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.

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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Falling Down (1993)

(AD's note: This is a very comprehensive post, please read the post in it's entirety & make sure to check out the corresponding 'movie stills' at the writer's blog!)

Excerpt of: At the Movies - Falling Down - Review via The Unapologetic Mexican by Nezua.

FALLING DOWN is a story (supposedly) about the decline of America as seen through the eyes of an "average," middle-aged, hard-working, suburban/outer city White man. It works on a few levels. At times I will speak of a conscious narrative and an unconscious one. The Conscious Narrative, as I use the phrase, will take notes on the cinematic and narrative elements that add up to show us a man breaking down much as his society is. He is a part of that breakdown as well as a cause of it as well as a reaction to it. Bill Foster is on the edge of both madness and awareness. He is meeting the ultimate disillusioning and disenchantment and dissolution of the American Dream, to which he gave full and total allegiance. He is also losing his mind.

The Unconscious Narrative, as I use the phrase, is not always unconsciously wielded, but sometimes I think it is. What I mean by this is that under and along with the first narrative I speak of, there are the messages that women are superficial, weak, ineffective creatures; that Blacks are criminals, pawns, and a threat to America's fiber; that Asians are either smart and by the side of the White Male, or Otherly conniving overcharging storeowners (also weak and easily dominated); that Latinos are thugs and women-haters, also a threat to America's fiber and cultural makeup; the usual nasty hype about Gays; that a privileged attitude is normal, that misogyny is normal, and some others. At times this is purposely achieved. And I offer the benefit of the doubt to these writers that at other times they are just writing women, for example, as they think of them and see them.
The front cover lets us know that our protagonist is "an ordinary man at war with the everyday world." "Ordinary man" is key, as is "the everyday world."

The back cover blurb sums up the theme as "Are we falling apart?" and tells us the protagonist is"slipping over the edge" and "ready to get even" with the "pressures of big-city life" that "can anger everyone."
Continue Reading at The Unapologetic Mexican...

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V for Vendetta (2005)

Published in the Hour, by Stuart Trew.

The Wrong Vendetta

A certain amount of shock and awe followed the release of the Wachowski brothers' screen adaptation of the comic series V for Vendetta. After all, the film is at heart about collapsing a fascist, puritan state - with terrorism if necessary - and draws blatant parallels between Nazi Germany and "war on terror" England and America. Big fucking deal, as they say.
I would have eaten this shit up too if it hadn't reeked of the very puritanism the original creators of the comic book V attacked so viciously back in the early '80s. Writer Alan Moore and illustrator David Lloyd didn't shy away from the word "anarchy" like the Wachowskis did, either for its negative connotation (anarchy = chaos) or maybe its implicit moral ambiguity (anarchy is simply democracy taken seriously). Or maybe because it would have required leaving in all of Moore's crucial female characters.

Anarchy, for it to work, requires respect, which in turn produces equality (between genders and races). Whether they realized it or not, the Wachowski brothers (who also gave us the Matrix trilogy) ignored the equality part when they removed the original comic's obvious and foundational feminist elements. Yes, women's lib is practically the driving force behind the comic V for Vendetta. The film, by ignoring this, reinforces the institutional sexism of both our world and theirs.

Continue reading here....

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Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs (1943)

The Good Ole Days that Weren’t

From The Primary Contradiction by Yolanda Carrington.

Exerpt 1:


I urge you all to watch this old cartoon short. Titled Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs, it is one of the infamous Censored Eleven cartoons that were taken out of official circulation in 1968, due to their overtly racist images and themes.

It’s hard for me to believe that animated shorts like Coal Black were regular staples at the movie house in the 1940s, given their decidedly child-unfriendly content. In light of our current political and cultural landscape, this sixty-three year old snapshot from history speaks volumes about our society and our culture. So much shit comes out at you here, so pay close attention. I’ll post a full critique of this short later on, but I just wanted y’all to see it first. Off tha chain.

WARNING: Blatantly racist and misogynistic images.

Exerpt 2(follow-up post):

As you probably guessed from watching the clip, the Merrie Melodies cartoon Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs (1943) is a supposed hot jazz retelling of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, animated and produced by Warner Brothers animator Robert Clampett. (The character is named “So White”—the short is titled “Coal Black” because producer Leon Schlesinger wanted to avoid confusion with the Disney film.) This short is one of the infamous “Censored Eleven,” eleven Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies shorts that were yanked from rebroadcast syndication in 1968 to accommodate that era’s swiftly-changing racial climate. Many of these banned cartoons (the Censored Eleven represents a mere fraction of the racist animation produced before World War II) are widely available over the Internet, since most of these works have long entered the public domain.

According to Wikipedia, Clampett was said to have been heavily influenced by jazz performers and hipsters from the 1940s Black jazz scene in New York, as well as the jazz-themed all-Black movie musicals that were wildly popular with audiences during that period. He and his animation team actually visited a Black jazz club in Los Angeles (ahhh….studying the Negroes!) to get a feel for the interaction and lingo. Today, despite having been banned for four decades, Coal Black is rated by animation experts as Clampett’s masterpiece, as well as one of the greatest animated cartoons ever made.

In 2006, we Americans find ourselves in a political situation nearly identical to the one faced by Coal Black’s audience in 1943. I know that for many of you, watching Coal Black was extremely offensive, even sickening. But I really wanted folks to see this short, and I was really hoping that others would recognize what I saw when I watched the clip, which was such a heavy experience for me that I had to watch it over and over again. Honestly, I have never seen anything like it, a piece of media that is so offensive yet so crystal-clear in its political message. I wanted everyone to recognize the eons and eons of memes in the narrative and to make the connections between those memes to grasp the overall message.

For me, Coal Black stands as one of the clearest expressions of the relationship between white supremacy, patriarchy, and militarism. Needless to say, the short is rife with almost every racist meme ever projected onto African Americans. An inventory of the damage:

Continue reading at The Primary Contradiction.

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