Undigested Haggis and a Tastier Alternative: Stereotyped in America
By Dennis Hartley
I’m going to risk crucifixion here and confess that I only recently got around to viewing Crash , Paul Haggis’ 2005 Oscar winning meditation on racism in America. (Perhaps I was shamed into screening it after Michael Richard’s recent little star turn on YouTube).
“Crash” takes the premise of 1993’s Falling Down and expands on it exponentially. Instead of one disenfranchised white guy going off the deep end and raging through L.A. blaming every person of color he encounters for his own personal failures, “Crash” serves up an Altman-sized, multicultural cast of self-pitying whiners running around L.A. pissed off at everybody else. They hail from all ethnic and socio-economic strata, they are all fuming about their (real or perceived) victimization by one societal injustice or another and (yeah, you guessed it) they are all on a ‘crash’ course, about to collide.
Structurally, “Crash” is a close cousin to PT Anderson’s (vastly superior) “Magnolia”, and operates on the same conceit. We are asked to accept an absurdly implausible series of “coincidences” in order for the story (or in this case, Today’s Lecture) to work.
The cast is talented, the performances are earnest and the film is slickly made, but the mind boggles as to how this condescending, contrived, PC-pandering mess earned a Best Picture Oscar. The Message (people are people and bigotry is colorblind) has been delivered numerous times before and with considerably more panache (see list below).
They don’t make ‘em like this anymore-honest, bold, uncompromising, socially and politically meaningful, yet (lest we forget) entertaining. The late Ashby only directed a relative handful of films, but most, especially his 70’s output, were built to last (Harold and Maude, The Last Detail, Bound for Glory,Shampoo, Being There). In The Landlord, Beau Bridges is a spoiled rich kid who worries his parents with his “liberal views”, especially when he buys a run-down inner-city tenement, with intentions to renovate. His subsequent involvement with the various black tenants is played sometimes for laughs, other times for intense drama, but always for real. The social satire and pointed observations about race relations are dead-on, but never preachy or condescending (are you listening, Paul Haggis?). Top-notch ensemble work, featuring a young Lou Gossett (with hair!) giving a memorable dramatic turn. The lovely Susan Anspach is hilarious as Bridge’s perpetually stoned and bemused sister. A scene featuring Pearl Bailey and Lee Grant getting drunk and bonding over a bottle of “sparkling” wine is a minor classic all on its own. Unfortunately, The Landlord remains the only Ashby film not on DVD (a crime!). It does pop up on cable, so check your listings, or your local independent video store may have a VHS copy for rent.
I know we just met recently and all, but, y’know, we’ve been talking movies for well past our, er, third review now, and uh (gosh this is awkward) y’know, I was kinda hoping you could, erm, trust me if I recommend some DVD stocking stuffers? (No theme here, just some great “off-Hollywood” flicks from my personal library)-DH
The Bad Sleep Well-Lesser-known Akira Kurosawa film (from 1960) that mixes Shakespearean intrigue with modern Japanese corporate politics and a dash of film noir.
Chan Is Missing-Outstanding 1982 indie debut for director Wayne Wang, filmed in SF’s Chinatown (on a shoestring!) Unique, keenly observed low-key cultural satire.
Dazed & Confused-Richard Linklater captures the bell-bottom and bong hit 70’s zeitgeist to a tee in the best “coming of age” period film since “American Graffitti”.
Free Enterprise-Pop culture geeks approach the dreaded age of 30 with trepidation and the sage advice of one William Shatner (playing himself!) Much smarter than it sounds.
The Loved One-Classic 1965 cult flick that finally made it to DVD in 2006. A black comedy extraordinaire co-scripted by Terry Southern; unbelievably surreal casting!
Me and You and Everyone We Know-Performance artist Miranda July’s 2005 directing debut is a daring, whimsical and sublime statement on the universal need to connect.
Nightmare Alley-Classic cult film noir from 1947 is the darkest of them all. Out of print for decades due to legal hassles-it finally reached DVD in 2005. Not to be missed!
Pow Wow Highway-Unusual Native-American road movie/spiritual quest/comedy-drama from 1989 that eschews stereotypes and made me a Gary Farmer fan for life.
