Review: East of Eden (1955)

A queer woman's review of a queer man's legendary movie.

Review by Yolanda Carrington

EAST OF EDEN (1955)
Director: Elia Kazan
Cast: James Dean, Richard Davalos, Julie Harris, Raymond Massey, Jo Van Fleet, Burl Ives
Screenplay: Paul Osborn, John Steinbeck (uncredited)
Format: CinemaScope, WarnerColor
Studio: Warner Bros.
Edition: Two-disc DVD set (Region 1), Warner Home Video, 2005

Back in the day, a kid from North Carolina named Yolanda Carrington was highly skeptical about an actor from Indiana named James Dean. From the time I hit puberty all I ever heard about was the legend of this dude, The Rebel, the guy who set a million hearts on fire with his performances in just three films, and who was gone all too soon from a fatal car accident right when his star was just beginning to shine. From looking at the old film posters and breathtaking publicity shots, it was easy to assume that Mr. Dean was just some pretty boy teen idol, whom white women old enough to be my mamas and grandmas were still pining for after all these years, just like they did with that other slick-headed fifties dude---Elvis Presley. It all seemed to fit in perfectly with the 1950s nostalgia that infected middle-aged and elderly folks in my hometown, the same ones who went out for burgers and shakes at carhop-style joints like Char-Grill and Cook-Out in glossily restored Chevys and Cadillacs.

But then there were the Top 100 Films of All Time specials on CBS from the American Film Institute, where Jimmy Dean was talked about in the same company as Humphrey Bogart, Marlon Brando, Paul Newman, Montgomery Clift, Frank Sinatra and all the other très legendary white men of stage and screen. Two of his films---Rebel Without a Cause and Giant---are among the AFI Top 100. In one of these broadcasts, I watched actor Dustin Hoffman become misty-eyed when he reminisced about how Dean's performance as troubled kid Jim Stark in RWC affected the kids of his generation. For Hoffman and for kids like him, Dean had set them on fire---for the first time they saw their real lives as young people reflected on the big screen. In my own adolescence the big stars who set my generation on fire---Kurt Cobain, Tupac Shakur, and the Notorious B.I.G.---had a similar affect on me and my peers. Of course, those three men and us were resting on the shoulders of folks like Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, all the Beatles and the Stones, the punks, post-punks and New Wavers, the South Bronx legends who created hip-hop, Kerouac and the Beat writers, and Messrs Dean and Presley and their followers.

In his short life and career, Dean made eight films and starred in three: East of Eden, Rebel Without a Cause, and Giant. Of these three, East of Eden is my favorite film. But my favorite performance of Jimmy's is his turn as the alcoholic, racist nouveau riche oilman Jett Rink in Giant (an uneven and overly long film co-starring Elizabeth Taylor and Rock Hudson). In a time when public consciousness of both white supremacy and substance abuse was extremely limited, Jimmy Dean brought out all the contradictions in Jett's character---a poor white man looked down on by the wealthy Texas rancher class who drowns his insecurities in liquor and projects his own vicious self-hatred onto the Mexican American community. Indeed, Jimmy gives a masterfully dialectical performance as Jett---he's every bit the poor white man that Bob Dylan sang about nine years later in "Only a Pawn in Their Game." But today, we're here to talk about Dean's first starring movie, East of Eden.

East of Eden is loosely based on the novel of the same name by Nobel Prize-winning author John Steinbeck (Of Mice and Men, The Grapes of Wrath). Like its literary predecessor, the film EOE is set in Steinbeck's hometown of Salinas Valley, California, and like the book, it's a play on the Cain and Abel story in the Bible. Director Elia Kazan focuses his dramatization on the last ninety or so pages of the book, set during the World War I era, which is concerned with the saga of the three-man Trask household, father Adam and his two young adult sons. Cal (Dean) is a young man wanting to know who he is. He feels part of his being missing---the missing piece tied somehow to the mother who he and his brother Aron (Davalos) have believed to be dead. Their father Adam Trask (Massey) told them that their mother died when they were young children. Yet somehow, Cal not only knows that his mother (Van Fleet) is very much alive, but that she's a big-time brothel-keeper the next town over in Monterey. Just how he figured this out is not revealed in the movie.

Cal (Dean) walking with Mama Kate (Van Fleet)

Cal is the so-called "bad" seed of the two Trask brothers. Cal's wanderlust, angst, boredom, and impestuousness arouse the ire of disappointment from Daddy Trask. Daddy fears that Cal is headed down the wrong path, and may be spiritually ruined in the same way that his mother was. By contrast, Aron represents all that a father would want from his son---well-behaved, honest, decent, hard-working, God-fearing, and responsible. He is on the right track to being a good, upstanding citizen, demonstrated by his intention to marry his sweetheart Abra (Harris), a sweet nurturing young woman from a prominent family. Aron envisions Abra as a loving, comforting wife and mother, that soft pillow of wifely goodness that every heterosexist family man dreams of coming home to. It wouldn't be a stretch to assume that Aron's daydream of Abra's future maternity comes from an unrequited desire for his lost mother.

Caught between two brothers (Davalos, Harris, and Dean).

As for Sister Abra, there is a hell of a lot more to her than meets the eye. (Ain't it always that way, ladies?) Because of her own strained family situation, she has a deep insight into the ways that family members can hurt and be hurt by each other. She also recognizes the deep complexity of a human being that is Cal Trask, seeing beyond his bad-boy persona/reputation and reaching out to the thoughful, intelligent man that lies underneath. She feels drawn to Cal by some intangible psychic bond, a powerful energy that ain't nowhere to be found in her relationship with upstanding citizen Aron. As she and Cal grow closer together, she becomes ever more determined to help him repair his strained relationship with Daddy Trask.

Daddy Adam is a hard-working, God-fearing man who has tried to live right, and to raise his sons in the word of the Holy Bible. Daddy Trask has a very static either/or view of the world, what is right and wrong and the correct way for a man to live a good, decent life. It's a mindset that establishes impossible expectations for himself and his sons. The unbearable tension in his relationship with Cal comes from the fear that many a parent has felt for her child---that she or he will make a big mistake and fall into a place where she can't come back from. Cal has felt this fear from Daddy Trask his entire life, and Daddy's fears for him and his spiritual welfare have convinced him that he is a "bad" son, an irredeemable lout predestined to be a sinner.

Daddy Trask (Massey) looks out over the horizon.

When Daddy Trask loses a substantial amount of money in a vegetable shipping venture, Cal sees a chance to redeem himself in his father's eyes. He embarks on a plan to earn back every penny that Daddy Trask has lost in the business failure. Of course, we in the audience can recognize that this plan of Cal's isn't necessary---the only thing that Daddy wants from Cal is the honor of a good, decent life lived. But here's the question: what constitutes a good, decent life? Financial success? A happy marriage with kids? Dedicated worship of God and regular church attendance? What standard of honorable manhood does Daddy Trask have? And what kind of man should Cal be?

Kate, the long-lost mama of the Brothers Trask, is a highly successful pimp and saloon-owner in fast-track Monterey, fifteen miles and millions of light years from verdant, idyllic Salinas. Her clients include top dogs in government and business, who sneak in at night, while she "walks through the front door in the daytime," in her own words. She broke free from Daddy Trask because she felt he was trying to tie her down as a wife and mother, to isolate her in Victorian domesticity on a Salinas ranch. Her desire to live independent of wifely/maternal expectations, to acquire power and independence on her own terms, is seen as the Ultimate Sin by both fellow characters and audience members alike. Indeed, more than a few film critics and even co-stars of EOE have referred to Van Fleet's character as a prostitute, rather than a pimp and brothel-owner. Granted, the Kate character in Steinbeck's book begins as a sex worker before taking over the brothel from the previous owner, but there is no indication of Kate having turned a trick in the film. No, any woman who abandons the respectable life of husband, home, and kids for easy money must be some kind of prostitute. Why is a woman who displays any kind of worldly ambition automatically seen as a whore?

