Faith and Film Critics Circle Pick '07 Winners

The Faith and Film Critics Circle (of which I am a member) has just announced its awards for 2007. I'm happy to say that Into Great Silence won our highest honor: "most significant exploration of spiritual themes." It's a great, deserving film that was tragically under-seen. I had the pleasure of writing about it for Relevant last April. Here is the full list of awards and nominees:

Most Significant Exploration of Spiritual Themes - Into Great Silence

Best Narrative Film - There Will Be Blood

Best Documentary - Into Great Silence

Best Film for the Whole Family - Ratatouille

Best Director - Paul Thomas Anderson, There Will Be Blood

Best Performance by an Actor - Daniel Day Lewis, There Will Be Blood

Best Performance by an Actress -Ellen Page, Juno

Best Performance by a Child - Saoirse Ronan, Atonement

Best Supporting Performance by an Actor (tie) - Casey Affleck, The Assassination of Jesse James & Javier Bardem, No Country for Old Men

Best Supporting Performance by an Actress (tie) - Cate Blanchett, I'm Not There & Jennifer Garner, Juno

Best Ensemble Cast - Lars and the Real Girl

Best Cinematography - Robert Elswit, There Will Be Blood

Best Original Screenplay - Diablo Cody, Juno

Best Adapted Screenplay - Joel and Ethan Coen, No Country For Old Men

Best Original Score - Dario Marianell, Atonement

Paranoid Park: The Best Film of 2008 (Thus Far)

Gus Van Sant’s new film, Paranoid Park, is without question the best film of 2008 thus far. And if we consider it a 2007 film (it did qualify as such for the Independent Spirit Awards, for which it won one and was nominated for three), I would have to put it in the top four (certainly just as good as There Will Be Blood, I’m Not There, and No Country for Old Men).

Paranoid Park is one of those films that jolts awake my deep love of cinema (and I know that’s a cliché… but it’s true). I’ve seen six films in the theater over the last seven days, and admittedly such a schedule makes cinemagoing frightfully mundane—even laborious. But as I left Park I felt more alive and entranced by the beauty and possibility of cinema than I have since probably The New World. Like Malick’s film, Park is brimful of moments and sequences that are achingly beautiful.

Like several of Gus Van Zant’s more recent works (Elephant, Last Days), Park is on the experimental/lyrical/avant-garde side of things—which to this critic is definitely a good thing. Van Sant’s more mainstream films (Finding Forrester, To Die For, Goodwill Hunting) display a great mastery of the cinematic form, but the scope of the auteur’s striking talent and vision is only beginning to be fully realized. Paranoid Park is his most accomplished film—I might even dare to call it perfect.

But enough of the glittering generalities and over-the-top superlatives. So why is this film such a big deal? Why did it receive (and totally deserve) the 60th Anniversary prize at Cannes last year? Let me officially begin my review…

Adapted by Van Sant from the novel by Blake Nelson, Paranoid Park tells the seemingly simple story of a 16-year-old skateboarder, Alex (non-actor Gabe Nevins), who begins hanging out at a notorious Portland skate park (“Paranoid Park”) and associating with shady characters. One fateful night Alex accidentally kills a security guard, and the film is about how he deals with the (mostly psychological) consequences of this life-altering event.

Like its precursor and companion film, Elephant, Park features a cast of unknown teenage actors—a brilliant move that lends a striking awkwardness and realism to the film. Gabe Nevins is perfect in the lead role—a wide-eyed, innocent teenager who finds himself in the midst of something too horrible to comprehend. The film is told from his perspective, though in a non-linear, “never sure where or when we are” sort of fashion. Like a highschooler recounting his day at school to his mother, Alex gives us scarcely little in the way of sensical verbal narrative—repeating some things multiple times (with slight variations or shifted emphasis), retracting or reframing other things, giving staccato answers to immensely involved questions, etc. His fragmentary, confused perspective and stilted utterances speak many volumes of truth, however.

