National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; © 1953, 2012 Allen Ginsberg LLC. All rights reserved.William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac, photographed by Allen Ginsberg in his East Village living room, 1953; from ‘Beat Memories: The Photographs of Allen Ginsberg,’ an exhibition organized by the National Gallery of Art and on
Continue readingTag: Film
Politics and Entertainment: Why a completely unremarkable film called Argo won the Oscar
How ironically fitting that Michelle Obama announced the Oscar for the winning picture. Argo is a putative “true” story from the not too distant U.S. past – a past to which American viewers can easily relate – a feel good story of American&nb…
Continue readingPolitics and Entertainment: Why a completely unremarkable film called Argo won the Oscar
How ironically fitting that Michelle Obama announced the Oscar for the winning picture. Argo is a putative “true” story from the not too distant U.S. past – a past to which American viewers can easily relate – a feel good story of American perseverance, ingenuity, courage, an inspiring version of U. S. exceptionalism resulting
Continue readingPolitics and Entertainment: Why a completely unremarkable film called Argo won the Oscar
How ironically fitting that Michelle Obama announced the Oscar for the winning picture. Argo is a putative “true” story from the not too distant U.S. past – a past to which American viewers can easily relate – a feel good story of American perseverance, ingenuity, courage, an inspiring version of U. S. exceptionalism resulting
Continue readingPolitics and Entertainment: Zero Dark Thirty Leaves Plenty of Space for Viewer’s Moral Judgment
Representations of torture are recessed in the second half of the film, it should be noted, not because of a moral awakening by any given character but only because of a policy decision by a new administration. The Obama TV moment presented in the background in the context of a CIA war or situation room makes this crystal clear. Even Dan’s warning to Maya – relatively early in the film – about the possible repercussions of “enhanced” methods of detainee interrogations comes in the form of a political warning about saving her CIA ass, not moral reprehension.
The devastating loss of American lives on 9/11 is the initiating narrative event that rolls out a straightforward revenge structure ending in the murder of Bin Laden and several of his domestic companions. Before the film proper begins in earnest, however, we are exposed to an introductory screen text informing us that the representations we are about to watch are based on “firsthand accounts of actual event.” There is an implicit moral distancing in this textual strategy – “I’m just showing you the way it was” – but certainly one of its other effects is to suggest that what we are about to see carries the weight of authenticity and is therefore important if not “real.” The now conventional use of handheld cameras is meant to reinforce this effect with a documentary-like style of shooting. In other words, the “realism” of the film is not an allegiance to “truth” or reality,” whatever those may be since neither is a given, but a filmic effect resulting from a well-established set of film conventions creating an illusion, a fiction, of “what really happened.” It seems appropriate to evaluate the film as such.
The film proper opens with a black screen over which we hear the dying voices of only American victims of the twin towers, a restriction thus positioning us emotionally if not ideologically as American viewers. Immediately after this audio text, we are treated to roughly forty-five minutes of extensive torture sequences, including several instances of the infamous water-boarding technique. Juxtaposing the first visual torture scene of al-Qaeda’s No. 3 leader, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, with the voices of the twin tower Americans who are about to die creates a structural effect implying a retaliatory cause-effect relationship – “I am torturing you because of 9/11” – and that effect is sustained throughout the entire 45 minutes of multiple scenes of torture and implied throughout the entire film.
These kind of scenes are gradually recessed as we move in the second half of the film towards interrogations without torture – but nonetheless grounded in bribes or threats – and sequences of CIA group intelligence analysis: the so-called “hard work” some critics want to see as the reason for discovering Bin Laden. But the dialogue reveals on several occasions that the analysis – the “hard work” – really results from information received from interrogated detainees, on screen and off, and those detainees, we know, were abused in some form or other if not overtly tortured. “Does our treatment of detainees work? You bet.”
Inter-cut with these intelligence analysis scenes is a revenge justifying history of major terrorist attacks against westerners since 9/11, but especially against Americans, each successfully gaining more screen time and thus significance until the final, climactic suicide bombing in Afghanistan of one of Maya’s closest colleagues, Jessica, who has been betrayed by her al-Qaeda connections. Now it’s “personal” is the implication as we move towards the final bloody revengeful act of murder in Pakistan.
But, in truth there has been little if anything personal in the film – no character development for anyone let alone Maya who has been merely the driving agent of revenge. We know little more about her by the end of the film than we do at the beginning, and the final scene of Maya in a giant U.S. army transport plane alone, isolated, and small is telling in its ambiguity. “Where do you want to go?” asks a crew member, his question unanswered. And what do we read on her face? Relief? Satisfaction? Sadness? An unwinding? Anxiety now that her obsessive-compulsive revenge narrative has come to its end? Plenty of room for the the viewer’s meaning.
Following that final character scene is another screen text rounding out the ideological thrust of the film in its acknowledgement of the victims of 9/11 once again and all those who serve the American exceptionalist project. Closure is provided by that framing text confirming the essence of the film as an apologia of sorts, a justification of policy, of strategy: “Revenge and all that that entails, including torture, are okay because they drove us to get Bin Laden, and we did that for you.” Whether this is a impaired moral justification is the viewer’s decision.
In the end, it matters little what the filmmaker or commentators say about Zero Dark Thirty. You are the site of meaning: it’s your reading of the film conditioned though it may be by your cultural, moral, and social inscription that matters. Like any text, film texts are unstable, dynamic, their meaning put in motion by your engagement with them. In a sense there is no film without you.Zero Dark Thirty is provocatively open enough – disturbing in so many ways – to allow for a variety of ways to read it, and that makes it a challenging, ideologically complex film well worth viewing – far more exciting than some of its straightforward conventional Oscar challengers.
