WARNING: THE FOLLOWING POST CONTAINS EXTENSIVE SPOILERS OF THE DARK KNIGHT. DO NOT READ ANY MORE IF YOU DO NOT WANT TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENS IN THE MOVIE.
I hope that warning is sufficient, but let me reiterate, I will be discussing the film candidly and completely without any attempt to conceal what occurs at any point, including the end. Let me say also that this is not a review of the movie but an analysis of its politics. My review of The Dark Knight needs only two words: Absolutely brilliant. I highly recommend it. With that in mind, let's turn to the politics.
The Dark Knight has already garnered a lot of attention. From Heath Ledger's death, to his performance, to its record breaking opening weekend, the movie was always going to create debate and discussion. And since it opened, the discussion has predictably turned to its politics
A commentator in the Wall Street Journal appears to be the first person to assert that Batman is represents President Bush. Despite the stupid superficiality of the argument in the WSJ, the argument has been adopted even by some left leaning commentators, including Open Left and Matt Yglesias. Even at Slate, their culture critics have called the film's politics "incoherent."
I disagree. The film is coherent and Batman does not represent George Bush.
I realize that it may be easy to make the mistake so many other commentators have made because the movie clearly does have something to say about our current politics and the war on terror. Simplistic interpretations are going to be advanced first, and that is what we are dealing with right now.
The WSJ's argument goes like this:
Batman represents Bush because Batman is willing to go outside the law to meet terrorists "on their own terms." Batman, the character, realizes that a free society sometimes must fight those who would destroy it through means that it normally finds unacceptable. Batman is a vigilante who operates without concern for civil rights or civil liberties in order to stop the plots of dangerous terrorists like the Joker.
Before we go any further, it is important to note that the commentator at the WSJ does nothing to justify this interpretation of the film through reference to the film itself. There is no analysis of the events in the movie or explanation for why this interpretation is appropriate to the plot. Thus, one's initial position on this interpretation should be one of skepticism
In order to develop a more serious understanding of the film, there are three significant points that must inform our interpretation. First, this is a movie that draws on a long and well established Batman mythology, and this mythology goes beyond the film. Second, the film itself is a creative work with its own story that is comprehensible without reference to politics. Third, nonetheless, this film is trying to say something about our politics and the war on terror.
Most commentators do not appear willing to allow these three interpretive principles, but each is crucial. I think many people are led astray on the second point, so let me explain its significance.
There are many movies that are transparently about the war on terror. These include things like "Rendition," "Lions for Lambs," and "Redacted." These movies have addressed the war on terror directly, and generally have failed to gain any popular attention or critical praise.
At the WSJ, the commentator argues that these are unsuccessful because they are left leaning movies that attempt to establish moral equivalence between the United States and Islamic terrorists.
However, this point is disproven by another set of left leaning movies like "Children of Men" and "Pan's Labyrinth," and TV shows like "Battlestar Galactica." All of these movies talk about the war on terror, take left leaning positions and have been generally very successful and received critical praise.
The reason is that these movies tell a story within an independent artistic framework. Although they address the war on terror, they do so while also telling a story that is unrelated to the war on terror.
This is important because it will often ensure that the filmmakers do not fall into common political positions. It is very easy to simply repeat the political debates we have on a daily basis in a movie that is about events mimicking those that occur on a daily basis. A story that is about something else, however, offers the opportunity to develop a different perspective on those debates. And a different perspective allows us to reassess, reinterpret, and refine our beliefs.
The Dark Knight is this sort of movie. It has a story to tell about superheroes and villains in a sprawling city. That story is not about terrorism, and its elements simply do not map cleanly onto the aspects of the war on terrorism.
In order to see that we must now turn to the film itself. So, let me once again reiterate:
SPOILERS FOLLOW. DO NOT READ MORE IF YOU DO NOT WANT TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENS IN THE DARK KNIGHT. THERE WILL BE NO MORE WARNINGS.
In the broad strokes, The Dark Knight is a story about Batman's struggle to bring the Joker to justice. I hope that I can convince you of my position through reference to the movie. Thus, I am going to begin by discussing some of the characters and then move on to specific plot points. I will finish with some general thoughts on the movie as a whole and on the other political interpretations.
