Zack and Miri Make a Porno

One feels odd using the term mature to describe as sophomoric a director as Kevin Smith but a refined crudeness makes Zack and Miri an oddly satisfying film. Smith brings the joy filmmaking to his work, albeit the joy of a thirteen year old who has just discovered a camera. Of course, he also has the scene of humor of a thirteen year old boy. Yet the raw humor is so pleasingly set forth and supported by a strong sense of craft that the film works. The great moments in the movie come from Smith’s ability to support both the awareness that this is film while never throwing it in the viewer’s face. At times the camera lingers on an actor or a scene when cutting away would keep the viewer immersed in the action. This second or two in which the image is held in front of the viewer reinforces the basic pleasure of film, seeing things on the screen. We often make the mistake of thinking that seeing reality or being immersed in a world is the triumph of film. Instead the pleasure of film is its very artifice and Smith loves the artifice of film, recognizes it and uses it. He never teases the audience by jarringly breaking the barrier between film and audience or breaking it simply for the sake of breaking them, rather he sees film as a creative, playful medium whose artifice is its great joy.

Jonathan Lethem. “Lostronaut.” The New Yorker. Nov. 17 2008

Science fiction, as much as it is an exploration of humanity’s relation to technology, is a genre of nostalgia. The reader, entering an alternative reality, experiences a separation from the known world, this distance then inviting an affirmation of one’s relationship to what is around them. We are encouraged to miss what is actual and present. Lethem’s epistolary short story “Lostronaut” takes the nostalgia that hides itself as an unseen force in most science fiction and brings it to the foreground. A female astronaut, trapped with her fellow crew members in earth orbit by Chinese mines, writes to her boyfriend (lover? husband?). Although what plot the story has is about the experiences on the ship, this mostly provides an occasion and context for the letters, which look back to life on earth, to events ordinary and common as seen from the physical and mental distance of space.

Technology is largely absent from the story; instead the use of letters gives the story a distinctly human presence. From the wonderful first sentence (“Dearest Chase, I am trying to ‘feel’ November, yours and mine”) Lethem makes clear that this is a fiction of sentiment. In fact, the story “feels” pleasingly antiquated. The convenient omission of certain technology (no video links here) marks the story as descendant of the sentimental fiction of the eighteenth century. Where Richardson’s Pamela and the like are concerned with social displacement associated with the rise of capitalism, Lethem seems to be pointing us to a replacement or at least reconsideration of our late capitalism values; particularly he is concerned about the relationship to place. The letters of this displaced astronaut gives us pause to place ourselves in the world.

Is Manhattan beautiful? Have they put up the Christmas tree, or is it too soon? (I know you loathe Rockefeller Center.) Do you ever go to the Chinese garden at the Met, with the tiny gurgling waterfall, where we once went and laid our heads together on a stone and fell asleep?

This passage expresses the lost astronaut’s need to locate herself. We move toward the specific and defined from the vastness of space to Earth to Manhattan to Rockefeller Center and the Met to a single stone. The stone of course is in some way a mark of alienation from nature (it is after all the recreation of a natural setting in the space of a museum); nonetheless it suggests basic desire (need?) humans have to be in place, to belong to the Earth.
The movement toward the Earth and toward being “in place” reverses the direction of locating one’s self that young Stephen Dedalus experiences in Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

He turned to the flyleaf of the geography and read what he had written there: himself, his name and where he was.

Stephen Dedalus
Class of Elements
Clongowes Wood College
Sallins
County Kildare
Ireland
Europe
The World
The Universe

[...]What was after the universe? Nothing. But was there anything after the universe to show where it stopped before the nothing place began? It could not be a wall but there could be a thin thin line there all around everything. It was very big to think about everything and everywhere.

For Joyce the problem is one of living in a world without God, a world without meaning. Lethem’s story looks for a way to put us back in place; to find meaning in our lives here on earth. The story also wants to suggest that technology does not displace us; rather we choose displacement through the technology we bring upon ourselves.

