Reactionary Visions -- Review of "The Dark Knight Rises"

I have been apprised of the subtext in last year’s The Dark Knight Rises. This is the final movie in the Batman trilogy directed by Christopher Nolan, and its premiere was widely anticipated. As we well know, Nolan is a critically-acclaimed director who revived a flagging franchise, and infused it with a darker edge, concentrating more on the psychic dimensions of the drama in play, but also combining it with vigorous action sequences. The subtext, referencing as it does the Occupy Wall Street protests and other current social movements, was a new element, one that made the movie more compelling because, as a dark fantasy, it seemed to respond to processes at play in our country. That it read as politically conservative response should not strike one as a surprise, given the underlying thematic nucleus of the story that is predicated on the idea of vigilante justice.

The Batman character was not a particular favorite of mine when I was a young man. Perhaps because of the camp factor that came with the popular 60s series, it seemed to lack a true ominous quality, one that it would have been natural to associate with this character. At the time, I remember being infatuated by superhero comics, and I enjoyed the drama that was portrayed in the lives of figures such as Spiderman or the Fantastic Four. They were fallible characters, ones who struggled with their daily lives, with Peter Parker in particular struggling economically, badgered and bullied by the irascible publisher James Jameson. The Fantastic Four, on the other hand, was a family always about to fall apart, with a subtext of sexual desire that was at once palpable but never truly given expression.

The first Batman movie seemed to me at the time to represent a vindication of the Batman character. Timothy Burton gave it a dark edge, and while there were many naysayers in the beginning, Michael Keaton captured the tortured quality of Bruce Wayne, the wealthy billionaire traumatized by the murder so many years ago of his parents. He was defined by this loss, by this rage that could not be satisfied, by this idea that he was alone, and was compelled to do whatever it took to recuperate a sense of justice that seemed outside of his reach. Is this how all victims of horrible crimes feel? Is there no recuperating what has been lost?

 

Of course, by then, the Frank Miller graphic novel, the Return of the Dark Knight, had also permeated popular consciousness. Frank Miller uses broad brushstrokes to elaborate his pageant, one in which it is first necessary to pass judgment on all the failings of contemporary society. The work was very crude, the news media seemed to revel in this spectacle of a society in decline, and the ordinary people were either too timorous to resist, or seemed, at worst, apathetic and thoroughly disengaged. It was a dark view of society, but painted, once again, in broad brushstrokes, where gladiators fought in the rain at night to settle the fate of society, and where no one escaped moral judgment.  The film franchise seemed to share in this dark vision, at least for a time, but then became too formulaic, too settled in a certain campy quality that made it seem, ultimately, to assume the contours of an empty costume epic. The nadir, perhaps, was the Batman and Robin movie.

Well, along came Christopher Nolan to revive the character, rebooting it and paving the way for other franchises to undergo a similar process of re-imagining. It hasn’t always been successful, one might add, if we may take the example of the Superman movie that has not performed according to plan after its release in the spring of 2013. Other franchises continue on their way, nonetheless, because so much of Hollywood is predicated on the formulaic, on the supposedly “sure” thing, and not on taking artistic risks or investing in movies that deal with complex psychological motives, with true human drama, with passions that are enflamed and harbored, with witty and dynamic interplay between characters, and with style and experimentation. The formula is king, especially when it comes to blockbuster movies.

I didn’t see the last Christopher Nolan film when it was released in the theaters last year, mainly because of the tragic events that accompanied its debut in a movie theater in Colorado. As we recall, an individual by the name of James Holmes, a graduate student who had been struggling of late, was seemingly inspired by the Joker character (played unforgettably by Heath Ledger in the previous film), and who on July 20, 2012, took several guns into a movie theater, killing 12 and injuring 58 people. It was a terrible event, and seemed to invest the film with a certain dark energy that certainly repelled me, and made me feel sorry for those who had invested so much of their time anticipating this movie. Which is not to say that I only want to see happy fables, but in this case, the film seemed almost to confirm my intuition that this character, from the very beginning, illustrated that there are dark and destructive energies that are harbored by all of us, and that we are all morally suspect. We can all be similarly dehumanized.

After finally seeing the film on video, it wasn’t this dark moral subtext that most disturbed me. It was the politically explicit text, in which, once again, we have outsized characters who personalize this inner struggle that we all have. Bruce Wayne has retired after the events of the previous film, ones that saw the murder of a heroic figure turned evil, Harvey Dent, and his girlfriend, Mary Jane.  Rather than excise the memory of his childhood trauma, he has been forced to relive it once again, in the bitter murder of two characters who, as I suppose he would have been forced to recognize, stood in for his mother and father who, once again, he couldn’t save. But what we have in this movie is an explicit allusion to the conflicts that divide our own society, especially in the wake of the meltdown of our financial institutions in 2008. We have a society waging a bitter war, but with itself, one divided into haves and have-nots, ready for a revolution.

There is no moral distinction between the two sides. It is all about giving free reign to their predatory instincts, for greed and manipulation and corruption on the part of Wall Street and the institutional actors who buy into this system, but also, on the thirst for vengeance on the part of those who feel powerless. We have a society that is also smeared with very broad brushstrokes, with amoral characters who seem to have little sense of moral restraint, and who are complicit in their dehumanization. By humanization, of course, I am referring to the capacity for feeling empathy, for understanding the suffering of others, for being capable of exercising restraint. In this case, Bane (another ruthless cartoon villain who serves as the spokesperson for the underclass) seems to be driven by an insatiable lust for power that belies his seeming defense of the underclass and their grievances against the system.