Politics and Entertainment: Zero Dark Thirty Leaves Plenty of Space for Viewer’s Moral Judgment
Spoiler alert: The U.S. Navy SEALS murder Osama Bin Laden and several others in his Pakistani compound without mercy and with vengeful malice. Most of the controversy swirling round the film revolves around whether the filmmaker, Kathryn Bigelow – positioned as auteur by most commentators – endorses torture or whether the film’s narrative
Continue readingPolitics and Entertainment: Zero Dark Thirty Leaves Plenty of Space for Viewer’s Moral Judgment
Spoiler alert: The U.S. Navy SEALS murder Osama Bin Laden and several others in his Pakistani compound without mercy and with vengeful malice. Most of the controversy swirling round the film revolves around whether the filmmaker, Kathryn Bigelow – positioned as auteur by most commentators – endorses torture or whether the film’s narrative
Continue readingArt Threat: Athena Film Festival passes the Bechdel test
Occasionally films come out in the mainstream that give a glimpse of hope that perhaps the world of film is changing and becoming more adept at telling stories that don’t rely on sexist stereotypes – last summer the Hunger Games gave a promise of a heroine who could fend for
Continue readingThe Canadian Progressive: Fractured Land: A Dene warrior battles Big Oil and neo-colonialism
by Obert Madondo | The Canadian Progressive, Feb 1, 2013: This is the trailer of Fractured Land a film that tells the story of Caleb Behn, a young Dene warrior from northeastern British Columbia, “taking on Big Oil and Gas to protect his ancestral land and people from the ravages of neocolonialism.” I met Behn
Continue readingThe Canadian Progressive: “We Steal Secrets”: The Story of WikiLeaks (VIDEO)
by Guest Blogger | Jan 27, 2013: Oscar-winning filmmaker Alex Gibney discusses his new documentary, “We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks” with Amy Goodman, the host of Democracy Now! The film examines the key players involved in the whistleblowing website’s release of hundreds of thousands of secret U.S. diplomatic cables to
Continue readinggay persons of character: Video: Queer Lisboa 16 – Death of the Gay Cliche!
I somehow missed this awesome ad for the 2012 Queer Lisboa 16 – Lisbon Gay and Lesbian Film Festival commercial created by the agency FUEL Lisbon. It hits one of the seminal aspects of my blog, which is to destroy gay stereotypes. Enjoy!
Continue readinggay persons of character: Video: Queer Lisboa 16 – Death of the Gay Cliche!
I somehow missed this awesome ad for the 2012 Queer Lisboa 16 – Lisbon Gay and Lesbian Film Festival commercial created by the agency FUEL Lisbon. It hits one of the seminal aspects of my blog, which is to destroy gay stereotypes. Enjoy!
Continue readinggay persons of color: Video: Queer Lisboa 16 – Death of the Gay Cliche!
I somehow missed this awesome ad for the 2012 Queer Lisboa 16 – Lisbon Gay and Lesbian Film Festival commercial created by the agency FUEL Lisbon. It hits one of the seminal aspects of my blog, which is to destroy gay stereotypes. Enjoy!
Continue readingChadwick's Blog & Commentary: And on the video scene… bargains!
December is always a good month for movie buffs, and for anyone who wants to buy TV series on DVD (no commercials!). Lots of places have before- and after-Xmas sales that make DVD shopping more interesting this month. In particular, … Continue reading →
Continue readingChadwick's Blog & Commentary: Tax the Rich – a video
You really should watch this video. It explains in clear, simple terms the argument of the billionaires and the rest of us. I like it because – while it’s simplistic – it is succinct and presents its argument in a … Continue reading →
Continue readingWalking Turcot Yards: À St-Henri, le 26 août – Screening Thursday Night
Great opportunity to see this film and pick up some information about Projet Montreal. From the NFB page– Glide along the boulevards of St-Henri with the charming perpetual motion machines that are this district’s diverse denizens, from the taciturn milkman to resourceful Doris the gleaner to a group of fashion-forward
Continue readingCanadian ProgressiveCanadian Progressive: The Invisible War: Rape, Sexual Assault Epidemic in U.S. Military (VIDEO)
Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman unpacks ”The Invisible War” a new documentary that examines the epidemic of rape of soldiers within the U.S. military. She speaks to Trina McDonald and Kori Cioca, two subjects of the film, and the film’s Academy Award-nominated director, Kirby Dick. A recent military survey shows that
Continue readingCanadian ProgressiveCanadian Progressive: The imagination, art, and activism of Herman’s House
by Chanda Chevannes | Troy Media Last week I attended the Toronto theatrical premiere of Herman’s House, a thought-provoking documentary written and directed by Angad Singh Bhalla. This Canadian film tells the story of an artistic collaboration between Jackie Sumell and Herman Wallace. Sumell is a multidisciplinary artist from New York.
Continue readingCanadian Progressive: The Mouse That Roared: Imagining an internet safe haven for journalists, whistleblowers and activists in Iceland
The Mouse That Roared is a documentary-in-the-making film by Judith Ehrlich, the award-winning director of “The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers”, which earned a Peabody, and was nominated for an Academy award for best documentary. The film centers around Icelandic parliamentarian Birgitta Jónsdóttir’s efforts fights
Continue readingCanadian Progressive: Innocence of Muslims: Pathetic Movie Responsible For Ambassador Stevens’ Assassination
Here’s an extended trailer of the ”Innocence Of Muslims”, the shitty anti-Islam movie that unleashed riots in the Muslim world, leading to the assassination of the U.S. Ambassador to Libya, J. Christopher Stevens. Earlier today, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton distance the U.S. government from the movie, and labeled it “disgusting and
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