The Chutry Experiment

In reviews of Paul Greengrass’ United 93 (IMDB), there is a tendency to begin the review by invoking the politics of representing 9/11. Writing in the Village Voice, Dennis Lim explains that the film has been discussed “almost as if it were itself some kind of terror attack.” Meanwhile Manhola Dargis comments in The New York Times that United 93 is “persuasively narrated [and] scrupulously tasteful,” implicitly seeking to assure audiences that the film is not exploiting the tragedy. As Dana Stevens points out, these reviews and others like them illustrate “the discomfort that we still feel about representations of that dreadful day.” And United 93 and its reception clearly points to the degree to which these questions are unresolved and will likely remain unresolved for some time. When I’ve discussed United 93, I’ve argued that these questions have less to do with “readiness” and more to do with “appropriateness,” about how the story gets told.

Greengrass approaches the material with what can best be described as a docu-thriller style. Using handheld cameras and other verite techniques, United 93 positions itself as presently history as it really happened. While Greengrass is careful to emphasize that we don’t know with any certainty exactly what happened on the plane, the film positions itself as offering an authentic historical narrative, one that in Greengrass’ terms depicts “the DNA of our times.” But as Paul Farhi of The Washington Post points out, United 93 does go far beyond what we know about the attacks, and it’s worth asking how the film’s “plausible truth” will contribute to the national narrative of September 11, a debate that is most explicitly felt around the decision to change the title card at the conclusion of the film. As Lim points out, the title card originally read “America’s war on terror had begun,” suggesting a Bush-style memorialization of the war, but the new title card (“Dedicated to the memory of all those who lost their lives on September 11, 2001.”) recasts the story slightly, suggesting a more somber memorialization.

At the same time, the film deploys many of the techniques of an action thriller, cutting quickly between the various scenes of action: the cockpit and the passenger area, but also the air traffic control centers in New York and Boston, as well as the NORAD defense center. The establishing sequences, designed to suggest that September 11 began as “just another day,” set up the passengers as everyday people with normal lives who are just trying to get home to their families (that the passengers are always characterized in terms of family and not other forms of identity also seems significant). However, the film underplays the action elements. Todd Beamer’s famous line, “Let’s roll,” was underplayed, spoken almost as an aside rather than the “rally the troops” moment it became in subsequent representations of 9/11. In addition, unlike most thrillers, we already know what happens, which for me only increased the tension of watching as I anticipated the inevitable events that were about to unfold. My response to this mixture was one of cognitive and emotional dissonance, which may be part of the point. The experience of watching the film was utterly grueling, the tension provoked by the film still palpable the following morning. This tension was reinforced by the use of the shaky camera and the use of an approximately real-time narrative.

It’s worth noting that discussions of the film have provoked conversations about the social and political “role” of the cinema in representing history. The question asking whether audiences are “ready” for a film about 9/11 is a complicated one, and given that I saw the film in a half-empty theater, it may be the case that many people are still resistant to revisiting these tragic events, and if the Box Office Mojo numbers are any indication ($3.8 million on Friday), it appears that the film isn’t finding a terribly wide audience. United 93 is a difficult film to watch, as my review indicates. Last night, I would have emphatically recommended not seeing it, but this morning, my response is a little more tempered. I think the film should be commended for avoiding easy answers, but I remain uncertain about what, if anything, the film has added to our national conversation about September 11.

In a Washington Post interview, Mary Harron, director of The Notorious Bettie Page (IMDB), comments in passing that female directors are more likely to be interested in “demystifying sex” than their male counterparts, and it is this impulse that seemed to guide Harron’s approach to the Bettie Page story, showing the pin-up queen less as a sexual icon than as a fully human character. At the same time, Gretchel Mol’s playful performance calls attention to the performance aspects of Page’s sexual posing, both in terms of her classic pin-ups and her bondage films and photographs.

The Notorious Bettie Page, filmed primarily in nostalgic black-and-white, is framed by the 1950s morality scandals, opening with an undercover police officer setting up a raid on a store selling pornographic magazines and Super-8 “stag” films. The raid sets up a sequence featuring the hearings on juvenille delinquency headed by Tennessee Senator Estes Kefauver (played by David Strathairn), with Bettie waiting nervously outside the Senate chamber where she is scheduled to testify. While these scenes emphasize the cultural conservatism associated with the 1950s, especially the taboos related to sex, Harron wisely underplays the Kefauver hearings, focusing instead on Page’s relatively brief career as a pin-up queen.