Unlike the fast-talking characters of other teen movies (Juno!), Nevins and the other adolescent actors in Park speak in the choppy, awkward, believable parlance of net-generation millennials. They talk about obligatory teen stuff (getting laid, making weekend plans), their personal problems (absentee dads, divorcing parents, annoying girlfriends), and even give MTV-style lip service to the problems of the world (Iraq, starving children in Africa, etc). They are the teenagers of today, and Van Sant’s eye captures them more perceptively than any film I’ve seen.

Paranoid Park explores the contemporary teen psyche well—externalizing the confusing and contradictory voices, influences, and narratives that crowd their mediated minds. Nevins’ Alex is never quite present in his interactions with people and lacks a tangible grasp of his own unfolding life. A scene of him driving a car and reacting to various songs playing on the radio (from classical to rap) displays his fluid, impressionable sense of self. Indeed, music is a huge part of the film, as it is in any teenager’s life. There is sort of “iPod shuffle” aesthetic to the soundtrack of Park—an eclectic, seemingly random assemblage of artists (everyone from Elliott Smith to Beethoven) that embodies the alternately angsty, meditative, whimsical, and disturbing mood of the film.

In the end, Paranoid Park is a film about the heavy incomprehensibility of “the self behind the self” (to use a phrase from an Emily Dickinson poem). There are multiple levels to this: Obviously Alex languishes under the tension between wanting to unload the terrible information that he holds and yet knowing that he can’t; but he also faces the more unsettling question of how he can live with himself in keeping it forever secret. Can one cordon off the unpleasantries of guilt and memory?

This is a film that astutely captures one young man in his first encounter with the burden of interiority—both as an adolescent in search of an authentic identity (beyond the Facebook self, the cell phone self, the skatepark self, etc) and as a human who must reckon with a reality that upsets the tidy balance of segmentation. All of this is rendered in far more organic and unpretentious ways than my discussion here would suggest. Still, it is complicated, challenging material—definitely not for the recreational filmgoer.

One of the things people will either love or hate about Park is the use of extended lyrical skateboarding sequences. During these audio-visual “interludes” (shot in a more home-video style), cinematographer Christopher Doyle (2046, The Quiet American) delicately follows the acrobatic swerving, flying, and weaving patchwork of teenage skater boys in slow-motion. It’s a remarkable sight to behold. For me, these were the most heartbreakingly profound moments—instances of making the familiar strange, of alienating the material environment while also exposing its truth. These scenes (and the whole movie), remind me of what realist film theorist Siegfried Kracauer believed cinema was most adept at capturing: “the flow of life.” Unlike photography, which can only capture moments and not movement of reality in time, the cinema, Kracauer believed, has the ability to capture reality in motion—an indeterminate glimpse into the open-ended continuum and “flow” of material existence.

Kracauer often referred to “the street” (i.e. shots of large groups of people in motion) as one of the most thrilling applications of cinematic potential. In his seminal work, Theory of Film: The Redemption of Physical Reality, Kracauer wrote:

The street in the extended sense of the word is not only the arena of fleeting impressions and chance encounters but a place where the flow of life is bound to assert itself. Again one will have to think mainly of the city street with its ever-moving anonymous crowds… Each [face] has a story, yet the story is not given. Instead, an incessant flow of possibilities and near-intangible meanings appears.

This applies to much of Van Sant’s film, which revels in the very indeterminacy and “near-intangible” meaning which photography and cinema uniquely relay. Indeed, much of Doyle’s photography in Park consists in long shots with purposefully little in the way of explicit meaning, point of view, or plot utility. As in Elephant, there are frequent tracking shots that simply follow Alex around as he walks in the school halls or carries his skateboard down a Portland sidewalk. Other shots linger on complicated faces (not just Alex) that could be thinking any number of things. There is a thrilling editorial restraint to this film, though it is no doubt a source of frustration for some viewers.