Batman, of course, is Bruce Wayne, multi-billionaire playboy industrialist. From the Batman mythology, and the previous film, we know that his parents were killed by criminals when he was a child and this has led him to seek revenge through vigilantism. He has extensive martial arts training, but he is also a detective, using forensics as much as brute force to catch criminals. We know that he does not kill indiscriminately, but rather incapacitates criminals and turns them over to the police. The real villains often end up in Arkham Asylum.
This allows the first departure from the Bush-is-Batman argument. The WSJ argument in part maintains that Bush is Batman because both go outside the law in order to fight terrorism. There are two reasons this analogy does not function. First, as others have noted, as a private person, Batman is not bound by the same laws as government officials. This is a simple argument and I assume it is accepted.
Second, and more importantly, Batman does not have the same relationship with the law as Bush, or to put it another way, their motivations are different. Bush has chosen to go outside the law because he believes the law to be unnecessarily constraining--that the actual terms of the law do not allow him to fight terrorism effectively. It should be noted, of course, that instead of changing the law, Bush has chosen to just violate it.
Batman, however, must go outside the law not because the law is unnecessarily constraining, but because the police and officials responsible for enforcing the law are themselves corrupt and criminal. They cannot be trusted because they are only pursuing their own interests.
Although this point derives from the pre-existing Batman mythology, it is repeatedly made in the film. Bruce Wayne/Batman works with Jim Gordon because he knows he is clean and can trust him. In the film, Batman/Wayne works to find out if he can trust Harvey Dent, the new district attorney. Bruce Wayne can see a time when he can stop being Batman, because he believes that Harvey Dent will be a public hero who upholds the law honestly. Later in the movie when Batman catches Dent about to torture one of Joker's henchmen, he stops Dent and explains that everything would be lost if anyone had seen Dent.
This is all a way of showing that Batman actually believes in the law. He believes in the goodness of society and decent order. But criminals--corrupt officials--undermine that goodness and destroy the order. This is not Bush's view of the law, and it is not his motivation in breaking it. Batman is fighting to restore the power of the law. Bush has struggled to weaken it.
The Joker is an anarchistic criminal who appears without warning to wreak havoc on Gotham first by taking over the criminal underworld and later through random killings and attempts at mass murder. The Joker is not just unknown
but unknowable. He has no fingerprints, his clothes don't even have tags, and he never tells a true story about himself. Without explanation, the Joker simply is.
He does not seek money or power, only disorder. The Joker exists to show that despite our pretensions to law and a liberal order, society is only inches away from collapse. This is why he offers public rewards for killing other characters, so that society will give up its own rules and turn on itself. This is why he plants bombs on the two ferries--to make people face horrible choices, and he hopes, to get them to make those choices.
So, the Joker is in some ways a fair approximation of Islamist terrorists. For we often cannot understand their motivations and they can seem bent on destroying us. But I hope it is also clear that this is not a clean match for terrorists either. Joker does not demand anything of society, he just wants to play games.
Harvey Dent is the good lawyer, the good official. He believes in the law, and if Batman has his way, Dent would be the symbol that brings Gotham back from the edge of collapse. Dent tries to clean up the city through the law and without fear. He faces down death threats, he indicts multiple mobsters on hundreds of criminal charges, and he places himself in direct danger to catch the Joker.
Who could he possibly represent in the Bush administration? Or in the war on terror? If we want to make a direct analogy to our current politics as the WSJ argument would have us do, then there is no explanation for Harvey Dent. Dent is not George Bush, he is not Alberto Gonzalez or John Ashcroft or Michael Mukasey. One might argue that he is part of the independent artistic project of the movie and thus can be ignored in a political interpretation. I will return to this argument later, but for now it is sufficient to say that it is mistaken.
Let's turn to some plot points beginning with Dent. Perhaps the most important aspect of Dent's story line is that he and his girlfriend, Rachel Dawes, are kidnapped by the Joker, and tied to bombs. Rachel is killed in an explosion, but Dent is burned on half his body and becomes Two-Face.
One might point out that this experience forces Dent to face the relentless reality of the Joker's terrorism, and that Dent spends the remainder of the movie ruthlessly killing the people, including police officers, who helped the Joker. In other words, Dent, the honest district attorney, sees the limits of the law and chooses to operate outside of it.
That is a fair interpretation, but it does not account for all relevant circumstances. Once again, it was corrupt cops who helped the Joker--public officials in part led to the creation of Two-Face. This reinforces the above point about the position of the law in the Batman universe. The law itself is good, but the people charged with enforcing it are corrupt.