The Quiet Earth-1985 cult sci-fi from New Zealand featuring the great Bruno Lawrence in a “last man on earth” scenario. Enigmatic wonder of the final scene will haunt you.
Rude Boy-This 1980 backstage pseudo-docudrama is not for all tastes, but it is a must for fans of the UK’s late great agitprop punkers The Clash-fantastic performance footage
In keeping with the usual Saturday night at the movies here on Hullabaloo, I just watched An Inconvenient Truth and I am here to tell you that if you ever thought Al Gore was a boring has-been, this film will prove otherwise. It isn’t that he’s any less stiff or formal than he ever was. He’s the same guy I always saw — earnest, decent and human. But this film shows us a person who is doing something that so transcends any of the usual political and media calculations that he seems almost serene.
This film is so important. I saw it last summer and felt more moved than I have in years. This is a complicated and dangerous world and we are all overwhelmed by the challenges we face. Global warming may be the biggest and most challenging of all — and yet it may present opportunities for us if we can recognize just how connected we are to other people by virtue of this planet we all share. The film is educational and illuminating but it also unexpectedly imbues you with an almost lightheaded feeling of hope.
Al Gore is really too good for politics. He’s more like a prophet than a politician at this point. I almost don’t want to see him enter the fray and take the disgusting offal they will throw at him. But I love the guy and if it happened I can’t think of anyone who’d make a better president.
If you haven’t heard Melissa Etheridge’s great song for the movie, check it out. It makes me all verklempt:
Gore is asking that people sign a million postcards which he will take to the new congress in January. He says:
Yes, the new majority in Congress will be much more receptive on the importance of global warming. That’s the good news. But I know from personal experience that the only thing that will make Washington really take notice and do more than give lip service to the problem of global warming is the prospect of millions of committed citizens taking action. It’s time to join together and make that happen. Can you help?
There’s been quite an outcry in China (and here) about the recent public shaming of prostitutes. Everyone seems to acknowledge that there is something inherently discomfiting about this use public humiliation.
But it reminded me of a famous essay by someone you don’t usually associate with totalitarian practices — the godfather of communitarianism, Amitai Etzioni, who wrote some twenty years ago:
Public humiliation is a surprisingly effective and low-cost way of deterring criminals and expressing the moral order of a community. It is used by a few judges, but much too sparingly. Some jurisdictions publish the names of “Johns” who are caught frequenting prostitutes.
Lincoln County in Oregon will plea-bargain with a criminal only if he first puts an advertisement in a local newspaper, apologizing for his crime. This is limited, in practice, to nonviolent criminals, including some burglars and thieves. The ad includes the criminal’s picture and is paid for by him. Judges in Sarasota, Fla., and in Midwest City, Okla., have required people caught driving while under the influence to display an easy-to-see sticker on their cars: “Convicted of Drunken Driving.”
When I mention public shaming to my social-science colleagues, their first reaction is a mixture of disbelief and horror. Such punishment seems some how to violate people’s rights, to be dehumanizing. But what is the alternative if one grants that criminals ought to be punished?
[…]
Some people respond that such penalties remind them of the stars Jews were made to wear in Nazi Germany. However, the main problem with these insignia was that they were imposed on innocent people, on the basis of creed. Marking those convicted in open court, after due process, seems a legitimate use of such a device.
Possibly people object to “psychological punishment” as an alternative to imprisonment precisely because it is public and thus highly visible. They may prefer to shut criminals away, out of town, out of sight, rather than face reminders of their own unsavory inclinations. Maybe they feel that if they were caught with a prostitute or driving drunk, they would rather not see their own names in the paper. That is no reason to suggest psychological punishment is a poor public policy.
[…]
We need more courage and creativity: Should we shave the heads of convicted first-offender teen-agers caught selling hard drugs? (It beats incarceration in “correctional institutions.”) Should we require them to carry placards listing their transgressions and calling on others to desist? Other methods are sure to be found once we look for ways to say “shame on you” to those who committed a crime, and to create opportunities for them to express publicly their shame, penance and regrets.