After a brief sequence depicting Page’s strict religious youth and her first marriage, the film then focuses on Page’s unsuccessful attempts to become an actress and her gradual transition into the world of modeling. The film suggests that Page takes quickly to her new career, happily posing in a bikini for a group of amateur photographers before eventually removing the bikini and posing nude, rationalizing that “it’s just a little piece of fabric.” Throughout these scenes, Bettie seems to remain relatively naive, accepting the assurances that the customers for her photographs are “respectable” men with slightly unusual tastes. In this regard, I found the “posing” sequences to be utterly fascinating, with Bettie “acting” to the directions of the photographers much like she attempts to emulate the directions from her “legitimate” acting teachers. In both cases, performance is central, and the apparently natural or realistic performances of method acting are no more natural than Bettie’s playful winking to the camera as a model. When Bunny Yeager comments about Page that “When she’s nude, she doesn’t seem naked,” I read the comment as highlighting Page’s ability to perform to the camera. Page’s performances are not without consequences of course. Her relationship with a young actor sours, in part because of her status as a pin-up queen, and more dramatically, Harron sympathetically depicts the testimony of a father whose son hung himself, likely while engaged in an act of auto erotica. Still, the film is able to dodge many of the questions about the effects of pornography by focusing almost excusively on the producers and not on the consumers of this material.

As Page’s career evolves, Harron introduces more and more color into the film, particularly during some of Page’s bondage films, but also during the later stages of Page’s career when she posed for Yeager (including the famous Playboy cover). As most poular culture junkies will know, Page eventually returned to Christianity and left behind her modelling career. The film seems to imply that Page left her past behind with few regrets, but Harron wisely emphasizes the fact that after her career, Page was able to return to a relatively “normal,” if necessarily private, life after she ended her career as a model, rather than taking what Harron describes as a “punitive attitude” towards Page or suggesting that women who do sex work will necessarily meet some horrible fate. It’s a complicated film politically, and I haven’t quite resolved my reaction to it. I think Harron manages to “demystify” Bettie Page in this film but does so without resorting to the puritanical denials of visual pleasure identified with the Kefauver hearings, which were in many ways a media panic rather than a moral panic.

By the way, while you’re in the neighborhood, check out Bettie Page’s MySpace page.

The Washington Post is reporting that Prince George’s County and even the city of Hyattsville where I live were prominently featured in an episode of Commander in Chief last week. It turns out that according to ABC, Hyattsville is a dangerous place, overrun by crime and violence. Yikes, and to think I’ve spent a year of my life too busy (working? watching Commander in Chief?) to notice all the bullets speeding past me. Making matters worse, the show seemed to cater to some fairly negative racial stereotypes as well. As County Executive Jack B. Johnson points out, “When the president of the show gets out of a car and is in front of a restaurant that advertises chitlins and pork chops in today’s America, what any right-thinking American knows is we are harking back to an age-old inability of this country to celebrate the leadership and achievement of African Americans and other diverse people in this country.”

While I recognize that an episode of Commander in Chief will likely be little more than a blip on most people’s popular culture radars, I’m intrigued by the angry response to the program, in part because I have lived in Hyattsville for the last few months and find it to be a friendly and ethnically diverse community with nice restaurants and lots of parks and green space, as well as being in the most affluent majority-black county in the nation. But Prince George’s (PG) County has historically been depicted as unsafe, leading to misplaced fears about living and spending time here.

I do think some of the comments about the episode might be overly sensitive. One commenter faults the show for referring to Prince George’s as “PG County,” implying that the abbreviation is “meant as a put-down,” but I don’t see the use of “PG county” as always functioning in that way. In fact, the phrase can be reclaimed as a form of identity, a connection to Prince George’s County as a community with a distinct personality. At any rate, I probably wouldn’t have even noticed this controversy if it weren’t about my neighborhood, but it’s interesting to see how the episode has provoked such a strong response.