Gran Torino

I had fun watching Clint Eastwood play a badass, epitaph spewing old codger. The role is a familiar one for Eastwood, a descendent of Dirty Harry and not unlike his character in Million Dollar Baby. But Eastwood is so good at playing the part it doesn’t get old (so to speak). One still marvels at his intensity and cool. I can’t think of another septuagenarian who could pull this part off with the gusto Eastwood brings to it. The rest of the movie, however, is nothing more than a hackneyed piece of garbage. The plot lacks surprises. The other characters have all the depth of those found in after school specials. In scene after scene Eastwood as director trots out one stenotype and cliché after another. The worst moment in the movie comes when Eastwood intervenes in a confrontation between a wannabe white gangster and the three tough black guys who stand on the corner. The white guy trying to pass as black by calling the black guys “bro,” is the best they could come up with? The black guys calling the white guy a pussy? One could say that these characters don’t matter. They are just occasions for Eastwood to be Eastwood. But the scene on the corner and others like it are so formulaic , the characters so flat that they kill the movie. One sees Eastwood trying to give these scenes emotional weight; there is a desire to flesh out the film, which causes some of the worst parts of the movie to get way more time on the screen than they deserve. But the writing leaves these characters as such voids and the scenes so unoriginal that there just isn’t anything there. The blame for this probably lies at the feet of first time script writer Nick Schenk. Which is not to deny that the script has potential; one sees why Eastwood was attracted to the project. But the script needed a serious rewrite, particularly its handling of the gang members. In the end, watching Eastwood in something so bad left me feeling sorry for him and wishing he had found a better vehicle to bring his tough guy persona to the screen for what may be the last time.

Nathan Englander’s Ministry of Special Cases

Nathan Englander is a very fine writer. Ministry of Special Cases is filled with unpretentious writing that flows across the page. For a novel about as difficult a subject as the disappeared of Argentina’s dirty war tone is a challenge: too serious and the reader will enter a void of sorrow and death, but such events are serious and levity must be handled with just the right touch. Englader’s story of Kaddish and his wife Lillian and son Pato set in Buenos Aires in 1976 resonates with the despair but also irony and touches of humor that make the experiences of the family resonate with the reader. Of the three characters, the failure prone Kaddish stands out as a memorable creation, a Job-like character caught in a Kafkaesque world. The other characters in the novel aren’t as vibrant, however, and details about Argentina are integrated cleverly into the plot yet they are on the whole facile choices. Recoleta Cemetery and Argentines’ propensity for cosmetic surgery both are functional to the plot and highly symbolic. Each is representative enough of Argentina but is the sort of things a tourist learns in a few days in Argentina, something any cab driver in Buenos Aires will tell you to explain the Argentine condition to you. A look at the sources Englander mentions in a brief note at the end of the novel seems to confirm a lack of engagement with the subject. The sources Englander cites are the obvious ones, and ones in English at that. My question then, finally, is why did Englander write this novel? For the U.S. reader unfamiliar with the dirty war in Argentina the book will have some value but there is little that is new. Setting the story entirely in the 1970s leaves out the opportunity to give the novel some contemporary relevance, either in relation to Argentina’s current struggles with instability and insecurity or as a means of reflecting on governments and terrorism in a post 9/11 world. As the novel covers well trod ground and offers little in the way of new reflections on its subject Ministry of Special Cases feels like a successful exercise by a talented writer: it fulfills the task it sets out for itself but why this is a story that needed to be told isn’t so clear.

In November, Arizona will vote on an initiative that would reward one voter in each election with a million dollar payout. The goal is to increase voter interest and turnout.

Initial Reaction: That is just wrong

Second Reactions:

• States already run lotteries to achieve certain objectives (i.e. school funding), is this initiative so different?

• One possible advantage of US federalism is that states can serve as laboratories for democracy. A lottery-style payout that increased voter participation by increasing political interest and debate would be a positive result. While I don’t think that is the likely outcome, what would be the harm in finding out? This proposal is so off the wall we don’t have any solid way to predict the outcome. Of course the result might be (probably would be) an increase in cynical, greedy voters but how can we know unless we try? If the measure doesn't produce a desirable outcome, it could always be repealed.

Evo Morales Changing the World One Goal at a Time

Inspiring pictures of Bolivian President Evo Morales playing fútbol (aka soccer) against an all-female team. I suppose it could be called a publicity stunt but a male president taking the field against a group of women is the type of act that will have real value in changing patriarchal beliefs. The match was held to inaugurate a new field. More pics here.

In Memoriam Juan Pablo Rebella: Uruguayan Director of Whisky, Aged 32

Several months ago, after renting the film Whisky, I made a mental note to keep track of its director Juan Pablo Rebella and his work. I expected the next I would hear of him would be upon the release of another feature, one that would fulfill the enormous potential of his early films. It was thus with much sadness that I read the young director had committed suicide last week.