But what disturbs me about the film is that there seems to be little faith in the idea of institutional justice. As with the formative Batman mythos, we have individuals who are brutalized by acts of injustice, and who are somehow justified in their need to pursue a balance (i.e. accountability) by their own solitary action, without the capacity for moral oversight. Justice would seem to be an individual goal, rather than a social goal, one to be guaranteed only by the action of enlightened individuals. Who watches over the Batman? Who will restrain the vigilante and guard against excess, in this situation that seems to be characterized by excess all around?

When Bane takes over Gotham City, he does so with the threat of setting of a devastating nuclear explosion. In the ensuing drama, we are supposedly treated to a vision of what might happen if the marginal sectors of society, the downtrodden poor, those who have lost their jobs and been downsized, those who affirm that there is a class war and are excoriated by the hosts of conservative talk radio programs, might achieve if they obtained power. The vision is not positive. We are treated once again to a demoralizing recapitulation of the French revolution, to the reign of terror, to second-rate Robespierres doling out inhuman justice, to human appetite unleashed in a paroxysm of greed and lust that is every bit the equivalent to that seen in the tycoons of Wall Street. It is a cartoonish vision, and it is deeply reactionary, in my point of view.

That is why I saw this film as deeply disappointing from an ideological standpoint. The action sequences are thrilling, as they always have been in this Nolan reboot of the Batman franchise, and the sense of mystery and suspense has been engaging, even if, as always in these thrillers, the finale always seems to revolve around a race for time, with the final seconds always ticking away. (I could do without this formula. For once, could the conflict be resolves with an hour to spare, or fifteen minutes, and not with the clock on explosive timers counting down the last few seconds? I know these are meant to get our adrenaline pumping, but all I can think as I watch them is that I have seen this too many times before, and I am tired of these frenetic endings.) Bruce Wayne is played with admirable intensity once again by Bale, although the Catwoman never does quite convince me that she is anything other than a pretty actress.

It is dreary, though, to think about the ideological underpinnings of this film, and to see the tribunals of people’s justice sentencing defendants to cruel deaths, as if the French Terror or the Stalinist purges were the only models for people’s justice. It is a deeply reactionary vision, to say that there is no alternative to the depredations of Wall Street tycoons and to the machinations of self-centered tycoons, to moralists who would seek to impose their own strict fundamentalism on society. It seems to be that in these films, even collective action is suspect, and human society as well as the individual are equally morally corrupt. A depressing vision, and one that rings false, for in the end, it is a debilitating vision that leaves us all passive, waiting for Batman.

 

 

Eternal Observer -- ORomero (c) 2013
Copyrights ORomero 2013
 

Review of "The Hobbit" -- Been there, done that

 

Well, it seems as if, eventually, we all make the trip there and back again. However much we may like to believe that we never retrace our steps, and that we are on a constant march forward, we find ourselves going back, to revisit those places we discovered when we were young, maybe at part of that instinct that guides salmon to return to their spawning grounds after a lifetime in the ocean, or us adults to relive our childhood years. In this case my return path led me to revisit once again J.R.R. Tolkein’s novel The Hobbit, a project that was naturally brought to a finish after much wrangling and acrimony involving Peter Jackson and a host of studios. That it was going to be made was never in doubt; it is part of a franchise, and Hollywood has proved its métier precisely by taking advantage of formulas and works that can be spun into sequels and extended series. Which goes to say, I am not entirely cynical about this film, since the book was part of my formative experiences as a child, but I was not particularly hopeful about this film.

I don’t know why I didn’t rush out and view the film when it was first released over six months ago in the theaters. Perhaps I was a little reluctant, like Bilbo Baggins, and saw this as a bloated expansion of what was meant to be a reasonably compact fairy tale, one with a happy ending and with a rite of passage that was meant to be affirming. Fairy tales are very popular, after all, and they appeal to something deep inside of us. If there is a specific lesson to be learned after seeing this film, I can’t seem to recall it, other than to be careful not to expect too much in the way of subtlety. Cinema can provide magic moments, but it also leaves much to be desired at times with regards to the power of suggestion, and in the era of CGI and 3D, it seems as if filmmakers nowadays don't want to leave anything to the imagination. I haven't changed my opinion that when Hollywood undertakes a blockbuster project consisting of a film adaption of a cherished book, it is almost always a disappointment.  Not always, but usually so. Just look at the track record with films made from Phillip K. Dick films (not including, of course, the spectacular Bladerunner).

It certainly helped that I saw the film on video and not in a movie theater. It seemed more less stressful that way, with less of the discomfort of having to put up with a group of strangers with unusual and annoying personality traits, who make demands on your patience, a la the dwarves who are guided to Bilbo Baggins' hobbit hole. The bands of rowdy mini orcs and trolls (and trollettes) saunter into a movie theater and jostle about before huddling in one or the other corner, with feet resting on the seats in front of them, jeering and conversing loudly, issuing cat calls, texting and sending the wayward light from their screens in your direction, slurping loudly on their drinks and rustling with packages of candy that are inevitable left half-consumed on the floors, ending up inevitable on your soles of your unsuspecting feet. Also, need I add that it is a pleasure not to have to endure what seems like thirty minutes of loud previews for upcoming films, with scenes culled from the most frantic and dramatic moments, highlighting crashes, shouting, intense emotions, and jangling noises, nor to have to endure frigid temperatures like those of a winter in the Andes?