I’ve been so busy and distracted this week that I lost track of the fact that Monday was my last day of regular class meetings this semester. I’ll see many of my students one last time at their final exams, but the semester is basically done. As my scattered posts recently might suggest, I’ve been working (somewhat frantically) on a writing project that I’m pretty excited about. But that’s not all that is happening:

• First, I had a terrific sushi dinner with profgrrrrl (who is bringing tons of traffic to my blog this morning) at Sushi Taro in Dupont Circle
• I almost forgot to mention that I’ll be giving a talk tomorrow at the Cultural Studies Association conference here in DC (sponsored this year by George Mason University. Because the conference is in my hometown, I haven’t had to think about the usual travel details (I’ll take the subway), but if you’re going to be around the conference, be sure to say hello (I’m presenting at 2:15 on Saturday, the very last panel of the conference). The title of my paper is a little vague, but I’ll be talking about some of the Iraq War documentaries I’ve discussed here in the recent past.
• I found out last night that the Hirshhorn Museum will be hosting screenings of several Jonas Mekas films this week. On Friday, May 5, they’re showing his autobiographical masterpiece, Reminiscence of a Journey to Lithuania while on Thursday, May 4, Mekas’ 1999 film, Happy Birthday, John, featuring footage of John Lennon’s 1972 birthday, will play, along with his film, Walden. Mekas himself will speak on Thursday May 11

More later, but I’m getting a late start this morning. I’ve very quickly fallen into my summer schedule (waking up around 11 AM, staying up until 3 AM) and I still haven’t had my first cup of coffee. Oh, and now that the semester is ending, I need to set up my semi-annual screening of Dazed and Confused, just to celebrate the beginning of summer, you know [entry updated to correct some details].

Update: I’ll use this entry as a reminder that Sujewa’s Date Number One will be premiering on Saturday, May 13, at the Goeth Institut.

Lingua Franca lives, sort of. Via Eric Alterman a link to a mirror website of the once must-read academic magazine. Memorable gems: Jeet Heer’s “Marxist Literary Critics Are Following Me! How Philip K. Dick betrayed his academic admirers to the FBI.”

Just noticed that David mentioned Darfest, a rally in Seattle to raise awareness about the situation in Darfur. The Seattle rally is scheduled for Thursday evening and as David explains, Darfest promises not only to explain what is happening in Darfur through lectures but will also convey the culture of Darfur through music, dance, and visual arts.

There will be a similar event in Washington, DC, on the National Mall on Saturday, April 30 from 2-4:30 PM. Speakers for the DC program include Representative Nancy Pelosi, George Clooney, Elie Wiesel, Paul Rusesabagina, whose story provided the subject of last year’s Hotel Rwanda, and Russell Simmons, among many others.

If you’re in the DC area, it looks like a good opportunity to learn more about the situation in Darfur and to petition President Bush to take further steps to end the genocide that is taking place there.

A few months ago, I contributed a short essay to a roundtable on the new video iPod, and I’m now reworking some of those ideas on “video mobility” for another writing project (one with a relatively immediate deadline). But while I was doing some last-minute reading to refresh my memory on some of the concepts I want to address, I came across Clive Thompson’s “Remote Possibilities,” an essay on cell phone use originally published in the New York Times, but now (freely) available on his blog, collision detection, which is also well worth checking out.

Also notable: via Risky Biz, Rob Pegoraro’s review of Intel’s Viiv (he was disappointed) and a New York Times article arguing that consumers are less than enthusiastic about mobile video thus far.

James Longley’s Iraq in Fragments (IMDB) is one of the more compelling documentaries to focus on post-invasion Iraq that I’ve seen. Beautifully shot over the course of two years, Longley’s documentary focuses on three stories coveringwhat might be regarded as the three major perspectives that could be divided into Sunni, Shia, and Kurdish points of view, a structure that seems to suggest the country’s ongoing fragmentation, but the most remarkable quality of Iraq in Fragments is its attention to the intimate details of everyday life, its ability to capture the fears and frustrations of post-invasion Iraq.

The first and strongest section of the film focuses on Mohammed, an eleven-year old living in Baghdad and working for an auto mechanic who alternately dotes on and abuses the young boy whose father is absent. Muhammed’s voice-over narration has a kind of lyrical quality that is reinforced visually by Longley’s “almost poetic” (to use David Ansen’s phrase) footage of Baghdad. The boy speaks wistfully about the material effects of the bombings (“Baghdad used to be beautiful”) and the developing insurgency (“the world is so scary now”). At the same time, Muhammed finds himself in and out of school, with his boss hounding him to return to school and then berating the boy when he is unable to write his father’s name before demanding that he leave school again or risk losing his job.