In contrast to Daddy Trask, Mama Kate is everything that he is not---streetwise, business-savvy, full of personal desire and ambition. She knows what the public wants and she knows how to deliver, and she won't let the fact that she is a wife and mother stand in her way. Rather than tell his sons this hard truth, Daddy convinces his sons that this untameable, disobedient woman died when they were babies. Just as her sons are the embodiment of Cain and Abel, Kate is the personification of Eve, the woman tempted by the riches and ambition of Satan who forsakes the innocence of Eden. In short, she is everything a good white woman of the time was NOT supposed to be, and in my 2007 eyes, Kate emerges as a distinctly feminist---albeit contradictory---character, an outcome I'm sure neither Steinbeck, Osborn, nor Kazan intended.

The tension between good son Aron and bad son Cal inevitably comes to a head in the end. In a fit of rage and jealously at the deepening intimacy between Abra and Cal, Aron arrogantly denounces Cal as no-good. In a desire for revenge, Cal introduces Aron to Kate, the bad mother that the good son has long believed to be dead. Not surprisingly, Aron's entire sense of self is shattered, and he leaves home to join the Great War in Europe, a war he swore he'd never fight. What ensues afterward changes the dynamics between the two remaining Trask men, for the better. Recognizing that they both love and need each other, father and son reach out to each other, in one of the most poignant reconciliations I've ever seen in a feature film. In East of Eden, the Prodigal Son comes home, straight into the arms of his father.

How do I feel about Jimmy Dean now? Well, needless to say, I ain't skeptical of him anymore. But I am deeply sad. Tragedy happens in life, as we all know. Many young people, talented, caring, and loving, have fallen before their time. James Dean just happened to be one of them. None of us knows when we're gonna leave this Earth, how old we will be or what we will have accomplished when that day comes. But I hope that when that day comes for me, I would have lived my life to the fullest, as Jimmy had. What a hell of an example for a young queer man to lay down.

Meeting an Actor's Acquaintance

Hey y'all---I've got a question for y'all. If one were to approach the films of a particular actor, which one would be the best one to ease into her work? Especially when that actor is Marlon Brando?

You see, I had wanted to watch Last Tango in Paris, but after reading as many reviews as I could find and seeing a few clips and stills, something told me that Tango wouldn't be a good "intro" film into Brando's work. A couple of years ago I saw Burn! at a film screening that was part of a group study, and I really enjoyed that film. I saw The Young Lions on cable TV when I was in my late teens. I've tried to watch The Godfather before, but I didn't like it at all (maybe I need to watch it again).

Which Brando film would you suggest watching before seeing Tango? And please be careful, I haven't seen many of these films before, so don't spoil 'em for me!

Professionalism = Selling Your Soul: A Feminist Rant on "The Devil Wears Prada"

Greta Christina offers a feminist persective on The Devil Wears Prada
"The Devil Wears Prada" has been on HBO recently: I watched it again a few days ago (I do think it's a funny, entertaining, well-crafted movie), and I was reminded of a feminist rant I had when the movie first came out.


Here's the deal. (Spoiler alert.) The purported arc of the movie is that our heroine, Andrea (Anne Hathaway), is a young would-be journalist in New York who can't find the kind of serious work she wants, and thus takes a job as assistant to the editor-in-chief at the biggest fashion magazine in the country. She justifies this as (a) a source of a much-needed paycheck, and (b) an entry-level position that could earn her some experience and gain her some connections in the profession.


But she sells out. She sells her soul. She is seduced by the glamour of the fashion industry into abandoning her high ideals; she prioritizes her work over her personal relationships; she stabs her colleague in the back; and she even winds up defending her abusive control-freak boss, Miranda (Meryl Streep) against her many critics. Eventually she realizes the error of her ways, walks out on her job, finds a better one, and grovels for forgiveness to everyone she injured along the way.

So here's my problem with the movie:

I couldn't see anything she did wrong.

I was watching very carefully the second time around, and almost every "soul-selling" step that the heroine took seemed perfectly reasonable and defensible.

And more to the point, just about everything she did would have been accepted without blinking in a male protagonist.

Let's take it a piece at a time. Here are the sins against her soul that Andrea supposedly committed.

1) She stayed in a job she didn't much care about, in an industry that's a snakepit of ego and ambition, working for a boss who treated her abysmally... just to get ahead in her career.

Well, yes. If you're serious about a career, "take this job and shove it" isn't always an option. Especially if you're just starting out. Sometimes you have to put up with very bad situations temporarily, to get what you need on your resume (not to mention to keep the paychecks coming). And sometimes you start out at a company you don't much like or care about, to gain experience you'll need to eventually work for someone you do care about. That's not selling your soul. That's having long-term goals, and the stick-to-it-iveness to go through the necessary, if sometimes unpleasant, preliminary steps to get there. That's being willing to prioritize your long-term goals over your immediate happiness and comfort. And theoretically, that's a quality our society values.


In men, anyway. This especially bugs me because her boyfriend, who's super-critical of her choices throughout the movie, is an equally ambitious, young, struggling would-be chef... and it's not like the world of high-end restaurants isn't a snakepit of ego and ambition, in which people stick with crappy jobs and asshole bosses to get the experience and contacts they need. But somehow, that's different.

And as it turns out, Andrea was right to do what she did. She did get useful experience and contacts, and at the end of the movie when she applies for the serious journalism job at the lefty newspaper, her recommendation from her old fashion-magazine boss is the tipping point that gets her the job. The job she cares about, and is good at, and that matters in the world.

But somehow, she was still selling her soul.


2) She prioritized her job over her friends and her lover -- including, sin of sins, skipping her boyfriend's birthday party because of a work emergency.

Let me ask you this. Ingrid currently has a job that she loves -- and it currently requires her to travel out of town two and a half days a week. This is a little hard on me, and puts some stress on our relationship. I also currently have a job I love (freelance writing) that currently requires me to spend weekends and evenings writing... time that would otherwise be part of the diminishing time we can spend together. This is a little hard on Ingrid, and puts some stress on our relationship.

Is either of us doing something terribly wrong?


I don't think so. I think we're both doing exactly the right thing -- supporting each other in our respective careers, making space for each other to do what we need to do, and making a point of savoring the time we do have together. That, in my mind, is what you do when you love someone. Obviously there's a limit -- if Ingrid's job required her to move to Antarctica, I'd put my foot down -- but especially when a situation is a temporary, experience-gaining or stopgap situation, cutting your partner some slack so they can get where they're going in a career they care about is just part of being in a relationship.


And, as Ingrid pointed out when I first shared this rant with her, "If you had a work emergency and had to skip my birthday party, I'd be disappointed, but I wouldn't think you'd done anything horribly wrong." Thinking that a birthday party is the most important thing in the world... that's not what sane adults do. (In fact, Andrea stayed at the emergency work event only as long as she needed to fulfill the requirements of her job, and when given the chance to stay longer to fulfill her own personal ambitions, she cut out and went home to be with her boyfriend.)


But women aren't supposed to think like this. Nobody blinks an eye when men have to work late or miss special personal events for job emergencies... but women are supposed to be loving and emotional and think family and love are always, always, always more important than work. Andrea was making a difficult but reasonable decision... but somehow, she was still selling her soul.


3) She got sucked into the world of fashion -- a world she didn't care beans about before she took the job.

Yes. Interestingly enough, when you take a new job in a field you're not familiar with, you often get excited about it and drawn into it. For fuck's sake, that's one of the best things about taking a job in a field you're not familiar with. You learn new things. You expand your horizons. I didn't know that much about women's health care before my job at the Feminist Women's Health Center; or about gay politics before my job at the gay newspaper; or hell, about the music industry before my crappy job at Ticketmaster. I grew to know and care about these things more because of these jobs. That doesn't make me a sell-out. That makes me an open-minded person who's eager to learn.


