Here’s a curious clip that I found the link to on gofugyourself.
I really don’t have much to say for this. It just made me laugh in funny ways. It seems so low budget. For instance, why is it black and white? And the song is such a stupid choice for a cover, for a big budget single production? Am I wrong? It’s not as though I don’t appreciate this. I’m just fascinated. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
Frankly, I’ve never been a big Tenacious D fan. I’ve never listened to much of their album, never really got the joke, but I was still psyched to see this one since I think Jack Black is pretty funny, and the previews made it look good. I was not disappointed, but I was not overly enthused either. Black did a lot of this material better in School of Rock, which also had a lot more heart. And even though ‘heart’ is in no way a prerequisite for a decent film, it helped in School and its absence here was conspicuous.
Like I said, I like Black, but that doesn’t mean I think he’s that funny. In fact, I don’t think he’s super-funny, but I think he’s creative and sensitive, and actually more of a good actor than a good comedian. For instance, I don’t really think he’d make a great stand-up.
There was even less plot in Pick of Destiny than I expected, which is saying a lot, but there were also way more drug jokes, which was funny. Basically, the whole movie was just two guys imbibing. There weren’t many live performances by the D, although the few performances that were included were the highlights of the flick.
I was not bummed that I’d spent my $8 on the D, but I would have rather seen Borat or Fast Food Nation, which I’m sure are better movies. Maybe tonight . . .
Congrats to Philly slugger Ryan Howard on the occasion of his first NL MVP award! May it be the first of many.
And woe today to any unfortunate Eagles’s fan unlucky enough to have watched yesterday’s ‘game.’ I feel your pain.
Dig it! I like this not just for the cartoon, but because it encourages you to just listen to the manifesto again. Brilliant!
I watched two Spike Lee movies this weekend. On Friday night I stayed up until 4:00 a.m. or so watching Jungle Fever on HBO in my hotel room. I can’t say for sure whether or not I’d ever seen that one before. A lotta scenes rang a bell. Maybe I saw some parts censored on TV before. I don’t have much to say about that one because I did miss the beginning. Obviously, it’s an old film and I’m not sure if it’s held in great esteem. I also don’t remember whether or not when it came out it got a lot of press because it was well reviewed, or just because it was controversial. Either way, I actually thought that it held up quite well as a record of early nineties racism and the crack epidemic, and even though Spike’s treatment of black/Italian relations was not exactly sensitive, I thought it was honest, sincere, and risky. I give the filmmaker credit for all that. But this review is of Inside Man.
First of all, I should admit that I watched the film in pieces as I did my laundry, both on my computer and on my TV, so I can’t really speak exactly to how the film was paced or photographed. I bring this up because it’s a caper, a heist film with an action plot, and since I can’t comment on the pacing or cinematography, I’m obviously missing two essential elements that make any heist film work.
But I can say that on the small screen, and in pieces, it did work. I, for one, was constantly surprised throughout by each plot twist and turn. I’ve been watching the DVD commentary and I have noticed that Spike gives away a few more details than maybe he needed to, which I didn’t notice the first time around, but there are also a lot of great details that one could only pick up on upon a second viewing.
Like I say, the film is a heist film and the heist plot works well, but it is also a clever allegory for and commentary upon the rise in racial tension and diminution in civil liberties in the wake of the events of September 11, 2001. Here the film really grabbed me. At points, I was afraid that Spike was going to buy into a sort of callow left-wing patriotism. (“Sure these infringements on our civil liberties are bad, tsk, tsk! But maybe, just maybe, we need to give a leetle to get a leetle. After all, Arabs are scary, right?” or something like that.) But Spike, in my opinion, never gave into that unfortunate temptation. In fact, he included some great scenes commenting upon anti-Indian, Arab, and Sikh racism, and he also included scenes that touched upon his classic complaints against racial, sexual, and economic injustice.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly for me, the allegory works in a way that other recent political allegories, Syriana in particular comes to mind, just didn’t. Here the allegory doesn’t needlessly stand in for some larger social problem, it models the larger problem on a manageable scale. As a Marxist might say, the allegory models and represents the totality, as Spike sees it. I’m not kidding, I really think the film is that good, but for that reason, it’s also a sort of case study in dialectical criticism’s possible shortcomings. Right now, I’m very positive about the new media’s ability to model the totality and raise consciousness. I think that this film offers an interesting case study because it models the totality so well, but does it raise consciousness? This is questionable and will have to be played out, that is, carried forth or carried out, over the course or more than one film. In fact, I might suggest that in order to really have revolutionary cultural impact, fillmaking like this would need to turn into a movement first. Anything’s possible. (And I apologize if this is all a bit obscure.)
And in closing, I would be remiss to mention that the film is not perfect, even politically. In fact, I was fairly turned off by some of its gender politics, as is typical in a lot of Spike’s movies. I think that he and Denzel were trying to be charming here in an old school Humphrey Bogart sort of way, and some of it does actually play, but more of it just falls flat or seems kind of creepy old man-ish. Some chauvinists just never learn.
I was impressed today by the NYT’s on-line lead story “Incoming Democrats Put Populism Before Ideology”. It impressed me for two reasons. One, I am currently attending the Film & History league Conference in Dallas, Texas where I delivered a paper on Michael Moore’s populism, politics, and paranoia. Nearly every one of the panels I have attended here on recent documentaries has touched on the wave of populist rhetoric, politics, affect that have been sweeping the U.S. Two, I am reading Ernesto Laclau’s latest On Populist Reason, which extends his critique of populism begun in such books as Politics and Ideology in Marxist Theory, and with Chantal Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy.
