Yom Yom---day after day
At one point, I came to realize how famous Amos Gitai had become of: he is no longer an Israeli film maker but the director who enjoys his fame and success of the world cinema. Maybe it was around the time when he made Free Zone starring Natalie Portman that I recognized that he no longer was Gitai the local of Israeli. Portman sure is the most popular Israeli in the current world come to think of it, and Gitai did not fail to make most of her star quality as the biggest trafficker of audience and to exploit it for otherwise unfavorabl y overrepresented region, Middle East . And it was the other day when I was listening to Radio France that I recognized what a long way he had come when I heard Julliette Binoche (ugh) mention his name for the director of her next work. He is no longer presented with any quote Israeli unquote; he is Amos Gitai, period, the introduction's completed.
He used to be an only 'watchable' director from Israel, or so Is he.
The other day, I revisited his old movie, one of the city trilogy, Yom Yom and discovered some hilarious fact. There is a rhetoric that Israeli employs in films, or in any representation. They dismiss any discussion that infers the politics by pointing it out as if that is the rudest behavior and paradoxically this proves the reality where they dwell upon day by day. Their life is fundamentally sustained upon the political situation that they cannot escape from; the perpetual violence and threat. To be indifferent, though, they try not to talk about politics,as if it will drive the worrisome reality away, so that they can lead their pretty much individualized& nbsp;and cozy lives. The rhetoric in question is frequently employed in Israeli films, and novels. Once you become conscious of it, you can't help but spotting one after another to the point it gets overwhelming. This is a tip to discern the representation. When a scene applies the rhetoric, it never fails to be
1) the user of the rhetoric is an Israeli, therefore the one is powerful enough to dictate the discourse of the occasion
2) and 1) says 'no political talk is invited, called for here, so please excuse us...etc.'
3) to avoid any discourse that would make Jewish Israeli side look oppressive
Regarding Yom Yom's case, however, the exact line falls into the every single category above, but the application of his seems highly conscious of the political connotation, therefore, he was using it quite deliberately to make the point of how Israelis are blinded for the fact that they are the cause of the problem. The scene from Yom Yom is where an Israeli trying to buy a multiply valued land ---sentimentally and practically--- from an unwilling Arab man in Haifa whose Jewish wife recently deceased. It was a small exchange where the Arab man's brother, who was the real estate broker and eager to sell mentioned that they Arab in Haifa were always tolerant, or even generous, to Jewish mythical view on the Jerusalem even though (he sees) there was no outstanding difference between Arabs and Jews in relation to the land's imagined holiness. To respond his remark, the Jewish buyer snaps as saying 'no political talk is necessary here, now' and rushes he Arab owner to sign the contract before the shaky situation becomes even shakier.
How many times I hear this phrase, discourse or rhetoric in Israeli production? Most of the time, it is represented as they say it almost unconsciously out of the habitual speech pattern. They are not even fighting or defending Jewish rights when they say it. It comes out of a habit and those lines we come across in films are also there when the makers are rather unconscious than being elaborate and manipulative. Thus, it is evident how unconscious they are to be the oppressor of the condition. The interesting point is that they believe that they are victims: Victims of violence, holocaust, anti-Semitism or victims of their parents' generations' project that did not come out as good as it was once supposed to be, Zionism.
The case of the movie Yom Yom--the title means day after day in Hebrew BTW---it is employed in a very careful manner and this got me take a mental note initially as it would be worth examining and marking as a good example of the employment of the rhetoric. This was what the director had observed in the locals, therefore he could raise it as a good line to insert, amongst all the serious talks, to form a natural flow of a conversation to reflect how the political dynamics are formed in their speech and reenforced day by day (yom yom). But if you have a look even more carefully, you cannot pass it unnoticed that the Arab man's offering his generousity, no matter what he really feels about the politics, whereas Jewish can casually dismiss it ultimately because he is on the power even though he was in the middle of the act of coercion to buy the land from the unwilling Arab; The Arab has to keep on yielding because that is what it means to have to survive in a place like Israel, as an Arab, and in Haifa. This movie captured the encountering point and who sacrifices who and who lives at the cost of who in the least sentimental manner.
New York Dolls: A documentary
The History of Yiddish
Give my radio back!
Notre Musique
I had a chance to revisit the movie Notre Musique (Jean-Luc Godard 2004) thanx to Netflix. This time the movie hit me so close to home for the dead on theme that I could not find anywhere but in this film maker's work.
The movie is set in Sarajevo and about an Israeli journalist who visits the war-torn zone, where became the recently produced ruins of of two major ideologies; one was the former Yugoslavia where the ideology of Eutopia was magically materialized and vanished. Another was the miraculous harmony in the community where constituted of the people from different backgrounds regarding the ethnicities and the religous creeds. (Well, this description sounds somehow redundant given the ideology of Communism was supposed to represent all of them after all.)