Clearly, Paranoid Park is not for everyone (again, a cliché!), but if you have any interest in seeing something truly unique and provocative and beautiful, I urge to go see this film. It comes out in NYC on March 7 and then releases wider as the month goes on.

The New Vigilantes

I recently saw Neil Jordan’s new film The Brave One, which stars Jodie Foster as a Erica Bain, a vigilante killer who cleans up the scum of NYC in revenge for the brutal murder of her husband by a couple of thugs in a park. It’s a very interesting film for a number of reasons—essentially a feminist retelling of Taxi Driver (which also starred Foster)—but its chief provocation is that it offers up a likeable protagonist who kills for pleasure, walking the streets at night in search of (male) sinners who need to be silenced.

Another incarnation of this amoral anti-hero is seen in the show Dexter (now on CBS). A sharply written and well-acted drama, Dexter follows a serial killer (the title character played by Michael C. Hall) who has an insatiable urge to kill those who kill others. He’s as likeable as any character on television and wouldn’t harm a hair on any principled, law-abiding citizen. But when it comes to rapists, pedophiles, murderers, and human traffickers, Dexter is as menacing as Jeffrey Dahmer. The show doesn’t condone or celebrate Dexter’s actions, but it definitely wants us to be on his side. To that end, it offers a “life is horribly complicated” backstory that attempts to explain (perhaps justify?) Dexter’s violent actions. Like Erica Bain, Dexter faced a violent past that made him who he is today: an unstable timebomb with a murderous axe to grind.

These are just two of the most recent examples of vigilante heroes in pop culture, which is just one subset of the much broader trend of moral ambiguity (the tendency of culture today to celebrate “the gray areas”). But none of this is especially novel or unique to the 21st century. I immediately think back to the novels of Dostoevsky that tackled these notions of DIY justice.

In Crime and Punishment, Dostoevsky explores the idea that some men are of an “extraordinary” nature, set apart from, or rather above, the common man. The character of Porfiry interprets the idea in this way: “The ordinary must live in obedience…while the extraordinary have the right to commit all sorts of crimes and in various ways to transgress the law.” In the novel, this concept is embodied in the character of Raskolnikov, a neurotic, distressed student who kills a pawnbroker and her innocent sister. Like Porfiry, Raskolnikov believes that the extraordinary man has a right (not official, but his own) to “step over certain obstacles, and then only in the event that the fulfillment of his idea—sometimes perhaps salutary for the whole of mankind—calls for it.” For Raskolnikov, his murderous actions constitute the “stepping over” of an extraordinary man, for in the killing of the wretched pawnbroker many people—if not the whole of mankind—will be better off.

So goes the logic of both The Brave One and Dexter. In each case we find ourselves rooting on the murderous actions of these vigilantes because they are “taking out the trash” so to speak. The disturbing allure of these types of films (and TV shows) is that we all, secretly, enjoy seeing a bad guy get shot in the face or (in the case of Dexter, chopped into pieces and thrown in the trash).

But there is a frightful end sum to this type of vigilante amorality. In Crime and Punishment progresses, Raskolnikov begins to understand that in trying to rationalize his killing through some grand idea, he is deluding himself. He senses the dishonesty of it, and though it proves painful, admits to himself that: “I simply killed—killed for myself.” At the end of the novel (the “punishment” portion in Siberia), Raskolnikov imagines the true implications of the idea that had fueled his former torment. He has a disturbing vision of pestilence taking over the world and producing a race of men who each assume the right to step over and who each find the truth “in himself alone.”

This vision paints a scary portrait of a world governed by relativistic morality. Dostoevsky’s comments that in this world “they did not know whom to judge, could not agree on what to regard as evil, what as good” prophesy the coming of postmodernism. Of course, the initial cultural manifestation of the “stepping over” idea seems to have been the rise in totalitarianism in the early-mid twentieth century, but Dostoevsky expresses a foresight of what would ultimately come in totalitarianism/modernism’s wake. Once one or two “extraordinary men” step over and take the reigns of a totalitarian authority, the natural outcome is that more and more people view themselves in the same way. Soon, because extraordinariness is so arbitrary and totalitarianism so distasteful, everyone claims the same rights to power and/or truth. Raskolnikov sees something of this future in his idea, and that is why he ultimately discounts it.