You can argue that fashion is a vapid, trivial thing to care about. But you can also argue, as many characters in the movie do, that fashion is an art form, one that touches everyone's life. Nobody thinks Hank Hill of "King of the Hill" is a sellout because he's grown to care passionately about propane and propane accessories... but when Andrea grows to see that fashion isn't as vapid and trivial as she'd originally thought, somehow it means she was selling her soul.


4) She stabbed her friend and colleague in the back.

Now, this is an interesting one. Andrea's most serious sin, in her mind and everyone else's, is that, when Miranda told her that she would be going on a coveted trip to Paris instead of her fellow assistant Emily (Emily Blunt), her initial reaction was to say, "I can't do that, the Paris trip means too much to Emily." But when Miranda made it clear that refusing the Paris trip would mean risking not only her job, but her chance at a recommendation and her career prospects (I believe her words were, "I'll assume you're not serious about your career, here or anywhere else"), Andrea caves and accepts.

In other words:


Her boss decides (somewhat unreasonably, but not entirely so) that Andrea is a better and more capable choice for the Paris trip than Emily. Her boss offers her the assignment. She accepts it.

And this is bad because...?


That's what the working world is like. If you're a boss, you don't offer assignments based on how much it means to your employees. You offer assignments based on who you think the best person for the assignment will be. And if you're an employee, you don't refuse assignments because taking them would hurt someone's feelings. It's not like the dating world -- it's not rude or bad to take the job your friend is hot for.

It's not like Andrea connived and schemed for the trip. It's not like she tried to undercut Emily or make her look bad so she could get the trip. In fact, she tried to turn the trip down, and she tried to give it to Emily.


But in the end, she acted like a professional. She treated her job like a job, not like a social relationship. She accepted an assignment that her boss offered her, an assignment her boss decided she was better suited to than her colleague -- and this, in her own eyes and in everybody else's, makes her a selfish, backstabbing power-slut. Nobody would blink twice if a man did exactly the same thing -- but for Andrea, somehow it means she was selling her soul.


5) She began to have understanding and sympathy for her abusive, control-freak boss.

My very, very favorite line in the movie -- and one that I think sums up in a nutshell the movie's real message -- is when Andrea says to a fellow writer (I'm paraphrasing here), "If a man acted the way Miranda does, nobody would say anything at all except what a great job he does."

Yup.

That pretty much says it all.


I think Andrea's character arc when it comes to Miranda is 100% reasonable. She starts out hating and fearing her; she grows to have some respect and compassion for her; and in the end, she decides that the compromises Miranda has made (personal and ethical) aren't compromises she would be willing to make.

But somehow, the fact that she ever had respect for Miranda's professionalism, and compassion for the pain that her sacrifices caused her... somehow, that means she was selling her soul.

*****


There's an essay I read in "Harry Potter and Philosophy," arguing that ambition (the defining quality of the Slytherin house) is, in fact, a virtue. And I would agree. Like most virtues, taken to extremes it can become a vice... but the willingness to focus on long-term professional goals, and to work hard and make sacrifices to reach them, is definitely a virtue. And it's a virtue that our society generally values quite highly.


But not in women. In women, ambition -- being willing to put up with shit to get where you want to go, sometimes prioritizing your career over your personal life, becoming engaged with a job even though it's ultimately not what you care about most, treating it like a job instead of a slumber party, having respect for successful high-achievers in your field, and generally taking your career seriously -- isn't considered a virtue at all.

In fact, it's more than just not a virtue. It means that you're selling your soul.

---

Read more from Greta Christina's blog

Jesus Camp: Training the Wee Footsoldiers of God

I finally saw Jesus Camp last night. (Yes, I know I'm late to the party.) While some of it was absolutely unsurprising, some of it did indeed send chills down my spine. There were certainly shades of my own summer indoctrination camp[PDF - thanks R.D.] but it went much farther. I recognize some of the brainwashing tactics, as they were used on us at bible camp, in particular the shame and the peer pressure to convert and repent (extra points for squeezing out some tears). While we didn't speak in tongues and writhe on the ground, the main difference was the political element featured at Jesus Camp.

One of the weirdest scenes was when a giant cardboard dummy (heh) of President George Bush was brought to the front of the chapel and all the kids had to pray over him. One of the scariest was the whole abortion thing. They gave the little kids tiny fetuses to hold in their soft little hands (of course they looked like wee toy babies, and nothing like a real fetus at 7 weeks - if the kids saw what a real one looks like they would probably have nightmares). They put "Life" tape over the kids mouths - there was even a scene in front of the white house. Many of these kids were far too young to understand sex, pregnancy, or any of that, so surely they had no idea what abortion actually is. In their minds abortion is baby murder, plain and simple, and it must be stopped.


In order to justify what they are doing, the camp director and some parents say they were training their little army of God as a response to how Muslims train their kids into an Islamic army.

It's no wonder, with that kind of intense training and discipling, that those young people are ready to kill themselves for the cause of Islam. I wanna see young people who are as committed to the cause of Jesus Christ as the young people are to the cause of Islam. I wanna see them as radically laying down their lives for the Gospel as they are over in Pakistan and Israel and Palestine and all those different places, you know, because we have... excuse me, but we have the truth!

The kids who were interviewed spoke about being warriors and not being afraid to die for God. I think they meant it metaphorically, but I'm not really sure.

The camp did an excellent job at reaching the kids' tender little minds - using stories and props that really reach the kids, making them feel special ("You are the most important generation", "God wrote the book of your life"), even letting them smash things with a hammer (coffee mugs labeled "government") - and if there's one things kids love, it's smashing things!

The children are not raised to be freethinking individuals, but vessels of God to be used. The frames in which they can think are extremely tight, and there is no respect for science or critical thought. Many of the kids are homeschooled: global warming isn't a big deal, science doesn't prove anything, evolution is a belief... One of the families did a sort of pledge of allegiance to Jesus, and the USA, and oddly enough, the Israeli flag.

Overall, it was an excellent movie, with no commentary from the directors at all. The interviews let the camp director, parents, and kids speak for themselves.

Worth watching: the deleted scenes.

Most embarassing guest appearance: Pastor Ted Haggard.

Funniest line of the movie: "We pray over these powerpoint presentations".

Crossposted at Red Jenny

Class and The Pursuit of Happyness

Originally posted at Red Jenny

I saw Pursuit of Happyness yesterday and found it to be a very emotionally engaging film. This feel-good story features a homeless single father going to extraordinary ends to try to make it big in nearly impossible circumstances.

I was struck by the fairly realistic portrayal of working class life... The precariousness of this existence; those who scrape by are always only one small disaster away from financial ruin. The bone-weariness of constantly overextending oneself. The emotional fallout from all the stress and anxiety, which impacts self-esteem and relationships. The distress at not being able to protect one's kids from the realities of poverty.

I liked that Chris Gardiner's character was at once hero and anti-hero; he is intelligent, loving, and determined. He also doesn't always make the best decisions - in fact he makes some pretty bad mistakes. He is ultimately moral, but does a lot of unethical things (some due to panicking in tight circumstances) such as lying and stiffing others for money they also need.

I've read some reviews which describe this movie as a dramatization of the American Dream, the "meritocracy" that insists everyone can make it if they are upright, smart, and willing to put in the effort. Moralizing class like this leads to blame and judgment: if you don't make it you are lazy, immoral, or stupid and deserve your lot in life.

For me, however, as for this blogger I see the happy ending in the film as very unrealistic. Not everyone can make it in America. Indeed it "shows that for someone starting with nothing in America, it take a ludicrous amount of talent and drive to pull oneself up." For every one rags-to-riches story like this, there are millions of people who go from rags to rags, and many others who go from rags to slightly better. And of course, what little class mobility there is goes both ways.

Getting out of the cycle of homelessness is an incredible struggle, and many of us who have done it were lucky enough not to fall too deeply into that cycle, perhaps to have some help or an unexpected stroke of fortune. Those who think anyone can do it should try finding a job without a permanent address, a phone number, safety, or clean clothes, the need to carry everything on your back, lack of sleep, and a generally scruffy appearance. Hard, but many do it.

