2011_4_29 From the Sublime to the Ridiculous
I woke up at 2:45 last night to pee. When I got back in the recliner, where I have slept ever since I got out of the hospital on January 12, I tuned into NPR to hear some music to help me get back to sleep; but instead I got the BBC broadcast of the Royal Wedding, and William and Kate were just walking down the aisle at Westminster Cathedral. Curious, I got the remote and tuned in on the TV, and indeed, there they were, gliding through the nave. She was in a simple white dress, which I later found out was modeled on what Grace Kelly wore when she married her Prince. William was in a Royal uniform of red and black with spangled details befitting a Prince of the realm. Invited guests jammed the cathedral and tens of thousands were arrayed out side waiting for a glimpse of the fairy tale couple. It was a grand moment for the English monarchy, almost the kind that justifies their continued existence.
Only the Brits could pull off such a ravishing spectacle with a cast of thousands. I heard it said that the event was going to set back the Queen $11 million dollars, and that sounds accurate for all the actors and black horses and pomp and circumstance it called for. There were 60 cameras placed all over the cathedral, including some high in the rafters, which made everyone down below look like ants. Not even the Super Bowl had that many cameras. Stylistically, the event had elements of the 19th and 20th centuries, with smaller touches that went back in time even further; but the couple, who have gone together 9 years and that includes living together, seemed of the 21st century, which is why the crowds outside could identify with them, especially Kate who was a commoner. Of course you’d never know she was a commoner. She had amazing poise, grace, and absolutely stunning beauty. She acted as if she had been born to play this role and she had a sublime radiance as a bride that will win over the hearts and minds of the people. There is no doubt in my mind she will be the replacement for Dianna. William had impeccable luck to land her for his Queen.
In comic contrast there is Donald Trump, who has arrived on the electoral circuit like a train wreck. Man, is he a blowhard, an uber-cowboy who is going to face down all our adversaries with bombast and curse words. I heard part of a speech he gave last night in Las Vegas in front of a very conservative group and he dropped the F-bomb when referring to price of oil and gas. I read a piece in today’s Huffington Post that argues he is the logical outcome of latter day Republicanism, the result of devolution rather than evolution. He is a puff fish who has crawled out of the cosmic slime.
Friday, April 29, 2011
Toxic Mix
2011_4_28 Toxic Mix
The Republicans turned the tables again on the Democrats. Their gall and audacity is truly amazing. Today, the day after Obama’s press conference to release his full birth certificate and to remark about the “silliness” of the whole affair, which had gotten blown out of proportion by a “carnival barker,” the GOP slammed the president for indulging in a distraction to suck up media attention when he should be trying to solve our nation’s serious problems. It was like saying; you shoot baskets while Rome burns. Moreover they mocked his comment about having more important things to do than deal with trivial issues. So what did he do after the news conference? He flew to Chicago to be on the Oprah’s TV Show and to attend a fundraiser at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel. Wow, did that invite ridicule. It made him look insincere and hypocritical. It is one more example of a Democrat shooting himself in the foot. He doesn’t need to feed the Spinmeisters of the GOP. So they were able to hit the ball back into Obama’s court, making Trump the courageous one and the president the court jester.
Then there was the other side of the coin: an editorial in the New York Times called “A Certificate of Embarrassment.” They saw Obama as the exemplary rational man trying to deal with irrational nonsense. But they felt it wasn’t necessary to genuflect to the purveyors of irrationality. They called it “a profound and debasing moment in American life.” They accurately bemoaned the fact he felt compelled to react to something with “heavy racial undertones.” And it is true that the second birth certificate won’t matter much because it won’t change anything on the Right. Today Sarah Palin called the birther issues still “fair game.” But the editorial did go to the heart of the matter with this summation of the affair.
“So it will not quiet most avid attackers. Several quickly questioned its authenticity. That’s because the birther question was never really about citizenship; it was simply a proxy for those who never really accepted the president’s legitimacy, for a toxic mix of reasons involving ideology, deep political anger and, most insidious of all, race.”
Toxic mix is right! The most extreme of the conservative Republicans are now constantly playing the race card through the vehicle of the birther issue. It all boils down to the effrontery of having an uppity black man as the leader of the nation. That fact is the new “white man’s burden, “ and it arouses that unrepentant racism still festering at the bottom of the American psyche. It is only Political Correctness that holds that angry demon in check. I’d guess anywhere from 20% to 40% of Americans are capable of exploding around this issue, with the right provocation or encouragement, especially in the South and other red states. By the time we get to late summer of 2012 passions will be running hot, especially if the economy is still limping along. If it looks like Obama might win again things could get dangerous.
The Republicans turned the tables again on the Democrats. Their gall and audacity is truly amazing. Today, the day after Obama’s press conference to release his full birth certificate and to remark about the “silliness” of the whole affair, which had gotten blown out of proportion by a “carnival barker,” the GOP slammed the president for indulging in a distraction to suck up media attention when he should be trying to solve our nation’s serious problems. It was like saying; you shoot baskets while Rome burns. Moreover they mocked his comment about having more important things to do than deal with trivial issues. So what did he do after the news conference? He flew to Chicago to be on the Oprah’s TV Show and to attend a fundraiser at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel. Wow, did that invite ridicule. It made him look insincere and hypocritical. It is one more example of a Democrat shooting himself in the foot. He doesn’t need to feed the Spinmeisters of the GOP. So they were able to hit the ball back into Obama’s court, making Trump the courageous one and the president the court jester.
Then there was the other side of the coin: an editorial in the New York Times called “A Certificate of Embarrassment.” They saw Obama as the exemplary rational man trying to deal with irrational nonsense. But they felt it wasn’t necessary to genuflect to the purveyors of irrationality. They called it “a profound and debasing moment in American life.” They accurately bemoaned the fact he felt compelled to react to something with “heavy racial undertones.” And it is true that the second birth certificate won’t matter much because it won’t change anything on the Right. Today Sarah Palin called the birther issues still “fair game.” But the editorial did go to the heart of the matter with this summation of the affair.
“So it will not quiet most avid attackers. Several quickly questioned its authenticity. That’s because the birther question was never really about citizenship; it was simply a proxy for those who never really accepted the president’s legitimacy, for a toxic mix of reasons involving ideology, deep political anger and, most insidious of all, race.”
Toxic mix is right! The most extreme of the conservative Republicans are now constantly playing the race card through the vehicle of the birther issue. It all boils down to the effrontery of having an uppity black man as the leader of the nation. That fact is the new “white man’s burden, “ and it arouses that unrepentant racism still festering at the bottom of the American psyche. It is only Political Correctness that holds that angry demon in check. I’d guess anywhere from 20% to 40% of Americans are capable of exploding around this issue, with the right provocation or encouragement, especially in the South and other red states. By the time we get to late summer of 2012 passions will be running hot, especially if the economy is still limping along. If it looks like Obama might win again things could get dangerous.