The frightening look at the scars of the city of Sarajevo brought tears to my eyes for the beauty it marvelously maintained. The structure of the movie could be divided into three parts as the semi-titles imply. But I took another take; the two women, an Israeli jornalist and Olga, the participant of the forum where Godard lectured on what images could mean to human psyche, seem to be rather important and pivotal to the narrative structure. These two women's physical resemblence brought a suspicion if the maker intentionally employed the two to show the alter-egos of each women, who were from the similar backgrounds, and would take the total different paths after the stay in Sarajevo. One was maintaining rahter an individualized view on the conflict Jewish people got involved in and responsible as well in the history, which almost looked as if she was slightly indifferent. (There was a scene where it was implied that she was not familiar with Hanna Arendt. I know I should knock just because she was void of the essential vocabulary in the Jewish journalism tradition. But I believed the maker intetionally added this tirivial info into the sequence of plots and it might infer some significance.) The latter ended up involving herself in a suicide demonstration that was obviously inspired by the lecture and the knowledge she gained, which ultimately brought her pain and sympathy based on the insight 'truth has double sides.'
The interview the first woman conducted with a Palestinian poet was so lucid and insightful that I took it as one of the maker's stands on the world famous comflict. "I want to speak in the name of the absentee (of the history)." It sounds so familiar that I had to question where I often heard that sort of discourse. The answer was Edward Said, and myself, who has been so influenced by the unconpromising life as well as his theory.
l'intervention devine
Where is my discipline these days? Initially, I had felt inihibited to put things down here that were going on in my life, given all the unlawful materials and where I was situated in the map of the criminality. The next thing that I knew was that I lead a life of autism; I was literally dysfunctional due to all the drugs that I professionally took and regularly, or what is commonly called addiction? I was in the market knowing that could kill anybody who got involved including me and I found myself not being able to leave in no time. Funny creatures we are.
Anyway, I have been seeing Palestinian movies of late as many as possible and I cannot get enough of them! I am planning to review those here for two reasons;
1) to promote the view of the politically opressed side of the area. Yeah, I am the advocate of their rights in the area. I never granted Isreal.
2) to discipline myself once again and to rehabilitate, I need a subject that I feel passionate about.
A while back, I found some intriguing fragments that I seemed to have jotted down sometime that I no longer remembered in my journal book. The note was on a Palestinian movie titled Rana's Wedding. Although the movie captured this modern woman who had to manage to get married in rush to her boyfriend, as oppsed to someone from ten men in a list her father chose for her, matteroffactly in order to keep her residentrial right in Ramallah. Because the depiction of the process including all the trouble and pain she went through were very dry and unsentimental and her attitude towards the marriage was rather up to date than traditional, timid or wailing one. All the more, though, the last scene where they managed to get the wedding done on time and finally smashed a dish made me break down for the pain, thrill and joy they must feel to live there. The idea how challenging it is to maintain one's life when none of their rights were protected never left me and I seemed to have hurriedly jotted it down. How horrible it must feel to have to make one's home when those houses were perpetually demolished one after another for no reason. The dignity that I saw in the people's life there literally touched me. I never forgot this movie and how I felt. But I completely forgot that I had writted something on it. Reading this small note made me think how touched I was to jot it down so that I would not let the feeling go away. This somehow encourages and reminds me of why we write. It feels like I got a letter from someone who has seen an unforgettale movie.
So I want to do what I can do; I will keep on writing on what I see in movies from the region and how I think of the situation. This will be Palestinian Film Fest presented by Chym-a.
China, Chinese and the knock-off world
I have been thinking of knock-offs for a while. I would not put it as I have been interested in them but I might as well admit that I had begun thinking of the whole meaning of them, and how they transform the whole world economy and meaning of what's real and what is fake. At this point, however, I have to question: isn't this world now a knock-off? I frequent Chinatown in Manhattan recently and ponder on the issue.
OMG. Emily Carter!
Visit the above. You can get a glimpse of the author as well as a long comment that contains a nice and thrilling description of NYC when she was active back in the days. It reads almost as another short story of hers such as "East Houston," the opening prose-poem-like piece of Glory Goes... her collection of short stories. It reads so touching that I got teary at several points. She was the author that I always wanted to reach but actually did not when I read the collection in 2000. It might be still worth trying. Just as she left NYC to pursue her self ---Glory's favorite word, I am still in the city, walking in and out of calls, tricks, working, whatever they call, in NYC as trying to whisle all the fear away forcing myself to believe this house is blessed. The City as the house somehow we all shelter and we all are God's Children here as Carter half ironically and half seriously puts it to; she is the New Yorker who belnds two of these contradicting qualities and balances; humanity and sophistication. And I feel that I am sufficiently represented by an author like Carter now: I am a sex worker who handles crack cocaine in the city, so deep in the business that I pray everyday to get off the life soon and do not belive that I will. At least for a while.
The Farewell & Vodka Lemon
I finally managed to secure some time for myself to see films.
The one that caught my attention recently was The Farewell by Jan Schutte. This is a hidden or cut off part of what is known as Albert Brecht's official biography up to today in the world. Therefore the movie captures the Germany's national playwright's very last days, which were more focused on how he faced the consequences of his way of life: the polygamous commune that he was actually living in. That he was productive regardles s of his challenged health and the political turmoil that always awaited him were rahter secondary plots. In the context, his political responsiblity and how he took it might be the undercurrent of all incidents. Ultimately, all is doomed and becomes deceptive when Brecht was doomed. Because it simply meant the whole system would collapse shortly when the partriarch was about to die. So how those women of his life had took care of his last days was the actual plop as opposed to how he took care of them.