Second, we must acknowledge that Batman stops Dent from torturing one of Joker's henchmen. In doing so, Batman tells Dent how important it is that he remain clean, that he still stand up for the law, and that he not treat the henchmen that way. Furthermore, Batman chides Dent for wanting to torture a man who is a paranoid schizophrenic--a man who wouldn't be able to provide any information even if he had it. This Batman is against torture.
The counterpoint is, of course, that later in the movie Batman actually beats Joker in order to get him to reveal where Dent and Rachel are being held. This is not perfectly consistent with the earlier position, but there are also important differences. After all, this is the Joker, not a henchman. Bruce Wayne also loves Rachel Dawes and may be acting out of personal rage. And this is part of Joker's plan to force Batman to break his own rules. In the scene, the Joker says that he will reveal Rachel's location only if Batman breaks his "one rule." Again, this reinforces the point that Joker stands at odds with law itself while Batman is ultimately bound by it.
The third major plot point that needs discussion is Batman's broad based surveillance device. This is a system that allows him to see anything in the Gotham at any time. He can watch everyone, invade privacy, without regard for personal rights. This can be seen as NSA spying, warrantless wiretapping, TIA, and whatever other systems the government has in place to look over us. And Batman uses it to catch the Joker.
But the movie does not approve of this technique. In fact, Batman does not use it on his own. He recognizes the danger in the device; he recognizes that it is wrong. That is why he turns it over to Lucius Fox, a trustworthy and decent man that he knows he can trust to first oversee it's use and then destroy it when the need is eliminated. If the device is NSA spying, then Lucius Fox is the FISA court. Yes, the film admits that extraordinary measures are required in extraordinary circumstances, but only with supervision, only with an end point, and only with a return to normality. So, in this instance, Batman is not George Bush, but rather what Bush should have been.
Finally, some general thoughts about the film. I hope I have convinced you that The Dark Knight is anti-torture, anti-surveillance, pro-law, and pro-civil liberties. The movie also believes that people are essentially decent. This is clearly demonstrated by the prisoner's dilemma the Joker gives to the two ferries. Each ferry is rigged to explode and the detonator is given to the opposite ferry. One ferry is full of normal civilians--men, women, children, families. The other has been loaded with dangerous criminals from a prison. Joker provides the ultimatum: Press the button, and blow up the other ferry. The only way to guarantee your own survival is to kill hundreds of other people.
This is a genius piece of work, because the movie wants the audience to reflect on this question. This isn't just a dilemma for the characters, but a problem for the audience as well. We are given time to contemplate it. But ultimately the movie provides the answer: A hardened criminal takes the detonator and throws it out the window--even he knows you can't simply kill other people to save your own life. The same thing happens on the other boat. A man stands up ostensibly to press the button, but facing the reality of killing someone, he can't bring himself to do it. Both sides make the right choice, the moral choice, to face the possibility of own death rather than actively cause the deaths of others.
I just don't see how this can be a conservative message--a message that says it is ok to exceed the law in order to protect society. Instead, it says that we must restrain ourselves; that we are responsible for creating our decent society everyday. In a conservative world, the possibility of an attack from the other ferry would justify the destruction of that ferry.
Is that not what happened with Iraq?
I want to conclude by cautioning everyone against this sort of hagiography of George Bush. Yes, some people will continue to believe that his administration has been morally justified in torturing people, in breaking the laws of this country, and in acting in unconstitutional manners. But there appears to be many attempts to link his behavior with figures from popular culture. Saying that Batman represents Bush is an attempt to attach a specific mythology to Bush's presidency, a mythology that makes Bush the ultimate hero and people who oppose him all villains.
By the standard asserted by the WSJ, any superhero represents George Bush. Superman does not operate within the bounds of the law, nor Spider Man, nor the X-Men. They could all stand in for Bush. But they don't. They don't because they are stories and stories contain predetermined relationships between protagonists and antagonists.
In the real life, we have to make evaluations of actions as they happen. A hagiography that identifies a real life actor with a fictional protagonist that exists in world with predetermined evaluations of its characters risks false associations that justify behaviors that deserve independent assessments. That's all a way of saying that we can't just say Bush is Batman, Batman is good, and therefore Bush is good. We need to ask if Bush is good in himself. That remains a debatable question.