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
FACELESS KILLERS
2011-4-25 FACELESS KILLERS
Tonight I finished FACELESS KILLERS by Henning Mankell, an author from Sweden I got involver with long before I heard of Stieg Larsson and his MILLENNIUM TRILOGY. FACELESS KILLERS was published in Sweden in 1991 but it had to wait till 1997 to be translated into English and be published here. It was his first novel that featured Kurt Wallander, his earnest but anxiety-ridden detective, who has solved many cases through ten novels. PBS has done 4 “MYSTERY” programs based on the Wallander novels and more are on the way.
The killers in FACELESS KILLERS were two sets of criminals, one set was two thugs who were in Sweden as refugees from Eastern Europe who robbed, tortured and killed an elderly Swedish couple who lived on a farm, and the other set was another pair who killed a Somali immigrant as a political gesture. The murder of the Somali was solved first. The killers were affiliated with a number of right wing hate groups, although they committed this crime on their own hook. They were political fanatics, one being a retired policeman, who held Neo-Nazi anti-immigration views, which provided the motivation for their actions. They killed as a statement against the national policy on immigration. It was something personal with them. Wallander brought them to justice rather quickly. With the other two he had less to go on and it took months, but he finally, by following up a hunch, tracked them down. They had brutally murdered the farm couple. They were hard habitual criminals looking for scores in Sweden.
I thought it was interesting that Mankell was dealing with the same extremist right wing groups that obsessed Steig Larsson. Apparently, anyone left of center who had the public’s ear was honor-bond to warn them about these fascist wannabe zealots. Wallander was hardly a bleeding heart Liberal when it came to the immigration question; but on the other hand he was aghast at the execution-style murder of the Somali who was walking and minding his own business. He could not let an innocent person like the Somali, no matter how he got the spot were he died, pass without the guilty parties being found and punished.
Actually, Wallander is being retired. I have already bought THE TROUBLED MAN; it is in it that his travail ends. At the moment I don’t know how but I’ll find out soon.
He was pretty much a mess from the get-go. His wife Mona had left him and already had made a connection with another man, which pained him deeply. He was suffering terribly without her. He was drinking too much to meet other women. He was estranged from his daughter Linda who was living with a black man, which made him somewhat uncomfortable. Near the end of the book he does improve the relation a bit. He has a bad relationship with his elderly father, a painter who digs into his son at every opportunity, relentlessly. The old man, who is played perfectly by David Warner in the PBS series, which is simply called “Wallander,” lives alone and was going senile, an affliction that gets worse in the later novels. Like his father, Wallander has slovenly personal habits. His apartment is a sight; he wears rumpled clothing, and rarely combs his hair. He has other priorities. The one woman he made a play for while inebriated rebuked his advances and rejected him out of hand, which doesn’t do much for his low self-esteem. He worried about his weight and diet, slept poorly, and was preyed on by anxiety and depression. But despite all this baggage and burden he was a bulldog as a detective, a cop who would never give up till he got his man. He was able to compartmentalize his work from his life. He was able to focus on the case to the exclusion of personal demons and distractions, to bring his powers to bear, using both his analytical skills and his amazing intuition, which helped him find the two Eastern European killers after months of getting nowhere. He was an interesting character on both levels, as a sharp, determined detective always willing to go the extra mile to catch the bad guys, and as an emotional and psychological train wreck, a near-basket case who often seems to be hanging by a thread to sanity. Perhaps his personal confusions help him understand the criminal mind in some way. Whatever was the explanation, it was amazing what acentric balance he had; it allowed him to keep going as a functioning human being and resourceful detective. He may be a sad sack and a problem to himself and his family, but at HQ he was and still is THE MAN, the cop who always solved cases no matter how difficult they seemed at the beginning.
Tonight I finished FACELESS KILLERS by Henning Mankell, an author from Sweden I got involver with long before I heard of Stieg Larsson and his MILLENNIUM TRILOGY. FACELESS KILLERS was published in Sweden in 1991 but it had to wait till 1997 to be translated into English and be published here. It was his first novel that featured Kurt Wallander, his earnest but anxiety-ridden detective, who has solved many cases through ten novels. PBS has done 4 “MYSTERY” programs based on the Wallander novels and more are on the way.
The killers in FACELESS KILLERS were two sets of criminals, one set was two thugs who were in Sweden as refugees from Eastern Europe who robbed, tortured and killed an elderly Swedish couple who lived on a farm, and the other set was another pair who killed a Somali immigrant as a political gesture. The murder of the Somali was solved first. The killers were affiliated with a number of right wing hate groups, although they committed this crime on their own hook. They were political fanatics, one being a retired policeman, who held Neo-Nazi anti-immigration views, which provided the motivation for their actions. They killed as a statement against the national policy on immigration. It was something personal with them. Wallander brought them to justice rather quickly. With the other two he had less to go on and it took months, but he finally, by following up a hunch, tracked them down. They had brutally murdered the farm couple. They were hard habitual criminals looking for scores in Sweden.
I thought it was interesting that Mankell was dealing with the same extremist right wing groups that obsessed Steig Larsson. Apparently, anyone left of center who had the public’s ear was honor-bond to warn them about these fascist wannabe zealots. Wallander was hardly a bleeding heart Liberal when it came to the immigration question; but on the other hand he was aghast at the execution-style murder of the Somali who was walking and minding his own business. He could not let an innocent person like the Somali, no matter how he got the spot were he died, pass without the guilty parties being found and punished.
Actually, Wallander is being retired. I have already bought THE TROUBLED MAN; it is in it that his travail ends. At the moment I don’t know how but I’ll find out soon.
He was pretty much a mess from the get-go. His wife Mona had left him and already had made a connection with another man, which pained him deeply. He was suffering terribly without her. He was drinking too much to meet other women. He was estranged from his daughter Linda who was living with a black man, which made him somewhat uncomfortable. Near the end of the book he does improve the relation a bit. He has a bad relationship with his elderly father, a painter who digs into his son at every opportunity, relentlessly. The old man, who is played perfectly by David Warner in the PBS series, which is simply called “Wallander,” lives alone and was going senile, an affliction that gets worse in the later novels. Like his father, Wallander has slovenly personal habits. His apartment is a sight; he wears rumpled clothing, and rarely combs his hair. He has other priorities. The one woman he made a play for while inebriated rebuked his advances and rejected him out of hand, which doesn’t do much for his low self-esteem. He worried about his weight and diet, slept poorly, and was preyed on by anxiety and depression. But despite all this baggage and burden he was a bulldog as a detective, a cop who would never give up till he got his man. He was able to compartmentalize his work from his life. He was able to focus on the case to the exclusion of personal demons and distractions, to bring his powers to bear, using both his analytical skills and his amazing intuition, which helped him find the two Eastern European killers after months of getting nowhere. He was an interesting character on both levels, as a sharp, determined detective always willing to go the extra mile to catch the bad guys, and as an emotional and psychological train wreck, a near-basket case who often seems to be hanging by a thread to sanity. Perhaps his personal confusions help him understand the criminal mind in some way. Whatever was the explanation, it was amazing what acentric balance he had; it allowed him to keep going as a functioning human being and resourceful detective. He may be a sad sack and a problem to himself and his family, but at HQ he was and still is THE MAN, the cop who always solved cases no matter how difficult they seemed at the beginning.