Now, with that said, this film seemed hardly an innovate film. It has much the same look and feel of the first trilogy, and of course, this was precisely the point, for the first three films constitute a formula that was to be duplicated. There was no rebooting the look and feel of the Lord of the Rings. It was, instead, a mirror image, not only in terms of cinematography and film and in the reappearance of familiar characters, but also, in the storyline or chronotopes (to use a concept culled from the Russian critic Mikhail Bakhtin) to suggest familiar plotline situations, familiar choices, familiar points of departure. They recur again and again, in a way that seems this to be a thinly disguised reworking of the more extended Lord of the Rings, although we know that the latter was, of course, much different in tone. The Hobbit, upon having read it, was meant to have a lighter mood, and I viewed it as more in the lines of a rollicking jaunt, with much less of the religious symbolism of the latter work. It was an adventure tale, situated in a place that seemed familiar but also exotic, a tale along the lines of Marco Polo's trip to the East, or the accounts of the European explorers such as Mungo Parks who explored Africa several hundred years ago, and whose narratives were amply celebrated. And what was most becoming was that Bilbo was meant to be us, the reluctant adventurer, accompanying a band of strange dwarves, embarking on a dangerous journey, the provincial bourgeois sensibility being taken for a "walk on the wild side".

We are, of course, treated first to a preamble that sets up the story of why this quest is undertaken. Much like the recounting of history that is seen in the Lord of the Rings, which narrates the alliances of different races against the common threat that is represented by a rebel who, like Lucifer, is imbued with a certain dark majesty, we are treated to a recounting of the history of the golden kingdom of the dwarves, located at the foot of the Lonely Mountain, a fabulously prosperous kingdom that was carved out not by slaves, as was the case with much mining activity carried out in European history, and repeated in the slavery imposed on the Indians in the Americas, but in relative harmony. The kingdom was a happy place, and was ably led by the king, one who grew perhaps too fond of his wealth, inviting the arrival of usurpers. This usurper takes the majestic form of the dragon Smaug, who sweeps in and kills a vast number of inhabitants, before crashing through the gates and invading the inner domain. Have we not seen this before? Is it not a familiar parable, that of the wealthy kingdom that invites plunder by outsiders?

We recapitulate familiar episodes of human history, and in this case, usurpation leads of course to exodus. The dwarves lose their kingdom and are forced to regroup and find a new homeland, unable to rescue what was lost, most notably, the heart of the mountain, the famed Arkenstone that was dropped in the frantic attempt to escape. What does the Arkenstone represent? Is it rather too obvious? Is it a symbol perhaps for something transcendent, for the ideal of art, for the connection with the earth and its vital processes, for that which is most unique and that seduces all who encounter it? It seems to be a talisman almost as powerful as the ring of the latter trilogy, the ring that bound all the others together, "One ring to rule them all". it is the idea, perhaps, of dominion, a crown that symbolizes of course power, and that proved as well irresistible to the dragon. (I think the dragon is also a symbol, and it suggests the naked ambition and blood lust that we all harbor, and that is given release from time to time in circumstances that prove utterly destructive. Just look at the destruction it wrought on Boromir in the Lord of the Rings.) The dwarves are forced to leave, and in the midst of their wanderings will wind up in Moria, where they will do battle with another race that is portrayed as usurpers, the orcs, led by the giant White Orc. (Scale is always a factor here, and we always have the recapitulation of the biblical episode of David and Goliath, where the humble, small and virtuous will always commit deeds of great bravery.)

The movie seems very familiar, like a well-worn glove that cribs as much from the Old Testament as from Homer, from the fairytales of the brothers Grimm (we don't seem to have any witches here, although there are plenty of trolls and giants and magical creatures) to the formulas of Hollywood that emphasize male bonding. The young Bilbo is played charmingly by Martin Freeman, and he captures just the right note of earnestness as well as longing that we would associate with a character who is quite a domesticated chap, the quite sort from the suburbs who lives in a two story house amidst more kitsch than you can imagine, who thinks always about what is most proper, and about what the neighbors will say, and about eating tea and biscuits at precisely the right hour. In other words, the prosperous bourgeois fellow of independent means who doesn't have to work, doesn't have to get into his car every day and drive off to downtown, counting the days until he can retire, certainly not having to worry about how to pay next month's rent or how to feed himself, if we can judge by the very generously stocked larder that is able to feed a pack of twelve voracious dwarves. 

The sets, once again, are familiar, as is the recreation of a prosperous agricultural valley, one far removed from the industrial energies that will so dramatically transform the landscape in our own era, or the great excavations and contamination that inevitably pollute the landscape wherever mining is involved, except in the case of the dwarves who, quite evidently, are able to dig deep into the mountains without having them cave in like a soufflé, and apparently, don't use mercury or other substances to extract gold, but are able to mine without leaving a trace of pollutants to affect the surrounding villages that live in a pristine state. It is capitalism without despoliation, a form of capitalism that doesn't exist, for if there is one thing that we know, nature always suffers when we enter in periods of prolonged industrial development. Just look at the rustbelt in England, in Eastern Europe, in the Americas, and currently, in China and other developing countries, where the lakes are being progressively polluted and the trees are being cut down at an alarming rate, and where coal plants darken the skies with billowing smoke. Are the dwarves that elusive practitioner that we haven't been able to find, the capitalist that not only doesn't pollute, but also doesn't cheat and steal and aggregate into monopolies in order to form corporations that are "too big to fail"? It is, of course, a fantasy, for there is no such thing, and we aren't meant to reflect on this, except for the fact that a few of us see films such as these and others (for example, the Harry Potter films), and wonder, isn't magic a way of harvesting productive power but without exploitation, in order to whitewash capitalism? It would be nice to believe that work could be carried out so efficiently and instantaneously in an Eden such as Middle Earth, instead of reflecting that somewhere, somehow, feudal serfs are invisibly performing that work.