Saturday, July 26, 2008
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
So, what is Family Guy
Family Guy is not a "show about nothing." Family Guy is a show about jokes. The evidence for this is the following:
1. It continues to rely on cut away jokes where a character says something like, "That reminds me of the time I . . ." and it cuts away from the main action to show something that the character just said. This is a way of telling a joke. You get a set up in the main action and a punchline--often a visual punchline--in the cut away.
2. It has no consistent metaphysics. In Family Guy, the Pilsbury Doughboy will show up inexplicably, Kool Aid Man will burst through walls, and the characters are capable of any feat including squeezing Play-Do out of their heads to create hair, or in Bryan's case, being 7 years old, but having a 14 year old human son. This flexibility allows the writers to do whatever they want in service of the jokes.
3. They tell actual jokes on the show. I don't have a good example off the top of my head, but listen to Quagmire's lines. Many of them are jokes you have heard before. Maybe in an email forward, maybe from a friend. But they are still just jokes you tell people.
1. It continues to rely on cut away jokes where a character says something like, "That reminds me of the time I . . ." and it cuts away from the main action to show something that the character just said. This is a way of telling a joke. You get a set up in the main action and a punchline--often a visual punchline--in the cut away.
2. It has no consistent metaphysics. In Family Guy, the Pilsbury Doughboy will show up inexplicably, Kool Aid Man will burst through walls, and the characters are capable of any feat including squeezing Play-Do out of their heads to create hair, or in Bryan's case, being 7 years old, but having a 14 year old human son. This flexibility allows the writers to do whatever they want in service of the jokes.
3. They tell actual jokes on the show. I don't have a good example off the top of my head, but listen to Quagmire's lines. Many of them are jokes you have heard before. Maybe in an email forward, maybe from a friend. But they are still just jokes you tell people.
The Simpsons is a show about nothing.
Seinfeld was the original show about nothing, of course, but I don't see any reason that other shows can't adopt that same mantle.
Seinfeld was a show about nothing because it rejected premises. Just by comparison, Cheers was a show about a bar. M.A.S.H was a show about doctors in war. Growing Pains was a show about the difference between the practice of psychology and the reality of family life. Mr. Belvedere was about a butler. And that brings us back to Seinfeld. In the Seinfeld episode explaining the show about nothing, Jerry and George end up making a fictional show in which comedy is supposed to be created by the fact that a judge sentences a man to be Jerry's butler. That is a premise.
Four friends in New York and their daily travails is not a premise. One critique I saw of Seinfeld said that the show was based on Jerry Seinfeld's personal moral code--a code about politeness, civility, and how people should interact with each other. That seems to be true as well, but it's still about daily life and there is no underlying premise that you have to buy into--there was no artificial background fact that forced these four main characters to be around each other. It was just four people who liked each other.
The Simpsons has reached this point too. It started out as a Honeymooners knockoff designed to comment on the American family. In the first three seasons or so, Homer and Marge cared about teaching and instructing their growing children. Every once in a while, Homer would suffer some real angst and actual regret. As it became more established, the show changed significantly. The family stories were still there, but since the show had covered so much ground, the family got pushed to the background while pop culture and satire moved to the front.
The perfect example of this is the episode in which Homer is hired by an evil mastermind to help bring a nuclear reactor online. After moving to a new town, Lisa finds she is allergic to nature, Bart is held back in school, Marge has nothing to do all day since the house cleans itself. Homer is happy in his new job, but ultimately chooses to move the family back to Springfield to make his family happy. That's a great story about the demands of family life, but the B story really makes the episode special. In the background, we have Mr. Scorpio, a Bond style villain who is also a New-Age boss who tries to make the work environment fun. It works as social satire about the stupidity of making office work fun and as a long form pop culture reference to the Bond films.
From this point, the show for a brief period went very far towards pop culture references. But that ground was ultimately taken up by Family Guy. On the other side, King of the Hill took up a lot of space about simple family issues. The Simpsons was left the middle ground and a slew of well established characters from the whole town.
And that is why The Simpsons is a show about nothing. At this point, Marge, Homer, Bart, Lisa, and Maggie are a family only nominally. Any new episode will essentially be about four and a half people who happen to live together, but without any particular relationships between them. It doesn't really matter that Marge and Homer are married or that Homer is Lisa's father, or that Bart is Lisa's brother. They just happen to live together.