This way of life of Brecht was represented quite interestingly especially in terms of how contradicting it seemed to be given his ideas and works that were read rather differently. As a matter of fact, he was living in this environment openly for a long time and he did not even intend to cease the life style. On the contrary, he was even racking his female followers/mistresses up one after another with his wife's consistent dedication even to this official womanizing. The political stance and responsiblity the national artist had in pre and post WWII seemed more weigh on his life than on any of this 'too personal matter'. I got so appalled to see this film as someone living in the 21st century world. Well, didn't those women claim how false it was to sacrifice themselves just to glorify a man even if he was such a powerful figure? The most worthwhile part of the film was it: they were sincere and wise enough to know all he did to them was wrong. But they did not know how to actualize their awareness beacause, after all, they were dependent to this man. They ended up iiving in the shadow of his and getting protection from his power rather than resisiting it or challenging the tyranny. But what can you do when Brecht even got a nerve to write a will to let his last mistress, a young talentless actress he collaborated with, inherit his good amount of assets including his play's copyright with his wife's consent to it. The reaction his daughter had over all of these mistresses AND her own father's fallacy offers such an insight. Well, the movie at least gives you the picture of the complexity in 20th centry when people still were living in the legacy of the partriarchical fallacy. This also represents the pretext of feminist ideology to question how far is too far to retrieve the falsely distributited of power. The answer is this: you can never get too far to earn it back.
Another impressive movie was Vodka Lemon.
Speak of ah...Jordan
I went to the library after I took an exam yesterday and discovered the lastest copy of Hello (!) and did recognize Jordan this time as the real grossly exaggerated female sex object with her object husband, thanks to the homework I had done.
I found it comforting to learn that Brits still seemed to have some room left for their tradition: sense of humor.
NATO reminiscence
Yes, I mean, no, I never knew this woman Jordan=Katie Price until yesterday. I came across her interview and the tone of the presentation of the whole article seemed just as if everyone knew her. As for the effect of it, I got puzzled. She looked more like Kathy Lee.
Given that it was an English magazine, I got the impression that she was the very national figure but did not reach out of the country or was I the only dumbfounded.
Later some of the Internet search brought me to the recognition that she was a 'glamour model', or is she still. The fact I saw in the interview was that she looked the least glamour or any representative model from England. She was more like a US TV material. And she is even before her thirty? Incredible. She seemed more interesting or funny than glamour and sexy but who knows? It is solely up to the way one is represented. The important point that I found in her was that she did not seem to aim her to be represented as a sex symbol. Odds are that it is how she gained such popularity or respect: a woman who can make fun of her beauty. Her comment as "I have got some botox but I do not smoke, drink or take drugs so I am allowed to do something bad to myself" speaks for itself.
Another former NATO moment that I had: I discovered that I looked more like Lily Allen yesterday with my hairdo and recent life style: cacaine (in)fested Doris Dey. I read recently that England's cocaine consumption rises up so high that it is the number one coke nation in Euro currently. Oh. Is crack reaching out there to be popular yet? Who is the next?
Oh, one more NATO: Emily Lloyd, a Brit actor who went native in US) is talking in NYC goverment PR about leaking in buildings and which number to call. These are too former NATO moments that regular US audience hardly get entertained. After a considerable amount of trial to crossover and a bit of success to act All-American girls in US made films, she allegedly developed OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder) to the point that it hindered her career. She has got to be better by now provided she is officially talking about 'leak and repair' on the radio.
The pun is this; because NATO seems so far away that I can't even remember if England part of NATO or they remained left out from the rest.
answer: England INCLUDED!
At Risk
Friday Night by Claire Denis 2002
I have seen two more movies of the director after the last entry; one was Beau Travail and the other was the entry's title.
Friday Night was rather dull even if the movie's subject was to deal with frustration itself: a subway strike in Paris. The theme and the way the movie's conveying the concept and the logic were corresponding to it. It still was slow and I often got frustrated during the watch. & nbsp;
The movie was about this sophisticated and independent woman, Laura's, seemingly the last night of her living alone in the urban set. She was moving into with her boyfriend and finishing up her final cleaning and sorting what was to be thrown out and what was not. She went out into the night in the city on a strike where a trasportation system was paralysed. Caused by the unusual situation, the traffic was extremely jammed and it was encouraged to offer among each other to share a car. A guy came to the protagonist's car looking for a ride so she offered him to share her car. And she ended up offering another ride later at the night; she stayed with the guy who remained unkown to her in a hotel room and had an intimate time together.
The point of the narrative is to tell how unusual it is for a woman to have a real good sex with no string attached nor any unecessary entanglement followed. The very final scene, where Laura's joyfully trotting as if to express how mush she benefitted the last night's sexual encounter and still intact physically, emotionally and morally in the morning light, seems to serve the subject matter.
Beau Travail was loosely based on Herman Melville's Billy Budd but moved the set to the deserted landscape in Dibourti. Sergent Galoup in French Legion finds his calm life begin to be disturbed when a new recruit Sentain joins his troop.
This intricate tale of a power struggle among an exclusively male environment and what a twist homoeroticism does to one's mind and the community.
geese...
Trouble Everyday by Clare Denis 2001
Wild. Unbearble sickness of being. Funnily sad and astonishingly beautiful even in the sucsession of sickening and brutal images. I have got to say how masterfully she captures every moment that flows from a motion to motion with the great empathy and the clear insight even in this movie on cannibalism derived from libido disorder. Vincent Gallo, your all time favorite American actor, transformed himself into the ultimate pervert, or did he just incorporate his potential finally.