Given that we are dealing with a new trilogy, the story has been expanded and modified. Besides the preamble that explains the loss of the dwarf kingdom, one in which greed plays a part, we have expanded roles for certain characters, as well as melodramatic elements. The screenplay, after all, was prepared by the original triumvirate that worked on the Lord of the Rings, after all, and it includes as well a certain dose of moralizing, such as Gandalf's admonition that a warrior is one who not only knows how to wield a weapon, but when to stay it, a reference, of course, to Gollum (the movie makes it very obvious).

Among the expanded roles we may cite the example of the White Orc, a new antagonist that to my recollection hadn't had such a prominent role in the original book. This orc towers above the others (many leaders to, from Gandalf to the Elves to the other King of the Dwarves), and his villainy is painted in very broad strokes. (At times, subtlety is sorely lacking.) We also have what we may only term as cameos, which is the case with the wizard Radagast, one of the five wizards who are known to dwell in Middle Earth and who is himself seen as belonging to the second tier of his class. (Is he the Bilbo Baggins of the wizard class?). And, I’m sure, in order to fill out the remaining two films which will almost certainly each occupy two and half hour films, I’m sure there will be several embellishments to come.

The film is paced according to the rhythm of a blockbuster film, with many battle sequences that feature breathtaking escapes and great chase sequences, as well as fights in which, almost always, the orcs end up being scythed down almost naturally. it is a rollercoaster ride, and because we know that all the band will survive, there is little sense of true danger. The story has been told, after all, in the book, and it lacks much of the visceral edge of a true Grimm fairy tale where protagonists are, indeed, eaten, or are subject to great violence.

An example would be the episode with the orcs in the mountaintop. After a blistering night of rain in which they saw the storm gods pummel each other like Rockem Sockem robots (a majestic spectacle that nonetheless featured great boulders being thrown from one side to the other, boxing sequences and cliffs crumbling like some vast bring arena, making for another sequence of narrow escapes as the intrepid band was forced to dodge the debris and jump from one ledge to the next), they seem to find what is an all-too-convenient refuge in a cave.

(Rockem-Sockem robots)

Of course it is a trap, and what we have as a consequence is the passage of the group through what we may term is a sort of orc-land ride of attraction, courtesy of Middle Earth theme park. The dwarves (and the hobbit) race from one edge to the next, on flimsy bridges that couldn't have been much good for anyone because they are very poorly constructed (I know, I know, orcs aren't dwarves when it comes to scaffolds and bridges), and we have a nonstop flight in which the swarms threaten but never manage to overpower the band. We aren't talking about verisimilitude, of course, but this strains belief, nonetheless.

This is almost like a reunion film, after all. We have once again the elves at Rivendell, but if in the book they come across as fey, singing silly songs, we have here once again the impossibly solemn elves of the first trilogy, ethereal but certainly not fey. We have Lady Galadriel, played by Kate Blanchet, and of course Lord Elrond, with Hugo Weaving reprising his role. And, we have Saruman, the great wizard who has been compromised but hasn't been detected yet, stern, foreboding, reassuring, but also, of course, duplicitous. Gollum/Sméagol, of course, also reappears as character, of course, because he appeared in the original book, and he is one of the most compelling characters of all. Tragic, alternately good-willed and evil, split in two, unable to reconcile, with Gollum (the evil twin) almost always ascendant. Once again, CGI fails to give him a sense of weight and density, and it seems almost as if he could float upwards, if he jumped hard enough. (Can such a thin and weightless creature really overpower and kill an orc, even one as wounded as the one who lands at his feet?)

The more I think about it, the more I think that this fantasy work by J.R.R. Tolkein is a parable, once again, of the situation that prevailed in Europe before and after World War Two. It is the fantasy version of what George Orwell was to undertake in his novel 1984, for it is a story of the rise of fascism and, then, the subsequent threat posed by the East, a threat that perhaps was always evident in the imagination of western European countries. In the east are to be found the vast expanses of desolate territory, and from the east came the tribes that always announced their presence suddenly, ferocious tribes of warriors that sacked Rome and pillaged what had grown to be the peaceful countries of the West, in the narrative that has been written from the point of view of these countries. There seems to be a sense of ideological conflicts at play, where civilized and sedentary communities are under threat, where the "nameless" and shadowy threats take the form of ghosts or, to use a more apt expression, "spectres", if we may recall the words of the Communist Manifest of 1848. There are spectres aplenty in these works, and it seems all the more compelling to view it as an allegory of the proletariat that is exploited by a brutalizing economic system and is bent on displacing and eliminating a pastoral mode of existence that seems destined not to survive. Is Smaug, then, not the prototype of the financial raider who swoops in and takes over vast quantities of capital, hoarding it, and leaving destruction in his/its wake?