Saturday, April 23, 2011
The Brothers
First of all I must tell you that the Arizona legislature in Phoenix voted yesterday to establish a state gun, which, not surprisingly, was the colt revolver used by the U.S. Cavalry in John Ford movies starring John Wayne. That is a first as far as I know. The state bird is a Vulture. They feed it defeated Democratic candidates.
Before Mike, Sue and I went into town yesterday, I had an appointment with my lung specialist. He never did call me about the throat scan so I was both eager and nervous to hear about it, although I went basically assuming the news would not be bad. It wasn’t. We talked for 5 minutes without him mentioning it, so I asked, what could you tell me about the throat scan? Oh, it was nothing he said, calling it an “accidental mismeasurement.” If you recall I bitched about the Respiratory Therapist, who was more interested in his damn cell phone than watching what how was doing. It pissed me off that they made me worry about nothing. The doctor suggested I get a shingles shot from my Primary; that came out of the blue and he never gave me a rationale for it. As it happens my brother wrote me two weeks ago that he had shingles around the back of his neck. The doc told me to see him again in 6 months. I felt he was blowing me off. That’s okay, I don’t like him either.
When I got home we got it together to go to the Tucson Art Museum to see a very funky show by two Mexican artists, the brothers Jamex and Elnar de la Torre, who specialize in blown glass sculpture and who have a wild imagination that embraces Dada, a Baroque extravagance, and a spirited attack of political correctness. They are bemused observers of social reality and technical masters of their medium, laughing wizards who practice an “Aesthetic of the Absurd.” Given the nature of the drawings I am currently doing, I can say I am in total sympathy with such an approach to creativity. Unfortunately, they did not provide a catalog for the show—apparently, all the pieces in the show are work owned along both sides of the border between the States and Mexico, which is why the show is entitled Borderlandia: Cultural Topographies. The form that shows up the most in all of the work was a red, transparent heart. It shows up again and again. In one large spectacular work, a rotating merry-go-round mandala that is approximately 10’ high and wide, there is a outside ring of red hearts about 18 inches apart and as the wheel rotates the hearts at the dip into the blood contained in a canoe underneath the merry-go-round mandala becoming the sacred hearts of Catholic lore. When I say blood I mean a red liquid of some kind that simulates the look and thickness of blood. I think they called the piece a “Bota-graph.” It is both a multi-layered pun and hybrid symbolism. A bota is a wine bag made of goatskins that can hold a couple of liters of wine. There is so much organic stuff in the pieces—blood, gore, skulls, vomit, interior body parts, animal skins and erections—that both Mike and I experienced some nausea walking around the museum. I don’t think that has ever happened to me before.
Technically speaking the work was brilliant. Besides all the body parts they included—and this has to be but a partial list—you can find many cultural artifacts in the “visual clutter,” embedded in the glass or cemented to the outside. There were bottle caps, small figurines, dolls, hot wheels, nuts and bolts, pictures and bas-reliefs of Jesus, kid’s toys, television sets, and everything else under the sun along the border. The brothers know what they are doing and carry off some incredibly complicated scenarios, all designed for two basic effects: a technical exuberance to wow you and to make you laugh. Mike and I laughed our way around the galleries, as their black humor hit home for us. Most pieces had a social subtext but others were just enjoyable nonsense. It was the best and most exciting show I have seen in Tucson in a long time. The last exciting show I saw in town was the Jim Waid show at the Pima College about three years ago.
As a side note, Mike discovered a wheelchair in the lobby of the museum and was kind enough to push me around which saved me a lot of pain and energy.
We had lunch at some genteel new age place Suzie had been to before during her in-town phase or when she goes on the town for one reason or another with her closest girl friends. The menu was a bit daunting for Mike and me so we played it safe and ordered hamburgers, expensive hamburgers too, $11 with Cole slaw on the side. They turned out to be really great burgers made out of quality meat. They were delicious, the best Hamburgers I have eaten since those hamburgers I had in Milwaukee in 2007, which were made from Kobe beef from Japan.
When we got home we continued watching “Mildred Pierce,” with Kate Winslet and Guy Pearce, a depression-era melodrama from a story by crime fiction writer James Cain that has been made into a movie before starring Joan Crawford, Ann Blyth and Zachary Scott. It was released in 1945 and it won Crawford an Oscar for her performance. We had started it the day before and we were determined to finish it last night. Altogether it is a five-hour movie. “Mildred Pierce” is a melodrama
between a mother and a spoiled daughter, with the daughter capable of ringing her mother’s bell whenever she wanted to and she wanted to rather too often. It would always end the same way with Mildred blowing her stack and then groveling to make it up the Veda, the daughter. Mildred never seemed capable of handling her, or standing up to her. She made the same mistakes over and over again, as Veda knew exactly what to do to set her off and to get her way. It got to be depressing to see Mildred so ensnared by her demons and so conventional in her comprehension and values. She was also very naïve, so bad she lost her chain of restaurants that she had worked so hard to build up due to being outsmarted by one female business partner and one ex-lover; she also lost her husband (Guy Pearce) to Veda, whose cruelty reached new heights by the end of the movie. The daughter and Mildred’s slacker ex-husband go off to New York to make their fortune with her singing voice, while back in lowly Glendale, a place Veda hated with a passion, Mildred and her first husband, now remarried—they were a fit from the beginning--go back to the way it was in 1930, with her husband a small-timer in real estate and Mildred back to making pies to sell to her old eateries. How sad it was to realize she had learned so little through her salad days in business.
Before Mike, Sue and I went into town yesterday, I had an appointment with my lung specialist. He never did call me about the throat scan so I was both eager and nervous to hear about it, although I went basically assuming the news would not be bad. It wasn’t. We talked for 5 minutes without him mentioning it, so I asked, what could you tell me about the throat scan? Oh, it was nothing he said, calling it an “accidental mismeasurement.” If you recall I bitched about the Respiratory Therapist, who was more interested in his damn cell phone than watching what how was doing. It pissed me off that they made me worry about nothing. The doctor suggested I get a shingles shot from my Primary; that came out of the blue and he never gave me a rationale for it. As it happens my brother wrote me two weeks ago that he had shingles around the back of his neck. The doc told me to see him again in 6 months. I felt he was blowing me off. That’s okay, I don’t like him either.
When I got home we got it together to go to the Tucson Art Museum to see a very funky show by two Mexican artists, the brothers Jamex and Elnar de la Torre, who specialize in blown glass sculpture and who have a wild imagination that embraces Dada, a Baroque extravagance, and a spirited attack of political correctness. They are bemused observers of social reality and technical masters of their medium, laughing wizards who practice an “Aesthetic of the Absurd.” Given the nature of the drawings I am currently doing, I can say I am in total sympathy with such an approach to creativity. Unfortunately, they did not provide a catalog for the show—apparently, all the pieces in the show are work owned along both sides of the border between the States and Mexico, which is why the show is entitled Borderlandia: Cultural Topographies. The form that shows up the most in all of the work was a red, transparent heart. It shows up again and again. In one large spectacular work, a rotating merry-go-round mandala that is approximately 10’ high and wide, there is a outside ring of red hearts about 18 inches apart and as the wheel rotates the hearts at the dip into the blood contained in a canoe underneath the merry-go-round mandala becoming the sacred hearts of Catholic lore. When I say blood I mean a red liquid of some kind that simulates the look and thickness of blood. I think they called the piece a “Bota-graph.” It is both a multi-layered pun and hybrid symbolism. A bota is a wine bag made of goatskins that can hold a couple of liters of wine. There is so much organic stuff in the pieces—blood, gore, skulls, vomit, interior body parts, animal skins and erections—that both Mike and I experienced some nausea walking around the museum. I don’t think that has ever happened to me before.