Talk about the empathy, in a scene where he jerks off frantically after he tore himself away from his newly wed wife remained lost and alone, something came over to me and I got teary. Needless to say, it happened to me and the scene reminded me of the ultimate sadness that I was in the marriage with a perv; how helpless it feels to be with someone who cannot connect himself/herself sexually. I saw myself in Gallo and his wife in the scene, except this wife remained just dumbfounded.
diversity in the workplace...
What I found hilarious in the site was 'airline tickets'. I wonder if this site's theme is designed to meet desi consumers' sexual preferences or to help them to gratify themselves with the minimum guilt trip by the tailored services from the ethnic and religeous cuircuit. It is often believed among pious folks regardless their denominations that they would commint less sin when they use a service from a member of their own community regarding religeon and/or ethnicity.
Has anyone seen the fast runner?
I wonder if anybody saw the movie 'The Fast Runner'. I just saw it tonight and I am still incredibly mesmorized. As a matter of fact, I'm just looking for anyone who can share his/her impression of the movie.
I remember my then-boyfriend saw it when it was released in NY, and he did not seem to like it much. I absolutely was shocked and moved by the vast landscape that looked almost infinite and its description of people's very fundamental struggle of survival on top of what is unuversal about human life. The generousity of the movie to show the tribal uniqueness, Innuit in North America area (although the movie does not specifies it in the set), and ultimately how the story embodies archetype of human were some spectacular that a viewer like myself from the homogenized Western civilization just appreciates for a great deal.
Among all the practices of thier nomadic and isolated life style in the wilderness of the ice cold landscape, I found the description of the mysterious manner of thier shamanism worship and how they perform immensely precious in terms of its' offering the recovered memory that had been deeply beried in the collective psyche of human beings. Where could I have possibly found the ritual if not here?
the namesake and time
It was such an odd hour to wake up and I had woken up twice before. Yesterday I went to see movies without sleeping at all, so the sleeping disorder that I am suffering for right now is merely a consequence of not getting to dicipline. However, I woke up finally before six and I realized that I had to call off all things that I had planned to do.
I reluctantly got out to grab a cup of coffee before nine and I learned all stores that I would fulfill my daily needs were closed due to the Easter holiday. Geese. I turned around and headed to Dunking Donuts. You know how disappointed I was by then; America ruins by Dunkin as their catch copy goes.
The movies that I saw yesterday were the Namesake by Mira Nair and Time by Kim Gidok. Two of them were fine, but the Namesake made me somehow fall into a kind of homesick state which I had least anticipated. I found this quite novel given I had currently no place to 'go back'.
When I was in the bathroom of the theater during an interval of those two movies, I caught two middle aged women casually chatting over the namesake that had just been played; I did not quite follow it in detail but heard one of those say 'did not do justice' so I wonder where she directed the complaint to. It is highly possible that it is directed to a movie when it is based on a pre-produced material such as a novel, just as this movie was. But other comments, this time affirmative, followed.
"Wasn't it very different? I found it very moving."
"Yeah, it seems the movie was focused on the mother."
I could have cut in, after confessing that I had eavesdropped their conversation, and joined their quiet but certain rating of their own with conviction, just as I usually would do. But I did not this time. I was content to discover what they were talking about and why I was feeling homesick because of watching the movie set in India. I saw these people derooted but somehow remained together because of the presence of the mother figure there. And somewhere in myself was missing my own mother as the root of all, evil or good or both, that I have got.
I suspect the woman had been complaining about the press coverage and its underrating this film, or lacking the info of how differently and wonderfully this movie version would unfold.
I remember the novel the namesake was more about the protagonist's struggle to find his male identity as a minority, especially a descent of the traditional colony, in the racist society such as US and a succession of his failures in finding the right kind of mate for his own good. Of course it looked different in the movie rendition.
Lila dit ca (sans accents) and Kebab Connection: minority male's sexual politics
The titles above are movies that I saw recently. The former Lila dit ca (sans accents as said in the title) is French one. I am not sure if it was officially distributed in English speaking countries or will it be soon. There are a couple of points that I found noteworthy in it.
The movie is set in Marseille, the southern sea town in France where Chimo, a struggling Muslim French boy, lives with his mom whose husband has abondoned them for running away with a white French woman. Chimo's life changes when a new girl in town, Lila, a Polish girl, forcefully moves into his otherwise prosaic life and stirs it around by her provocative acts and almost violent flirting.
The funny thing that I found as soon as the movie unfolded was Lila's thick and black eye brows while she proudly and triumpahntly convinced Chimo how people had adored her for her being blonde and blue eyes. To me, this just struck me as a huge joke; this girl might look better in her natural color scheme, supposedly brown hair, so that her obviously latin, probably Italian, facial feature and eye brows fall into place.
Chimo is a typical minority teenage boy in every city in Euro where a ton of immigrants flock together and their second generation come of age; the instructor from school recognizes his talent as a writer and encourages him to go to Paris to attend a creative writing program in University with scholarship. The offer rather confuses him than gets him keep his hope up for future. He finds it easier to drift away in routine life of a series of trifle crimes and trouble with his fellow Muslim local kids. To be short, he is afraid of a change in his life, and tries to talking himself into sinking into the misery of being minority and abondoned than rising above all of them. Still, he starts writing a story that was inspired by Lila at the same time.