I know nothing of the man, although these links offer some background about his life and death. What I do know was that Whisky was a remarkable film, terribly sad and tender. The aging owner of a dilapidated sock factory asks his long time employee to pretend to be his wife in order to impress his visiting brother. This triangle of characters struggle with desires and hopes on which they fail to act because of their individual limitations. Throughout the film connections between are characters are only fleeting moment. These are good people living proud lives but lives that are horribly empty. The movie captures the loss of what could be, but is not.

Whisky is also an allegory for the nation. Several years ago, I lived in Argentina. Every three months in order to extend my visa, I would take the ferry from Buenos Aires across Rio de la Plata to Montevideo. Sometimes I went with friends but sometimes I went by myself and wandered the streets of Ciudad Vieja. I walked past the shells of once grand nineteenth century buildings, some now home to many poor families, some left to rot. In this decaying world I was struck by the dignity of the men on the benches Plaza Independencia, the women in the street doing their errands. People dressed in worn clothing, but worn with a care as though it was a fine garment just back from the tailor.

This was before the devaluation of the Argentine Peso in 2001, an economic collapse that affected Uruguay just as forcefully but with less international notice. Like Argentina, Uruguay is a nation of great promise that has never been able to fulfill its destiny, instead remaining mired in economic stagnation and political instability. Just as the lack of personal will and the ability to take a chance that keeps the characters trapped in their empty lives, the Uruguay shown in Whisky is a nation that cannot come to terms with its place in the global world. As love might save the characters from the distant lives they lead, human contact might also be the path to salvation for the nation. Without the energy, openness, and trust that comes from recognizing a shared humanity there can be not hope for love or national development.

The artists of a small nation are precious things, to be valued as the life of the people. To lose one as fine as Rebella at such a young age is a deep loss.

Pirates of the Caribbean Hype

Endless talk today about the big box office gross of POTC. Obviously it did very well but would it kill journalists to report the number of ticket sales in addition to the gross? Ticket sales would provide a valid comparison with older movies, for which ticket prices were much lower. Although I don’t have the figures, I would guess Gone with the Wind easily holds every ticket sales record. Of course, breathless reporting of inflated figures benefits the studios by hyping the film and the media by giving them something to report so we aren’t likely to see a change anytime soon. Who needs context and accuracy anyway? We can just wait until next summer when another movie comes along to ride the inflation wave past POTC. . . . Sigh.

Tags:Culture, movies, Entertainment, Pirates of the Caribbean

Immigration Debate: Kaus takes on Horwitz

Over at Slate, Mickey Kaus doesn’t “understand the argument behind Horwitz's Sunday NYT op-ed essay.” (See Horwitz's original article here). To summarize, Kaus argues that the Spanish role in US history, rather than supporting immigration, makes “Mexican and other Spanish-speaking immigrants profoundly different from previous immigrants. Unlike other immigrants--Italians or Irish or Koreans--they do not necessarily think they are in a foreign land. . . . Unlike other immigrants, Latinos have a powerful rationale for challenging, at the very least, the current common language.” Kaus fears that immigration will lead to “Quebec style separatism or Kosovo-style irredentism in the Southwest.”

Here’s what Kaus misses. By pointing out the continual role of Spain and Spanish in the development of the US, Horowitz and others show that the nation need not fear Latino influence. In fact, that influence has been instrumental in shaping the nation we live in today. Those who are against immigration on cultural grounds fear the destruction of a mythical Anglo culture (in fairness, unlike many immigration opponents isn’t a complete Anglophile but logic of their arguments is the same). This ignores the essential point Horwitz makes: the values, culture, and even the idea of the United States are the product of diverse influences. The United States, rather than being a static, monolithic entity born fully formed from some Puritan womb, has evolved over time, incorporated different peoples and changed as a result. Ironically, the society Kaus and others fear we might lose by allowing immigration is already a society profoundly marked by immigration and Spanish/Latino influences. To exclude immigrants by erecting new xenophobic structures in an attempt to preserve some narrow version of “our American culture” would truly be a fundamental change the values of our nation.

The rest of Kaus’s argument is mostly what I can only call an unjustified fear. Where are the Spanish speakers who are refusing to learn English, particularly among the children of immigrants? Every Spanish-speaking immigrant I have met would love to learn English. Every young immigrant I have met who has been here for more than a few years does speak English.

If the fear really is a balkanization of the United States, from a more pragmatic standpoint, I would also ask: which of these two situations is more likely to create a separate class of people that might be alienated enough to seek a social partition?

1. A large illegal, marginalized population segregated from mainstream society
2. Immigrants who are able to work, get driver’s licenses, and generally participate in public life; immigrants whose children are able to attend public schools and universities.