Now add a small child, and try to get a stockbroker job. Virtually impossible, and as noted, the extreme jump from total poverty to millionaire is "about the only jump that many black people get to see others of their race make when they’re growing up." Unfortunately there's no exploration of the injustice of the entire structure, or the need for collective action.

So is the film pro-capitalist propaganda or does it portray the realities of poverty? Both, a little. And neither. But it's emotionally satisfying, and ultimately worth watching.

Crash: Viewing White Hollywood Through Minority Colored Glasses

nubian reviews Crash: Viewing White Hollywood Through Minority Colored Glasses



last night i finally saw the film “crash” which i have been told to see many times before. i already knew that the premise for the film was about the racial undertones of the multicultural multiracial city of los angeles (my home)

first off, if you havent seen this movie, i think you should. not because i think that it does anything to educate folks about racism, i just think that in some instances it was well written and it told a story very well. since i am a filmmaker myself, i really enjoyed the cinematography and visual imagery.
however, my main problms with the film are as follows:

out of the characters of color, one was run over, one was fatally shot, another was publicly molested by a cop, one was a crack head, one shot a 5 year old child (with blanks however), and another was involved in human trafficking–the only thing badthat happened to a white character was when sandra bullock tripped and fell down the stairs of her house. but don’t worry, as the lovely white women that she was, she ended up being fine. this made me feel like the filmmakers were getting at the idea that white peoples lives are much more valuable.

the white people in the film were portrayed as the saviors of folks of color. the racist cop played by matt dillion molested a black woman on a routine traffic stop, but eventually saved her life when she was in an accident. the other white cop played by ryan phillipe saved terrence howards character from being shot by another cop, but eventually shot and killed larenz tate’s character then dumped his body on the side of the road. the mexican child was not fatally shot because the white storeowner saved her by selling the iranian daughter character blanks that filled the gun.

the message of the film implied that racism exists in all facets and it is not just a black and white issue, but that white people are somewhat immune to its effects. white people will never die from it, maybe fall down the stairs, but never suffer as much as folks of color. the film also implied that racism is not institutional, rather it is the fault of the citizens who perpetuate it. which, i think holds some weight, but i also think that racism is fundamentally institutional, whereas it is in every facet of american life. it is a disease that reproduces itself through the exploitation and subjugation of darker skinned folks, whether through equal access to education, healthcare, economic stability, or plain and simple…a healthy life. by ignoring this salient issue, the film then perpetuates the idea that racism can be eradicated if people simply stopped seeing other people’s skin color. this idea promotes “individualism” and denies the collective histories of people of color within this country. unfortunately, seeing people as “people” rather than as a white person, asian person, black person, etc is impossible because we do not live in a vaccuum. by that i mean, we are always affected by other people’s perceptions of race whether positive or negative; we are affected daily by the racist images produced in the media; we attend school within a system of education which systematically excludes the experience of folks of color–rendering our experiences as inferior to whites; and as american citizens and arguably, citizens of the world, we are controlled by a government which has blatantly and historically created policies which deny people of color the same mobility and equal opportunity and access afforded to whites. it is also highly unlikely that we can just up and erase the past 230 years of sterotypes that have grown, developed and changed and been ingrained into the core of the united states to see people as “just people.”

the sterotypes in the film were plentiful, but were not depicted in a way that challenged them–they were only reinforced and presented as truth. asians were bad drivers, black women were big and loud and named shenequa or big and loud and crackheads, iranians were shopkeepers with short tempers, black men were violent criminals and disrespectful towards women, latinos looked like gang members or didn’t speak “good english.” now, in a film that was supposedly produced to have us question our own prejudices, why wasn’t it produced in a way that portrays people of color differently? i argue because it wouldn’t make sense. the film needs to depict the stereotypes that maintain the racial social order to have the audience be able to relate to it—basically, to be able to consume it. if the film was about poor white people, rich and educated black folks, latinos who weren’t houskeepers but doctors or lawyers and so on, who would go see it? would it make any money? probably not.

in short, the film reinscribes racist stereotypes, which do not contradict hegemonic conceptions, but rather maintain the dominant social order regarding race. secondly, the film keeps racism at an interpersonal level without exploring race at the structural and institutional level, deeming it as a problem that can easily be solved if the world were “color-blind.” finally, “crash” follows the overtly racist claim that people of color “need” whites to save them from racism, since whiteness is depicted as a path of redemption and necessity for racially marked bodies.

its films like this that continue to fuel my fire to make better films….

Recommended: "Shut Up & Sing"

Recommended: "Shut Up & Sing" by Amy at Feminist Reprise

Yesterday we saw the documentary about the Dixie Chicks,"Shut Up & Sing." The controversy that has surrounded the band since lead singer Natalie Maines spoke out against the Iraq war on a London concert stage in 2003 has led the Chicks to produce an amazing song, "Not Ready to Make Nice," which could well become an anthem for strong women. The video is complex and intense, juxtaposing traditional icons of femininity with the strength and power of the song's direct lyrics and the band's emotional presentation.

Watch the
video of "Not Ready to Make Nice" (requires viewing an ad)

The film exemplifies the frightening contradiction between the supposed "amerikan" value of free speech and the vitriol and hate that was spewed at Maines for speaking out against violence and war, by those who would likely not bat an eyelash at hate speech against any marginalized group. The irony is that the Dixie Chicks has not been a political band--though I enjoy their work, it mostly treats stereotypical country music themes. (The exception to this is their song "Goodbye Earl," in which a woman and her best friend conspire to poison the man who is beating her. I heard this song was also banned from country music radio and the subject of significant public protest, though the film does not touch on this at all.) "Shut Up & Sing" shows the band becoming more political, almost in spite of themselves, as they witness the increasing hatred and over-the-top protests from former fans in response to Maines' clearly off-the-cuff, spontaneous comment such as any of us might make. I was reminded that, so often, it's not that we choose our radical politics--it's that the events that happen to us when we are going about our business radicalize us. The contradictions and injustices that surround us force us to take stands that we might not have chosen, but that, once taken, cannot be abandoned. What I took away from the film is that the Dixie Chicks' transition is far from over; there is a strong sense that the changes sparked by the London concert in 2003 in their politics and their work have really just begun, and I have high hopes that the future will bring more music from them that blends the personal and political as they do with "Not Ready to Make Nice."

The documentary makes much of portraying the Chicks as very traditional Texas
girls, good wives and mothers, probably partly to make a statement to those who
have criticized them; but it also comes through really clearly that that is who they are. That's one reason why the hate directed at them suprises them so. As I watched the scenes dealing with Emily Robison's difficulty becoming pregnant and her decision to undergo fertility treatments, I remembered what I wrote the other day about belonging to lesbian/feminist culture; I felt strongly that the culture the Dixie Chicks represent is not mine. And yet I also felt a kinship with them in their struggles to stand up for what they believe, to stick together and support each other even though they may not all agree. There is a wonderful scene where the Chicks are sitting with their male manager and a male representative of their tour sponsor, and the men are struggling (and failing) to get a word in edgewise as the three band members are clearly focused on talking intensely to each other. If nothing else, "Shut Up & Sing" is a testament to the strength of female friendship, to what women can accomplish when we take each other seriously--and, not least, a delicious showcase for the brilliance of three incredibly talented musicians.

Read a review of the film
(NOT a feminist site - offensive ads)

Rory Gilmore as the Feminist Ideal

Rory Gilmore as the Feminist Ideal by Rich of Adonis Mirror.

The CW Network’s Gilmore Girls came to a warm and inoffensive conclusion this past Tuesday. The finale gave everyone pretty much what they hoped for: a chance for the wide pastiche of character actors to take a bow, another windfall of a cameo (Christiane Amanpour), a big kiss, and a goodbye.

