Crumb - % % % % %

OK, maybe I'm exaggerating these films' quality, but this was honestly a well made biographical documentary of a very interesting person. Honestly.


A comic book artist is certainly a great subject matter for a film. Composed primarily of Robert Crumb's drawings and interviews of him and those in his life, "Crumb" depicts the sad life of the Crumb family and Robert's attempts to live beyond the mediocrity of his childhood by processing his own psycho-social issues through his drawings. He is paralleled with his older and younger brothers: one who lives at home with their mother and is continually on tranquilizers to moderate his violent tendencies; another who lives alone, meditating on a bed of nails for several hours a day to quell his impulses to pull women's shorts down.

His former girlfriends and old haunts are interviewed as well. We follow Crumb around, watching him draw people, seeing the world through his eyes. Yet Terry Zwigoff (Ghost World, Bad Santa) refrains from mocking the people on the street directly. Indirectly, there are definite allusions between characters Crumb sees and his seemingly subsequent drawings. Yuppies in a yogurt shop are followed by caricatures of muscle-bound, meat heads. Zwigoff's presence isn't denied, nor is it obtrusive. He occasionally prompts those on screen with questions, but relies on the camera and editing to point out the connections intended for the audience.

Interviews with cultural critics, from art critic, Robert Hughes (who calls Crumb the Breugel of the second half of the 20th century) to former Mother Jones Magazine editor, Deirdre English, including a very young Peggy Orenstein, cut back and forth showing the many interpretations of the work. When Orenstein tells Crumb that as a young girl she saw her brother's collection of Zap Comics, including many of his cartoons, and that she was extremely confused about adulthood and sexuality, Crumb at first tosses his hands in the air. He says that he can't defend himself, but follows with a story of his daughter's fear and confusion watching Goodfellas. So some art is only for some people, even then only those who choose it, and his is therefore not for children.

It is a sensitive telling of a small man's life which connected with other men's lives. His work is controversial because it exposes many of our species' and society's ugly impulses. The film does not interrogate whether his sexual fixations and fantasies are biological or psychological, which would be an interesting, although expansive, discussion. While it touches on the racist imagery depicted in some of his work, especially from the 60s, the film neglects to include any African-American voices, nor those well versed with African American History. I suppose that the previous editor of Ms. is familiar with the kinds of bigotry and oppression involved in any discussion of racism, but no other experts or authorities are called upon to respond.

The film is also shot on the eve of his departure from the America he so successfully satirizes. At the end, Crumb, his wife and daughter, move to the south of France. The US was not a fantasy-fulfillment land for him, and so he takes his fantasies and exits. He seems to be someone who narrowly escaped mental illness, unlike his two brothers, through expressing and experimenting with his demons. These expressions found camaraderie with others' demons and gave him friends, love and support. It seems that without these friends and support, that he might be living in a one room apartment in squalor and greasy hair. Instead he lives in France. Ah! The transformative power of art!

Finally! It has happened to me, right in front of my face, and I just cannot hide it!

Ah ha! Netflix has accomplished the seemingly impossible. They have opened the ability to watch online to Mac users! Yay! If it's Netflix' or Apple's fault, I blame them both.

And now I will likely never leave the house. I've been fortunate to have had a wicked cold for this week and have thus been able to watch a bajillion different tv shows and films. I don't need people anymore, I have got a history of cinema to catch up on.

Peace out.

link to another review of Born in Flames

deeper into movies: Screening: "Born in Flames" - March 13th, 7:30 pm

Born in Flames - % % % % %

I don't intend on giving 5%s to every movie, nor writing only on the films I give 5%s.

But this film is awesome. It's nutso. I love it. It's super low-fi, using varied formats and awkward camera placement reminiscent of home photography and security cameras. It cuts unexpectedly into the next scene, leaving the audience with the sense that we're just flipping through conversations between these women.