When I first read this, my immediate thought was that in many cases we weren’t talking about “crimes” at all — and if these behaviors needed to be regulated or punished in some way, that public shaming was the absolute worst way to do it. I certainly agreed that we would no doubt find “other methods.” There is no end to the variations of creative humiliations people can devise if given sanction to inflict them. (Abu Ghraib anyone?)
Public, degrading, humiliating affronts to human dignity, institutionalizing phony pretentions of moral superiority, enlisting the public to inflict punishment in the form of social ostracism all seem like Theodore Dreiser novels turned into social science. I recalled that essay when I saw the story about the Chinese prostitutes because it had clarified something for me that I hadn’t thought of before: that there was a side to communitarianism that I really recoiled against on a visceral level. There seemed to me to be a great temptation to force conformity through coercive social means.
To me, the idea of institutionalizing community bully tactics and moral scolding as a legitimate tool of the state is nothing short of hell on earth. I’d rather live in a totalitarian political environment any day than a totalitarian social environment that is backed by the rule of law and enforced by James Dobson and Lynn Cheney. (We don’t actually have to imagine this. We already lived it.)
The idea has gone on to become quite popular, however, in certain legal circles and is used in courtrooms throughout the nation. The rightwing has joined with the communitarians with an enthusiastic backing of such clever punishments. (One called it “beautifully retributive.“) I continue to be appalled at the notion of enlisting the community to administer public shame as a criminal punishment. This is not to say that there is no such thing as creative sentencing, there can be great utility in forcing someone to face the person against whom they transgressed, for instance, and personally offer an apology or some sort of compensation. These are called “guilt punishments” and are not the same thing as public shaming.
Shame is a powerful, primal thing and it’s been a socially useful tool since humans were still in caves. But shame is a very short hop to repression and in the hands of the powerful or the mob it can be used for social purposes that have less to do with regulating bad behavior and more to do with sending messages to the community about the dangers of individualism.
The Chinese used it as a form of political represssion during the cultural revolution and that memory is fresh enough that last week’s little pageant was protested by many throughout the country. I wonder if there would be outrage in this country if prostitutes were paraded through a town in certain parts of America? I would hope so, but I’m really not sure.
We knew this, but it’s still good that the AP is investigating and reporting it:
The Pentagon called them “among the most dangerous, best-trained, vicious killers on the face of the Earth,” sweeping them up after Sept. 11 and hauling them in chains to a U.S. military prison in southeastern Cuba.
Since then, hundreds of the men have been transferred from Guantanamo Bay to other countries, many of them for “continued detention.”
And then set free.
Decisions by more than a dozen countries in the Middle East, Europe and South Asia to release the former detainees raise questions about whether they were really as dangerous as the United States claimed, or whether some of America’s staunchest allies have set terrorists and militants free.
[…]
But through interviews with justice and police officials, detainees and their families, and using reports from human rights groups and local media, The Associated Press was able to track 245 of those formerly held at Guantanamo. The investigation, which spanned 17 countries, found:
Once the detainees arrived in other countries, 205 of the 245 were either freed without being charged or were cleared of charges related to their detention at Guantanamo. Forty either stand charged with crimes or continue to be detained.
Only a tiny fraction of transferred detainees have been put on trial. The AP identified 14 trials, in which eight men were acquitted and six are awaiting verdicts. Two of the cases involving acquittals — one in Kuwait, one in Spain — initially resulted in convictions that were overturned on appeal.
[…]
Overall, about 165 Guantanamo detainees have been transferred from Guantanamo for “continued detention,” while about 200 were designated for immediate release. Some 420 detainees remain at the U.S. base in Cuba.
Clive Stafford Smith, a British-American attorney representing several detainees, said the AP’s findings indicate that innocent men were jailed and that the term “continued detention” is part of “a politically motivated farce.”
“The Bush administration wants to be able to say that these are dangerous terrorists who are going to be confined upon their release … although there is no evidence against many of them,” he said.
[…]
The United States insists that the fact that so many of the former detainees have been freed by other countries doesn’t mean they weren’t dangerous.
“They were part of Taliban, al-Qaida, or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners,” said Navy Cmdr. Jeffrey Gordon, a Pentagon spokesman.