Technically speaking the work was brilliant. Besides all the body parts they included—and this has to be but a partial list—you can find many cultural artifacts in the “visual clutter,” embedded in the glass or cemented to the outside. There were bottle caps, small figurines, dolls, hot wheels, nuts and bolts, pictures and bas-reliefs of Jesus, kid’s toys, television sets, and everything else under the sun along the border. The brothers know what they are doing and carry off some incredibly complicated scenarios, all designed for two basic effects: a technical exuberance to wow you and to make you laugh. Mike and I laughed our way around the galleries, as their black humor hit home for us. Most pieces had a social subtext but others were just enjoyable nonsense. It was the best and most exciting show I have seen in Tucson in a long time. The last exciting show I saw in town was the Jim Waid show at the Pima College about three years ago.
As a side note, Mike discovered a wheelchair in the lobby of the museum and was kind enough to push me around which saved me a lot of pain and energy.
We had lunch at some genteel new age place Suzie had been to before during her in-town phase or when she goes on the town for one reason or another with her closest girl friends. The menu was a bit daunting for Mike and me so we played it safe and ordered hamburgers, expensive hamburgers too, $11 with Cole slaw on the side. They turned out to be really great burgers made out of quality meat. They were delicious, the best Hamburgers I have eaten since those hamburgers I had in Milwaukee in 2007, which were made from Kobe beef from Japan.
When we got home we continued watching “Mildred Pierce,” with Kate Winslet and Guy Pearce, a depression-era melodrama from a story by crime fiction writer James Cain that has been made into a movie before starring Joan Crawford, Ann Blyth and Zachary Scott. It was released in 1945 and it won Crawford an Oscar for her performance. We had started it the day before and we were determined to finish it last night. Altogether it is a five-hour movie. “Mildred Pierce” is a melodrama
between a mother and a spoiled daughter, with the daughter capable of ringing her mother’s bell whenever she wanted to and she wanted to rather too often. It would always end the same way with Mildred blowing her stack and then groveling to make it up the Veda, the daughter. Mildred never seemed capable of handling her, or standing up to her. She made the same mistakes over and over again, as Veda knew exactly what to do to set her off and to get her way. It got to be depressing to see Mildred so ensnared by her demons and so conventional in her comprehension and values. She was also very naïve, so bad she lost her chain of restaurants that she had worked so hard to build up due to being outsmarted by one female business partner and one ex-lover; she also lost her husband (Guy Pearce) to Veda, whose cruelty reached new heights by the end of the movie. The daughter and Mildred’s slacker ex-husband go off to New York to make their fortune with her singing voice, while back in lowly Glendale, a place Veda hated with a passion, Mildred and her first husband, now remarried—they were a fit from the beginning--go back to the way it was in 1930, with her husband a small-timer in real estate and Mildred back to making pies to sell to her old eateries. How sad it was to realize she had learned so little through her salad days in business.
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Technological Icons for an Affluent Age
2011_3-17 Technological Icons for an Affluent age
If the sun and moon would doubt/they would immediately go out. (Wm. Blake)
You impress me as a hardcore skeptic and it has shaped your view of teaching. You seemed to fret a lot about the no-talent kids you had in class, and even feel some guilt about how you handled them. From Day One I accepted them; they came with the territory, so I turned my attention to those kids I could reach. In some ways maybe it wasn’t fair, but it simplified my job, and I had only so much energy to give and I didn’t see any virtue in wasting it on the whole class.
Frankly, I am amazed you lasted so long in Academe. With your technical skill, intelligence and general all-around know-how you could have done many things and made more money, although it sounds like you did well with what you made. Like you I was skeptical about the whole enterprise of Higher Education but I felt I should at least give teaching a whirl to see what I could do. Spratt was my vehicle for opening that possibility for me. By the time I got to UNLV could see that Higher Education was tied to the Federal Government, the Military-Industrial complex, and Corporation Land. (The first Chancellor of UNLV was from the world of Advertising. When I handed him the AFT Charter in 1968 he said to me, “ Does this mean you are going to bring your union goons here?”) After AE had run its course artists took on a new identity: the businessman artist. There was no longer the isolated genius creating in a hovel; all romantic conception faded away. These new artists were producing “necktie art” and art drained of personality. Artists were, as I recall, after “objecthood.” My best student in Vegas, after two years in the Masters program at Berkeley, saw some of my transitional drawing in 1971 and called my work “self indulgent,” a mortal sin in his book. At the same time Spratt had been telling me that artist were bound to be working hand and glove with industrial craftsmen in the creating of “technological icons for an Affluent Age.” Due to my working class background, I had always felt like a “Stranger in Paradise” in Academe. It was hard for me to feel at home and comfortable in Academe, and teaching had taught me that. I was good in the classroom but not with the institutional bullshit. And clearly, the drift of the Art World was in a direction not compatible with my inclinations and preoccupations. So I decided it was time to check out. And I did.
I had gone to UNLV as a 29-year old naïve idealist and at 35, after a few short years of intense living and activity I left exhausted, psychically played out, and despairing over the artistic, political and social conditions in America. During the last couple of years at UNLV I taught as a subversive, someone who wanted to undermine the whole enterprise as corrupt and joined at the hip with a Political Establishment that was run by money and power. It was as if I had revolted against my patrons, Spratt, Tansey, Bowman, the lot, who had duped me, I felt, had me believing university teaching was an honorable profession full of sterling personalities. After 5 years I saw it quite differently. I could write a book to list all the negative incidents of those 5 years. Sometimes I think I was lucky to get out alive. I had paintings slashed, drawings defaced, and unhappy mothers buying guns to come after me for corrupting their darling boys.
Three times in my life I have taken a leap in the dark with no idea where I might land. The first was leaving Madison on a whim in 1957 when I had only one year to go to graduate, and I ended up in the Bay Area in California, and you know what happened after that. The second leap of faith was leaving UNLV and teaching behind when I had zero possibilities ahead of me. That turned out pretty good too. The third time was leaving my job at the church at the age of 59. I can’t tell you how many people told me I was crazy, leaving a sure thing for something iffy. That leap turned out very well—a good job with great people in a welcoming subculture that led to 5 years of online writing. It’s faith baby, faith. Each time I came out smelling like a rose.