It's a marxist-feminist-1968 revolutionary fantasy. 10 years following the Liberation Revolution, women are still frustrated by the rhetoric of equality and the lack of follow through by the new government. Thus the Women's Army is formed, initially chasing rapists on bicycles, but eventually moving to armed resistance following the prison murder of their leader, and uniting women in the struggle for equal work and the end of masculine-focused society.

In an interview included on the DVD, filmmaker Lizzie Borden claims that she intended the audience to disagree with the violence in the film. I find this hard to believe. The militancy is so admired by the attention given to certain characters and the non-violent, bourgeois, cultural, educated elite are dismissed as out of touch and afraid of action. I think she, like many who came of age after 1968, admires the firm stance that many took during the fight against the Vietnam War and the willingness to completely sacrifice for a cause. It is romantic and foreign to bougie college kids like Borden at the time, and myself for that matter. College educated, liberals long for a passionate commitment to a movement. If our heroes are Dr. King and Gandhi, we naturally fantasize about civil disobedience. If one's heroes are Bernadine Dorn or Malcolm X, one fantasizes about militant revolution.

The romanticism of the film is further developed by the two radio djs, Honey and Adele, one a firm, forward, black, soulfully-voiced leader & one a punky, opportunistic, painfully-rapping, feisty provocateur. They are folk leaders whose messages ignite the imaginations of their audience and the audience of the film.

I, for one, enjoy the fantasy of bands of bike riders coming to save the day, blowing rape whistles to prevent sexual assaults, and groups of women coming together to provide daycare, eldercare and equal employment in male dominated occupations (i.e. nearly all). The film's movement demands respect for nurses, teachers, waitresses and secretaries.

I wish I'd seen it when I was in high-school, but I don't know if I'd have been gutsy enough to embrace it.

Shock Corridor - % % % % %

Bookended by the quote, "Whom God wishes to destroy he first turns mad. (Euripides, 425 BC)", Shock Corridor indicts 1960's society for numerous ills: racism, repressed sexuality, war crimes, nuclear war, and unbridled ambition. Each character's madness is derived from these ills. The only African-American student at an all white college goes crazy and believes that he is a KKK member, terrified that a black man will marry his daughter. One of the creators of the atom bomb regresses to childhood because his adult choices and their consequences are too painful to countenance or to responsibly own. A room of women, diagnosed as nymphos, must possess men, driven by their weakness in society when independent of men.

This alone makes the film interesting, but I'm giving it 5%s because it's also interesting as a film, with oddly cute superimposed images indicating the hallucinations of the main character. While the acting of Constance Towers, as the cabaret-star girlfriend of the main character, is over the top and hysterical, the extreme emotional swings of all the characters artificially indicate the torture everyone experiences.

It's fun to watch and interesting to ponder.

Economic Hitman Speaking Freely - If you like Noam Chomsky...

While essentially an extended interview of one man in one location, “Speaking Freely: John Perkins” posits numerous paradigm shifts for the economically and politically minded. Filmicly, it is boring. As one who possesses an economics undergrad major, and a passionate advocate for social justice, I found John Perkins’ description of the world to be a good, hard push on a swing. It spun me around and gave me a new perspective on what I had thought I knew so clearly, and simultaneously connected with suspicions I’d had for some time.

In the opening minutes of the documentary, Perkins claims that poverty is not the core problem. It is extreme wealth that necessitates poverty, which is to blame. It is not possible for a small percentage of the world to be as profoundly wealthy as many are in “developed” nations, without the rest of the world being profoundly poor, without resources or opportunities for significant advancement. Thus over half of the world’s population lives on less than $2 a day. And they are getting what they pay for.

One of the first concepts taught in economics is scarcity. There are a limited number of anything. There are only so many gold deposits on earth, so many potatoes at any given time, or so many hours in a day. We affix a price as a means of estimating the goods’ or services’ relative value. Four frappaccinos is worth as much as a sweater at H&M. So for a small percentage of the people on earth to control a vast percentage of the resources, objects, land and people, it is necessary for most people to not have any access or control over those scarce resources. Wealth is a representation of power over goods and people.