Like most fans of the series, I enjoyed the frenetic pace of the dialogue—I have an aunt who loves the show both because of and despite of that, being that she generally has no idea what they’re actually talking about through the tirades of “cultural references.” Indeed, it’s hard to think of a program that rewards watchers more for being plugged-in consumerists.

Like everyone else, I also enjoyed the interplay between the two leads.

When they were together.

Rory was always a touch too perfect to be interesting on her own.

I think Paris was a deliberate commentary on that perfection, or at least its unattainable nature for women: she was the person Rory would have been were it not for the necessities of network marketing. (Liza Weil had originally auditioned for Rory.) If Gilmore Girls was a show about characters, tragically, Rory was never allowed to be one: she was more of a vehicle, a blank slate of quiet, effortless perfection for launching one boring romance after another. That’s what female “stars” exist for, after all; it’s the female “characters” who get to have all the fun.

Her perfection—and the utter imperfection of her suitors, all cast from the underbellies of various fourth grade princess fantasies—made the prospect of any relationship for her an ugly impossibility. As the show was a drama, and mother and daughter could never be lucky in love at the same time, it meant for a lot of adolescent romance that is best fast-forwarded through.

It’s disturbing to think that a show celebrated for a mother and daughter relationship often didn’t really have a daughter in it, but rather someone to set up punch-lines. Some like to blame Alexis Bledel for that. But it wasn’t her fault that Rory was the consistently least interesting female character on the show.

If I were to blame anyone or anything for that, my finger would point first to the ideal of feminism that supposedly progressive types are peddling on cable these days.

Joss Whedon, especially, gets a lot of credit for crafting “feminist-friendly” fare. And to a good extent, it is, even if scare-quotes are still necessary. Thematically, cinematic “feminism” has to differ from its real-life inspiration. Yes, some of these contortions are necessary to get female-centered programming onto the screen at all.

But men like Whedon also have their own ideals of what a “real” feminist is. Whedon’s friend Rob Thomas drives that stake even deeper with his Veronica Mars, where his feisty girl-detective is out tasering the bad guys while the school feminists are navel-gazing over theory and leveling false accusations against frat boys.

Back to Gilmore Girls:

Paris Gellar is the ugly feminist, just funny and vulnerable enough to be palatable, enjoyable in short doses only with Rory as a foil. She is selfish, venal, and pursues her perfection with ruthless diligence.

Rory Gilmore is the post-feminist, plucky like some flapper heroine, who can make the world right just by being herself and bootstrapping her way through it. Somehow she always winds up on top by putting others first.

Gilmore Girls’ creator Amy Sherman-Palladino, notwithstanding, it seems like a lot of men have a vested interest in promoting Rory as the ideal feminist. “Reading is Sexy,” after all. (A hipster t-shirt design she sported on the series once.)

Thankfully, they at least gave Rory the dignity of avoiding a marriage to her gadfly prince-charming, even if the end result made the final few episodes feel more than a little bit like a middle school career-day film: you too can join the fast paced world of journalism! It was sad enough to watch Lane sit on the sidelines of her own dream.

And by “they,” I mean the season’s producer, David Rosenthal, who replaced Sherman-Palladino and her husband. In contrast to Rory and her effortless perfection, always sitting still in class with the posture befitting a Good Girl, Rosenthal is proof that a man can be a living train wreck and still receive the very best of second chances.

Prior to his installation as Gilmore Girls’ show-runner, he reportedly had a past of intense misogyny.

Televisionary.blogspot.com recounts his story as follows,

“The guy quit Spin City in order to concentrate on writing a play about his desire to have sex with Heidi Klum,” Julia told me. “Dropped out of TV completely to do this. He pretty much had a breakdown, dropped out of society, and became the madman writing a misogynist play. He lived like this until his dad read the play and actually had him committed.”What?!? After speaking to Julia, I did some more digging. Rosenthal had in fact written a play called “Love” about his quest to get supermodel Heidi Klum to have sex with him. Reviews of the play, which apparently contained so many profanities that it rated an NC-17, were not kind. The New York Times called Rosenthal’s play “not only offensive but incompetent” and said that the way that Rosenthal talked about Klum—whom he had met during a guest stint on Rosenthal’s show Spin City—was “as cruel and disgusting as actual stalking.”

The New York Times reviewer wasn’t the only one perturbed by Rosenthal’s play. Rosenthal had sent copies to his then agents at Endeavor—Ari Emanuel and Richard Weitz—who promptly dropped him as a client. His rabbi father, after reading the play, had Rosenthal briefly committed at UCLA Medical Center. Wait, what?

….

In 2001, Rosenthal appeared on Howard Stern’s radio show and spoke about the incident.

This is the guy they brought in to give Gilmore fans their happy ending.

Comments closed, please comment at writer's blog.

Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room

Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, review by rich from Adonis Mirror.

I recently had the chance to view Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room. Like many, I knew the basics of the Enron story, I could be a snide finger pointer at the business world like the average liberal-type, but somehow I thought the nitty-gritty details were beyond my comprehension: why bother? The film did a decent job at explaining why I should bother, why we should all bother.

Plus, there’s enough “how did they get that tape?” moments to keep you enthralled, footage of stuff that you can’t believe there’s footage of, like a video-greeting card that George W. Bush did on behalf of a Ken Lay as a gift for a friend. Things that defy explanation, like a taped self-parody Jeff Skilling did about the company’s bookkeeping policies, or recorded conversations between Enron floor-traders about how they were breaking the California electric grid on purpose.

On the other hand, there’s also some “why did they use that tape?” moments. Primarily, about 45 seconds worth of strip club footage—likely bought from a stock company—that boosted the documentary to an R-rating for no good reason.

The footage in question plays out during a discussion of Lou Pai, the lucky Enron executive who “got out first,” leaving the company and cashing in his stock at Enron’s peak in order to meet the terms of a divorce settlement. Talking heads in the film repeatedly refer to him as “mysterious,” as if he were some sort of shadowy figure that was appeared out of nowhere and vanished just as quickly. They did everything short of calling him a ninja: wouldn’t want to be racist when you’re being racist, after all.

Indeed, much was made of Pai’s patronage of strip clubs (supposedly the cause of his divorce), the humorous trope of the lusty—yet safely tiny and effete—Asian guy being played for all its worth.

Enron folklore claims that Pai once explained that he splashed gasoline on himself before he went home so his wife couldn’t smell the perfume of his strippers: the punch line of the rumor had it that during one such explanation, one of his fellow Enron club-goers retorted “your wife probably thinks you’re fucking a gas station attendant,” causing Pai, in revenge, to ship him off to the far reaches of Canada. Of course, if he was hanging out with his lackeys at a strip club, shooting the shit with them, how mysterious could he really be?

The film does not make it clear whether the footage shown was of an actual club that Pai had visited or if it was just stock footage they had purchased. Alex Gibney, the director, does little elaboration during his commentary track: he seems utterly obsessed with trying to position himself as a music geek and sounds consistently tickled by the cleverness of his choices. He does remark on his selection of Philip Glass’ “Einstein on the Beach” and how he saw the interplay between it, the strip club, and Jeff Skilling’s belief in evolutionary biology. Then he pointed out that the breast implant was invented in Houston, as if that fact was the crowning piece of synergism in his argument.

For all the tsk-tsking the film does about “hubris,” it’s ironic that Alex Gibney’s own fascination with boobs disqualifies it from being played for many audiences. Not only does it become iffy for educational settings, but it almost has the tone of: this is for liberal people who go to far flung indy-film festivals; if you’re not hip enough to get past the boobs and just view them as wallpaper, you’re not cool enough to watch our movie.

Gibney knew he was safe from feminist criticism: a complaining feminist would have to admit that she thought the exploitation of women’s bodies superseded the importance of people knowing about why all kinds of middle-class people lost their pensions. The feminist critic who snubbed the film on account of Gibney’s strip clubs would look like a spoiled child, selfishly obsessed with her own “niche” issues.