Obviously, with your more middle class background, you didn’t feel that discomfort that bugged me. You were better at rolling with the punches. You got along for, what, 40 years. Fairly early on you got married and settled in for 18 years, secure in your job and, I suspect, oblivious of the institutional bullshit. You were more career orientated from the get-go. You told your self you could keep the bullshit at arm’s length and apparently you managed that for years. In all the emails you’ve sent me I don’t recall any serious complaints about colleagues, intermural politics, or boredom. You stayed on even keel and above the fray. God, I wish I had been talented in that way. But I am a different type of personality, more volatile and impulsive, more willing to take chances. And, I dare say, much more emotional. I remember you as congenial but always at an emotional distance, with a tendency to be aloof and as such, a bit untouchable. It kept you immune from a lot of tussles that are wearing, from things that easily got under my skin. I was a hot button where you were, are, a cool customer, now, then and forever. Don’t you see yourself that way? But you are a bit manic about your intellectual propensities, very grounded in empiricism and science, always trawling for bright nuggets of insight and wisdom that you can hang your hat on for a few weeks until something else attracts your interest. I can understand the need to build oneself a picture or a system that helps us keep our heads above water, which holds off doubt, obscurity and the enormity of the indecipherable universe. We each have carved a mask and a niche to survive in until it’s time “to grab the Tiger by the tail.”
If the sun and moon would doubt/they would immediately go out. (Wm. Blake)
You impress me as a hardcore skeptic and it has shaped your view of teaching. You seemed to fret a lot about the no-talent kids you had in class, and even feel some guilt about how you handled them. From Day One I accepted them; they came with the territory, so I turned my attention to those kids I could reach. In some ways maybe it wasn’t fair, but it simplified my job, and I had only so much energy to give and I didn’t see any virtue in wasting it on the whole class.
Frankly, I am amazed you lasted so long in Academe. With your technical skill, intelligence and general all-around know-how you could have done many things and made more money, although it sounds like you did well with what you made. Like you I was skeptical about the whole enterprise of Higher Education but I felt I should at least give teaching a whirl to see what I could do. Spratt was my vehicle for opening that possibility for me. By the time I got to UNLV could see that Higher Education was tied to the Federal Government, the Military-Industrial complex, and Corporation Land. (The first Chancellor of UNLV was from the world of Advertising. When I handed him the AFT Charter in 1968 he said to me, “ Does this mean you are going to bring your union goons here?”) After AE had run its course artists took on a new identity: the businessman artist. There was no longer the isolated genius creating in a hovel; all romantic conception faded away. These new artists were producing “necktie art” and art drained of personality. Artists were, as I recall, after “objecthood.” My best student in Vegas, after two years in the Masters program at Berkeley, saw some of my transitional drawing in 1971 and called my work “self indulgent,” a mortal sin in his book. At the same time Spratt had been telling me that artist were bound to be working hand and glove with industrial craftsmen in the creating of “technological icons for an Affluent Age.” Due to my working class background, I had always felt like a “Stranger in Paradise” in Academe. It was hard for me to feel at home and comfortable in Academe, and teaching had taught me that. I was good in the classroom but not with the institutional bullshit. And clearly, the drift of the Art World was in a direction not compatible with my inclinations and preoccupations. So I decided it was time to check out. And I did.
I had gone to UNLV as a 29-year old naïve idealist and at 35, after a few short years of intense living and activity I left exhausted, psychically played out, and despairing over the artistic, political and social conditions in America. During the last couple of years at UNLV I taught as a subversive, someone who wanted to undermine the whole enterprise as corrupt and joined at the hip with a Political Establishment that was run by money and power. It was as if I had revolted against my patrons, Spratt, Tansey, Bowman, the lot, who had duped me, I felt, had me believing university teaching was an honorable profession full of sterling personalities. After 5 years I saw it quite differently. I could write a book to list all the negative incidents of those 5 years. Sometimes I think I was lucky to get out alive. I had paintings slashed, drawings defaced, and unhappy mothers buying guns to come after me for corrupting their darling boys.
Three times in my life I have taken a leap in the dark with no idea where I might land. The first was leaving Madison on a whim in 1957 when I had only one year to go to graduate, and I ended up in the Bay Area in California, and you know what happened after that. The second leap of faith was leaving UNLV and teaching behind when I had zero possibilities ahead of me. That turned out pretty good too. The third time was leaving my job at the church at the age of 59. I can’t tell you how many people told me I was crazy, leaving a sure thing for something iffy. That leap turned out very well—a good job with great people in a welcoming subculture that led to 5 years of online writing. It’s faith baby, faith. Each time I came out smelling like a rose.
Obviously, with your more middle class background, you didn’t feel that discomfort that bugged me. You were better at rolling with the punches. You got along for, what, 40 years. Fairly early on you got married and settled in for 18 years, secure in your job and, I suspect, oblivious of the institutional bullshit. You were more career orientated from the get-go. You told your self you could keep the bullshit at arm’s length and apparently you managed that for years. In all the emails you’ve sent me I don’t recall any serious complaints about colleagues, intermural politics, or boredom. You stayed on even keel and above the fray. God, I wish I had been talented in that way. But I am a different type of personality, more volatile and impulsive, more willing to take chances. And, I dare say, much more emotional. I remember you as congenial but always at an emotional distance, with a tendency to be aloof and as such, a bit untouchable. It kept you immune from a lot of tussles that are wearing, from things that easily got under my skin. I was a hot button where you were, are, a cool customer, now, then and forever. Don’t you see yourself that way? But you are a bit manic about your intellectual propensities, very grounded in empiricism and science, always trawling for bright nuggets of insight and wisdom that you can hang your hat on for a few weeks until something else attracts your interest. I can understand the need to build oneself a picture or a system that helps us keep our heads above water, which holds off doubt, obscurity and the enormity of the indecipherable universe. We each have carved a mask and a niche to survive in until it’s time “to grab the Tiger by the tail.”
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
Disaster Capitalism
2011_3_09 Disaster Capitalism
Larry O’Donnell, Rachel Maddow and Ed Schultz are now assuming that the Democrats have won the showdown with Scott Walker; they are saying that because some emails have come to light that show the governor has been negotiating with the absent 14 senators for the past few days while telling the public he won’t negotiate. According to one of the senators interviewed by O’Donnell last night they have the raw material for a compromise settlement right now; a deal could come soon.
That was great news to Rachel’s guest last night, Naomi Klein, the author of that great book THE SHOCK DOCTRINE. She was visibly elated over this latest turn of events. Here’s an excerpt from her book.