Reading Suggestion: What to Read after Reading Horwitz in the NY Times

Tony Horwitz, author of Confederates in the Attic, has a nice opinion piece (link) on the denial in the US of our Spanish heritage and how this misrepresentation of history is used by today’s immigration foes. Horwitz puts the current debate in the context a long history of black legend fear mongering and cultural denial in the United States. For anyone interested in this topic as it pertains to cultural and literary history, María DeGuzmán’s Spain’s Long Shadow is well worth checking out. The book considers the representation of Spain in the works of US writers from Poe to Hemingway. She argues that the black legend has been used continually to shape and reshape the construction of whiteness in the United States. Spain’s Long Shadow, published last year, is engaging, insightful, and accessible for anyone generally familiar with literary theory.

Tags: United States, Culture, Immigration, Literature

Inconvenient Cocooning: Gore Playing Well in Red States?

The San Francisco Chronicle runs a bit of wishful thinking under the heading “Gore movie reaching the red states, too.” The article finds that An Inconvenient Truth has grossed $13 million and this week will likely become the third-highest-grossing political documentary of all time (which is nice as far as it goes but that is a pretty limited category). Also, the $13 million figure while strong is hardly overwhelming when compared to Fahrenheit 9/11’s $119 million gross.

Weaker still, the article makes largely unsupported claims about “the film's continued success in red states like Georgia and Texas.” To start with, the article doesn’t cite any specific numbers for red states. More significantly, even if the film is doing some business in red states the author ignores the fact that significant numbers of liberals and progressives live in red states. Red states may vote 60% (or even 70% or 80%) Republican but that still means there are significant numbers of other people in the state. Since it doesn’t take very many people going to a the theater to produce box office numbers like those of Inconvenient Truth, a likely interpretation is that the liberals/progressives in red states are going to see this movie.

Doing a few thousands dollars of business doesn’t mean the working man “truck driver” figure the article trots out is going to see the film. For the most part the people going to see the movie are already liberals/progressives. While it makes a better story to play up red state success (surely what the Chronicle’s liberal readership wants to read), the article is an instance of liberal cocooning.

All of which isn’t to say I don’t think An Inconvenient Truth will have an influence. The film will have an impact, just a more limited one. After seeing the movie, my wife is now committed to buying a hybrid as our next car. As significant as any individual action the movie encourages, the movie has become a platform from which Gore has been able to reshape the national debate on global warming. Today it is harder today to argue that any significant scientific doubt remains on the subject. Yet in the terms of creating the political will to change US national policies, An Inconvenient Truth won’t have a significant impact. Liberals and Democrats need to be honest with themselves about where the nation is on these issues if they are going to devise winning political strategies.

John Yoo in the LA Times: D+ Essay

John Yoo, the legal mind behind much of the President’s post-9/11 consolidation of power, today writes an op-ed in the LA Times disagreeing with the recent Supreme Court decision in the Hamdan case. In Hamdan the court essentially found a variety of positions Yoo had supported when he work for the Department of Justice to be without merit. In the op-ed, Yoo tries to argue back but his defense is laughably weak. It is work unworthy of a law school student, let alone a professor.

Yoo makes three claims about the need for strong presidential powers: Presidents “can act with a speed, unity and secrecy that the other branches of government cannot match. By contrast, legislatures are large, diffuse and slow” [italics mine]. Later in the article, Yoo reformulates this same idea by quoting from the Federalist Papers on the ability of presidents to act with “decision, activity, secrecy and dispatch.”

Okay let’s take these points one by one. “Speed” (or dispatch) hardly seems relevant in this case. Guantanamo has been in operation for over four years now. That is hardly a situation that seems to require speed. Skipping unity for a moment, next consider “secrecy.” This isn’t even relevant to the question at hand. While secrecy is in play in related cases, such as Bush’s wiretapping and bank monitoring, the military tribunals at issue in Hamdan were publicly known. Thus, what Yoo calls a Supreme Court power grab didn’t take any power away from the executive in this case.

Finally, the last issue is that of “unity” (which I take to mean essentially the same thing as decision and activity). Certainly the president can act with more unity that the “large, diffuse and slow” legislative branch. But this advantage is largely negated when there is no need for quick action. As noted above, there was plenty of time for the Congress to act in this case. Sure, having Congress authorize the tribunals might have taken some time and might not have been as decisive but those facts alone hardly would have put the nation in any danger. A year would have been plenty of time for Congress to act (if it was truly important a week would have been enough). That is, it would have been the case had Bush tried to get Congressional approval rather than following Yoo’s legal opinions and claiming not to need support.