The rest of the story is about how she is tantalizing every boy in town by her being 'exotic minority' in the Arabic dominant neighbourhood; she is unusually white, Catholic and seemingly sexually liberated, which translates that she is sexually available and that makes her even more attractive and desireable in their sexually repressed collective psyche. Lila is living with her notorious aunt for fanatic behavior rooted in her Catholic faith and Virgin worship. This seems to involve some sexual abuse for Lila especially because of her fixation on Lila's vagina. This part is unfortunately inadequate in its description. She takes advantage of her being an official guardien of Lila and coerces her to cooperate to gratify her sexual needs, which is justified as religeous one, unless Lila does not mind being sent back to an orphanage. This intimates where Lila's handle of her own sexuality was coming from; she holds onto it as the wild card for her survial. She became&nbs p;immune to be treated as nothing but vagina, a virgin's or a slut's, does not matter, she knew she would be valued just for IT. In the same manner, Lila confuses Chimo by her compulisve lying habit mostly on her imaginary sexual acts committed with other men.
The trouble occurs due to her showy and extraordinary lie about sex that was Catholic driven. This is enogh to drive her pervert aunt cr azy partly for her jealousy.
Meanwhile, Chimo's buddy, the petty gang leader, who was also after Lila with no luck finds her worth punishing for her not paying any attention back to him.
It is a night in a brothel when he and Chimo finally confronts each other because of the competition over Lila. Chimo refuses to take part in getting a service from a prostitute when everone else was happily taken care of by her. This fuels a little bickering among all. The prostitute suspects Chimo to be homosexual and The Leader gets upsets for Chimo's refual for his hospitality, and he thinks the way Chimo is heppy without getting off might be attributed to his involvement with Lila. He feels that Chimo outsmarted or outsexed him while he is resorting to the commercial sex service. He feels as if he was insulted and he turns it to the prostitute. His verbal abuse, which is mostly focused on racial slur, starts, and ironically that is when what the cast was meant there becomes clear; his slander goes on even when they are back in the car on the way home. He goes on 'that spring role whore etc.' which indicates the prostite's ethnicity that was not obvious in visual infos when the scene offered was Asian;
she was thin and had her hair done in the Princess Lear style in Star Wars. She could pass as white, or something barely white and something else a bit for the rest. It seems that we should naturally assume that she was an Asian hooker, but the way it was coveyed was heavily depended on the public image and cultural vocabulary on Asian women as the group that contributed the influx in the sex industry all over the world rather than represented so only by visual element. In other words, this was only possible when the audience exercises a lot of imagination and his/her streotyped image on Asian women.
The Leader guy feels humiliated that he was content by the prostitute's hand (or her vagina) as opposed to any help from the blond and blue eyes' just as Chimo seems to. This is what the whole bickering was all about.
In a way, the whole movie accentuates how Lila is special and how meaningful it is to be infatuated by her along with the achievement of interracial relationship.
Wait up. There is nothing challenging about minority male's longing for sexual liaison with the majority female given that is the long recognized goal, physically and psycologically, overt or covert, minority's accomplishment, to compensate the undermined mentality caused by colonialism. Therefore, I feel perplexed to see this sort of minority mentality parading and justifying his desire to be unified with a white girl especially for her unexpected innocence and virginity even though it was presented twisted. Isn't is just same as his saying "yeah I just wanted to colonize her back in the manner they did us so that I can write the story backward as in Arabic ?"
There seems to be a novel this movie was based upon. The same title, the author Chimo. You decide how much autobiographical or not as the rule in the publishing industry goes recently. I do not feel like picking this up and bother to read.
Another movie that reminded me of the same theme was Kebab Connection. This is set in Hamberg, Germany. A turkish decsent kung fu film maker wannabe enpregnated his German girl friend. This slapstick with a twist of multiethnic society representati on is basically sustained by the plot of Kung Fu stereotype as if that is at least a free zone of political charge. In other words, I just wonder why people never question Asia as another area people live instead of the area that is the remotest, so they can get away with murder. This movie was about another minority male who wanted to mate with a majority girl at the cost of his prejudice and/or ignorance against Asia. So you watch and decide.
Manderlay
I do not want to hear that from this director. It is always the easiest solution to draw something theoretical and didactic out of what you do not have to take the consequence of. To be short, it is quite useless to see anything interesting or intelligent from someone who does not live the predicament. He, as usual, took a quick look at somewhere he never belonged to nor will he and cut a tiny slice of the essence of what seemed to be the core of America as saying here! This is the structure of their predicament, never forgot to add ‘how silly of them not to recognize this idea like mine so clever and so interesting that I cannot help but showing to these silly people. He almost managed to divert audience's minds from what is always urgent to something sophisticated, logically right but does not really help what is to be helped in the polical discourse in films where racism is still active and practiced or even capitalized, whether you like it or not. How easy could it be for a white Euro director who just passed by, ironically just like his heroine, US to pose a deep and free thinker, who actually would not be affected by the issue and forget once he was done with the production?
The movie is dealing with a remain of slavery that was supposed to be rid of by the time when it was set, 1930. A cross states traveler, the daughter of a gang family, caught the unlawful convention in a plantation and began running it by her new rules without any old convention, just to discover that the plantation was operated by Bla ck leaders of the plantation, who chose to stay slaves for a view based on that they were not ready to be released and seek their own ‘freedom’ out by themselves but deliberately hid that they were voluntarily remained there to anybody outside of a couple of ruling figures. People, once enslaved, are forever slaves, as far as these few clever black leaders in the plantation.