It's not necessarily a bad thing. If you go into an episode with this in mind, you will probably be more satisfied than if you thing it is still about the American family.
Seinfeld was a show about nothing because it rejected premises. Just by comparison, Cheers was a show about a bar. M.A.S.H was a show about doctors in war. Growing Pains was a show about the difference between the practice of psychology and the reality of family life. Mr. Belvedere was about a butler. And that brings us back to Seinfeld. In the Seinfeld episode explaining the show about nothing, Jerry and George end up making a fictional show in which comedy is supposed to be created by the fact that a judge sentences a man to be Jerry's butler. That is a premise.
Four friends in New York and their daily travails is not a premise. One critique I saw of Seinfeld said that the show was based on Jerry Seinfeld's personal moral code--a code about politeness, civility, and how people should interact with each other. That seems to be true as well, but it's still about daily life and there is no underlying premise that you have to buy into--there was no artificial background fact that forced these four main characters to be around each other. It was just four people who liked each other.
The Simpsons has reached this point too. It started out as a Honeymooners knockoff designed to comment on the American family. In the first three seasons or so, Homer and Marge cared about teaching and instructing their growing children. Every once in a while, Homer would suffer some real angst and actual regret. As it became more established, the show changed significantly. The family stories were still there, but since the show had covered so much ground, the family got pushed to the background while pop culture and satire moved to the front.
The perfect example of this is the episode in which Homer is hired by an evil mastermind to help bring a nuclear reactor online. After moving to a new town, Lisa finds she is allergic to nature, Bart is held back in school, Marge has nothing to do all day since the house cleans itself. Homer is happy in his new job, but ultimately chooses to move the family back to Springfield to make his family happy. That's a great story about the demands of family life, but the B story really makes the episode special. In the background, we have Mr. Scorpio, a Bond style villain who is also a New-Age boss who tries to make the work environment fun. It works as social satire about the stupidity of making office work fun and as a long form pop culture reference to the Bond films.
From this point, the show for a brief period went very far towards pop culture references. But that ground was ultimately taken up by Family Guy. On the other side, King of the Hill took up a lot of space about simple family issues. The Simpsons was left the middle ground and a slew of well established characters from the whole town.
And that is why The Simpsons is a show about nothing. At this point, Marge, Homer, Bart, Lisa, and Maggie are a family only nominally. Any new episode will essentially be about four and a half people who happen to live together, but without any particular relationships between them. It doesn't really matter that Marge and Homer are married or that Homer is Lisa's father, or that Bart is Lisa's brother. They just happen to live together.
It's not necessarily a bad thing. If you go into an episode with this in mind, you will probably be more satisfied than if you thing it is still about the American family.
Monday, July 21, 2008
Groundwork for the Metaphysics of "Word World"
If you have a job, you might not be aware of a program called Word World running in the mid afternoon on your local PBS station. Word World is an animated children's educational program that is supposed to teach kids how to spell. It tends to be charming and the animation is pretty good. But Word World is strange indeed. In Word World, there are free floating letters, and when organized into words, the letters become the thing that they spell. There are a variety lead characters in word world--a sheep formed of the letters S H E E P, a frog formed from the letters F R O G, and so on. Houses are formed from H O U S E, and you can imagine what red buildings are made from B A R N. With this general understanding in mind, I ask the following questions on the metaphysics of word world:
1. In Word World, does the creation of a word/item require some intent from the person forming the word, or does it simply happen spontaneously when letters are arranged appropriately? If no intention is required, won't word world be ultimately destroyed by an accidental B O M B?
2. In Word World, adding an "s" to any noun creates more and more of the noun without end. This happened in an episode with pizza. A few extra friends came over to Sheep's house, and in order to provide more food, he added an "s" to his pizza. The resulting pizzas spilled out of his house continually. If this is the case, then s's are the most dangerous letter in the alphabet.
3. Isn't word world essentially Marxist? After all, there are no industrial means of production, and there is no need for them. Any object or good one might possibly need can be created simply through arranging the appropriate letters. Frogs and Sheep and dogs are free to pursue their individual fulfillment without any hierarchical power structure. Education has set them free, and they have thrown off the chains of oppression. In short, spelling is important.