“What Chile pioneered under Pinochet was an evolution of coporativism: a mutually supporting alliance between a police state and large corporations, joining forces to wage all-out war against the third party sector—the workers—thereby drastically increasing alliance’s share of the national wealth…” (The global pattern was) an urban bubble of frenetic speculation and dubious accounting fueling superprofits and frantic consumerism, ringed by ghostly factories and rotting infrastructure of a development past; roughly half the population excluded from the economy altogether; out-of-control corruption and cronyism; dissemination of national owned small and medium-sized businesses; a huge transfer of wealth from public to private hands…”
The start of our recession was a crisis along these lines. The bailing out of the banks (to big to fail was the mantra) with taxpayer’s billions was one example of how the new Robber Barons pulled the wool over the eyes of the workers and the Middle Class. And who got the blame? The folks who bought the houses who should have known better, it was said, not the greedy real estate agents, who got no more than a slap on the wrists. They laughed all the way to the bank, as did their bonus-bloated brethren on Wall Street, while being immune from blame and suffer no consequences. like the homeowners did. Meanwhile all the good jobs disappeared; many were shipped over seas and people with PHDs were forced to work at McDonald’s for minimum wage or drive a delivery truck just to keep body and soul together. And now we have situation with the Tea Party advocates being top dog around the country in control in many states governments, like in Wisconsin, Ohio, Idaho and Indiana. Feeling rich with power they are going for the big prize: dumping unions, the workers’ last bastion of countervailing power. Governor Walker and others are trying to persuade the Middle Class, feeling resentment over the better deals the public sector unions have gotten for themselves (God forbid!) so those unions and their “Bosses” (what are CEOs if not Bosses?) have to be taken down a peg or two, or even better, eliminated—who needs them anymore? They are actually attacking their legitimacy, with collective bargaining in Wisconsin going back 50 years. The right wing money establishment has a master plan to dismantle unions, thus depriving the Democratic Party of election funds. Secondly, they then seek to privatize as many institutions as they can, which would greatly be facilitated with the a Republican in the White Hose in 2012, say, a Republican like Scott Walker or some other person with Tea Party values or affiliations. We now see what they want to do. As Grover Norquest phrased it, “We want government small enough to drown in a bathtub.” They want to eliminate government—all but the Military—as a viable entity. These people hate to pay taxes; they want to keep every red cent they get. They have no social conscience. Let the churches and the ERs take care of the helpless and homeless. It’s not their concern and shouldn’t have to be. Let the families of the mentally ill take care of their kin. We can’t afford that anymore; we have wars to wage. They are now showing a particular animus toward teachers who they are demonizing as inept part time workers who don’t deserve the salaries they get. They denigrate education at their own peril. They know not what they do.
Scott Walker is obviously a gambling man; he was willing to shoot the moon believing that the reaction to his so-called Budget Repair Bill would be small and feeble. That turned out to be a colossal miscalculation, which might cost him his future career. From the start the Bill was perceived as a union-busting piece of legislation, a ruse and smoke screen to cancel out most of their collective bargaining rights. It had nothing to do with budget issues. He fooled no one. As he told the person he thought was Dave Koch on the phone, “This is our moment to grab power.” Not quite; instead he awoke a sleeping giant, as tens of thousands showed up to assert their anger and their rejection of his move to depose unions in Wisconsin. He unintentionally reinvigorated the ‘monster’ he set out to destroy and his miscalculation may haunt him the rest of his life. The big moment may belong to the workers, not the plutocrats.
Larry O’Donnell, Rachel Maddow and Ed Schultz are now assuming that the Democrats have won the showdown with Scott Walker; they are saying that because some emails have come to light that show the governor has been negotiating with the absent 14 senators for the past few days while telling the public he won’t negotiate. According to one of the senators interviewed by O’Donnell last night they have the raw material for a compromise settlement right now; a deal could come soon.
That was great news to Rachel’s guest last night, Naomi Klein, the author of that great book THE SHOCK DOCTRINE. She was visibly elated over this latest turn of events. Here’s an excerpt from her book.
“What Chile pioneered under Pinochet was an evolution of coporativism: a mutually supporting alliance between a police state and large corporations, joining forces to wage all-out war against the third party sector—the workers—thereby drastically increasing alliance’s share of the national wealth…” (The global pattern was) an urban bubble of frenetic speculation and dubious accounting fueling superprofits and frantic consumerism, ringed by ghostly factories and rotting infrastructure of a development past; roughly half the population excluded from the economy altogether; out-of-control corruption and cronyism; dissemination of national owned small and medium-sized businesses; a huge transfer of wealth from public to private hands…”
The start of our recession was a crisis along these lines. The bailing out of the banks (to big to fail was the mantra) with taxpayer’s billions was one example of how the new Robber Barons pulled the wool over the eyes of the workers and the Middle Class. And who got the blame? The folks who bought the houses who should have known better, it was said, not the greedy real estate agents, who got no more than a slap on the wrists. They laughed all the way to the bank, as did their bonus-bloated brethren on Wall Street, while being immune from blame and suffer no consequences. like the homeowners did. Meanwhile all the good jobs disappeared; many were shipped over seas and people with PHDs were forced to work at McDonald’s for minimum wage or drive a delivery truck just to keep body and soul together. And now we have situation with the Tea Party advocates being top dog around the country in control in many states governments, like in Wisconsin, Ohio, Idaho and Indiana. Feeling rich with power they are going for the big prize: dumping unions, the workers’ last bastion of countervailing power. Governor Walker and others are trying to persuade the Middle Class, feeling resentment over the better deals the public sector unions have gotten for themselves (God forbid!) so those unions and their “Bosses” (what are CEOs if not Bosses?) have to be taken down a peg or two, or even better, eliminated—who needs them anymore? They are actually attacking their legitimacy, with collective bargaining in Wisconsin going back 50 years. The right wing money establishment has a master plan to dismantle unions, thus depriving the Democratic Party of election funds. Secondly, they then seek to privatize as many institutions as they can, which would greatly be facilitated with the a Republican in the White Hose in 2012, say, a Republican like Scott Walker or some other person with Tea Party values or affiliations. We now see what they want to do. As Grover Norquest phrased it, “We want government small enough to drown in a bathtub.” They want to eliminate government—all but the Military—as a viable entity. These people hate to pay taxes; they want to keep every red cent they get. They have no social conscience. Let the churches and the ERs take care of the helpless and homeless. It’s not their concern and shouldn’t have to be. Let the families of the mentally ill take care of their kin. We can’t afford that anymore; we have wars to wage. They are now showing a particular animus toward teachers who they are demonizing as inept part time workers who don’t deserve the salaries they get. They denigrate education at their own peril. They know not what they do.
Scott Walker is obviously a gambling man; he was willing to shoot the moon believing that the reaction to his so-called Budget Repair Bill would be small and feeble. That turned out to be a colossal miscalculation, which might cost him his future career. From the start the Bill was perceived as a union-busting piece of legislation, a ruse and smoke screen to cancel out most of their collective bargaining rights. It had nothing to do with budget issues. He fooled no one. As he told the person he thought was Dave Koch on the phone, “This is our moment to grab power.” Not quite; instead he awoke a sleeping giant, as tens of thousands showed up to assert their anger and their rejection of his move to depose unions in Wisconsin. He unintentionally reinvigorated the ‘monster’ he set out to destroy and his miscalculation may haunt him the rest of his life. The big moment may belong to the workers, not the plutocrats.