Does our culture today see the folly and contradiction that Raskolnikov finally does? Or are we once again romanced by the notion of “extraordinary” men and “above the law” morality? More broadly: is our emphasis on cultural specificity and relativism weakening our ability to even delineate where the “stepping over” lines are? It’s a question and pesky problem that deserves to be discussed.

The Art of the Cover

I’ve been thinking about covers recently, and not as in bedsheets. The cover is ubiquitous in our culture (form karaoke bars to American Idol in all its kitschy glory), but what makes a good cover? What, if anything, happens to the meaning of a song when it is covered by someone else?

Last night I went to a Cat Power concert at the Wiltern theater in Los Angeles. It was a very, very interesting show. Chan Marshall (aka Cat Power) is a strange person and a very odd performer. In years past she was known to have emotional breakdowns during shows and frequently walked off the stage, unable to finish a song or set. Last night she was gleefully happy (a little too happy if you ask me—prancing around on stage like a bunny doing the moonwalk), and she plowed through an 80-some minute set of entirely cover songs, including 5 or 6 covers of some of her own older songs.

But how, you might be wondering, does an artist cover themselves? Isn’t that just called a performance? Not if you heard Chan Marshall last night. She played a medley of songs from her 2006 album The Greatest, but they were rather unrecognizable and completely reinterpreted from their original form. At best it was intriguing, at worst terribly frustrating; but this is Cat Power. She’s all about the covers… and she’s probably the best at it. That is: the art of the cover.

Most people who cover songs take the “imitation is the best form of flattery” approach—mimicking the original song in melody, phrasing, tone, and mood. Cat Power can do this too (just listen to her spot-on rendition of Bob Dylan’s “Stuck Inside of Mobile With the Memphis Blues Again”), but her preferred method of covering songs is to reconstruct them from scratch and sculpt them in her musical image. Take her cover of the Stones’ “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction”—there is little of the original left in her morose, acoustic version, save some remote, flickering (yet very much alive) musical idea. But songs are mysterious creatures, and to each listener they are completely different things. The meaning of a song is fluid, multifarious, easily changed and infinitely pliable. Every time a song is sung or performed (whether in the shower or on stage) it means something different, so it makes sense to say that the performer and audience have just as much or more to do with the “reality” of a song as the notes, chords, and instruments. And this is what Cat Power recognizes; this is why her covers are so utterly brilliant.

Chan Marshall has now made two albums of cover songs—2000’s The Covers Record (in which she covered Neil Young, Nina Simone, The Velvet Underground, among others) and this year’sJukebox (a two disc album which covers Hank Williams, Janis Joplin, Billie Holiday, among others). These albums don’t feel like covers records, however. They feel totally original, personal, and uniquely Cat Power. For Marshall, singing other people’s songs is not just an act of mimesis or karaoke. It’s an act of reinterpretation—and that, in a way, is what all art is.

Indeed, I might argue that the art of covering is, in fact, the art of art. After all, very little art is completely original. Whether you are making a film (in which you copy the styles, conventions and motifs of other films), writing a book (abiding by centuries of literary rules) or creating music (perhaps the most derivative of all art forms), repurposing the past is just part of the game. Shakespeare was the worst offender (none of his stories are original to him), but that doesn’t diminish him as an artist. On the contrary, it’s a rare skill to be able to take other stories and inspirations and histories (as Shakespeare did) and make them something altogether better and greater in a recombinant form.