But Joshua Colangelo-Bryan, a lawyer representing several detainees, says the fact that hundreds of men have been released into freedom belies their characterization by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld as “among the most dangerous, best-trained, vicious killers on the face of the earth.”
“After all, it would simply be incredible to suggest that the United States has voluntarily released such ‘vicious killers’ or that such men had been miraculously reformed at Guantanamo,” Colangelo-Bryan said.
I suppose it shouldn’t be surprising that a nation that has more people in jail than totalitarian communist China (which has four times our population), would do such a thing, but it still is. I can only assume that these officials think throwing innocent people in jail to be tortured and driven half mad is just the price that these people have to pay for being the wrong nationality, race or religion.
And they’ve assigned another psychopath to run the place:
As the first detainees began moving last week into Guantánamo’s modern, new detention facility, Camp 6, the military guard commander stood beneath the high, concrete walls of the compound, looking out on a fenced-in athletic yard.
The yard, where the detainees were to have played soccer and other sports, had been part of a plan to ease the conditions under which more than 400 men are imprisoned here, nearly all of them without having been charged. But that plan has changed.
“At this point, I just don’t see using that,” the guard commander, Col. Wade F. Dennis, said.
After two years in which the military sought to manage terrorism suspects at Guantánamo with incentives for good behavior, steady improvements in their living conditions and even dialogue with prison leaders, the authorities here have clamped down decisively in recent months.
Security procedures have been tightened. Group activities have been scaled back. With the retrofitting of Camp 6 and the near-emptying of another showcase camp for compliant prisoners, military officials said about three-fourths of the detainees would eventually be held in maximum-security cells. That is a stark departure from earlier plans to hold a similar number in medium-security units.
Officials said the shift reflected the military’s analysis — after a series of hunger strikes, a riot last May and three suicides by detainees in June — that earlier efforts to ease restrictions on the detainees had gone too far.
The commander of the Guantánamo task force, Rear Adm. Harry B. Harris Jr., said the tougher approach also reflected the changing nature of the prison population, and his conviction that all of those now held here are dangerous men. “They’re all terrorists; they’re all enemy combatants,” Admiral Harris said in an interview.
He added, “I don’t think there is such a thing as a medium-security terrorist.”
Admiral Harris, who took command on March 31, referred in part to the recent departure from Guantánamo of the last of 38 men whom the military had classified since early 2005 as “no longer enemy combatants.” Still, about 100 others who had been cleared by the military for transfer or release remained here while the State Department tried to arrange their repatriation.
[Shortly after Admiral Harris’s remarks, another 15 detainees were sent home to Saudi Arabia, where they were promptly returned to their families.]
MORAN: So no man who ever came to Guantanamo Bay came there by mistake [or] was innocent?
HARRIS: I believe that to be true
Admiral Harris also thinks that these prisoners are committing an act of terrorism when they commit suicide. I guess the logic is that embarrassment for the United States government is equivalent to the deaths of innocent people in a suicide bomb. In fact, he thinks that any resistence to their captivity is terrorism.
Rear Admiral Harris is adamant that the people in his care are well looked after and are enemies of the United States.
He told me they use any weapon they can – including their own urine and faeces – to continue to wage war on the United States.
I wrote about this last fall:
When heavily guarded people in cages throwing feces is considered assymetrical warfare, we have gone down the rabbit hole. (Either that or a couple of toddlers I know are in training to be the next Osama bin Laden.) Does this man think he’s actually fighting terrorists down there?
The men being held in Guantanamo might have been terrorists, but when they are under the total control of the most powerful military in the world they are most definitely not combatants, they are prisoners. It’s not an act of war to dislike your jailers or resist your imprisonment. That’s absurd.
According to the NY Times today, Harris has really straightened things out down there:
Several military officials said Admiral Harris took over the Guantánamo task force with a greater concern about security, and soon ordered his aides to draw up plans to deal with hostage-takings and other emergencies.
He and Colonel Dennis both asserted that Camp 4 — where dozens of detainees rioted during an aggressive search of their quarters last May — represented a particular danger.
Admiral Harris said detainees there had used the freedom of the camp to train one another in terrorist tactics, and in 2004 plotted unsuccessfully to seize a food truck and use it to run over guards.