On the other hand, it’s fairly safe to point out that anger at Enron is a non-partisan emotion. By taking the hipster pose regarding nudity, Gibney was purposefully alienating conservative viewers who could be best reached by the film, particularly with its footage of connections between Bush and the company’s top executives. Numerous critics have pointed that out, if only in the margins of websites.

One final note on Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room: much is seemingly made of the macho atmosphere at the company, not just the strip clubs, the Darwinian “survival of the fittest” mentality, and even the “extreme” adventure outings that employees took together, racing dirt bikes through bone grinding courses. Jeff Skilling had a phrase he spun about how he appreciated “men with spikes.”

What interests me—and I don’t say that lightly, I mean, I’m completely interested down to my last molecule right now—is how such gender treatments are so often used in media to give a pejorative view of something that people already have a pejorative view of. In other words, people hate Enron. If we show people that Enron was sexist, they will hate it more and feel safe and informed in their hatred for it.

However, even after seeing that bad things can be sexist and that sexist things can be bad, viewers still don’t have the power to see that sexism, itself, is bad.

I think “media people,” for lack of a better descriptor, are aware of that phenomenon. I think they exploit it. More on this from me in the future.

But really, how effective was the Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room from a feminist perspective if, immediately after viewing it, one self-avowed Leftist blogger wrote:

Jeff Skilling was right about one thing

As much as I despise Enron and injury they perpetrated (although employees could have saved their retirement through diversification!), Jeff Skilling was right about one thing. I also like men with spikes. No, this is not a gay metaphor. It means that men should be men. We should be extreme and we should pursue until we kill or are killed.

Ever see those older men at the mall whimpering around like a castrated dog while they wait for their wives to finish trying on clothes? Kill me if I ever lose that much direction.

The first comment on the post was from a conservative rival who called him a “pussy” for being against the war on Iraq. The blogger called him a “pussy” back.

Please comment directly at authors blog.

Nicholas Cage whirls his MEGA LONG flaming iron chain from waist height

Hello. This is my first review at Leftist Movie Reviews. I was invited months ago or something by AradhanaD to post reviews here, but then I stopped watching movies.

This review has spoilers. Not that it matters.

This is going to be a very short review. I saw the comic-book-based movie Ghost Rider, and was ROTFL the whole way through. What was it? A hypermasculinized mélange of stereotypes wrapped in a nonsensical enigma wrapped in a heavily overwrought resurrection of Faust. We are treated at the beginning to the usual glorified retelling of the White Man's conquest of the desolate, uninhabited West, and then we proceed from there to a tale about a budding motorcycle stunt man's heartbreaking take of a predictable loss caused by a deal with the Devil, a white man on a cane. A fairly good-looking young man eventually grows up to bear, sadly, the droning voice and completely wooden, expressionless face of Nicholas Cage, performing ever more ridiculous stunts to prove himself worthy of his father as well as challenging this limits of his Faustian bargain.

Finally, the Devil comes to take his due, and that involves turning Nicholas Cage into a FLAMING SKELETON IN LEATHER to fight his enemies, who are ghoulish creatures with few interesting characteristics and are all defeated in one way or by Cage waving a giant flaming chain from waist height. In the meantime, his ex-girlfriend, who has gone from alluringly naive but wholesome country girl to glamourous yet completely incompetent sports TV reporter---and is played by someone who must be some exotically objectified Hispanic pop star, I'm sure, I hardly pay attention to these people---endured heartbreak yet again, only to be take hostage by Cage's enemies and freed with minimal effort by the FLAMING SKELETON IN LEATHER.

One scene that particularly struck me was when Cage, in FLAMING SKELETON IN LEATHER mode, decides to rescue a young white woman being mugged by a young white man. Cage uses his Total Perspective Vortex powers on the young perp to destroy him. That really encapsulates what this movie is all about, which is merely the wish that the world would conform to a simple Manichean model, where powerful masculine hero defeats EVIL wherever it may be, with no distinction made between little perps and big perps.

And that, of course, is no different from 90% of superhero movies out there. What were you expecting? I'm sorry to disappoint AradhanaD, but I cannot bring any serious powers of class analysis to bear on this movie---or at least I can't bring anything new to it, because there is nothing new or unusual about this movie. It's primary quality is that it is so badly done, which is also its most redeeming quality: it is hilariously funny. I guess, to be fair to the creators of this movie, they didn't really stereotype dark skinned people, largely because they were absent---unless you count comically stupid supervillains with blue-tinged skin. I apologize to all blue humans if I have not done right by them in this review.

Alright: I will throw you one bone. This movie was clearly made to give voice to one cultural strand in North America: a certain segment of the working-class midwestern/southern white population. If these people exist that way, then the hero is intended to be seen as coming from among them. The chief villain is dressed in Gothwear, so perhaps---stretching it---he is intended to represent the decadence of urban liberal media or something. But that's all I can give you.

Comments happily open. Crossposted at my blog, Politblogo.

How to win a cock-fight: review of the movie 300...

What the #$%& was I thinking you ask, I wasn't... yes, I just witnessed the biggest load of tripe ever.

Short version or long version? Why bother, you can find a detailed review of the movie elsewhere - spoilers and all, in fact it seems many reviewers have already called out this tripe for what it is on rotten tomatoes and Imdb (honestly writing a review for this is just too easy).

Short Version:

Don't waste any money on this overinflated hard-on (I didn't - I watched it for free). I don't know whether it was the rampant Islamophobia (despite Islam forming as a religion 1000 yrs after this war took place!), anti-black racism, white supremacy, the homophobia, anti-disableism, the obvious war-promoting or the spoils of war (i.e. objectified women) which got to me the most. Of course it could be the moral of the story: The only way to win a cock-fight (or "fighting for justice, freedom and humanity") is to get a bigger "stronger, harder" and "harder, stronger" cock (not my words, the movie's - and yes, they did say it TWICE in case I missed it the first time) while wiping out the bad guys i.e. asians, africans and persians (i.e. ANYONE non-white).

Long Version:

The movie's about some war in Greece set in 480BC, Battle of Thermopylae, based on the Frank Miller graphic novel - it's something I won't pretend I even knew about until today, so let's just ignore the 'history' of it and focus on it's cinematic glory. Really, there's no point in discussing the 'history' of this battle because the $&%*ing movie is an American pro-war propagandist movie not about 'the spartans or the greeks' but American-version of this battle which happened nearly 2500 yrs ago.

Basically, the Spartans, led by King Leonidas, have been asked to surrender Sparta/Greece to the Persian empire. A black male messenger informs Leonidas of this. When Leonidas's wife interrupts their discussion - he says "how dare you let your wife speak on these matters?"

Of course the only thing his wife is good for is bearing babies so she says "because only Spartan women BIRTH REAL MEN"...And yes, the 'pro-empowerful' camp of the audience lets out a little cheer when this line is spake (I'm still scratching my head bout that).

The interesting thing about this brief little discussion is that 1)it's an implicit acknowledgement that women in the messenger's country must be treated like dirt - remember the imperialist dynamic of "evil coloured patriarchal cultures?" vs. liberated western women? 2)liberated western women (read white) in Hollywood are generally empowered via their value to men - whether it's as a sex-object, love-interest, their adoption of masculinity or 'traditional' motherhood.

So the stage for white-hetero-male-patriarchal-supremacy is set from the get-go.

So instead of surrendering, Leonidas kills the BLACK Persian messenger and his black allies because they've 'insulted his wife and Sparta'. A violently glorified chopping a black man's head scene follows, really it's grotesque.

A flashback technique is employed to tell the tale of how Leonidas has been trained to be a fierce warrior from the age of seven, when the barbaric/noble Spartans start training their young to be warriors. The flashback of young, pre-pubescent, Leonidas proving his manlihood by slaying a wolf while only wearing a loin cloth in the freezing darkness of winter is referred to several times throughout the movie to reinforce Leonidas' ferocity.