4. This, of course, begs the question of the where the free floating letters come from. Are they made in a factory? If so, who controls the factory? Given the way things work in Word World, couldn't you create more letters by arranging L E T T E R S? And if you did, how many letters would you get? In the pizzas episode, they made robots to eat all the pizzas. How do you get rid of letters? Can you create letter eating robots?
5. In word world, if a word is misspelled, it does not form the object you are intending to spell. But what about words that don't have consistent spelling, or spellings that are different in British and American English?
6. What about compound words? The use of 's' to create more pizzas suggests that letters can be added to already completed words. Would anyone ever want to spell "muskrat"? Wouldn't you get musk before you get muskrat?
7. What about nouns that are two separate words? Can you make a dung beetle in word world? Or will you only ever have some dung and a beetle?
8. Finally, the big questions. What happens if you spell "be"?
What about "truth"?
"Beauty"?
And the biggest of all: What happens if you spell "God"?
Things to ponder in your afternoon.
1. In Word World, does the creation of a word/item require some intent from the person forming the word, or does it simply happen spontaneously when letters are arranged appropriately? If no intention is required, won't word world be ultimately destroyed by an accidental B O M B?
2. In Word World, adding an "s" to any noun creates more and more of the noun without end. This happened in an episode with pizza. A few extra friends came over to Sheep's house, and in order to provide more food, he added an "s" to his pizza. The resulting pizzas spilled out of his house continually. If this is the case, then s's are the most dangerous letter in the alphabet.
3. Isn't word world essentially Marxist? After all, there are no industrial means of production, and there is no need for them. Any object or good one might possibly need can be created simply through arranging the appropriate letters. Frogs and Sheep and dogs are free to pursue their individual fulfillment without any hierarchical power structure. Education has set them free, and they have thrown off the chains of oppression. In short, spelling is important.
4. This, of course, begs the question of the where the free floating letters come from. Are they made in a factory? If so, who controls the factory? Given the way things work in Word World, couldn't you create more letters by arranging L E T T E R S? And if you did, how many letters would you get? In the pizzas episode, they made robots to eat all the pizzas. How do you get rid of letters? Can you create letter eating robots?
5. In word world, if a word is misspelled, it does not form the object you are intending to spell. But what about words that don't have consistent spelling, or spellings that are different in British and American English?
6. What about compound words? The use of 's' to create more pizzas suggests that letters can be added to already completed words. Would anyone ever want to spell "muskrat"? Wouldn't you get musk before you get muskrat?
7. What about nouns that are two separate words? Can you make a dung beetle in word world? Or will you only ever have some dung and a beetle?
8. Finally, the big questions. What happens if you spell "be"?
What about "truth"?
"Beauty"?
And the biggest of all: What happens if you spell "God"?
Things to ponder in your afternoon.
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
The Frightening World of Presidents
I live in D.C.'s Maryland suburbs and I work in downtown Washington. In fact, every day on my way to work, I walk past the White House. I have only been here a few months, however, and today I saw something I hadn't seen before. It was a motorcade.
I have seen other motorcades, but this one was different. Three cars sped through traffic ignoring traffic signals. The first car was a Metropolitan Police Department black and white with its lights and sirens running. It was followed immediately by two black Chevrolet Tahoes flashing concealed lights. Although the sirens were odd, this normally would not have been too unusual.
The first Tahoe caught my eye. The rear driver side window as rolled down, and a blonde man in a light brown suit sat there looking out at the sidewalk--looking at me. He wore a light blue shirt with a yellow tie. His left hand held the grip of a Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine gun.
I know it was an MP5 because I've played a lot of video games, and because like any good American, I love guns. But, like any good gun lover, I know that guns like that are designed to kill people, and I find it disturbing to see them in public.
As was well reported a few weeks ago, D.C.'s gun ban was struck down by the Supreme Court. You might not have heard that the Metropolitan Police recently set up mandatory road checkpoints in the northeast section of the city in order to curb drive by shootings. On Sunday, bystanders in the Adams-Morgan neighbor chased down and beat a man who shot another man in broad daylight. There is a problem with guns in this city, but the man with the MP5 was not there to protect against random or gang related gun violence.
On a day-to-day basis, my biggest fear is that I will get hit by a car. This fear largely comes from the fact that I walk everywhere, that I am frequently very close to moving vehicles, and the fact that there are an unusually high number of pedestrian deaths in D.C. It is my environment--the cars flying past me, the number of crosswalks I use--that inform and create my fears.
