As movie allusions go, Decade at Bernie’s is near-perfect: partying at a dead man’s house while literally propping him up so that everyone will think he’s still alive as a metaphor for the financial sector and its regulators over the least 10 years.
the best way to hide something
the best way to hide something is to leave it out in the open. It’s counter-intuitive but true, again and again.
so it is that “fiscal conservatism” is an acceptable way of saying “liberalism is shit”. conservatives have supported running deficits when it suits their needs. but when it suits the needs of a welfare state, it’s a sin.
in our protestant culture, you need not prove that deficit spending is immoral. and in our media-driven politics, just repeating the claim that it is, over and over again, changes the language everyone uses until even your opponents concede to your unproven argument by using labels like “fiscal conservative.” as if that moniker actually meant something, as if it was a clear and transparent term rather than subterfuge for surrender.
Or, in the words of the late Claude Bessy: there is no such thing as New Wave.
things meant to make you go hmm that instead make you sigh
Provocative without being thoughtful, Towelhead is an exercise in button-pushing that seems unsure of what it wants to say (except to assert, correctly, that being a sexually abused biracial teenager in suburban Houston would really, really suck).
The good guys, the bad guys, the victim, the perp: all are stereotypes.
Ball’s trying to be honest about adolescent coming of age, but since he’s dishonest about everything else, the movie collapses in on itself, ending with a laughably pat resolution that renders “Towelhead” a Bizarro World “After School Special.”
Bishil gives a touching performance in the circumstances, but it’s hard to play a confused character when the director’s just as confused as you are. Both nymphet and victim, Jasira wanders through Ball’s cracked America like an Arab-American Little Annie Fanny, as exploited behind the camera as she is in front of it.
Titanic
I often think about art as a social cipher. But all powerful art is, first, intensely personal:
As the two men got to know each other better in subsequent meetings, their discussions would meander, as Cook sought to understand his onetime and perhaps future adversary. Hedging his bets, he used his company sniper team as his bodyguards during some meetings so they would get a good look at Sarhan in case they needed to shoot him in the future. The two men talked about Sarhan’s children, who were playing “Mujahadeen and Americans,” instead of the traditional “Cowboys and Indians.” Cook knew that Iraqis of all stripes loved American movies, particularly the 1997 epic Titanic. Sarhan told him that he didn’t watch any American movies, that they were products of the devil. Cook jokingly asked him if he liked Titanic, knowing it was enormously popular in Iraq. Why, yes, the insurgent confessed. He recounted watching it seven times and crying every time at the ending, as Kate Winslet lets the dead Leonardo DiCaprio slip into the freezing North Atlantic.
a different kind of liquidity trap
Thanks to Israeli policy, the people of Gaza have run out of money, literally.
Cash has been in short supply here since 2007. That’s when the Islamist group Hamas forcibly took control of Gaza. Israel then imposed a strict blockade that limits trucks taking cash from bank headquarters in the West Bank to branches in Gaza. Israel, the U.S. and the E.U. consider Hamas a terrorist organization and don’t want money getting into its hands. Over the last few months, the shekel embargo has tightened. And Gaza-based economist Khaled Abdel Shafi says banks are at rock bottom.
archaeology of the present
Many American homes only have mirrors in the bathroom. I know because of the profile photos on MySpace.
a one sentence argument against the U.S. trade embargo on Cuba
We don’t believe our own rhetoric: that free markets promote freedom.
it’s the economy, stupid
The New Yorker has published an excellent report on the recent economic history of Iran. Unfortunately, only a summary is available online.
Stories about money don’t titillate as easily – or as often – as those about outsized personalities. And, yet, money is what makes the world go round. The prosperity that allowed America to play dice with George W. Bush is the flip side of the coin that got President Obama elected during a financial crisis and deep recession.
In Bolivia, Venezuela, Cuba, China, North Korea, Sweden, Iceland and Iran: what is possible is dictated as much by economics as it is by politics; both are efforts to understand and organize human activity.
To fashion a crude analogy: politics and culture may be what’s in the brain, but the body (the heart, the lungs, the stomach, the limbs, etc.) is economics.
another thing what’s great about the web
other people have almost always written exactly what you want to say about a movie you’ve just seen. commenter “strawdawg” from nine days ago:
I really liked Fat Girl up to the last scene. These were wonderful, complex characters that kept my attention throughout the film. The relationships between the family members were fantastic in the most dysfunctional way. The “shocking” ending was completely unnecessary in my opinion. To me it seemed as if Breillat ran out of ideas at the end. Or that she was rushed somehow and just threw that ending in without a lot of thought… There certainly are other ways to have just as powerful a message without the quick violent scene. I really hate to say it, but the ending is very Hollywoodish…
cut!
Thanks to Netflix Instant Play we’ve been watching a lot of movies lately, sometimes two in a row. But because there’s not many choices for the impatient, most of these movies have been “OK” (a rating I wish Netflix allowed.)
Most if not all of these movies could be much better with a simple change: less expository scenes – scenes so leaden they bring down the entire structure upon which our belief is suspended.
I suspect it’s not a matter of taste but courage. The producers may ask: can the audience make sense of what is happening without being told outright? To which I answer: what season of Lost are we on, again?
reminder
All engineering is social engineering. Even hacks that are restricted to code are people interacting with each other across time and space through highly coded language.
on opening a small cafe in New York City
A place that seats 25 will have to employ at least two people for every shift: someone to work the front and someone for the kitchen (assuming you find a guy who will both uncomplainingly wash dishes and reliably whip up pretty crepes; if you’ve found that guy, you’re already in better shape than most NYC restaurateurs. You’re also, most likely, already in trouble with immigration services).