I’ve often thought that the portrayal of the rude and violent temperament of the orcs was a not too subtle allusion to colonial peoples. After all, I am all too familiar with the view held of Mexicans and Mexican-Americans who are lumped in as part of that vanguard of invading forces that threatens, supposedly, the American way of life. This is certainly one of the messages that is promoted by anti-immigrant groups that decry the supposed "dangers" of multiculturalism, as well as the social conservatives who fear demography, and who disguise this fear by channeling their energies into anti-abortion movements. (The total fertility rate in western countries is below replacement level, and minority populations have a higher rate than that of groups of European or Caucasion extraction, so that the minority population is continually growing in countries such as the United States.) I view the militancy of groups such as the Minutemen, that group of vigilantes that sprang up about ten years ago and proclaimed the need to stop the invasion by "illegals", and whose main actions seem to consist of act of intimidation and false imprisonment along the US/Mexican border. Are they like the inhabitants of the kingdom of Gondor, who look our to Mordor (Mexico?), and decry the threatening tide that will overwhelm them with fertile orcs and other suspect races?

In the United States we have intellectuals such as Samuel Huntington, who wrote about a class of civilizations in our country, and of supposed incompatible groups that would never be assimilated, as well as, supposedly, being the first to detect the threat posed by Islamic fundamentalism. We have also figures such as Victor Davis Hanson, a classics professor who was held in high esteem by the former vice President Dick Cheney, and who in his books affirms the validity of this idea of incompatible races and civilizations, in sordid books such as Mexifornia, in which he laments the passing of the California he once knew. (How can such a figure, which such a divisive and repugnant ideology, be celebrated by the political leaders of our country, and especially, by a Vice President?)
This distrust of the outside world and this metaphorical circling of the wagons has become an article of faith for the so-called Tea-Party movement, a disparate collection of groups that are united by their opposition to supposed government overreach, by their resistance to regulation, by their skepticism of global warming, by their opposition to minority groups and their struggle for inclusion and opportunity, and by any threat that they see to their way of live that revolves around a penchant to blame others for the ills of society, and to agree with the vitriol that is spouted by extremist right-wing shills on AM talk radio, chief among them, the performance artist, Rush Limbaugh, who can so easily weave a spell of subjugation to those who hold power. Rush is who I imagine when I think of a real-life Saruman, able to lie and deceive, crafty, with no true master but his own self-interest.

 

(Dick Cheny, grimacing as always)

 

(Rush Limbaush, pontificating as always)

 

(The rise of the recalcitrant Tea Party movement that "hates government")

 

(The Tea Partiers aren't particularly welcoming, tolerant or even logical)

It is hard to escape this political dimension when rereading or, in this case, viewing the film version of J.R.R. Tolkein’s works. I know that Fantasy isn’t necessarily innocent, and that it presents in disguised form conflicts that are present in our society. Even in a blockbuster movie such as this one, it is hard not to feel a little sympathy for the orcs whose heads are so assuredly and inevitably hewn off their shoulders by this small band comprised of dwarves, a hobbit and a wizard. What is the story of the orcs, and do they have families? I know they must have a society, and they also have humor, and they also can be witty, but is it not the case that, as was insinuated in the original trilogy, that the orcs are merely tortured elves? Are the not the fantasy equivalent of the Morlocks, those bestial creatures that are a product of social forces, of the pressures brought to bear on them by industrial labor? Are there any female orcs, do they form attachment to mates, or have they been thoroughly bestialized? (Yes, yes, I know, they look grotesque, and who would want to identify with them, but that is one of the ideological tools wielded by groups in power, the ability to determine how the marginal and "other" groups can be portrayed, and esthetics plays perhaps an even greater role than ideology.) Yes, yes, I know that I am supposed to identify with Bilbo, but in all reality, it would be too easy to imagine a Bilbo in the modern American landscape, living in segregated communities far from the urban centers, voting for Republican extremists and calling into AM talk radio in the United States to proudly proclaim "ditto and mega-dittos" (ditto means "I agree with you and wish to reaffirm what you have said") with Rush Limbaugh and the other purveyors of extremist messages, with the Michael Savages and Sean Hannitys and the many others of their ilk, who lash out against those who lack protection or opportunity in this country. (Remember, when the dwarves in the film are looking for a new homeland, they find that the orcs had already taken refuge in the mines of Moria, but yet they feel perfectly justified in their attempt to wrench it away from them by conquest, almost, one could say, like what happened with the Southwest portion of the United States.)

To pick up on a theme brought up in the film, wherein it is asserted that the wish to recuperate a homeland is what dignifies the quest of the dwarves, as if the accumulated gold had no bearing in the matter nor the wish for revenge, don’t we all have homes we want to recuperate? I guess I am less at peace with the Hobbit than I used to be. 

(Who is the true invader?)

 

 

Eternal Observer -- ORomero (c) 2013
Copyrights ORomero 2013

A Crashing Class System and Imperalist Nostalgia

I’ve become a great fan of the British television series Downton Abbey. It airs on PBS here in the United States, typically during the winter months, and has recently concluded its third season. It is a period piece set during the first few decades of the twentieth century, and it follows the story of the aristocratic Crawley family, including the entire household staff. I am attracted to these period pieces because they remind me of the 19^th century historical novels that I found so enticing, depicting as much the drama of individual stories as they intersect (and here, we have a constant interplay between the aristocratic characters and their servant staff) as they do the times and their society. I remember the criticism directed at works of this nature that failed to capture the full picture, and the sociologist Renato Rosaldo had referred to a work such as “The English Patient” (a movie set roughly during this same period) as works that appealed to an “imperialist nostalgia”. Perhaps there might be an element of this, but I would like to think that, as a Mexican-American, one who grew up in working-class circumstances and considers his politics progressive, I harbor no such nostalgia. There are, however, repeated references to Britain’s colonial administration, and to the ways in which industrial development has transformed the society. These changes help open up new dramatic possibilities that are exploited in this series.