As Chris Knipp points out in his review (scroll down), Muhammed’s boss becomes a kind of mini-tyrant, while we begin to see the tension and frustration mounting in Baghdad through Muhammed’s eyes and ears, with Mohammed listening while the men in the repair shop complain that conditions were better under Saddam. Muhammed tells us that he dreams of becoming a pilot so that he can see someplace better than Baghdad, but his section offers little hope of escape.

The second section offers the least focused story, in part because it does not focus on a personal story but on the political movement being led by Muqtada al-Sadr to empowermembers of the Shiite population. This section features a far more frenetic camera with jump cuts and rapid camera movement that suggest mounting tension. In one scene, Sadr’s men harrass and beat a group of merchants who are accused of selling alcohol (Longley reported in the Q&A that the men were soon released). At the same time, we see wounded men directly addressing the camera and asking “Is this democracy?” Because of the frenetic camera work and quick cutting, we never get a coherent sense of al-Sadr’s followers or the politics associated with his movement, but that seems to be Longley’s point. All we are left with is what Knipp calls a “chaos of images” that reflect the mounting danger and tension of that time.

From there, Longley takes us to Koretan, a town in the Kurdish section of Iraq, introducing us to Suleiman, a serious young boy who tells us he wishes to become a doctor, although because he is forced to work to support his aging father, we are left with little room for optimism. The smaller story represents a major departure from the broader picture of al-Sadr’s movement, but it also prvides us with a glimpse of another boy with little hope for the future.

Put together, the three stories offer a compelling account of a fragmented nation in a state of turmoil immediately after the invasion. However, because the three-part structure typically remains on the level of the personal (and because the stories are isoalted from each other) we don’t get a clear picture of the past and present relationship between these three groups or any real synthesis of their perspectives, although it can certainly be argued that the film’s structure represents the difficulties of achieving any kind of synthesis. It’s also notable that the film features very few images of US soldiers (although the Sadr section does feature a brief conflict between members of his group and some Spanish soldiers) and almost no images of women. The latter can be attributed to the suspicion that many male documentarians face when attempting to document the lives of Iraqi women, but I think it’s a testament to Longley’s patience as a filmmaker that he was able to capture much of the footage he presented in the film (he reports that he has 2-300 hours worth of footage, some of which will hopefully find its way to the DVD), and his presentation of the everyday experiences of a small number of Iraqi people is a valuable contribution to our collection of documentary images of Iraq.

I caught Thomas Gibson’s Letter to the President (Amazon) last night at Filmfest DC as part of their Hip Hop 4 Reel series. Letter offers an overview of the political and social history of hip hop from its formation in the Reagan era through the 2004 election (the film was completed before Hurricane Katrina), specifically focusing on the socially conscious hip hop artists and their response to various forms of social injustice, including police brutality, the Iran-Contra affair (and its relationship to the crack epidemic), censorship, racial profiling (driving while black), and the prison-for-profit programs that essentially use prisoners as free labor. The film also explores a Miami Herald article that exposed the practice of several police forces of monitoring hip hop artists. At the same time, the film doesn’t shy away from some of hip hop’s excesses, including the misogyny of some aspects of hip hop culture. Gibson and his producer, Trinh Banh, have also assembled a welth of interviews with prominent hip hop artists, politicians, and academics, including KRS-One, Common, 50 Cent, Chuck D, Maxine Waters, Amiri Baraka, and Michael Eric Dyson (among many others). But the film and the discussion afterwards with the producer Banh raised a number of interesting–and sometimes unresolved–questions.