This brings up a point Yoo makes at the end of his article: “But here, unlike abortion, the Supreme Court does not have the last word. Congress and the president can enact a simple law putting the court back in its traditional place, allowing for the usual combination of presidential initiative and general congressional support.” While Yoo states it like he is making some novel point, this was exactly what the court said in its decision: the president’s actions needed Congressional approval. This is radically different from the Yoo’s and the president’s position that the executive can do whatever he wants. Thus Yoo obscures the essential point of the Hamdan decision, the president doesn’t have unlimited powers, even in a time of war.

Law professor Peter Spiro of Opinio Juris takes some shots at Yoo here and spork incident calls out Yoo’s reasoning here. Carol Platt Liebau agrees with Yoo but only quotes from his op-ed. Anyone care to offer a stronger defense of Yoo’s position?

Thoughts on the Rendition Case Described in the New York Times

Today’s New York Times contains an article on another in the growing list of CIA rendition cases. Laid Saidi, an Algerian who worked for an Islamic charity in Tanzania, was picked up by US agents in May 2003. Saidi was held in Afghanistan for sixteen months after which he was unceremoniously released, never having been given any explanation for what was happening to him, much less charged with any terrorism related activity. The Times plays up the negative angle of the story beginning with the headline, “Algerian Tells of Dark Term in U.S. Hands.” The article is also prominently featured on the front page above the fold of the print edition and at the top of the newspaper’s website. Nothing in the article is particularly new or shocking to merit such a placement. That the US holds terrorists suspects in foreign countries has been extensively reported already.

In spite of the overplay by the Times, Saidi’s story does raise some interesting issues on what constitutes reasonable actions by the US government in fighting terror. Because Saidi wasn’t extensively or severely tortured, his experience approaches the liminal case of what is acceptable government action and serves as an interesting starting point for further discussion.

A few thoughts. First, picking up this type of person seems reasonable. The US government needs to take proactive actions to prevent future terrorist acts. He worked for a suspect organization, he had a fake passport and he was recorded talking about buying airplanes (although this last fact turned out to be incorrect, a point I will get to below). To me this seems like enough evidence to pick up and hold a suspect.

From there the US government’s actions become more questionable. The biggest problems are the secrecy of the government and the length of Saidi’s detention. There are real security reasons for not divulging that an individual has been picked up, primarily that it would alert those connected to him. Ongoing investigations may require that a suspect not be charged for an extended period. However, over time, this rational becomes less justifiable. After a month or two, the suspect’s fellow terrorists (if he is a terrorist) are going to figure out what happened. If they are even minimally sophisticated, they will have already covered their tracks. Being generous, to hold a suspect without charging him for more than, say, six months is unjustifiable. In addition, the US government needs to own up to the holding of these suspects instead of passing the off the agency to other countries. Even if it happens in another country and foreign agents do the hands-on activities, the US is clearly responsible. If the holding of the prisoner is legal, morally justifiable, and necessary the US should fully describe its actions and rational, after a reasonable period of secrecy.

As for the conditions in which suspects are held, from the article it doesn’t seem that Saidi was subjected to any extreme forms of torture. He was certainly made uncomfortable but the worst that was done to him was being chained in a standing position for three days. This pushes the limits of what I would accept and would label torture (crosses the line in fact but I think it is debatable) but in general the tactics used seem reasonable. That’s good. Nonetheless, the US needs to put in some type of oversight, with an administrative review on who is being held and what is happening to them. A suspect held in these conditions could easily be tortured or killed without any government acknowledgement. Without oversight torture will occur, and has in other cases. The need for security and security would prevent the creation of an oversight panel, which has limited powers to monitor and document the treatment of suspects. Such a panel would go a long way to putting these activities back under the rule of law.

One interesting piece of information in the story is the seeming incompetence of the US interpreters. Saidi seems to have been held at least partly because the translators misunderstood the word he was saying in a recorded phone conversation, using a term for tires that the CIA thought meant planes. While it doesn’t speak well of the CIA’s capabilities (if they make this type of mistake they could just as easily miss key information) mistakes will happen. Where the problem lies is that the situation should have been straightened out much more quickly and with a greater level of transparency. This goes back to the issues of review and accountability. After the fact the US could explain the situation without risking its security. It would only suffer from embarrassment, which is an important step in preventing future mistakes and improving security operations.