Nonetheless, this series is what I may term a guilty pleasure. I don’t always feel comfortable admitting (I almost wrote “confessing”) my enjoyment for this series, even if, at times, I do feel a measure of irritation for the sense of entitlement and the paternalism of many of the aristocratic characters. Their diction is clipped precisely, and they are always conscious of maintaining appearances, even if they are guilty of many of the same foibles as their servant classes. The household, nonetheless, is impressively stately, and the luxuriousness of the estate as well as the sense of order are, at once, constricting as well as comforting. The head of the household, Robert, Earl of Grantham, is a fuzzy sort of patriarch, one who is earnest but without a hard, puritanical edge.  And of course, the dowager Countess of Grantham, played by Maggie Smith, is a pleasure to watch, with a tart edge that is at once infuriating but also comical and, surprisingly, warm-hearted.  The appeal of this series seems to lie not only in the evocation of a lost age, one that would be dramatically transformed as Britain entered into its post-colonial senescence, but also, in the interplay between the two halves of this household.

(Servants, Downton Abbey)

There are the lords of the estate, who socialize endlessly and who seem infinitely removed from the real-world concerns of earning a living (as the dowager Countess huffily reveals as she questions this bourgeois idea of a “weekend”, leisure being part of a work-day routine that is foreign to those of her class) and of the servant classes who labor under them. This class, comprised of many memorable characters, lives in what may be taken to be a netherworld, a place of shadows. They never appear in the social registers of the newspapers, and they are confined to meager lives of economic dependence, one step above laborers and factory workers but nonetheless a dependent class.  The servants have their own hierarchy, one that mimics in ironic fashion the one that is evident above, and there is also a strict sense of propriety and limits that keeps people within their spaces. They occupy the lower depths of the house, in spartan surroundings, and in a type of gloom that contrasts strongly with the tinkle and sparkle of chandeliers and sparkling surfaces above.  And yet, for all that, there is a vitality that contrasts with the surface veneer of calmness and glacial etiquette above.

 

There are many storylines in this series that confirms itself along the lines of a soap opera. As someone who watched many telenovelas (as soap operas are known in the Spanish-speaking world) with my parents as a child, I recognize these structural features. It is no surprise: there is an emphasis on melodramatic storylines, those predicated on sudden turns of fortune and discovery, on the arrival of mysterious characters, on salacious plotlines that emphasize affairs, abortions, and forbidden love, on households that harbor secrets and that are riven by jealousy and ambition, on pathetic scenes that emphasize suffering (witness the scene in which Lady Sybil dies after giving birth, in heartrending fashion, as her family stands around helpless) as well as celebration, and on the exaggerated roles assigned to various characters that plainly may be divided between those of villains (note the O’Brian character, played chillingly by Siobhan Finneran) and the heroic (Mathew Crawley, the heir apparent who is tragically killed at the end of the third season). There could hardly be less of a parallel with a Mexican telenova such as “Los ricos también lloran” (1979), which details the suffering of a poor young woman who joins what could be the anologue of the Crawley household, one belonging to the Mexican upper classes.

(Los ricos también lloran)

But all this serves as a preface to my review of the movie “Gosford Park” which inspired the series Downton Abbey. It is a murder mystery, directed by Robert Altman and released in 2001. It could hardly have been a more tumultuous year, for it also reflects a period of tumultuous change. It is set in a period slightly after the television series, and there is a sense of foreboding since we can’t help but reflect on the events that were to follow in Europe. Similarly, 2001 provided a shock to the Western world and, specifically, to the imperial ambitious of the United States, as it weathered the terrorist attacks of 911. It opened up much soul-searching in this country, and it coincided with the perception of diminished circumstances, of hidden threats that were being revealed, and of a need to counter the triumphalism that accompanied the era of globalism and the end of the Cold War just a decade earlier.

This movie is set in another aristocratic British household, that of Sir William McCordle, during a weekend spend with many invited guests. Not having seen the movie when it was first released in 2001, and only seeing it after having watched three seasons of Downtown Abbey, the similarity is very evident. Both the series and the movie were written by the same person, Julian Fellowes, and it presents a household that is riven by conflicts and dissension, all of which are fairly well disguised but that bubble to the surface. The actual murder mystery seems like an appendage to the film, for what ultimately seems more compelling to a viewer such as myself is to follow not only the workings of this household, and the parallel society that is created downstairs by the servant classes, but also, to see how ultimately fragile this household really is.

(Sir William McCordle, Gosford Park)

 

There is enormous wealth, of course. In contrast to the character of Robert, Earl of Grantham, who in Downton Abbey is manifestly incapable of administering his household and who loses a fortune in the progress of the series, only to be rescued by an unexpected fortune deeded to his stepson, the aristocratic head in this household is a much more successful businessman. He furthermore seems to be a gracious host, but the dramatic nature of this movie dictates that there will be secrets, and we will slowly see that this family, as well as the numerous coterie of friends and aspirants to favor, are distinguished by their own set of conflicts.

 

There are comical elements in the film that stand out to me. There is, of course, the awkwardness evident in the necessity of incorporating the valets and lady’s maid, and the way in which they tangle with one another while seeking to hide this from their lords and employers (the valets and maids are, curiously, referred to by the names of their peer and employers), but also in the interactions with the American film producer, Mr. Morris Weismann, whose crassness is the source of much hilarity on the part of the viewers, if not necessarily on the part of the upper-class characters in the film who are slightly offended by it.