The blonde man in the Tahoe was not there to protect against random gun violence. He was there to stop unknown attempts to kill whoever he was protecting. And he forms that person's daily environment. This the world in which Presidents, Vice-Presidents, and the Secretaries of State and Defense live. A world where they must constantly be on guard against secret plots and vague conspiracies. A world where their life is at risk every moment of every day. A world in which even a man in a suit on his way to work is a potential threat.
This is something to consider as we get ready to elect the next President. If Barack Obama becomes President, he will live in this same environment. The mere fact of such intense protection will change how he perceives the world, but it is impossible at this point to tell how. For those of you who are concerned with the excesses of the war on terror, be ready to fight to keep Obama from falling off the edge. He will live in a frightening world.
I have seen other motorcades, but this one was different. Three cars sped through traffic ignoring traffic signals. The first car was a Metropolitan Police Department black and white with its lights and sirens running. It was followed immediately by two black Chevrolet Tahoes flashing concealed lights. Although the sirens were odd, this normally would not have been too unusual.
The first Tahoe caught my eye. The rear driver side window as rolled down, and a blonde man in a light brown suit sat there looking out at the sidewalk--looking at me. He wore a light blue shirt with a yellow tie. His left hand held the grip of a Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine gun.
I know it was an MP5 because I've played a lot of video games, and because like any good American, I love guns. But, like any good gun lover, I know that guns like that are designed to kill people, and I find it disturbing to see them in public.
As was well reported a few weeks ago, D.C.'s gun ban was struck down by the Supreme Court. You might not have heard that the Metropolitan Police recently set up mandatory road checkpoints in the northeast section of the city in order to curb drive by shootings. On Sunday, bystanders in the Adams-Morgan neighbor chased down and beat a man who shot another man in broad daylight. There is a problem with guns in this city, but the man with the MP5 was not there to protect against random or gang related gun violence.
On a day-to-day basis, my biggest fear is that I will get hit by a car. This fear largely comes from the fact that I walk everywhere, that I am frequently very close to moving vehicles, and the fact that there are an unusually high number of pedestrian deaths in D.C. It is my environment--the cars flying past me, the number of crosswalks I use--that inform and create my fears.
The blonde man in the Tahoe was not there to protect against random gun violence. He was there to stop unknown attempts to kill whoever he was protecting. And he forms that person's daily environment. This the world in which Presidents, Vice-Presidents, and the Secretaries of State and Defense live. A world where they must constantly be on guard against secret plots and vague conspiracies. A world where their life is at risk every moment of every day. A world in which even a man in a suit on his way to work is a potential threat.
This is something to consider as we get ready to elect the next President. If Barack Obama becomes President, he will live in this same environment. The mere fact of such intense protection will change how he perceives the world, but it is impossible at this point to tell how. For those of you who are concerned with the excesses of the war on terror, be ready to fight to keep Obama from falling off the edge. He will live in a frightening world.
Sunday, July 13, 2008
Mongol
Last year's Oscar nominees for best foreign language film included a Russian remake of 12 Angry Men, a Polish film about Soviet attrocities during World War 2, an Israeli film about the withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000, an Austrian movie about Jewish men in a concentration camp who are forced to counterfeit foreign currencies for the Nazis, and Mongol, the story of Genghis Khan's rise to power in Central Asia. Given how much this country loves stories about World War 2, it is perhaps no surprise that the Holocaust drama won.
Mongol certainly deserved to be nominated, but it probably did not deserve to win. This film has a lot going for it and as a production, it is a rather significant achievement. It may be, in fact, the production that is the most impressive part of Mongol. It was written by two Russians, filmed in Kazakhstan, starred Mongolians, and was funded by a multitude of sources including German and Russian non-profit organizations. And for all this, the production values are extremely high: the costumes are well designed, the acting is also more than competent, and the photography is beautiful as they obviously tried very hard to capture the grand sweep of the steppes.
But the story has problems. The writer and director Sergei Bodrov obviously took some dramatic license in telling this story, and there is legitimate ground for complaint for the simple reason that there is a really great story here. In his 2005 book, Jack Weatherford told that story with simplicity and insight. Weatherford managed to recount the most recent research into the early life of Genghis Khan, describe the cultural and political world in which he came to power, and explain why Genghis Khan was so successful militarily. Bodrov's movie forgoes what is, to me at least, an inherently fascinating story in order to tell a somewhat more conventional tale of love and the will to power.