Instead, the conversation in our society is directed towards the lives of the poor, when really their circumstances and choices have little effect for change. It’s the choices of the wealthy and powerful that determine the circumstances of the lives of the poor. The poor have few choices. Should I work at this degrading job or work at that poorly paid job? Do I live in this slum or that shack? What can I afford to eat? So we should flip the conversation around and discuss how the wealthy and powerful can equalize the circumstances by equalizing access to resources. And this sounds very Robin Hood indeed.

Who is in control of this system? The corporatocracy. This marvelous word, apparently created by Perkins, draws attention to the power structure of the economy. We don’t live in a democracy. Corporations and those who run them finance our elections. They control the conversations politicians can have and what most people can learn about through the media. They are not a monolith, but rather operate within the same system, based on the assumptions of economic theory, and resultantly think alike.

And then he gets into his area of expertise. As an “economic hitman”, his self-appointed title, Perkins worked for one of the major international monetary funds, like the IMF or the World Bank, convincing the nations of the global south to accept development loans in exchange for accepting disadvantageous policies, such as dictating the subcontracting US or European companies or dictating the domestic policies of such “developing” nations.

As evidence he sites the fact that the poor are poorer and more populous. If these financial deals were indeed intended to improve the standard of living of people in the global south, they have failed. The forecasts created to justify these loans were totally off. This points to the real intentions of those who designed these loans. The loans have been clearly been designed to favor the wealthy nations, and particularly the wealthy corporatocracy, and to maintain the status quo.

While the World Bank was founded upon noble intentions to rebuild Europe after WWII, it quickly devolved into a means of securing loyalty to the west and alienating the communists, who would disturb the distribution of wealth and power. Once the CIA succeeded in inserting the Shah of Iran, as Perkins' narrative formulates, the powers that be realized that war, an ugly and embarrassing means, was not the only means of maintaining their hold. They could use economic incentives to manipulate a few powerful leaders in various nations to follow their dictates.

Once these nations are securely in debt, wealthy nations extort these weaker nations' resources by forcing them to sell off their natural resources or keep their wages and benefits low for multinational companies to take advantage of.

And we all, on some level, do know that this is how it works. We live in a society in which brazen selfishness is considered street smart or intelligent. Of course USAID doesn't pass on its finances to foreign NGOs. Why would the US government want to benefit foreign NGOs? Well, because the money is intended for the people living in poverty and it doesn't matter how it gets to them. Of course, we say, we can't just give the poor money. They'll use it for other purposes. Those governments are corrupt. That homeless guy will spend it on crack. We continually need to maintain power over other people by defining the ways in which they live their lives so that it will benefit us the most.

What makes people without financial power more dangerous than those with it? Are they really more sinister? more psychologically damaged? more reckless? more financially stupid? Our nation spends $12.4 billion a year on plastic surgery and we're all worried that the guy on the street is going to buy beer with the nickel we might give him. But I digress.

Aren't there checks and balances in these large non-governmental financial organizations to prevent this kind of corruption? Yes, says Perkins. There are some within the IMF and World Bank who's job it is to point out inconsistencies and manipulations. But inevitably, it's in the interest of these institutions to go forward with the loans. The money, after all, comes from the wealthy governments, which comes from the wealthy corporations, and the leaders of these institutions are selected by the wealthy governments, like Paul Wolfowitz, recent Bush placement as president of the World Bank.

What I find most interesting is his personal analysis of how good people can do bad things. Because their actions are not illegal, they exist within large structures, it takes so much effort to make small improvements, and they are making good money, it's easy to justify their part of the system.