The movie unfolds rather a fable than any realistic or naturalistic movie we could usually find. All the sets it employs here are even less than what a movie can usually do without. So the whole scenes appear to be a theatric set that was filmed. I actually find the method clever and refreshing. If only I could get over this fundamental distrust for this filmmaker.
Chym-a did not go to White Castle
I did not get to apply for the contest, so I would not be happy to see what was settled anyway. Although I have no personal prejudice against a Black guy's dating white chicks, I might be put out a bit given the nature of thier historical fixation for them and justifying it no matter what they say. Besides, the girl he picked was cute, and I had to assume that she was picked for her safe looks rather than her rather dull statement of what the good she was proud of doing for Black folks. Oh, whatever, you cannot get your hope up too much because he is after all the Assimilated one as he claims. You cannot argue about it. I would not have made it on the day even if I got picked. (...interminable monologue...) However, how lame. You would be even more disappointed when you find out how uninteresting it seemed to be by 'she said, he said' about how it turned out in a vedeo they had for a while. When I serched for it to paste here, thouhg, it seemed to be totally gone. TOO BAD!!!
scences of a marriage
I went to Conneticut a day after Valentine's day with G to visit J and his family. He had had a lot to celebrate in his life such as his marriage, his baby who was born last summer and the new house the family moved into. To top it all off, my beloved G was a day past of a birthday boy; his birthday was V day. How handy it was to remember!
J used to live with us in Brooklyn before he married up in reverse of the conventional inter-class method to this psychiatrist, who pays the whole househould expenses in addition to J's tuition for his grad program in the local institution. How pleased I am to learn that he found the awsome and perfect mate that even brought his awatited son to the world, on top of putting bread and way some more on the table. Besides she cannot wait to have another baby. Jeese, I said secretly to myself when I discovered how wonderful their new house J's parents in law bought them, where J practically was idling away or babysitting when their live-in Polish nanny was not around. The rest of the times, he occasionally goes out for class that does not meet often or heads out to the local library that he has got his major income from, which obviously seemed very meager when it is compared to his wife's income as a MD.
J was no different than the time I knew him in my neighborhood;
he has got this habit that I actually do not know how to put, but it almost like a speech defect for mumbling that makes our communication always very difficult. In a way, it is very frustrating when you still try to understand him and be understood by him. In this travel, I remember only people who have given up communication can only accept him and the state we inevitably fall in. That is what people call friendship. I could say this behavioral problem was partly attribted to his long term alcoholism and drug abuse, but now that he is apart from either of them, I just assume that is his make up, MO, or chronicle state, which might be even another charm of him to women. I was reminded how he was popular among women even though he was a disastrous man to have around when any kind of commitment involved. Ironically, seeing his perfect MD wife being very nice and smitten bewildered me and made me question what possibly could be so wrong with this perfect MD who seemed to be not only so competent but also beautiful, too. Couldn't she recognize how bad this match was? J was almost like a criminal figure to people who knew him back then. It was just that his being 'bad' never discouraged people to like him. By the end of this trip, G helped me understand they were working well; it seems it takes a lot more than what I see to understand what people want when it comes to mating that even I myself tried so briefly, half jokingly but the rest, seriously, that did not outlast even for the time J's wife's pregnancy. J's wife's strikingly composed manner reminded me of how things could be different when you are away from the city life where you could get easily sucked up by a problem that comes one after another.
Now the only concern G and I still have is that J's peculiar fixation, or attraction I'd say, to 'youth' in general that we constantly observed.
When we had a tour in the gorgeous house to get a slice of the good and stable suburban atmosphere, J introduced a plain view of the backyard where we remotely faced another house in distance. I knew what he was implying just by saying, 'This is the window.'
Once he called G up in a total excitement to report what he could see from the window. He was almost agitated to describe how well he could see a teenage girl naked in her dressing or undressing moment off guard in her room.
Last Life in the Universe
This movie Last Life in the Universe (2003 by Pen-ek Ratanaruang) was way better than I had imagined; whenever I stepped in the local Blockbusters', the box caught my eyes. After I read the brief introduction on the back of the cover, however, I quickly got turned off given it was another mysterious Japanese gangster plot line with a 'cute Asian chick'. I absolutely would not have taken it up had it been for the library material as opposed to any checking out from DVD store or Netflix that I have been suffering for the current addiction for. What it turned out to be was such a delight that it was worth pursuing even with paying for it.
The bruising world and sexual politics is undertoned in this drama; a suicidal Japanese librarian Kenji meets a local girl, Noi. The comomn thing between two of them is that both of them recently lost their siblings; the Jap guy lost his gangster brother and Noi lost her sister by a car accident that hit her right in front of two of them, and that incident actually put them together.
While Kenji shelters in Noi's more than half abondoned and caotic house and cleans in return for the hospitality Noi offers to him, they develop a heartful relationship that is somewhere between frindship/family/love until Noi takes off for Japan, and the librarian faces the consequences of homicide scene he fled unattended in his cozy and isolated apartment.
Asano, the Japanese actor who acted Kenji, was convincing enough to manifest the complexity this role signifies; the power and undercurrent of ultra violence Japanese male embodies to Thai people's history and current politics where girls are entertain Japanese that constitutes mostly of sex tourists. The movie unfolds in the business that is specifically targeted to Japanese male by certain constume performance that is to immitate Japanese school girls' uniforms, and Noi's dead sister was one of those hostesses in the uniform.