I would have preferred if the movie were more historically accurate and covered more ground. Mongol ends after Temudgin defeats the army of his blood brother Jamukha, and stops with the assumption that we know the rest of the story. But the rest of the story is what really deserves to be told.
Setting aside the ahistorical aspects of the story, it still was not structured very well. In the first half of the movie, the story moves rather quickly and is at best episodic. There is very little explanation of why the scenes fit together or how the characters are able to do what they do. The movie would have benefited from a slower exposition that established the cultural and political framework in which the story exists. Even though the storytelling becomes more coherent in the middle of the film, some of these problems continue until the end.
The problems in the story are perhaps best exemplified by the climatic battle between Temudgin and Jamukha. The conflict between these two characters is a central aspect of the movie as Temudgin refuses to become Jamukha's vassal and actually attracts some of Jamukha's followers by distributing the spoils of battle equally. But to get to this battle scene, Bodrov first creates a one year period in which Temudgin has been defeated and sold as a slave to a Chinese trader. Much of the film, in fact, is told as a flashback during Temudgin's ahistorical imprisonment by a Chinese lord. After escaping from prison, Temudgin manages to gather sufficient followers to challenge Jamukha's preeminence on the steppes, and thus the movie comes to the battle scene. But it doesn't tell the audience anything about how Temudgin gathered these followers. In one scene, he is escaping from prison, and in the next he is at the head of a large army. That is all we are shown, and it simply does not work as a storytelling device. If you are going to tell the story of Genghis Khan's rise to power, it would be wise to show that rise.
Nonetheless, the movie was pretty entertaining. It just wasn't perfect.
Mongol certainly deserved to be nominated, but it probably did not deserve to win. This film has a lot going for it and as a production, it is a rather significant achievement. It may be, in fact, the production that is the most impressive part of Mongol. It was written by two Russians, filmed in Kazakhstan, starred Mongolians, and was funded by a multitude of sources including German and Russian non-profit organizations. And for all this, the production values are extremely high: the costumes are well designed, the acting is also more than competent, and the photography is beautiful as they obviously tried very hard to capture the grand sweep of the steppes.
But the story has problems. The writer and director Sergei Bodrov obviously took some dramatic license in telling this story, and there is legitimate ground for complaint for the simple reason that there is a really great story here. In his 2005 book, Jack Weatherford told that story with simplicity and insight. Weatherford managed to recount the most recent research into the early life of Genghis Khan, describe the cultural and political world in which he came to power, and explain why Genghis Khan was so successful militarily. Bodrov's movie forgoes what is, to me at least, an inherently fascinating story in order to tell a somewhat more conventional tale of love and the will to power.
I would have preferred if the movie were more historically accurate and covered more ground. Mongol ends after Temudgin defeats the army of his blood brother Jamukha, and stops with the assumption that we know the rest of the story. But the rest of the story is what really deserves to be told.
Setting aside the ahistorical aspects of the story, it still was not structured very well. In the first half of the movie, the story moves rather quickly and is at best episodic. There is very little explanation of why the scenes fit together or how the characters are able to do what they do. The movie would have benefited from a slower exposition that established the cultural and political framework in which the story exists. Even though the storytelling becomes more coherent in the middle of the film, some of these problems continue until the end.
The problems in the story are perhaps best exemplified by the climatic battle between Temudgin and Jamukha. The conflict between these two characters is a central aspect of the movie as Temudgin refuses to become Jamukha's vassal and actually attracts some of Jamukha's followers by distributing the spoils of battle equally. But to get to this battle scene, Bodrov first creates a one year period in which Temudgin has been defeated and sold as a slave to a Chinese trader. Much of the film, in fact, is told as a flashback during Temudgin's ahistorical imprisonment by a Chinese lord. After escaping from prison, Temudgin manages to gather sufficient followers to challenge Jamukha's preeminence on the steppes, and thus the movie comes to the battle scene. But it doesn't tell the audience anything about how Temudgin gathered these followers. In one scene, he is escaping from prison, and in the next he is at the head of a large army. That is all we are shown, and it simply does not work as a storytelling device. If you are going to tell the story of Genghis Khan's rise to power, it would be wise to show that rise.
Nonetheless, the movie was pretty entertaining. It just wasn't perfect.
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