“Camp 4 is an ideal planning ground for nefarious activity,” he said.
But according to several recent interviews with military personnel who served here at the time, the riot in May did not transpire precisely as military officials had described it. The disturbance culminated with what the military had said was an attack by detainees on members of a Quick Reaction Force that burst into one barracks to stop a detainee who appeared to be hanging himself.
But officers familiar with the event said the force stormed in after a guard saw a detainee merely holding up a sheet and that his intentions were ambiguous. A guard also mistakenly broadcast the radio code for multiple suicide attempts, heightening the alarm, the officers said.
“Nefarious activity?” They send in one more bizarre, psychotic warden down there after another. Maybe that’s the only kind of person who is willing to do it.
We know that they paid bounties in Afghanistan to rival clans who sold out their enemies who had nothing to do with al-Qaeda. We know that they knew this very early on and yet kept the prisoners there for years. There may very well still be some of those guys down there. Some of them mayh ave died in prison or killed themselves.
Guantanamo is a stain on America that is going to haunt us forever. Its very existence is an affront to the constitution upon which our government is built and the philosophy of human rights that inform it. For years now we’ve known what was happening down there and yet it still continues. In fact, from today’s report, it’s taken a recent turn for the worse. I can hardly believe it.
All the sordid evidence of Guantanamo abuse is laid out here and the Center for Constitutional Rights. Amnesty has more.
“The leading advocate for escalating the war is Senator John McCain. I have served with John in Congress and I respect him. But John McCain is wrong, dead wrong to think that we can solve Iraq’s political crisis through military escalation.”
Yes, yes, yes. If Bush does what he’d like to do, which is send in more troops, then this will no longer be Bush’s war —- it’s McCain’s war too and he needs to have it strung around his neck like a neocon albatross. Bush and McCain want to “escalate” the war at a time when 70% of the public believe we should at least begin a process of withdrawal. Don’t let him worm his way out of it when he gets his way and it doesn’t work.
McCain said conditions in some areas of Iraq have improved since his last visit in March, but “I believe there is still a compelling reason to have an increase in troops here in Baghdad and in Anbar province in order to bring the sectarian violence under control” and to “allow the political process to proceed.”
Two other senators in the delegation, Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., agreed.
“We need more, not less, U.S. troops here,” Lieberman said.
So the great bipartisan lions of the Senate, the captains of the sensible Gang of 14 continue to insist that we just haven’t spilled enough blood to get the job done despite the fact that they are out of step with the vast majority of the nation and the world.
There was one killjoy among the manly warriors:
Another senator in the group, moderate Republican Susan Collins of Maine, was more cautious.
“Iraq is in crisis. The rising sectarian violence threatens the very existence of Iraq as a nation,” she said. The current U.S. strategy in Iraq has failed, but “I’m not yet convinced that additional troops will pave the way to a peaceful Iraq in a lasting sense,” Collins said.
She’s facing a tough re-election campaign in ’08. (And maybe she’s sane, who knows?)
Among the punditocrisy these four Senators are considered the perfect “moderates” of the ruling class — the leaders who best represent the mainstream thinking of “real Americans.” And yet they are alone with the radical, failed neocons like William Kristol and Frederick Kagan (who are lobbying with everything they have to try to rescue their tattered reputations) in their view that the war needs to be escalated.
Bravo to Richardson for calling it what it is and calling out John McCain on this right now. We’ll see if Dean Broder and his fellow court scribes begin to see him as a dirty hippie now that he’s separated himself so boldly from the “centrists” who represent the most radical 10% of the country.
The good news is that Lieberman is no longer a Democrat or he would have reached a new pinnacle of liberal perfidy with this latest gambit. After all, this is the man who ran his last campaign saying “no one wants to end the war more than I do.” It takes a lot of chutzpah to turn around two months later and say “we need more, not less, US troops here.”
And to think we called him a liar.
Update: McCain says we can send more troops to Afghanistan too. On ponies!
He hedged a little bit though:
“If it’s necessary, we will, and I’m sure we would be agreeable, but the focus here is more on training the Afghan National Army and the police, as opposed to the increased U.S. troop presence.”