Cat Power is one artist who gets it. Her view of “the song” is an interesting one—she seems to conceive of a song as a living, free-market organism that is more about collective intelligence and cultural ownership than singular expression or solitary authorship. Indeed, it is interesting that so many of the songs she covers could be considered “folk art” tunes of the sort that define a culture/region/era rather than a particular artist. These are artifacts of people, not one person. Cat Power is just one modern girl who connects to the songs she hears and sings them in her own voice and way—embedding a song’s meaning with her own meaning (which is the only way anything ever means anything).

At a time when the remixed/repurposed/recombined seems to be the only means of creativity in our increasingly exhausted artistic climate, Cat Power is a shining, thoroughly postmodern exemplar. As classic songs are systematically stripped of meaning by the vacuous performances on American Idol two nights a week, other artists—like Cat Power—are envisioning new ways of breathing life into long-lost art and ephemeral culture.

No Discussion Allowed

Yesterday I went to a press screening of the new film, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. For those who are unfamiliar with this film, it’s an agit-prop documentary of the Michael Moore variety, with one main difference: it’s conservative. It’s about the evolution debate, and takes the position that Intelligent Design theory (ID) should at least be allowed a place at the table in discussions of biological origins.

The film stars Ben Stein as the Michael Moore/Morgan Spurlock/Al Gore figure—mounting an “op-ed” type argument that is less about why ID is right or evolution wrong as it is about why there is such a concerted effort by the mainstream science community to squelch any and all debate on the matter. The film begins by recounting about a half dozen cases of highly-qualified PhD professors at various universities who have been fired in recent years for daring to mention that evolution as a theory has some weaknesses. From here the film gives a general narrative of how the scientific and academic powers that be have aggressively sought to silence any dissent—either by ID proponents or anyone else with questions about Darwin’s theory.

I came into this film very, very skeptical, worried that it would be all about trying to disprove evolution and argue for creationism (thereby reinforcing stereotypes of anti-intellectual religious fundamentalists). I was worried that it would further reinforce the (false) binary that says Christianity and science are on two sides of a battle and can never have any common ground. But I was pleasantly surprised with Expelled on a number of levels.

First of all, it’s pretty funny and quite entertaining. Ben Stein’s hyper-dry way of interviewing people is great fun to watch, and his “everyman” persona makes him easy to sympathize with. His “anyone, anyone” Ferris Bueller character also makes him an appropriate choice for a film about the expulsion of dissenting ideas in the classroom.

Secondly, it’s a reasonably effective, well-mounted argument (if a tad on the manipulative side). The filmmakers interviewed many prominent figures from both sides of the debate, including an extended (and deliciously uncomfortable) interview between Stein and Richard Dawkins (atheist extraordinaire and author of The God Delusion). The film is smart to keep its focus on the glaring double standards and contradictions among the evolution advocates—who have built impenetrable walls around the sacrosanct theory of evolution and (in a very un-academic spirit) refused to allow any rational dialogue on the matter.

Indeed, the film hits a nerve in its critique of the contemporary American academy. As a graduate student immersed in academia and all its idiosyncrasies, I can attest to the pervasive and disturbingly hypocritical sense of close-mindedness that stifles the spirit of progressive discourse. It goes beyond the scientific communities in higher education and touches many disciplines. Quite simply: if you are not on the “right” side of the wall (whatever wall it may be), your voice is stifled, your work discredited, and your intelligence questioned. It’s gone beyond political correctness and is now something altogether more militant and sinister. Sadly, the academy today is less about the sharing and discovery of truth as it is about the wielding and protecting of power.

Critics will attack this movie and claim that it is manipulative propaganda, but if Michael Moore can get an Oscar for it, why hate on Ben Stein? Certainly the film has its faults. It is less-than-subtle at times and heavy-handed at others (the sequence on Nazism and Hitler as direct descendent of Darwinist thought is perhaps unnecessary), and overall it is very derivative of other films of this type. Obviously Stein knowingly mimics Michael Moore in his leading-question, “I’m going to make you look stupid” method of interviewing. But there are also direct parallels to Al Gore in An Inconvenient Truth. Like Gore in that film, Stein gives a speech in a lecture hall, incorporates “deeply personal” elements, and plays on apocalyptic fears (in this case, the fear that free speech is increasingly suppressed, East Germany style).