In short, the US government needs to take strong actions to prevent future acts of terrorism but it also needs to act with in a legitimate legal framework: that would seem to be a reasonable compromise that everyone could agree on. Would that it were so.

All of MP3 and Tradesports: Two Sites Worth Checking Out

Alright, both these sites have been around a while so maybe you have heard of them. I, however, only discovered them recently so I imagine others might be interested.

All of MP3 is a brilliant site for downloading music. Based in Russia, the site allows you to download music at incredibly cheap prices. The cost for an album is the generally less than two bucks and a single track costs ten to fifteen cents. Unlike iTunes, All of MP3 charges for bandwidth rather than the song. Prices for longer albums are higher and vary depending on file format and bitrate. This is actually one of the nice features of the site: the user can select the format and quality of the download. If you want near CD quality you can get it; if you are like me and just want something listenable, you can choose lower quality and pay less. The selection of music is good and I have had no credit card problems. Sure, the legality is questionable but in a world where copyright laws are over enforced one should take the advantage of the few times when the laws benefit the consumers, not the corporations. For a full discussion of the legal issues involved, see this Wikipedia entry.

The second site I’d recommend checking out is Tradesports, a prediction market modeled on future exchanges. In fact, it is a future exchange. The site offers contracts on a variety of events, including sports, politics, and current events. You can bet on the baseball games, the Tour de France, the Democratic and Republican presidential nominations, congressional races, and a host of other subjects. For each event, contracts can be bought (if you think the event will happen) and sold (if you think the event won’t occur). If the event takes place the contract expires at 100; if it doesn’t, it expires at 0. On each trade are two people, one on either side: a buyer and a seller. The exchange just establishes the contract (and takes a small cut of each trade in fees). To buy or sell you have to take the price someone is offering or find someone who will take your price. The price of the contract reflects the probability the event will occur. For example, right now contracts for Hillary Clinton to be the Democrats 2008 presidential nominee are trading for just over 43, implying a 43% chance Clinton will be nominated. If you by the contract thinking Clinton will be nominated and she is, your profit would be the difference between the price you paid and the final contract expiration price of 100.

At this point volume on the site isn’t great, which means that for many events the spread between the ask and bid prices makes trading difficult. Poor liquidity also largely nullifies one of the potential advantages of the this type of market: unlike a sports book, on Tradesports you can trade during the event. If, for example, Albert Pujols hits a home run, the market on the game will change as more people want to buy the Cardinals and sell their opponent. Unfortunately, only major events actually have active trading during the event (World Cup games, Yankee-Red Sox games, etc.); you generally can’t trade during, say, a Wimbledon match. One other drawback are the fees. They are a bit high in my opinion, although they are cheaper than what you pay a sports book when you factor in the better odds.

In addition to Tradesports, Betfair and Inkling both operate similar predictive markets. All three sites are interesting tests of the predictive power of markets, such as the wisdom of crowds. At this point though, issues of volume, fees and full transparency limit the value and the usability of these sites. In a few years, however, as these companies upgrade (or a new generation of predictive market sites emerges), I expect these sites will largely replace sports books. Once the kinks are ironed out and more people sign on, predictive markets, which already generally offer better odds, will have advantages in fairness and flexibility that traditional sports books can’t match.

The Unavoidable Failure of Superman Returns

Brain Singer’s Superman Returns, while visually interesting and well acted, fails as a cinematic work and as entertainment due to the inability of the Superman character to translate in any meaningful way to a postmodern, post-cold war, post-9/11 world. Singer is a wonderful blockbuster director. His visual sense creates outstanding action sequences such as a tour-de-force scene in which Superman must uncouple a plane from the space shuttle as the two approach orbit. Quieter, reflective moments, frequently involving Superman flying in a vertical position rather than the more familiar horizontal arms out in front position, stand out as well and do an exceptional job at inspiring awe. In these scenes, and there are several throughout the movie, the camera lovingly pans over Superman and lingers on the fine features of the well-cast Brandon Routh. These moments come the closest to capturing the idealization that is at the core of the character of Superman, the great American hero.

Behind these visual elements, however, lies the problem with Superman Returns: a slow and unengaging plot. The movie contains two stories: a love triangle/parentage narrative involving Superman, Lois Lane, Lois’s fiancé, and the main story of the evil villain (Kevin Spacey’s Lex Luther) who must be stopped by Superman. It is the former, rightfully a subplot, that generates any interest, while the main plot produces nothing more than a by-the-numbers take-over-the-world story (and a few good lines from Spacey). That the main plot fails to create any interest and that its development is so labored results from Superman, the first and the greatest of the great comic book superheroes, being nothing other than a hero. As a product of the cold war, Superman has little to say to the contemporary issues facing America or the world.