I’m not sure where we’re going to get all these troops. Maybe that’s what they’re going to do with all those illegal immigrants they’ve been rounding up and shipping to parts unknown.
Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.) announced today that he will forgo a run for president in 2008, citing the “long odds” he would face as a candidate who is not well-known nationally has blood on his hands, and whose war vote helped extinguish a large part of the human race.
Kevin Drum and Steve Benen wonder why the wingnuts haven’t come up with anything good with which to smear Obama. Good question.
It reminds me of some earnest and straightforward analysis Bill Bennett dispensed earlier today:
BENNETT: Well, I mean, as a Republican partisan, let me just say that, for sure, I would rather face Al Gore than Hillary Clinton…
BLITZER: Why?
BENNETT: … or Barack Obama.
Because I think it’s an easier win for a Republican. But, by the way, when they got it tuned into the Al Gore channel tomorrow night, if they flip by accident, and they get Obama, people are not going to go back.
Do you believe Bill Bennett is being honest about this?
I have no idea which candidates really scare the Republicans. But I do know one thing. When lying sacks of discarded table scraps like Bill Bennett tell you that they are afraid to face certain Democrats and don’t fear the others — be skeptical. Be very skeptical. I know it sounds mean and partisan, but experience should tell everyone that he is not a sincere man trying to dispassionately analyze the political scene. Everything he says is designed to benefit the Republican Party.
For days I have been half-heartedly trying to draft a post about Christopher Hitchens’ flaccid and shrunken sense of self-awareness, but couldn’t quite work up any enthusiasm. (I doubt this is the first time first time he’s evoked that response.) Lucky for me I don’t have to waste even one more frustrated nanosecond trying to find the inspiration to refute his sterile sociological effusion. Lance Mannion says everything that needs to be said.
I’m listening to Rick Warren (“A Purpose Driven Life”) talking about how people everywhere are tired of partisanship and want civility. He says that he thinks it’s time for both sides to stop being mean to each other — and he says that base politics are completely out of fashion.Isn’t that terrific? We can all put the partisan ugliness of the past two decades behind us a work together.
But I can’t help but wonder just a little bit about why all these people never said anything about this when the Republicans held a majority in both houses? After all these years of toxic right wing radio and Fox TV and Ann Coulter, you would have thought these fine non-partisan people would have spoken up sooner. Odd, don’t you think?
Oh well. I hear Lucy is getting up a nice game of football for all of us. Anybody up for a rousing chorus of Kumbaaya?
Most of you probably saw this already over at Kos, but I think it’s worth taking another look at. It is interesting that nobody has mentioned this before:
Democrats now have 233 seats in the 110th congress, more than Republicans have had since 1952. The Republican “revolution” never secured this large a majority in the House.
Meanwhile Karl Rove is telling people “the election was awful darn close.” Right.
Those arrogant Republicans thought they were building the thousand year Reich and the Dems managed to build a bigger majority in one go. But the truth is that Republicans are not a majority party and never really have been — when they get into power they can’t seem to help themselves and they become excessive and out of control. Power doesn’t become them.
But that doesn’t mean they (the Republicans) aren’t able to advance their cause; they are very effective as a minority party and they know how to advance their agenda as the opposition. In some respects they govern more effectively from the minority position than from the majority. The Dems never mastered that skill and don’t function any better out of power than the Republicans do when they are in power. So we are probably heading back to a more natural state of things, but I would caution that it doesn’t mean that the Democrats will easily be able to enact a progressive agenda. They have to outsmart an opposition that knows exactly how to manipulate things to get their way while blaming Democrats for the inevitable fallout.
The good news is that the Democrats have spent some time in the wildreness and hopefully they’ve grown more savvy. With some coattails next time, they could start to get something real done starting in 2009.
and I am here to tell you that if you ever thought Al Gore was a boring has-been, this film will prove otherwise. It isn’t that he’s any less stiff or formal than he ever was. He’s the same guy I always saw — earnest, decent and human. But this film shows us a person who is doing something that so transcends any of the usual political and media calculations that he seems almost serene. 
the book is a great choice if you are looking for something meaningful to give someone for Christmas.