But Expelled’s lack or originality and copycat style is, in a way, sort of the point. It’s a film that very deliberately presents itself as an alternative type of film—the anti-Michael Moore, perhaps. It is trying to argue that there is (or should be) room at the table for both sides, for multiple arguments on any issue. But more than likely the film will be denied wide distribution or much (if any) press coverage, just as Intelligent Design theory is either ignored or laughed out of most cultural discourse. Whatever you may think of ID or evolution (and I’m not saying either is wrong or right) it’s hard to argue against the injustice of denying the discussion. But unfortunately that’s just what is happening.

White People Like: Making Fun of Their Whiteness

The "Stuff White People Like" blog simply consists of an ongoing list of things that white folks like (or, more specifically, things yuppie/hipster white folks under 40 like). Some inclusions on the list: Difficult breakups (#70), Asian fusion food (#45), Knowing what's best for poor people (#62), Arrested Development (#38), Japan (#58), "Gifted" Children (#16), The Sunday New York Times (#46), Wrigley Field (#30), Writer's Workshops (#21), and Farmers Markets (#5).

It's a hilarious blog, with aggressively ironic writing (after all, "irony" is #50 on the list!) and humorous pictures throughout. The whole endeavor is blindingly white in nature (i.e. spending so much time ironically skewering whiteness in a non-standupcomedy sort of way).

If you look over the list on the blog, one of the major recurring themes is the idea that above all, white people like being the best or superior (but not in a self-deprecating sort of way) at whatever they do or whatever situation they are in. They're constantly trying to one-up one another and prove themselves better than the next white guy. It's funny and ironic, then, that "Stuff White People Like" screams of this sort of "look how smart and witty and self-deprecating we are" attitude. But then maybe the people behind the blog are trying to make some meta critique of the whole process of reflexive self-stereotyping (wouldn't that be white of them!). In any case, the sort of half-hearted deconstruction with which I'm concluding this post is certainly stereotypically white. We love taking things--even (perhaps especially) amusing and entertaining things--apart and analyzing them. There's no fun in that. But then again, white people are very prone to becoming wet blankets.

Does Jesse James Know Who He Is?

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford is a film I did not get a chance to write about when it came out last autumn, though I did put it #8 on my “best of 2007” list. I recently saw it on DVD again, however, and have been struck anew by the film’s surprising beauty, mystery, and psychological resonances.

Beyond its artistic excellence (including some really interesting photographic effects, beautiful music, etc), Assassination is a film that captures some pretty complicated truths about humanity and identity.

The “larger-than-life” title hints that this film is less about a real event (though it is a true story) than it is about a mythology about a larger-than-life man and his untimely demise. This is not a biopic of Jesse James, and as such we never really get close to understanding him as a person as much as a symbolic icon. The brilliantly cast Brad Pitt (himself a larger-than-life icon) recognizes this, providing his character scant few moments of intelligible humanity. What we do see of Jesse James the man is someone who is very much intrigued by his own cultural mystique. He’s acting the part that has been written by pop-culture and legend; he’s both an observer and the main attraction in the abstracted spectacle that is “Jesse James.”

Fittingly, much of Pitt’s performance consists of iconic poses and postures: standing gallantly amid the windswept plains; sitting throne-like in an Edenic yard with snakes writhing around his forearms; enshrouded in mystical steam and darkness as a train approaches (to be robbed). He’s the consummate rebel hero—an unbeatable bandit who, in the end, seems to orchestrate even the circumstances of his own assassination.