Everybody knows that Thailand acqired its notoriety and a huge amount of profit out of the world biggest sex tourism at some point in last three decades, but not a lot of people know in the world who invested for the business, capitalized and profited the Thai sex industry; Japanese investors. So the relationship between local Thai and Japanese men are hookers, their dependents and their pimps. Asano's role was to show the unwilling participation and resistence to the visceral politics, and violence he repeatedly get involved even though he is the least wishing to, is the metaphor and reflection of the reality Japan has to play it hufe role of.
Although it might sound deplorable premise and connotation, this drama never succumbs to the common vocabulary or the cliched political struggle. What this movie manages to capture was beauty of people and fulfilling view on life if you know what to see and what to appreciate. The beauty in the despription of the local landscape and people opens audience's eyes to wonder how little politics, sociology and statistics could convey to outside of the community, and how distorted and underrepresented Thais are to people all over the world. The visceral political situation is never about the local people's lives but the distortion and miscommunication. You get the essence of the wonder only if you see this movie. The suble but the very articulate observation is achieved because the materials they deal with and they are really lucid about it. It would have never been the same it this drama was about the local and American, but only with Japanese people, this bitter sweet movie was achieved.
And the seemingly only 'cute and easy local chick' was the most dignified caracter in this movie; she was offering this man she could have hated/thrown herself at one time deal of reviving himself by showing a perspective in life that he never knew. She just saved this passer by without asking anything in return. She just did so as another life in the universe.
and I might go to White Castle, too
Well, what I am planning to submit one paragraph as below to win the White Castle Valentine date;
I taught local kids in D.C, surely African American, how to swim as a mentor and went to jail in NYC and spend a night with Black streetwalkers, some were teenegers, and offered a free, group and individual, consultation on how to manage their business and keep the profit to themselves as opposed to give it all up to their daddies.
Charlotte Sometimes
The movie Charlotte Sometimes (2003 by Eric Byler) that I had happened to catch turned out to be an unusual triumph and I am pleased by the unexpected dicovery of a new talent. This movie that explores the identity politics of Asian Americans in US is deep enough to make you think more than merely the youths' alienation, adjustment and diappointment in the mating season you quite often sumble into and walk out of in a theater. This work's unique subtlety that is yet logically well founded absolutely gives the characters life in that we audience are convinced to the point we all feel the raw pang each and every caracter suffers from although that is stated very little.
Eugenia something that I remembered to have begun seeing here and there recently such as in Mail Order Wife or Memoirs of Geisha seems to be establishing herself here with her signiture posture of the highly sexualized, desperate and cunning eager Asian beaver to the point that I get concerned if she would be unretreivably typecast due to her choice of roles that always seem to fall into the category of 'thorough and complete Asian stereotyped female. Ironically, this woman's portrayal of 'that kind of Asian babe' never fails to hit our collective pshyche for how convincinv she appears to be, which incorporate what&nbs p;An Asian woman is and what it means to be and see/have one in the US context. Therefore have to give her credit for embodying it and made it visible and so real insteaed of belittling her for succumbing to the premature typecast and/or not challenging itreduced roles. And of course this seems to be another subject the director wants to raise in a comparison with the opposite type of Darcy, who makes the whole peaceful community---two couples of Asian Americans---doomed. This almost plain woman sets fire in the whole set once the camera captures her presence, heat and breath. This actor, Jacquline Kim, leaves one electric image of a woman in the movie, and in your mind, for a while I bet.
What really impressed me was the director's well thought out logical development of the psychodrama, though quite understated, in a good way, and his observation of hatred each one carries around here in the story is so profound that we after all end up looking deep down inside of our own psyche. The director shows his deep observation on one's mind and experiments with all the hate, possibly rooted self hate and how it was internalized and nurtured/nurturing one's own life. The chemical composure ultimately sparks as the movie's brilliance. This is the point where the movie transcendents from mere a minimalistic movie and one of those youths' whose lives are marginalized or another 'behind the scene of your token and model minority' life. It is interesting so how their hate manifests itself and how they get sucked up by the mirroring self hate and wrong each other. This non sentimental observation is probably something that I found most astonishing in this director's view. One like Michael hates oneself without knowing so, another like Lori shows the utmost aversion to her sisterly competitor/intruder and tries desperately to defend her vain relationship with someone she does not really love or rather hates. She hates her boyfriend for he never gives what she wants; herself, and still fends the relationship for the prospect of getting to get married for security. Another like Darcy compulsively makes sure what her competitor/Lori/sister wants so that she can violate and rob her of it; that is the only way she can feel reasured and validated. And the last one like Justin feels like belonging to nethier of those worlds; the bonding of the isolated or the reaching the mainstream when he almost reaches only if he streches a bit more. He was not aware how he hates all including his dependent girlfriend until Darcy showed up in thier life.