Unlike the two most profitable Superhero box office commodities, the X-Men and Batman, as a character Superman has no room for evil. He is completely good and completely all-American; the embodiment of American values and American military strength in one body. As Peter Suderman in The Washington Times notes, Singer’s Superman is stripped of some of his Americanness. Yet for a director making a Superman movie today there is little choice. The original Superman represented doubts about America’s strength in cold war terms (what if the Russians build kryptonite?). Today neither conservatives nor liberals, neither war supports nor opponents doubt that American is the greatest power in the world.

The issue is no longer whether America is stronger than its enemies in terms of military might; rather the debate is over how the nation can identify its enemies and whether or not sheer force is the best means to defeat them. What the nation fears and what it is struggling with are issues of secrecy and the unknown, be it the secrecy of terrorists or the secrecy with which America’s government has taken to acting. The basic premise that sustains Superman, what does it mean to be the strongest power, is no longer applicable; Americas know what it is like because that is already the reality of the nation. This creates a situation in which the Superman character doesn’t have a raison d’etre.

It has taken years and multiple writers and directors to produce this latest installment of the Superman story. The struggle to find the right story is suggestive of the fact that no Superman story works for this moment. While it seems that Superman Returns will do reasonable business at the box office, it will leave no cultural mark and the Superman franchise will continue to struggle to invent a Superman who is relevant today. What interest Superman Returns creates is a testament to Singer’s abilities as a director; the material he has to work with has little to offer. One can hope that Singer chooses a more promising project for his next work.

The Economics of Life

The Economics of Life

The often interesting Everyday Economics column in Slate yesterday discussed the case of Tirhas Habtegiris, a woman who died after being taken off life support because she could not pay her medical bills. While this case deserves more national attention, the Slate column by Steven E. Landsburg is an example of economic thinking at its worst. Landsburg claims that the removal of the woman’s ventilator was a compassionate act because the money could that would have gone to the young woman’s care could be better spent in other ways. This is a false choice.

Landsburg claims, "A policy of helping everyone who needs a ventilator is a policy of spending less to help the same class of people in other ways." Give me a break. Does Landsburg really think the money that was saved went to other programs to help people in need? If he could show that was what happened then he would have at least some argument to make.

This line of reasoning suggests the more significant problem with Landsuburg’s argument. He turns the issue into an abstraction and then makes a universal claim. He goes so far as to say that “economic considerations are the basis of true compassion.” Economics may have something to say about how we put compassion in to action but the claim that compassion arises from the economic is ridiculous. As is often the case, rhetorical emphasis, in this case the use of “true”, points to the weakness of the argument. Landsburg wants the reader to believe that he knows what compassion is. Since his claim is weak, he throws in true to make his case sound strong.

Argentina in the NY Times

Yesterday’s NY Times article on Argentina was sloppy and generally disappointing. The article tries to be a catch all on recent news from Argentina by covering Argentina’s decision to pay off all its IMF debt, Kirchner’s popularity and solidification of power, and the general move left in Latin America. The broad outlines are on target but the details consistently miss the mark. It is unfortunate that the Larry Rohter, a reported based in Buenos Aires, could not do a better job.

Some points are misleading. Rohter suggests Kirchner has become more popular since he was elected: “Mr. Kirchner, 55, took office in May 2003 having won less than a quarter of the popular vote.” This low vote total does not reflect the story of Kitchner’s support. He received less that a quarter of the vote in a multi-candidate field but would have received 70% or perhaps even 80% of the vote in a runoff. His support was so overwhelming that his opponent, Menem, dropped out. He entered office as a bit of an unknown figure but with a clear mandate.

Others statements are wrong: start a conversation with anyone in Buenos Areas and see if the last three years have “erased memories” of the crisis. The crisis still is very much present in the minds of the people, especially much of the middle and lower class for whom a few years of strong growth haven’t even come close to allowing them to recover their economic position. In fact, Rohter contradicts himself, as he argues that people still blame the IMF for the crisis. If the crisis were forgotten Kirchner’s paying off the debt would not be so popular.

Some arguments are just silly, like using a quote from a political scientist who trots out a weak environmental argument about personality: “‘For someone like Kirchner,’ a native of frigid Patagonia ‘who doesn't have an extroverted character, Chávez is too tropical.’”