I am only a couple chapters into Laclau’s book, but what he seems to be getting at is that populism is more a desire than anything else, but it is also all those other things I mention above–rhetoric, politics, affect. What does this mean? Well, any political movement can basically be described as populist. In a basic sense, because every political movement involves a people. Beyond this, every political movement also assumes certain political desires on the part of its people, psychological or affective positions which, strictly speaking, fall outside of the realm of traditional political discourse a la Aristotle, the founding fathers, and perhaps even Marx and his descendants.
So when the Times says that Dems are putting populism ahead of ideology the statement only makes rhetorical sense in the realm of language and argument, no real sense in the world of politics and things. I realize this is all very complicated. I’m still working out the details myself. Perhaps a real-world example will help . . .
The last time there was a shift in control of congressional politics was 1994 when the Gingrich Republicans took over. The Gingrinch program may be accurately described as an “ideologization” of the Right, and a possible re-ideologization of American politics generally. (These ideas come from Dana Nelson and Tyler Curtain’s dialogue in the collection Our Monica, Ourselves.) What does this mean? Well, before Gingrich, since the late 1800s the Republican party was purely a party of privilege, that is, corporatist, statist, and pro-business. It had no real ideological platform except for the Zen-like “Going with the flow of the market.” Gingrich brought ideology into the mix by instead building a platform for the Republicans. This involved adopteing the politics of hate paired with financial austerity and an abandonment of social programs, i.e.it was pro-white, anti-gay, anti-female, anti-welfare, pro-business, pro-war, isolationist, nationalist, etc. Despite the program’s utter irrationality on paper, and American politics’s reputed rationality, the program appealed to our desire for two reasons, 1) because of its heated, hateful elements, 2) because it constituted a set of beliefs, i.e. a platform, which could be taken or left, not simply an affective stance like Clinton sought. If Clinton had had a program, it would have been a direct descendant from New Deal and Great Society social welfare programs, popular programs unbeneficial to the rich.
The populist dems, as the Times describes them, are comparably politically weak when compared with both the Clinton dems and the Gingrich Republicans since they lack both a political platform (“We’re better than the other guys”), and because they run a greater risk of alienating the public on an emotional or affective level. Why this latter? Well, because the dems are unlikely to end the Wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and on Terror without massive losses in blood and treasure either to the U.S., its allies, or the occupied nations, or a large-scale spread in terrorist activity (NB: This wouldn’t have happened if the wars hadn’t been started in the first place. A paradox that only seems like a paradox.). Universal healthcare reform seems more possible now, but it still a distant goal and will probably result in class warfare before reform. The dems have no response to the problems of the disenfranchised or the poor.
And this last is what really stood out for me in the Times article. Since all these dems got elected not because they are authentic, clever, or driven, but merely not the other guy, they are unlike the other guy in all categories but one, their relative wealth and privilege in comparison to the rest of the United States population. These are not political leaders in the traditional sense, i.e. charismatic, auratic figures, but rich men and women–doctors and lawyers, pseudo-celebrities, former sports players, businesspeople, captains of industry, etc. Is this the real face of democracy? Perhaps. But I also wonder whether or not it is also the face of a nation starving, unsated by the blood of its imperial adventures abroad.
I don’t have much time to write. In fact, I have no time at all. Flying to Dallas tomorrow to deliver the much revised part of my M.A. thesis on Fahrenheit 9/11. Still much more revising to be done, which is pitiful, but I’ve been so busy this semester.
Still, I wanted to chime in briefly on the election. I’m very happy with the results. Virginia is still undecided, but looking dem, hopefully. My home state PA went hard dem. Santorum was voted out. For a pro-lifer, sure, but I’ll take a sexist over an out and out racist, homophobic bigot any day, and my hometown, Springfield, voted out Curt Weldon, which is exciting. It will feel much more inviting when I go home there for the holidays this year. I don’t know much about the new congressman, Joe Sestak, he could be a chump, but this election was largely symbolic, as I see it, like all U.S. elections really, and the symbolism here was encouraging. And it seems as though maybe Bush and his cronies are getting this, this symbolism, these signs of the times, too. They are apocalypticists after all. Rumsfeld’s resignation today caused me to raise my arms in triumph, but it’s scary too. Large shifts in power should always be approached warily, especially when they are more so symbolic and will probably not have a great effect on policy.
Late last night I saw some pundit on CBS saying that, if anything, these election results are a sign that Americans are angry. I think that’s true, and it’s encouraging in one way, and scary in another. It’s good to know that Americans are fed up with business as usual, that they’ve finally broken through the slimy skin and teflon wardrobe of president Bush and his cabinet, which so deceptively conceal their depraved and inhumane barbarity. But anger is always a dangerous political emotion. If the democrats should not be able to turn the ebb tide of barbarity, at home and abroad, then I fear that the flood tides of reaction will return upon us ever stronger and more ferociously.
If they can’t do it, then the multitude might have to, and in that case, I foresee a possible social upheaval in the U.S. on a scale so massive as to dwarf the ideologically fraught and unduly romanticized struggles of the 60s. The dems are in power, but can they harness it and to what ends, and will this really satisfy the anger of a population impressed into service on the losing side of the total war that is everyday life under terror capital?