Indeed, the scene in which Robert Ford (heartbreakingly portrayed by Casey Affleck) shoots Jesse James is so thoroughly blocked and theatrical that we can’t help but wonder if James had this moment planned out his whole life. Without giving too much away (it’s a brilliant scene), I’ll just say that the sequence feels like the ultimate convergence between the “real story” and the “mythology”—in which James and Ford fully transition from people to characters, from humans living to actors performing. And this is not a knock on the verisimilitude of the film; on the contrary, I suspect that this climactic sense of artifice/performed mythology was just what writer/director Andrew Dominik intended.

The point is further made in the subsequent “one year later” sequence, in which Robert Ford is now a widely-known actor in New York, “performing” his legendary assassination on stage every night for star struck audiences. Here, in ghostly makeup and stage light, Ford shoots blanks and “Jesse” is just an actor who dramatically “dies” for a gasping audience. It’s a simulation of an event that, in reality, was a simulation in it’s own right.

Among other things, Assassination is a film that understands the performative aspects of identity. In a sense, we are all actors—performing and projecting versions of our selves to fit whatever circumstance, stage, or audience we are in. Like Jesse James we all have images and public “selves” to live up to (though to a less grandiose extent for most of us). It is an exhausting and seemingly unavoidable practice of everyday social interaction—the performance of a suitable self in social context.

Sociologist Erving Goffman touched on these issues in his 1959 book The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, in which he wrote:

“The impression of reality fostered by a performance is a delicate, fragile thing that can be shattered by very minor mishaps. The expressive coherence that is required in performances points out a crucial discrepancy between our all-too-human-selves and our socialized selves. As human beings we are presumably creatures of variable impulse with moods and energies that change from one moment to the next. As characters for an audience, however, we must not be subject to ups and downs”

This is the burden of identity—the weight of having to maintain a “front,” manage impressions, and live up to perceptions and standards and (in Jesse James’ case) legends that we ourselves foster—even while we are humans with far more complexities and contradictions than one sellable “self” could assume.

But that is the very justification for why we must perform. We are far too complex to be understood by others (let alone ourselves) if not by way of crafting a character for every given context. Of course we can only take the theater metaphor so far, but I think Goffman is perceptive when he says that “All the world is not, of course, a stage, but the crucial ways in which it isn’t are not easy to specify.”

Top Down Populism

I’ve been intrigued of late by a seemingly obvious and pervasive contradiction within American culture—the notion of “grassroots” or “populist” activity as something that can be not only leveraged but orchestrated from above by powerful groups seeking the “consensus” approval or authentic legitimacy that comes when something is done “by the people.” Politicians recognize the importance of tapping into populism (see how many times each of the presidential candidates’ websites name-drop the word “grassroots”), as do media moguls (who pay bloggers to start a buzz on the web to create “bottom up marketing”) and television executives (who, in reality shows like American Idol, cede “control” to the audience to portray themselves as “America’s show”).

Indeed, populism has always been a hallmark of America, a nation birthed out of a direct opposition to the elitism, stratified wealth, and top-down imperialism of 18th century Europe. But the very point of populism was that it not be coopted by the elites who—from their perches of power in Washington or Madison Avenue—sought to use “the people’s voice” as just another way to sell their products, their messages, their agendas.

So how can we take top-down populism seriously? After all, a “grassroots” movement is, by definition and necessarily, bottom-up. This is not to say it doesn’t take leadership on the grassroots level to get the ball rolling with any momentous movement or change. Of course it does. But something ceases to be authentically grassroots when the ideas or origins of a movement come not from the “people” or “populace” but are fed from above by campaign strategists, teachers, or other institutional arms of the hegemony.