In particular, I found that the film didn’t have a clear narrative voice. While Snoop Dogg’s voice-over gave the documentary flavor and the filmmaker clearly seemed invested in the project, the film itself seemed a little unfocused, with the film moving too quickly across this 25-30 year history. In particular, further exploration of the socially-conscious rap of the late 1980s-early 1990s would have been valuable, especially in its connection to police brutality, as would some connections between rap and other forms of popular culture. Further exploration of P. Diddy’s Vote or Die campaign might also have been helpful. There was an interesting montage in which many of his fans discuss their plans to vote, almost exclusively for John Kerry, and while the film does address the disillusionment of many voters when the Democratic candidate lost, even more exploration of the difficulties of sustaining political activism would have been valuable. As always, documentaries such as Letter are valuable simply because they assemble archival materials that might otherwise be lost or forgotten (in that sense, I’m looking forward to seeing the Smithsonian hip hop collection)

That being said, the film does an effective job of exploring many of these questions. Wyclef Jean, in particuar, was attentive to the fact that a heavy work burden often makes it difficult to sustain the energy to work for a candidate or a specific political cause. Add to that long voting lines, often far longer than in predominantly white, suburban precincts. But the strength of the film is its collaborative tone, the contributions of the interviewers who not only describe the history of hip hop but also theorize its social significance and attempt to imagine where it will go in the future. Here, Snop Dogg’s narration seems most fitting as he speaks personally about hip hop and the contributions it can make without the professional veneer of a voice-of-god narration. At the same time, the film subtly theorized the economics of hip hop, the question of whether hip hop artists can be politically transgressive when they are signed to major labels and do not own the means of production. While this issue could have been explored further, it provoked an interesting discussion after the film. In that sense, perhaps Letter’s greatest strength is that it raised a number of valuable questions, even if many of them emerged afterwards in discussion and dialogue afterwards.

Just a couple of links I don’t want to lose: first, via Steven Berlin Johnson, Dan Hill’s fascinating blog post arguing that Lost is genuinely new media. I’ve been thinking about, writing about, and theorizing new media a lot this week and Dan’s post about Lost and the fan cultures it has inspired cut through many of the poblems I’ve been trying to address. In particular, I’ve been thinking about Fredric Jameson’s discussion of what he calls the “volatilization of the individual work of art or text” in “Symptoms of/for Theory” (Jameson’s notion of volatilization is not unlike what Nick refers to as “incompleteness“). Jaemson proceeds to argue that “it is now the cultural production process (and its relation to our peculiar social formation) that is the object of study and no longer the individual masterpiece. This shifts our methodological practice (or rather the most nteresting theoretical problems we have to raise) from an individual textual analysis to what I will call mode-of-production analysis” (408).* The approach imagined by Jameson is certainly consistent with what I regard to be the most productive work in media studies that focus on artistic and cultural production rather than the individual work, and Lost, with its multiple layers of cultural production (individual episodes, the show’s official website, as well as “unofficial” productions such as blog analyses), provides but one interesting case study. I’m deep in the middle of some last-minute writing, not to mention grading and final exam prep, or I’d have more to say about this topic.

Also via Green Cine, this interesting contest sponsored by security expert Bruce Schneier calling for readers to “submit the most unlikely, yet still plausible, terrorist attack scenarios they can come up with.” As Schneier points out, audiences are fascinated by “movie-plot threats,” although homeland security experts might be advised to focus their energies on intelligence and investigation rather than preparing for the next movie-plot terrorist threat.

Finally, I caught Taiwanese filmmaker Hsiao-hsien Hou’s Three Times at Filmfest DC and deeply enjoyed it, although I’m not prepared to write a full review. The basics: the film tells three love stories, one set in 1966, one in 1911, and a third in 2005, with two actors playing the main characters in all three stories. James Berardinelli’s review of the film is quite good, so I’ll defer to him for now.

Update: The blog world comes full circle. Via a commenter on Pharyngula, an article about the guy who created the George Bush Imagine video I mentioned the other day.

Update 2: Elbert Ventura’s review of Three Times captures much of what I liked about the film. If I have time, I may write something longer in response to his comments. In particular, I like his reading of the film’s use of “silent film” techniques during the film’s second section, which was set in 1911, and the failures of communication (suggested by unreturned phone calls and incomplete text messages) in the contemporary segment. He also mentions the good news that Three Times will receive all well-deserved US release.

* Critical Inquiry 30 (Winter 2004) 403-08.

Via Jason J: A link to the International Society for the Study of Time. Given my current book project, I should really know more about these folks.

Update: Speaking of time, Boing Boing points to some “upcoming numerically cool dates.”