I always wonder why people have different takes on the world than me. Is it lack of information or lack of education or what? Am I fortunate enough to have had the financial cushion of my education, which enabled me to move into the arts, knowing that if worst comes to worst, I'll be a secretary at a non-profit, like my last job. I won't starve. I have access to a living wage without sacrificing too much. So I can buck the system. and I've been raised knowing that the church isn't right about everything. Women are equal to men so they should be able to be priests. And the government isn't always right. Look at Watergate and the Iran-Contra scandal. Our nation has done some pretty terrible things, like killing Native Americans and supporting legal slavery and discrimination. So that leaves existing within a large structure and that it's just plain hard to get anything to change. Fair enough. People discriminate when everyone around them does the same. People want to enjoy life and not struggle every day against the flow. I see that. So what do we do?

This discussion proves why privatization is a tempting evil. Governments receive large sums of money in exchange for control of their resources. Chicago is in the process of privatizing our parking meters. The city will get a large lump sum to pull us out of the red for a year or two, or to finance our preparations for the Olympic bid. But we'll spend it all now and not have that revenue stream available in the future. In fact, whomever purchases the contract for parking meters will certainly make more money over a few years than they paid the city in the first place. Why else would they do it? So five years down the line and our parking rates are extortionist and the city is broke. I guess it'll help lower traffic and air pollution. Maybe even improve CTA ridership. But who says how many meters the company is allowed to install and operate? Are there any limits on where future meters are installed? There's no government regulation once the control has been sold off and no democratic control over that city resource.

This narrative explains how US citizens can be treated well and welcomed to many nations but the US government can be so deeply hated. The US government manipulates officials, or the entire government and military like in Nicaragua, in order to benefit US corporations, who pay politicians to get elected. Foreigners know that US citizens are almost as helpless as they in this matter.

Included in the discussion of governmental manipulation, is Saddam Hussein's rise to power. I did not know this, but as a member of the Ba'ath party, Saddam was part of a 1959 US-backed attempt to overthrow the new military dictator. According to NewsMax.com, "he was part of a CIA-authorized six-man squad tasked with assassinating then Iraqi Prime Minister Gen. Abd al-Karim Qasim." "Little attention was paid to Qasim's bloody and conspiratorial regime until his sudden decision to withdraw from the anti-Soviet Baghdad Pact in 1959, an act that 'freaked everybody out' according to a former senior U.S. State Department official. Washington watched in marked dismay as Qasim began to buy arms from the Soviet Union and put his own domestic communists into ministry positions of "real power," according to this official. The domestic instability of the country prompted CIA Director Allan Dulles to say publicly that Iraq was 'the most dangerous spot in the world.'" There's more to the story, but I found this quite interesting. I had learned about the US' ties in the '80s to Saddam, and I laughed out loud at the photo of Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam, but I didn't know how far back his ties with the CIA went. Another example of the US governments' sneaky plans backfiring in all of our faces. And an example of the actions of the US government when the economic policies and the CIA aren't successful. If we can't manipulate the government peacefully or orchestrate an assassination, we invade.

Perkins' discussion of undocumented US immigrants leads to the conclusion that the only way to stop extra-legal immigration is to alter our trade policies to end our exploitation of their economies, so that people can make a living wage in their own home nations. Using a band-aid on the wound won't stop the bleeding. Slapping a wall up on our border, won't end the need on either side of the wall.

Perkins makes another interesting analogy. He connects modern day militants and "terrorists" to his ancestors who used militancy and guerrilla warfare to toss out the British when they, farmers facing desperation, were forced to bear arms.

He ends on the "it's a small world" note. The misery of those in Afghanistan can affect us. The world is so interconnected that we can't close our eyes any longer. Unlike the citizens of the British Empire, the violence in our foreign policy is clear to us and affects us personally. We don't have continents between us and the consequences of our policies. TV, the internet and air travel bring it into our living rooms.

So yeah, it's an interview inter cut with images of the global south and common people of those areas. But it's got some important ideas that we should be discussing.

FYI Bizarre bit of scientific history

In watching the fifth disc of "Planet Earth", which btw is fantastic and everyone should watch the whole series - it's amazing, I discovered that early pregnancy tests involved injecting women's urine into mice, then frogs, then rabbits.

http://german.about.com/library/blfroschtest.htm

Bizarre.