Rohter’s reference to Bolivia is a red herring: “if Mr. Morales's promised transformation were to go awry and degenerate into class, regional or racial conflict that, in the worst case, would send refugees spilling across Argentina's northern border and constrict the flow of natural gas to Argentina.” Sure this scenario is possible but it is farfetched. The leftist positions cited by Rohter are more likely to keep gas flowing to Argentina. And it seems unlikely that things would be come so much worse in Bolivia that it would lead to a large refugee problem. It is not as if Bolivia is in great shape now.

The number of weak arguments is a relatively short is just unfortunate, particularly in a piece such as this one that does not have to be written on the spot. Rohter had time to get the details right. Sloppy work from the newspaper of record.

De Young Museum

Museums have a vexed relationship to their surroundings. They are constructed as important public buildings yet the requirement of protecting the works that they contain causes the insides of museums to be closed off from the public space outside. As a result, the outside and inside of museums often are incongruous: when one views a museum from the outside, the building is in relation to its surroundings; when inside, one feels little relation to the outside world.

San Francisco’s de Young Museum, which reopened in October housed in a new building designed by Herzog & de Meuron, presents a special case of this problem. Located in Golden Gate Park the museum in surrounded by urban park. The primary feature of the building is the eight story copper tower that calls to mind a modest skyscraper and the tower of a fort.

Neighbors have objected to the broken sight lines caused by the tower. Undoubtedly, the contrast between the brown metallic tower and the trees is jarring. Golden Gate Park, however, is not a pure natural environment but a constructed urban space. Like Olmstead’s Central Park, GG Park was a response to the urban environment. Developed in the last decades of the nineteenth century by John McLaren, the park was created through extensive planting of what had been barren, windswept sand dunes. Thus the park it is as much artifice as any skyscraper.

The de Young tower reminds us of this relationship. Just a bit taller than the surrounding trees, the top of the tower stands in a playful relationship to the park. Its twist suggests the organic possibilities in built architecture. And while the neighbors can see the tower, when one looks from the surrounding neighborhood, trees hide the majority of the building’s mass. This playful relationship carries over to the interior of the building where rooms look out on interior gardens. The city encloses the park, the park encloses the museum, the museum encloses the park.

Some Organizations I Support (Maybe You Should Too)

It is the end of the year again. Looking for a charity to give your money to? Maybe something other than the usual suspects? Here are five organizations worthy of your cash.

1. Ruckus Society
Training the people in the art of protest

2. Electronic Frontier Foundation
The laws on the use of technology that are established today will set the ground rules for a generation at least. Help make sure they are fair.

3. El Futuro and El Centro Latino
North Carolina has the fastest growing Latino population in the nation. These two organizations provide much needed community support in a region that is ill equipped to provide services for Spanish speakers.

4. First Place Fund for Youth
On the day they turn 18, youths in foster care, already having faced more challenges than most of us will experience in a lifetime, are turned out into the world. Help them successfully make the transition to independent adulthood.

5. Poetry Flash
Art in general and poetry in particular are only in the borders of the public consciousness. Poetry Flash, by providing monthly listings of poetry events in the West, helps maintain a vibrant artistic community.

Domestic Spying and Secrecy

At the moment, the deabate over domestic spying is centered on the legality of Bush’s executive order. The question I want to ask is this: is the secrecy of the program justified? Is such a program something over which we could have had an honest and forthright debate or is the secrecy so essential to the effectiveness of the spying that Bush was justified in issuing the order in secret?

Bush argues that public acknowledgement aids terrorists: "our enemies have learned information they should not have, and the unauthorized disclosure of this effort damages our national security and puts our citizens at risk. Revealing classified information is illegal, alerts our enemies and endangers our country.” Twice in two sentences Bush links disclosure of the order to danger to Americans.

Is there are connection? How might knowledge of the order benefit terrorists? Terrorists would be alerted to the fact that America was being vigilant in the war against terror. Would they have taken additional precautions to avoid detection? It seems likely that terrorists already would have been doing everything possible to avoid detection. Surely any self-respecting terrorist would have already considered the possibility that a phone might be tapped. Therefore it seems unlikely that knowledge of this program would have changed terrorist behavior significantly. This being the case, the Bush’s secrecy hardly seems justified.

The only other reason for not making the spying public was that the public would not have stood for it. The justification for government secrecy is that sometimes doing what is in the public’s wishes requires that they not know what the government is doing. Bush seems to think he knows what is good for the American people better than they do.