First in New York, Boing Boing mentions that Don Cheadle’s documentary short, Journey into Sunset is set to premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival in NYC on April 26. The film documents the stories of “night commuters,” the Ugandan “children who have to flee their homes every night and hide in urban camps to avoid being forced to fight in the rebel Lords Resistance Army.” The film’s website reports that more than 30,000 children have disappeared over the last twenty years.

In DC we have the 20th Annual Washington DC International Film Festival. Recommended viewing: James Longley’s Iraq in Fragments, which I’ve heard is an amazing documentary. The Saturday screening is sold out, but as of last night, Sunday’s screening still has tickets available. The director will attend both screenings. Playing tonight: Hsiao-hsien Hou’s Three Times and Matt Mochary and Jeff Zimbalist’s Favela Rising, among many other cool-looking films. Bettie Page may have to wait.

Jean at creativity/machine has some intriguing entries about her PhD research on new media. In particular, I’m interested in her criticism of a certain brand of new media scholarship that is “too busy trying to find the cutting edge,” adding that she “was gobsmacked to find that it said there was not enough emphasis on the future” [an aside: I need to figure out a way to work “gobsmaked” into my everyday vocabulary]. Jean then offers some “manifestoey statements” the need for slowness when it comes to evaluating new media, calling for more attention, in particular to slowness and boredom because they might, in fact, have a lot to tell us about the celebration of all things accelerated.

She’s also talking about online video sharing sites, such as Youtube and JumpCut, a topic I’ve been thinking about quite a bit lately [worth noting: Jason McElwain, the autistic high school student who gained some brief web fame when a video of him sinking six three-point baskets hit the web now has a movie deal with Columbia Pictures. Magic Johnson is set to executive produce.].

Update: Odd timing. As soon as I posted this entry about Jean’s discussion of “slowness,” I found Michael Joyce’s treatment of the same concept in “Forms of Future,” anthologized in Rethinking Media Change: The Aesthetics of Transition. Joyce writes that “in our technologies, our cultures, our entertainments and, increasinbgly, the way we constitute our communities and families we live in an anticipatory state of constant nextness” (227), later adding that “I hope I do not disappoint you with my slowness” (228). More later as I work through this concept.

Update 2: I forgot to mention that I found this entry at Purse Lip Square Jaw. While I’m in the neighborhood, I also want to point to Anne’s entry on Rick Poynor’s essay, “The Death of the Critic.”

I’ve fallen behind on blog reading and, as a result, missed or lost track of a few things. David at Green Cine has a number of links worth noting. First, I’m very disappointed that I missed the PBS doc, The Armenian Genocide, which aired on April 17, but will hopefully catch it later (check the NY Times and the PBS ombudsman comment on the doc, as does the History News Network).

Via Movie City Indie, reports that McDonalds is gearing up a “war room” of sorts to prepare for the launch of Richard Linklater’s Fast Food Nation. Linklater’s film is set to play at Cannes Film Festival. Also scheduled for Cannes, Richard Kelly’s Southland Tales his follow up to Donnie Darko.

Also worth noting: Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth continues to get good buzz, this time in The New Yorker Will be interesting to see how Gore’s film compares to Gregory Greene’s The End of Suburbia. Meanwhile Lance Mannion makes the case that we should re-elect Al Gore, “the best President we might never have.” Like Lance, I think Gore made some mistakes in his campaign (we both dislike the choice of a certain Senator from Connecticut as a running-mate), but Lance is probably also right in pointing out that Gore would still face an uphill battle if he ran again, not least a So-Called Liberal Media (see Alterman) that clearly didn’t like him.

Finally, for my readers in the midwest, Roger Ebert’s Overlooked Film Festival is ready to roll. I spent two years teaching at the University of Ilinois, and Ebert’s annual festival in his hometown of Champaign, IL, was always an enjoyable event, even if it was usually inconveniently scheduled during finals week when I had multiple grading marathons looming.

Just wanted to briefly mention that Sujewa has scheduled the world premiere of his film, Date Number One, a comedy about several first dates. The premiere is scheduled for Saturday May 13, with 2 shows (7 PM & 9 PM) at the Goethe-Institut.

I’m sure that Sujewa will keep us posted on the film’s progress and its upcoming premiere.