Sunday, March 6, 2011
A Few Laughs and Four Films
2011_3_05 A Few Laughs and Four Films
Let me start with some humor provided by David Fitzsimmons, our local political cartoonist, who also writes a satirical column in the Arizona Star on Saturdays about the weekly folly in in the state’s politics. He poked fun at our state Senators up in Phoenix, most of whom have “spent three years in the eighth grade. “He goes on the say, “Most of them think a Rhodes scholar is an asphalt expert and PBS is something that happens to wives “to make them edgy once a month.” He also weighed in on the subject, hot in the press this week, about the desire of some citizens of Pima County—that is to say Tucson-- wanting to secede from Arizona. It is an idea that has a great appeal to Sue and I, however foolish it sounds. He has three suggestions for possible names for this 51st state. The people who advanced the idea thought “Baja Arizona” was a good name. Fitzsimmons goes them one better: “Bajajaja.” If you don’t like that he has two other suggestions: “Arizonistan,” or “Mexafornia.” He also thinks everything north of Tucson should be called “southern Utah.”
I have seen four films in the past few days that are worth a few remarks. Two are low budget American films, one is a French erotic drama, and one is an early action film with Michael Caine.
PRINCESS KA’IULANI I picked up for Sue, as she is an aficionado of all things Hawaiian, and she was in tears by the end if this film. The father, a Scottish man, takes the Princess, a mere teenager, away to England when some greedy American businessmen trying to hi-jack the islands for their own profit and dominance, threaten the royal family. Being wrenched away from her homeland was very hard on her and to make things worse she is abused at the school she is sent to by the wealthy aristocrat who becomes her protector. Fortunately her host has two teenage kids, a boy and a girl, and they like her and soften the blow of being away from home. Eventually she and the lad fall in love; a period of bliss follows, but it is not to last. She was too committed to helping her homeland and he had to take care of the estate once his father was gone. And when she did return to the islands she did play a part in her people getting the right to vote. But, alas, she died shortly thereafter. The American influence could not be stemmed. In 1950 it became our 50th state. However, a minority has preserved the Hawaiian culture and it has made a bit of comeback in the past decade or so. In 2007 Sue and I went to Molokai to attend a Hula event that lasted three days. And the Hula celebrated was the traditional Hula, not what you find in the bars in Honolulu.
The young woman who played the Hawaiian Princess was O’orianka Klicher, the same young woman who at 14 played Pocahontas in Terrence Malik’s film, “The New World.” She did a good job in both films. Interestingly, in both films she plays a doomed Princess who falls in love with a foreigner, both Englishmen, and then spends time in England, to end up dying in their early twenties.
The DVD contains two discourses on Hawaiian history and both are informative and authoritative. They fill in some details and add nuance to the Princess’s character.
CONVICTION is a small movie but effective, about a timely topic: DNA testing that free men from prisons who were mistakenly jailed, tried and sentenced. The movie tells the incredible story of two mischievous kids who had lousy parents, so they bonded together to hold off a mean-spirited world. San Rockwell plays the brother, who is hot-headed, impulsive, and a magnet for trouble, while Hillary Swank plays his sister, Betty Ann Waters, who also has a temper and enough will and determination to move mountains, even if it takes 18 years. That’s how long the brother is in jail for a brutal murder he didn’t commit.
He goes to prison in 1980. The sister eventually becomes a lawyer, and once she finds out about the DNA tests she goes after a blood sample from the crime of the assailant, and then enlists Barry Scheck, the well-known DNA lawyer, to help her prove they got the wrong man. The brother had made the mistake of insulting the female Sheriff’s deputy who had arrived to take him in for questioning and she takes umbrage at his attitude, and actually decides to frame him out of spite, and she pulls it off by threatening Water’s wife and an ex-girl friend who lie to the jury saying he told them he killed the woman, who was stabbed something like 47 times. The sister, Betty Anne, finally gets the women to retract their stories. All her patience through several setbacks and her diligence on finding out the truth pay off in the end. Unfortunately the ex-Sheriff’s deputy could not be brought to justice because the stature of limitation had run out. Nonetheless the DNA test proved Waters wasn’t the killer, so he was freed. He was one of 254 men who have gotten off because of the DNA tests. Justice delayed is better than none at all. The actual killer has never been found.
LEAVING is a hot-blooded French movie that stars the bilingual Kristen Scott Thomas who has never been so sexy. It is not a new story; one thinks of Nora in “The Doll House,” and Emma Bovary. It is the dilemma of the trophy wife who finally pushes back, usually with tragic results. Suzanne (Thomas) has been married to a doctor for twenty years and he hardly pays attention to her. Anymore. They have two teenage children, a boy and a girl. Superficially, they appeared to be an ideal family. But then the husband hires Ivan (Sergi Lopez) a Spanish laborer, a hunk but also an ex-con, to do some cleanup work around the house. One thing leads to another and when Ivan makes a play for Suzanne she has already decided to go for it, as she’s tired of being the bored and ignored housewife. That initiates a passionate affair driven by lust and a dream of a different life, one more emotionally satisfying. But when the husband finds out he initiates a war between himself and Suzanne; he blocks every avenue that the couple have to make some money. They are quickly reduced to penury, their backs up against the wall. In desperation Suzanne and Ivan invade the family home and walk off with paintings and other valuables which she figures, she was only taking back what was really her’s after twenty years of service. The cops saw it differently and Ivan was arrested when he tried to sell what they took. The husband made a deal with Suzanne: come back home and Ivan will be freed. She has no choice so she takes the deal. But he can’t stand her husband any more, and one night she gets out of bed and takes her revenge. The film ends with Suzanne and Ivan at their secret meeting place in the countryside. They embrace and…at this point I told Sue it should end here; we needed go further, as we know how it has to end, badly. And it did end right there.
It’s easy to think they might have made it as a couple if the husband had let her go and been fair with her about what she was owed. It is also easy to be swayed by their passion, which was borne on Eros rather than love. But few experience that kind of ecstasy in their lifetime. But as Rex Reed commented in his review; he salutes the sincerity Kristen Scott Thomas brought to the role of Suzanne but ultimately she’s “a woman who is basically naïve, careless and self-destructive.” The trade-off of such reckless passion is a state I would characterize as NO EXIT.
PLAY DIRTY is the last film, an early Michael Caine vehicle, about a suicide mission to blow up a petrol depot in the desert that Rommel needed for his tanks in the battle for North Africa. It’s a “Dirty Dozen” type plot; an officer behind the lines dreams up this next-to-impossible-mission that he recruits several criminals for it to be led by a naïve engineer, which is Caine. The reason I ordered it from NETFLIX is I am reading Caine’s autobiography and it was one movie of his I thought I hadn’t seen—there were several-- but as it turned out I had seen it, probably when it came out. But no matter, I didn’t mind seeing it again, although it was predictable from beginning to end.
The movie was shot in Spain in geography first exploited by Sergio Leone. Caine tells a funny story about another film being shot close by, “Shalako,”with his old buddy Sean Connery. Some Indians on horseback came riding over a sand dune and the run smack into, not cowboys, but German tanks and other armored vehicles. The horses bucked their riders and high-tailed outa there. Laughter abounded but it took an hour to clean up the mess.
As for “Play Dirty” I did enjoy seeing several middle aged British actors that I used to see quite often in the sixties and seventies, like Harry Andrews and Nigel Green.