 

(Maggie Smith, Downton Abbey)

 

Once again, Maggie Smith gives a memorable performance as the upholder of traditional values, one with a sharp tongue and a penchant for castigating uncouth behavior (or pretention or the lack of it, as her biting comments are directed to servants and lords alike). And the bit with inspector Thomsen (played by Stephen Fry) is also hilarious, as it gives evidence to a guileless and inept character who is the last person one would imagine would be able to solve this mystery.

Everyone would seem to have a motive for murdering Sir McCordle, who is found in his library with a knife sticking out of his chest. There are many false herrings planted, and his death seems woefully unmourned by anyone in the household. But it is a mystery nonetheless, and misdirection (in the sense of misleading the viewers) is one of the hallmarks of a good mystery.  It will ultimately revolve around the relationship between the lord and his staff, in particular, his servants, in a bit of domestic drama that is at once sordid as well as pointed, for in a very symbolic way, it demonstrates the exploitative nature of the class system, and the evidence of predation on the part of a factory owner who, as with feudal lords of old, is able and willing to satisfy his sexual whims on his workers who are treated as little more than chattel.

The film was engaging, then, more for the evocation of a time and place than for the mystery which is solved by the lady’s maid, Mary, a Scottish servant played by Mary Macdonald who, in a way, is a paragon of diligence and investigative acumen. It is only by moving between the two worlds, that above and that below, that the mystery is piece together and solved, while the inept Inspector Thomsen fails to even take into account the possibility of grievances and motives harbored by the servant classes. The movie ends on a hopeful note, not only evident in the fact that the fired head housemaid, Elsie, seems off to a more promising start by accompanying the American Mr. Weismann on what one can suppose will eventually be a trip to the United States to join his movie production (another Charlie Chan mystery, in a meta-theatrical reference that to my mind isn’t ever fully exploited unless we consider that the maid Mary, as with Charlie Chan, is also an outsider who solves mysteries), but also in the full knowledge that the class system that had been in place for centuries in Great Britain will shortly come crashing down, as will the industrial and imperial framework that made it possible.

And with that last sentence, I can’t help but ask myself, could I possibly have concluded by establishing a parallel with the events of the past decade?


Eternal Observer -- ORomero (c) 2013
Copyrights ORomero 2013

Alternative History: Review of "The Yiddish Policeman's Union"

Book Review

The Yiddish Policeman’s Union by Michael Chabon

Winner of the 2008 Hugo Prize for Best Novel

 (My review was originally written in 2009, but was rewritten extensively in 2013.)

 

While perusing the list of books that are up for this year’s Hugo Award (for Science Fiction, a genre I have been reading since I picked up my first Ray Bradbury collection as a child), I came across the title of Michael Chabon’s latest work, “The Yiddish Policemen’s Union”. This seemed a little incongruous, given that I recalled the work having been reviewed in several newspapers and programs that don’t normally take the time to review works of what is deemed “paraliterature”, which is to say, genre literature. As a matter of fact it had been reviewed quite favorably on NPR, and from what little information was provided, it seemed a work that didn’t fit the profile of those works that typically are up for consideration for Hugo or Nebula awards. Which is not to say that I don’t have a bone to pick with the way that science fiction has typically been viewed, despite the affirmations of writers such as Stanislaw Lem who had excoriated the genre as one populated by charlatans.

 

It was with these concerns that I undertook to read the novel, and quickly was able to confirm that the work was structured along the lines of one of the time-honored formulas of the genre, that of the alternative history. If the protagonist in H.G. Wells’s influential novel “The Time Machine” posited that time consisted was in reality a Fourth Dimension, one that could be traversed at will, then this opened up new landscapes that, by compressing the passage of time, would allow for the presentation of a variety of new scenarios. It also opened up the possibility of time paradoxes, namely, one in which a time travellor could journey into the past and murder his or her father before having been sired, which was resolved by the conception of multiple time lines and multiple universes, a conception that has proven fruitful and has even been incorporated by theoretical physicists in the form of the “Many Worlds” inaugurated by Hugh Everett III. It was exploited in novels such as the “Time Ships” by Stephen Baxter, the alternative histories of Harry Turtledove and the recent novel by Stephen King, 11/22/63 (which was published in 2011). It was also mined by acknowledged masters of the science fiction field such as Phillip K. Dick in his seminal “The Man in the High Castle”, a novel which posited the defeat of the Allied Powers in World War II and the consequent dismemberment of the United States. Curiously enough, that novel also won the Hugo Award, in 1963.

 

 

Michael Chabon’s novel posits as well an alternative ending to World War II, one in which the Holocaust didn’t succeed in killed off such a large proportion of Europe’s Jewish population. It is based on an actual project that was proposed during the 1930s but was never carried out, in which a temporary homeland for many of these Jews would be carved out in Alaska. It is an intriguing concept, although it only serves to underscore the fundamental obstacles that this population encountered both in Europe as well as in the Americas, one in which the European shtetls would be reproduced on this continent. But the premise, however dispiriting (and many of these alternate histories envision scenarios that are much worse than the ones that prevail), it is one that is also based on whimsy, and reflects a certain nostalgia for the life of these settlements, and a wish that at least part of these communities had been saved.