Some reviewers insist that this is not about race as if they know what it is about, then, as if they believe it could be a compliment to assert that they did not see and hear that there was the undercurrent of hate and scared bodies that were all caused by the marginalization and the unsettled feelings, that all were struggling to be recognized as individuals and knew that they would never get to. This is about people's lives with the accents on how the they are living the race, how inseperable the big word can be. If a damn veiwer believes that he is complimenting that this is not about race at all, that means that he missed one major theme the director carefully crafted to argue in the film along with other points that way transcendent the racial issue. But the triunmp of the movie is that it manages to capture the moment the race issue transcendents and how; people transcendents when they see what is mirroring in others. They are the marginalized people who are trying to make some adjustment and peace in their lives and want to be individual but cannot in the context where they are perceived nothing more than Asians. They chosed and happend to get together looking for undo the burden of the race, and just see self hate and scars in the other they face. They see it where they the least want to see it. The big word/race/politics sneaks into their bedroom even if they do not want to deal with, but it does keep coming back to surface when supressed.
This director Byler released another work of his "Americanese" last year, which also deals with the issue of race, being biracial and what it means in US context. I would absolutely like to check it out.
Ugly Better
"Ugly Betty" seems like another national TV production that just capitalises 'minority'. It is just favoring the same old idea of "Better to be mocked than ignored." But the whole structure is, for it is in 21st century, sickening twice more. This enforces the conventional game rule of setting minority back as lesser beings, and fixes the protagonist to the point of reduction so that 'minorities' are at least registered to American psyche, as something to be rediculed, humiliated and still happy about it. This successfully shuts everybody up and leave them satisfied (except people like me).
The thing that I found very offensive is that character Betty is marginalized for being minority and a woman, who somehow is thought to be defected for her below par looks, and the sitcom not only justifies it but also benefits of it totally at her cost. The repulsive point here is that the heroine's officially deemed defect in her looks, which is premised to be a huge minus in her life in the racist US society, is accentuated by her being Latina. Could this be OK? People would not have passed anything Ugly Such as a show had it been about a white woman. In the context of this production, officially calling someone ugly is just plausible when it is about a marginalized minority woman in the white dominant environment; Betty accidentally landed on the job that is fashion related. So the story is designed to mock this ugly girl's deplomatic skill&nbs p;without any of her visual appeal. People are thrilled to see this because in TV representation in general, a woman w/o her entitlement nor prevelidge is hard to find nowadays. Besides it is regarded OK to laugh at Hispanics officially. To me, this can't be funny. Just overt and vulgar racism. This phenomenon translates; white women no longer can be portrayed to be ugly enough for anything because of all other women, of color, are lined up dying to be represented and convince the audience that 'they are off the main stream, so you validate them in any way you want', in other words, minority women are officially treated as 'undesirable sex, but they can still be sex objects'. The US showbiz handles races as some lazy standard of their reduced esthetics, and the value attached to white people saves white women from being considered to be ugly even when they are really so. The rest of them, no matter beautiful they happened to be, are measured with some points deducted already because they are minorities. On top of it, minorities do not exist in TV world, as if showing their images violates the broadcasting code, until audiences say OK, this one can be on TV even though she is dark. To get the OK sign, minorities have to play the assigned roles and accentuate and reinvent their preconceived images just as the saying goes in the prostitution industry, "Dark meat has to work harder (to make up the deducted points); they have to live up to what are already stereotyped and reactivate to get OK sign from the mainstream media. Because without it, you are invisible in the showbiz and the society. When you are invisible, you can't get any part in the biz/society, which jeopadizes your survival. That is how actors do not think twice acting a humiliating part when they got it.
The predicament of the production "Ugly Betty" is that it is originally made in Colombia. That the caracter's hit twice, first to be 'ugly', second to be Latina, is a twist only US version has. My stomach turned when I heard the original colombian creater nonchalantly say in BBC interview "I understand that people can more relate to a less than perfect looking woman." This guy was making the sitcom at the cost of a woman, and laughing at her as well. He does not care, because he does not realize that he is humiliating a fellow hispanic and benefit at her cost. I would have organized a petition to stop the broadcasting if I were Latina. However, real Hispanics might be happier, than being dismissed and ignored forever, to see themselves represented there even if it is not in a favorable manner.
The lead role of the show Ugly Betty is actually charming. But what is premised in the show makes audience regard her as the officially ugly figure. What is playing the role of authorizing the esthetic standard and sorting who is meeting it and who is not is the racial destinction anybody can see istead of real esthetics that would take personal preference and plus alfa.
Unfortunately the phenomenon of this ugly celebration of ugly betty is just another consequence of the cultural compliance of Hispanics as well their disregard of women's rights, and imposition of male value on the audience. This is only a very likely scenario of institutional racism.
And the original creater stated how risky it was to cast a non beauty for a lead role. Wow, visual stimulus only communicates when people cannot think or understand anything more than what they see. But do people in 21st centyry have to be this moronic and reduced? This translates that to their idea, it is already a fresh theme if you bring a non beauty and depict how she lives without benefitting anything women should. It is as if they are entitled to mock and make fun of a woman when she does not meet the requirement; beauty and pleasing men. I was appalled to learn how backward this creater's view on TV production was. But that was where the whole idea came from, and ironically accepted in a place like US where everthing is over the limit of PC's thought police system. But it is better than seeing minorities being entertained by having their self images humiliated. At least don't count me in accepting this gross show. Accidentally the title souded like Ugly Better when I was listening to the translator's accented English in the BBC interview, which accidentally captured the whole essence of the show; better to be ugly and made fun of than being pushed out of the border. This is what the visceral politics of what US and Latin American power struggle drew out. Under the threat, people do not remember what is the humiliation they should not take and what is the right kind of represention. How easy, and reduced, the cross cultural understanding could be.