It’s very well written.
don’t we have some PAC money left over for this?
But there also shouldn’t be much question why Republicans are having such a field day spreading disinformation and simple nonsense about this bill. We’ve heard virtually nothing over the last couple weeks about the big issue, which is that the economy is in severe free-fall because of a once-in-a-century financial crisis. … This is an emergency jobs bill. And it costs a lot of money because we’re in a deep crisis. But this basic point has disappeared almost entirely from the public debate.
unfortunate association
Fresh Air has produced a wonderful interview with the very smart Antony Hegarty of Antony and the Johnsons.
That said, his constant vibrato reminds me of David Sedaris imitating Billie Holiday. I’m sorry.
the second as farce
What would Italian fascism look like within the context of the EU, the G8 and NATO? Would we recognize it?
Silvio Berlusconi controls the media he doesn’t own outright. Organized crime is now that nation’s most important industry. The country is flirting with state-sponsored xenophobia. Its political system is at the breaking point.
The first time it’s tragedy, the second time it’s farce. Only, it’s not very funny.
why are there newspapers in North Korea?
Michael Bérubé defines one of the most important power blocs in contemporary America as “a low-information conservative constituency.” It’s a stunningly precise and pithy description.
First, “low-information” is a universal term. For example: the governments of Cuba and North Korea carefully cultivate low-information constituencies. The executives of Regnery Publishing and Fox News do likewise.
Second, it’s not a slur. All of us are lacking information, usually through no fault or deficiency of our own. Whether you have two PhD’s or never finished grammar school, whether you’re a valorous hero or a selfish coward, you will find yourself, again and again, lacking information.
Finally, information is not opinion. The late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan is credited with saying: “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts.” Information is the bedrock of political discourse. In modern times, even the most tyrannical dictatorships keep their newspapers open to lend their propaganda a patina of truth.
In our most heated political debates, we can say “get your facts straight” but we can seldom get away with saying “just trust me, OK?”
The proper political response to someone who lacks information is clarity, knowledge, persistence and sympathy. The proper political response to someone who shuns information is the same with one additional measure: ridicule.
part right
Politics is so central to the human experience that, like humanity, it’s far too complicated to describe with just one theory. We do well to find a way to keep competing definitions in mind and this one, offered by Glenn Greenwald, is very compelling:
Why would anyone think that “common ground,” on any consistent basis, can be found with people like this, or that it would be beneficial to eliminate real differences in order to accommodate their views? People in this country — like most countries — have radically different views of things, and politics is about having those ideas compete with one another for persuasive supremacy. This compulsion to eliminate differences and disharmony in pursuit of some feel-good, trans-partisan consensus is not only futile but also destructive. Why would it be a good idea to mold one’s beliefs and actions to induce the assent of the Dick Armeys and the Texas GOPs, even if that could be done?
self-serve nation
We would do well to print out this brilliant comment on MetaFilter and keep a copy handy at all times given the faddish resurgence of doomsday cults:
In Katrina, a huge group of refugees, all banded together trying to help each other escape the devastation, was turned back at a bridge by a small group of angry cops from a rich nearby suburb, cops who thought like survivalists. That everybody wants to take your stuff and you’d best be ready to shoot to kill to protect your stuff.
This is the left and the right in a nutshell. The people who want to band together so that everybody can help everybody else, and the people terrified of somebody else taking their precious stuff, and ready to protect it at all costs.
There are always rumors of atrocities when there is a disaster, a breakdown of order, because people want to protect the Hobbesean myth of a basically vicious humanity barely held in check by a civilizing force imposed by authority. Few of them turn out to be true. But the belief that everyone’s just one earthquake away from violent savagery is so very, very precious to so many people and institutions….
And from the same thread:
In the present: If you go to fairly dangerous and crime ridden places today, like South African townships you won’t find Mad Max. You’ll find people who band together, and try to take care of each other as best as they can and while the criminal element is present (in part because it has no where else to go) most people help to keep an eye on their neighbors and protect each other. Word travels among people like crazy, and everyone knows who the bad apples are and tries to avoid trouble. Otherwise people go to their jobs, raise their kids, watch tv and listen to the radio, visit each other, sleep and eat like normal people everywhere – this all takes place in a country that is as divided and well-armed as any.
the blind leading the blind
This morning I visited the web site of a local television station to read a story about a tragic violent crime. I then read about 40 or so comments (of 200) posted in response to the news report. As with many of the threads on YouTube and major city newspaper sites, at least half of these posts were, to be charitable, antisocial.
If you were to extrapolate from this graffiti the depth and breadth of our society, you’d likely despair. (Or, if you’re Michael Haneke, rejoice at the start of your next screenplay.) But there’s good reason not to mistake all that rage as our true if hidden natural state. We’re all fakes.
We are copies of each other. We begin imitating as infants and never stop. Consciously and unconsciously, whether speaking or yawning, we are responding to the world around us, taking cues from one another just like flocks of birds. Or schools of fish. Or swarms of locusts.
Online spaces are still so porous, so amorphous that they often fail to provide clear indication of who is present and, thus, what is permissible. Many more of us are assholes online because we literally can’t see each other and, thus, can’t see ourselves.