Homophobia:

The movie doesn't even pretend to be anything but white supremacist, misogynist, islamophobic, ableist, or homophobic, in fact it prides itself on all these accounts. If we missed the homophobia at the beginning of the movie when King Leonidas briefly refers to Athenians as "Boy-loving philosophers", we get it again ten-fold repeatedly throughout the movie.

When Leonidas' army of 300 meets a neighbouring Greek city's army of 1000 men, Leonidas justifies the manly-manliness of his army because the "artists, sculptors, and blacksmiths" of the neighbouring city's army do not real manly-men make. The conclusion is that a few good men, are better than the lives of 1000 (this is enforced later on too).

When battle takes off, we find out that the evil Xerxes (god-like emperor of Persia) is an effeminate, heavily ornated, man-woman-transgender-loving horndog.

The funniest thing about my cinematic experience though, was that my companion, in this case evil incarnate; a gay, occupationally effeminate MOC, was drooling over the washboard abs, chiseled thighs and pecs of the uber-manly-man Spartan Army (yeah, okay so was I :P). So, despite it's obvious homophobia (i.e. it's literal message) this movie's reliance on extreme gender conformity was almost a parody of itself visually - i.e. there is no way you could take the narrow gender roles seriously without thinking dirty thoughts about the Spartan's in their loin cloths. At some point there was a duo of two younger Spartan's whom my companion repeatedly wished would make out - of course until one of them was decapitated.

Now, I don't think this was some clever-pomo-gender-fucking-theory on screen, that would give an otherwise horrible movie too much credit, and besides the lines between good/evil repetitive jabs at gay men in comparison to manly men were stark. I just think it was a series of bad choices made by the movie-makers and ended up reading differently than they expected. But saying this was a 'homoerotic' movie, as many critics have cited it as - would be negligent and would be like saying that football players, basketball players, other 'manly-men' are not really 'violent' but rather enjoy watching each other shower... or some other more clever analogy that I can't think of at the moment.

Sexy Nekkid Chicks, "white" vs. "other":

Yes, this movie has a lot of 'sexy nekkid chicks'. The first scene is where we're entertained by what we find out later to be a "white, nude, drunk, teenage girl". Girls gone wild anyone? Hurrah. And guess what? Said girl is really OWNED by very ugly priests because she is an oracle, and we find out that they get to fuck her too, cause they have "dark manly hearts" and women who are hot "are cursed by their own beauty", talk about victim-blaming...Totally unnecessary scene.

Later on, because manly man, Leonidas is urgin for the plungin, he 'bangs' his wife (Queen Gorgo) every which way to nth-multiple orgasm - to which even the the couple next to me laughed "Okay, we get the point already!" *snarky laugh*.

These former women are both white. One part is revolting, but obviously the way it was shot - it was meant to tantalize the viewer with it's 'mystical' elements, and when we find out this erotic dance is by a drunk, teenage girl, it's well after the scene is over - so what, the main point of it was to objectify...

Both of the white women in the two scenes are 'property' of their rightful owners, the white men in their immediate lives - the priests and husband. Their 'sexuality' is dutiful, non-deviant, conforming and 'moral' whether that is for a group of men who 'facilitate religion' (thus their sexual value is extended for the benefit of the entire community) or whether for their husbands (in this case the KING, and you bet your ass if the King don't get his rocks off... well).

But later, when we are introduced to a whole harem of hot, ornated, tattooed, coloured sexy chicks it's more like we've been thrown into a visual orgy of totally debaucherous sexuality. They are aggressive, forceful, defiant, unaware of their obvious ownership because even though they are owned they are willing participants in their own 'degradation'. We see these women of every single colour, other than white, defiantly throwing themselves at the disfigured/disabled/gollum-like character who is a traitor to Leonidas. They tempt and snare him into being an asshole and betraying his leader while luring him to the 'dark side'.

So basically the set-up of 'the dutiful/sexually moral white woman' vs. 'amoral Jezebel' [link to interesting article] is in place because of the way the women are sexually portrayed. Their sexuality is DIFFERENT. Their all objectified, but are morally different.

Later, Queen Gorgo (Leonidas' wife) is raped by a janus-faced politician. After which she gives a passionate speech in the male council chambers on behalf of the 'mothers/daughters/sisters/wives/families' of the 300 soldiers that have sacrificed their lives for the betterment of the city-state (again their value in relation to men). It is imperative that they send more troops to help them out. Gorgo's morality and better judgement are implicit in her being a 'liberated white woman'.

The thing is - the women in the harem are all SLAVES, we've heard this comment repeatedly via the open-conjectured-threats of what would happen to the women of sparta if the evil Persians got hold of them. One character goes so far to say "the women would become slaves, or much worse" (i.e. sex slaves). I.e. so if the harem consists of SLAVES, they are obviously 'victims of rape'. Yet, the only sympathetic rape(s) here (potential and realized), are those of the moral white women of Sparta - not the coloured women who are not victims but rather 'sexually deviant' from the get go.

Colourism:

Do you see any significant difference between the skin-colour of Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro) or Leonidas (Gerard Butler), in this picture here? not really... Throughout the movie it is obvious that the Americans Spartans are all white and the other's are all deviant coloured people... yet, we're also aware of the obvious use of 'brown-face' throughout the movie. Cause Xerxes definitely does not look like Rodrigo Santoro.

Genetic variation and thus skin-colour are more varied within a 'group' than between 'groups'. So it's rather silly for them to consistently employ such stark colour differences anyways.

The Persian army is also substantially disfigured/ugly. The terrorists Persian Army, also employ 'dishonest tactics' to win the war. I.e. by employing sneak-attack strategies, strange monsters and 'magic'...

American-Propaganda - Conclusion:

The only way to win a war is to send in more troops, otherwise we all lose. The closing shot ends with an army of 30K plus who are all willing to 'sacrifice' their lives for the rest of us. They are "brave heroes" who die "a glorious death".

More on the obvious homophobia of the movie, here.

Cross-posted at Leftist Looney Lunchbox, comments open everywhere.

Myth, Hollywood & White American Conquest

Myth, Hollywood & White American Conquest by Jo Swift.

The White Supremacist Syndrome Hollywood has shaped the "tough guy" image of the USA and exports this "don't mess with me" persona to the rest of the world as its contribution to the advancement of American jingoism and imperialism. The frontiersman represents the epitome of American masculinity. He's everywhere fighting Indians, Nazis,Commies, Arabs, sissies and space creatures, playing out the mythical narrative of American birth and continual rebirth Hollywood loves this guy because nothing is more American than he is.
The myth sells a lot of movie tickets. The Frontier myth is America's secular creation narrative--the story of how the waves of the historical frontier experience simultaneously birthed and cleansed the nation.

In this way European culture was said to be stripped away by the challenges posed on and by the savage frontier; and then, in turn, through an ill-defined, nearly mystical, quasi-magical process of environmental determinism, America was born.

That is, as the inevitable result of this transformation, the prototypical American emerged--Natty Bumpoo, John Wayne, Indiana Jones, the Marlboro Man--take your pick.

Hollywood has played and continues to play an important role in this process for two reasons. First, movies serve as our most influential history teachers, reaching and swaying audiences that the professional historian cannot even dream of.

Just think about it. You know what gladiators, Nazis, the Titanic and cowboys looked like because you've seen them in film (or, possibly worse, on television).

Second, the frontiersman represents the epitome of American masculinity. And he's everywhere fighting Indians, Nazis, Commies, Arabs, sissies and space creatures, playing out the mythical narrative of American birth and continual rebirth. Hollywood loves this guy because nothing is more American than he is (and, for corresponding reasons, he sells a lot of movie tickets).

As a result, Hollywood has been instrumental in promoting America's imperial project. Without domestic support aggressive foreign policy is not workable in the long term (witness George W. Bush).