 

The verbal creativity in this novel, relayed in an English that captures the awkward structure but also the creativity of Yiddish, is at once familiar to the American reader. It is the language we associate with Eastern European immigrants to the United States, a language that is inflected with humorous inversions and a self-deprecating wit that that quickly moved out of the Borscht Belt and into the mainstream. It is the language that entreats offenders to “Go crap in the Ocean!”, a language with a directness but also a stimulating visual imagery that lends it, as always, a certain poetic quality. It thus evokes the culture we associate with this community, with dialogue that is snappy and crisp, and with situations that could well recall the lower east side of Manhattan during the 1920s, if it had been transported to the almost barren wilderness of Alaska. Which is not to say that things would have gone smoothly. The novel honestly posits the possibility of conflict with native Indian communities that would have felt displaces, but at the same time, of intermediate characters, those bewildering new hybrids that combined elements of both cultures, like the Jewish Gauchos of Argentina, to cite a real-world example.

 

Here we have memorable characters such as the physically immense and somewhat lugubrious figure of Rebbe Shpilman, the leader of a Jewish conservative clan know as the Verbovers who have shaped the district with their own mix of apocalyptic devotion (they are ever-awaiting signs of the impending arrival of the Messiah) and petty crime, and others such as the half-Indian, half-Jewish policeman known as Berko Shemets (who we could almost imagine as a stolid and taciturn figure born out of the depths of Eastern European literature, the bureaucratic schlub who carries out his duty with a certain placidness if it weren’t for the fact that this façade is broken by his periodic emotional outbursts, ones which give expression to his deep-seated empathy, his anger and his sense of isolation. It is almost as if we have a character type from the early Yiddish theater of the past century, and it represents another point of continuity, in addition to the linguistic expressions, that help to provide elements of familiarity.

 

And we have other characters, figures such as Bina Gelbfish, the no-nonsense, well-grounded Police Chief and former wife of the protagonist, detective Meyer Landsman. There is little acrimony here in this relationship, but much that lends itself to an almost sitcom scenario, and it is the reference to these genres (ones that hark back to a formulaic structure that was pioneered by figures such as the classical writer Menander, he of the “New Comedy”) that provides much of the humor for the novel that is whimsical but also deeply affecting precisely because we know that it is based on a premise that was never enacted, one of saving a considerable portion of Europe’s Jewry that perished in the Holocaust. Bina, indeed, exudes all the sexual heat and gravitational pull of a minor star, a substantial woman with presence but also mass, one that brings to mind the stocky women who are fetishized by free-spirit cartoonist Robert Crumb. In fact, almost all the characters seem to incorporate a sense of scale and primal essence which can’t help but evoke situations and tastes that are out-of-proportion, that are exaggerated and memorable precisely because that are suitable for popular dramas, and this novel at times seems like this, a story told by a doting grandmother of ethnic background, about life in the old country, or in this case, in an alternate world that might have been.

 

Since this book is also a murder mystery, the dialogue of this Yiddish shammes (detective Landesman) is appropriately dry, evincing the world-weariness of detective figures who are forced to confront their own cynicism and need for redemption (which is in part occupational, and in part existential) as they seek to craft the “stories” that will help them to solve crimes. Yes, violence is a part of human existence, as is murder and mutilation and thievery, but there is a grander pageant in evidence as well. With the backdrop of 3,000 years of Jewish suffering, what better way to underscore this paradigmatic human condition than to enact in the many ways in which these characters love (and hate), lie and cheat but also nurture and protect one another, domestic conflict that allows one to forget for a minute the grander historical predicaments, the historico-political dilemmas that are in evidence even here, in this backwater of Alaska?

 

Other readers have found the language of Chabon’s other book ("The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay") perhaps a little uneven, but in the case of this novel, the metaphors and visual imagery was, as referenced above, very true to how we tend to perceive the cultural mileaux of Yiddish immigrant culture. We’ve been enriched so much by these linguistic contributions, and by the incorporation of Yiddish idioms into everyday language, where expressions abound such as the verbs “schlepping” and “kvetching”, exclamations (“Oy, vey”) and in the very rich and funny language of vituperation (“schlemiel”, “tucchus” and “schmuck”), and expressions (“Go crap in the ocean!” exclaim several of the characters), an evocation that takes on a hint of nostalgia.

 

The murder mystery (which is explained in part through the medium of chess, and is filtered as well in the cultural references to Jewish mysticism and the belief that the murdered son of Rebbe Schpilman might have been the messiah) is fascinating, but what proves to be more engaging is the simple human story of compassion and the need for redemption that is felt by this Yiddish detective, one who has also experienced his own loss and leaves him yearning for a son who, if he had come to term and been born rather than been lost to miscarriage, would have been named Django.

 

Thus, in the end, I found this book more satisfying from an emotional rather than intellectual standpoint, and as with all good and memorable literature, enjoyed the use of formulas that, as is the case with so much paraliterature, capture the potential to tell old stories in new ways that prove emotionally satisfying not because they are new, but because they embellish on old and familiar stories, those evident, for example, in the epics of old. What could have been, if things had turned out differently? It is all details. The grander pageant would, perhaps, have remained the same: people trying to love one another, trying to carve out safe existences, trying to find happiness, but also carrying around their own torment, and like detective Landesmann, having to see the woman they couldn’t love, and being unable to forget the child of their heart that might have been. It would have been more of the same.

 

Oy, vey!

 

Eternal Observer -- ORomero (c) 2013
Copyrights ORomero 2013