Let me start with some humor provided by David Fitzsimmons, our local political cartoonist, who also writes a satirical column in the Arizona Star on Saturdays about the weekly folly in in the state’s politics. He poked fun at our state Senators up in Phoenix, most of whom have “spent three years in the eighth grade. “He goes on the say, “Most of them think a Rhodes scholar is an asphalt expert and PBS is something that happens to wives “to make them edgy once a month.” He also weighed in on the subject, hot in the press this week, about the desire of some citizens of Pima County—that is to say Tucson-- wanting to secede from Arizona. It is an idea that has a great appeal to Sue and I, however foolish it sounds. He has three suggestions for possible names for this 51st state. The people who advanced the idea thought “Baja Arizona” was a good name. Fitzsimmons goes them one better: “Bajajaja.” If you don’t like that he has two other suggestions: “Arizonistan,” or “Mexafornia.” He also thinks everything north of Tucson should be called “southern Utah.”
I have seen four films in the past few days that are worth a few remarks. Two are low budget American films, one is a French erotic drama, and one is an early action film with Michael Caine.
PRINCESS KA’IULANI I picked up for Sue, as she is an aficionado of all things Hawaiian, and she was in tears by the end if this film. The father, a Scottish man, takes the Princess, a mere teenager, away to England when some greedy American businessmen trying to hi-jack the islands for their own profit and dominance, threaten the royal family. Being wrenched away from her homeland was very hard on her and to make things worse she is abused at the school she is sent to by the wealthy aristocrat who becomes her protector. Fortunately her host has two teenage kids, a boy and a girl, and they like her and soften the blow of being away from home. Eventually she and the lad fall in love; a period of bliss follows, but it is not to last. She was too committed to helping her homeland and he had to take care of the estate once his father was gone. And when she did return to the islands she did play a part in her people getting the right to vote. But, alas, she died shortly thereafter. The American influence could not be stemmed. In 1950 it became our 50th state. However, a minority has preserved the Hawaiian culture and it has made a bit of comeback in the past decade or so. In 2007 Sue and I went to Molokai to attend a Hula event that lasted three days. And the Hula celebrated was the traditional Hula, not what you find in the bars in Honolulu.
The young woman who played the Hawaiian Princess was O’orianka Klicher, the same young woman who at 14 played Pocahontas in Terrence Malik’s film, “The New World.” She did a good job in both films. Interestingly, in both films she plays a doomed Princess who falls in love with a foreigner, both Englishmen, and then spends time in England, to end up dying in their early twenties.
The DVD contains two discourses on Hawaiian history and both are informative and authoritative. They fill in some details and add nuance to the Princess’s character.
CONVICTION is a small movie but effective, about a timely topic: DNA testing that free men from prisons who were mistakenly jailed, tried and sentenced. The movie tells the incredible story of two mischievous kids who had lousy parents, so they bonded together to hold off a mean-spirited world. San Rockwell plays the brother, who is hot-headed, impulsive, and a magnet for trouble, while Hillary Swank plays his sister, Betty Ann Waters, who also has a temper and enough will and determination to move mountains, even if it takes 18 years. That’s how long the brother is in jail for a brutal murder he didn’t commit.
He goes to prison in 1980. The sister eventually becomes a lawyer, and once she finds out about the DNA tests she goes after a blood sample from the crime of the assailant, and then enlists Barry Scheck, the well-known DNA lawyer, to help her prove they got the wrong man. The brother had made the mistake of insulting the female Sheriff’s deputy who had arrived to take him in for questioning and she takes umbrage at his attitude, and actually decides to frame him out of spite, and she pulls it off by threatening Water’s wife and an ex-girl friend who lie to the jury saying he told them he killed the woman, who was stabbed something like 47 times. The sister, Betty Anne, finally gets the women to retract their stories. All her patience through several setbacks and her diligence on finding out the truth pay off in the end. Unfortunately the ex-Sheriff’s deputy could not be brought to justice because the stature of limitation had run out. Nonetheless the DNA test proved Waters wasn’t the killer, so he was freed. He was one of 254 men who have gotten off because of the DNA tests. Justice delayed is better than none at all. The actual killer has never been found.
LEAVING is a hot-blooded French movie that stars the bilingual Kristen Scott Thomas who has never been so sexy. It is not a new story; one thinks of Nora in “The Doll House,” and Emma Bovary. It is the dilemma of the trophy wife who finally pushes back, usually with tragic results. Suzanne (Thomas) has been married to a doctor for twenty years and he hardly pays attention to her. Anymore. They have two teenage children, a boy and a girl. Superficially, they appeared to be an ideal family. But then the husband hires Ivan (Sergi Lopez) a Spanish laborer, a hunk but also an ex-con, to do some cleanup work around the house. One thing leads to another and when Ivan makes a play for Suzanne she has already decided to go for it, as she’s tired of being the bored and ignored housewife. That initiates a passionate affair driven by lust and a dream of a different life, one more emotionally satisfying. But when the husband finds out he initiates a war between himself and Suzanne; he blocks every avenue that the couple have to make some money. They are quickly reduced to penury, their backs up against the wall. In desperation Suzanne and Ivan invade the family home and walk off with paintings and other valuables which she figures, she was only taking back what was really her’s after twenty years of service. The cops saw it differently and Ivan was arrested when he tried to sell what they took. The husband made a deal with Suzanne: come back home and Ivan will be freed. She has no choice so she takes the deal. But he can’t stand her husband any more, and one night she gets out of bed and takes her revenge. The film ends with Suzanne and Ivan at their secret meeting place in the countryside. They embrace and…at this point I told Sue it should end here; we needed go further, as we know how it has to end, badly. And it did end right there.
It’s easy to think they might have made it as a couple if the husband had let her go and been fair with her about what she was owed. It is also easy to be swayed by their passion, which was borne on Eros rather than love. But few experience that kind of ecstasy in their lifetime. But as Rex Reed commented in his review; he salutes the sincerity Kristen Scott Thomas brought to the role of Suzanne but ultimately she’s “a woman who is basically naïve, careless and self-destructive.” The trade-off of such reckless passion is a state I would characterize as NO EXIT.
PLAY DIRTY is the last film, an early Michael Caine vehicle, about a suicide mission to blow up a petrol depot in the desert that Rommel needed for his tanks in the battle for North Africa. It’s a “Dirty Dozen” type plot; an officer behind the lines dreams up this next-to-impossible-mission that he recruits several criminals for it to be led by a naïve engineer, which is Caine. The reason I ordered it from NETFLIX is I am reading Caine’s autobiography and it was one movie of his I thought I hadn’t seen—there were several-- but as it turned out I had seen it, probably when it came out. But no matter, I didn’t mind seeing it again, although it was predictable from beginning to end.
The movie was shot in Spain in geography first exploited by Sergio Leone. Caine tells a funny story about another film being shot close by, “Shalako,”with his old buddy Sean Connery. Some Indians on horseback came riding over a sand dune and the run smack into, not cowboys, but German tanks and other armored vehicles. The horses bucked their riders and high-tailed outa there. Laughter abounded but it took an hour to clean up the mess.
As for “Play Dirty” I did enjoy seeing several middle aged British actors that I used to see quite often in the sixties and seventies, like Harry Andrews and Nigel Green.
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