The formula pays rich dividends, too, whether it's Indiana Jones smacking down Arabs, Hart Solo gunfighting his way across the galaxy, Sigourney Weaver as Ripley playing against gender type by beating up an alien, or the Duke picking off Injuns/ Vietcong in the Green Berets. The choices are nearly endless and the recipe is simple.

All you need is a version of the frontier story and a leading man who can play a plausible frontiersman--in short, a hunk and a few savages.

Visual images are far more effective than words in relating the simple emotive force of myth.

A myth is nothing more than a story that a culture tells to itself about itself in order to portray itself in a positive light. It's all about perception. Physical reality is largely beside the point.

Here's the basic frontier mythical tale. See if you recognize it. A ruggedly handsome, innately clever and athletic white male simply appears on the frontier, where free land abounds.

He's challenged. Maybe it's from Indians, Mexicans, men in black hats, varmints, whatever. Doesn't matter. The point is the setting--civilization versus savagery. And that the white guy prevails.

He saves the day and he sets the standard.

He conquers the land and makes it his own. He makes it fit for civilization, for women and children and decency and apple pie. It's the movie Far and Away, starring Tom Cruise.

It's Richard Harris in Man in the Wilderness. It's Bogart in African Queen. John Wayne in Hondo, in the Man Who Shot Lierty Valance, in Stagecoach. Gary Cooper in The Virginian.

Kevin Costner as the fair-haired saviour of all Indians (except the Pawnee) in Dances with Wolves. Star Wars. Dirty Harry. And on and on.

It's nearly everywhere in American popular culture. And its signifiers are so powerful--tumbleweed, Monument Valley, cowboys, feathered headdresses, gunfighters, saloons, men on horseback.

Clint Eastwood's eyes, that they have the power to invoke the myth in stories that fall well outside the frontier--as in advertising, science fiction, action movies, and the like.

While the symbols may seem innocuous--say, an ad for a jeep sitting atop a mesa in Arizona, or the skin color of the evil lion in Lion King, or the Hispanic accent of the bad bugs in a Bug's Life--they subtly reinforce (or not so subtly in the case of a typical Schwarznegger flick) white American conquest. Mark Anderson

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TV Review: 24

Who’s Your Daddy?! A Terrorist! entry by DesiItaliana from Pass the Roti.

The first time I watched the show “24,” I was with other people. When one of the agents had a brown man on the floor, someone in the room said, “Why does it always have to be Middle Eastern people?” I replied, “I can’t believe you guys are watching this show.” That person responded, “It’s fiction!” Then why would you say that it’s always someone who is Middle Eastern if this fictional show is not reflecting reality?

Anyone with more than two brain cells can tell that this show has a blatant political agenda, with not so subtle arguments which justify racial profiling and the suspension of civil rights for the sake of “national security.” I mean, what do you expect? It’s on Fox, for god’s sake!

So it comes as no surprise that the New Yorker recently featured an article discussing the politics of the show’s producer, Joel Surnow, a self described “right-wing nut job” whose “politics suffuse” the whole show. The article has caused an earthquake in the media because U.S. Army Brigadier General Patrick Finnegan, the dean of the United States Military Academy at West Point, along with three military and FBI interrogators, met with the producers of the show in November- they think that fiction is blurring into reality way too much. Apparently, the show’s gratuitous on screen depiction of torture “hurts” the image of the US and is encouraging torture practice:

…it had become increasingly hard to convince some cadets that America had to respect the rule of law and human rights, even when terrorists did not. One reason for the growing resistance, he [Finnegan] suggested, was misperceptions spread by “24,” which was exceptionally popular with his students. As he told me, “The kids see it, and say, ‘If torture is wrong, what about “24″?’ ” He continued, “The disturbing thing is that although torture may cause Jack Bauer some angst, it is always the patriotic thing to do.”

Gary Solis, a retired law professor who designed and taught the Law of War for Commanders curriculum at West Point, told me that he had similar arguments with his students. He said that, under both U.S. and international law, “Jack Bauer is a criminal. In real life, he would be prosecuted.” Yet the motto of many of his students was identical to Jack Bauer’s: “Whatever it takes.” His students were particularly impressed by a scene in which Bauer barges into a room where a stubborn suspect is being held, shoots him in one leg, and threatens to shoot the other if he doesn’t talk. In less than ten seconds, the suspect reveals that his associates plan to assassinate the Secretary of Defense. Solis told me, “I tried to impress on them that this technique would open the wrong doors, but it was like trying to stomp out an anthill.” [Link]

Yikes.

I agree that this is disturbing- how Hollywood often is the vehicle which mobilizes collective jingoism during war time, and how it justifies, safeguards, and defends the actions of the establishment. And while it is difficult to assess just how much TV fiction can and does seep into reality and vice versa, it is true that the mass media’s has the ability to condition what we think and the way we see things. And ‘24′ is one of the most popular shows on American TV. Scary. Apparently, the show is tapping into the sentiments of the average viewer.

But here is one aspect that many newspapers pick up on that I want to emphasize: racial profiling. And if you are of South Asian descent like I am, you definitely cringe when you hear someone say, “Why does it always have to be the Middle Eastern people?”

On screen torture after September 11, 2001 has multiplied to an excessive rate:

Since September 11th, depictions of torture have become much more common on American television. Before the attacks, fewer than four acts of torture appeared on prime-time television each year, according to Human Rights First, a nonprofit organization. Now there are more than a hundred, and, as David Danzig, a project director at Human Rights First, noted, “the torturers have changed. It used to be almost exclusively the villains who tortured. Today, torture is often perpetrated by the heroes.” The Parents’ Television Council, a nonpartisan watchdog group, has counted what it says are sixty-seven torture scenes during the first five seasons of “24″-more than one every other show. Melissa Caldwell, the council’s senior director of programs, said, ” ‘24′ is the worst offender on television: the most frequent, most graphic, and the leader in the trend of showing the protagonists using torture.” [Link]

USA Today reported in 2005 that “Fictional ‘24′ Brings Real Issue of Torture Home:”

Alistair Hodgett of Amnesty International credits 24 and A&E’s MI-5, which follows the British security service, with realistic depictions that provide “a clearer idea of what torture involves. … They do more to educate than desensitize.” [Link]

“Desensitize”? I’m not sure about that. It seems like it becomes glorified and justified: presumed suspects on the show- who are, of course, weeded out by racial profiling- can be tortured because when they are, they invariably confess to something; that is, they are always guilty (evidently, the show never throws light on the fact that torture can elicit coerced false confessions from an innocent person).

These “suspects” on the show are defined as being of Middle Eastern origin (with accents that are a curious hybrid between Arab, Indian, and Russian). But what happens when the actors who play these suspects are of South Asian background? Kal Penn plays a villain on ‘24′ who is part of an “Islamic” group and may be involved in a terrorist plot. Penn is actually of Indian origin. There are plenty of males in my family and social circle who have his phenotype. But according to ‘24′, people of this phenotype always have something to hide. It’s just a matter of time (or torture technique) that their nefarious plans come to the surface. You can chuck the constitution, civil liberties, and due process of law out the window because they are inconvenient obstacles to getting the job done. Innocent until proven guilty is no longer a legal right.You’re guilty until proven innocent. The principle in practice now is: people of South Asian phenotypes are Muslim and therefore suspects; and these suspects are never innocent. So go ahead and torture them for the collective good- it’s a “necessary evil.”

It goes without saying that the fundamental problem is not that people of South Asian descent are getting racially profiled, but that racial profiling exists. No one ever puts up a picture of a white guy when they talk about “terrorism”, even though many of the acts carried out by the US military can qualify as “terrorism” (such as bombing 3 million Vietnamese) and the guys on those “missions” are mostly white. Yet our brown faces serve as the symbolic mugshots of “terrorists.”

So don’t be surprised if FBI agents pay your daddy a visit– if he’s Desi, he just might be a terrorist!

Read the wonderful discussion at Pass the Roti.

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