Briefly, here are two examples I’ve encountered recently that illustrate my point:

1) I sit on a board at UCLA that oversees all student media (newspapers, magazines, yearbook, etc) and at our last meeting a few board members proposed a revitalization plan for several of the floundering niche magazines on campus. These magazines (for groups like African American students, Muslims, Latinos, Asian-Americans, etc) were quite popular in the mid to late 90s at UCLA, but for whatever reason have recently fallen on apathetic ears. Students are simply not as interested in this sort of community-based “progressive” journalism anymore. The proposed “revitalization” plan calls for the formation of an “alternative/underground journalism training program” wherein students are taught how to organize on the street level and produce community-specific journalism that is hopefully oppositional, subversive, muckraking and important. Sounds good, but we can easily see the contradiction here. How do we teach community-level, grassroots activist journalism? If the students are inclined to do it, they will on their own. If not, why should we (and how can we) force it?

2) I went to a conference at USC’s School of Cinematic Arts this weekend on the topic of DIY Video (i.e. kids with cameras and editing equipment who make their own films that wind up on YouTube). A panel of ridiculously utopian media theorists (Henry Jenkins, Howard Rheingold, Joi Ito, Yochai Benkler, John Seely Brown) went on and on about the “revolutionary” effects on culture that this sort of democratized video production might hold. They kept repeating that we (read: educated, old, and liberal) should create programs of “visual media literary” wherein young, poor, minority students would be given the tools (cameras, computers, etc) and training to visually express and distribute (via YouTube or elsewhere) the opinions they are otherwise never given platform to convey. The idea is that these muted voices will be enabled to speak and speak out against the forces that control and oppress them. The goal of the old rich benefactors who finance these “media literacy” initiatives is, of course, that some brilliant high schooler with a laptop will create the next great anti-establishment “stick it to the man” expose. But what happens if all the kids want to do is film Jackass stunts?

Ultimately, the problem both of these groups must solve is the problem of caring. How do we get young people (or anyone, really) to care enough about an issue to organize and build grassroots momentum for change? It’s a serious problem. But it can’t be solved by cloying, force-fed, top-down manipulation.

Perhaps the increased proliferation of top-down, taught populism is simply a sign that the populace doesn’t know what or who it is (or should be). Perhaps grassroots activity today—even with the ultimate grassroots tool (or, perhaps, hindrance) of the Internet—cannot exist without the orchestration and steering of someone who actually has a message or idea we can get excited about. In lieu of having little we are organically excited about (or perhaps in lieu of the overwhelming glut of potential things to get excited about), we need direction.

I’d like to think that a “mass” or “populace” exists outside the realm of top-down influence. I’d like to think that the people are capable of banding together and revolutionizing systems and societies, Marx style. But I think that Marx underestimated the extent to which—as we see today—the “people” are quietly (and perhaps unknowingly) going about the business of the powers that be, rather than overthrowing them. Indeed, I think Gramsci’s view of the world is more practical—the notion that control is wielded not through coercion but ideology, that subjugation can be framed as a positive, that we willingly participate in the subtle reinforcement of dominant values.

Of course this is all very pessimistic, and any Gramscian must hold on to the hope that little moments of personal rebellion are possible—that hegemonic forces can be thwarted by means of grassroots revolution. But it is definitely, and increasingly, an uphill battle.

Why I Love Ash Wednesday

Today is Ash Wednesday, and it is one of my favorite days of the year. I never really celebrated this beautiful day growing up… which is a shame. As the first day of Lent—the 40 day period of repentance, renewal and reflection in advance of Easter—Ash Wednesday provides a perfect chance to quiet oneself and get in the proper penitential mode for the Lenten season.

At my church and at many churches worldwide today, Christians will come together for worship, prayer, and the imposition of ashes. This part I love. An ash-marked cross on one’s forehead is a very strange thing to see (especially in a town as vain and airbrushed as L.A.), but it is beautiful. What a fantastic symbol of what Lent is all about: our coming into a focused, reverential meditation upon and solidarity with the suffering of Christ.

Ashes are a material of decay and death, but they also allude to new life. After a forest fire, for example, the ashes provide nutrients for the rebirth of a new generation of trees. And here it all comes together: “Lent” is derived from the Middle English “lente” which means “spring” or “springtime.” Though it comes early this year and spring feels miles away, Ash Wednesday is our first glimpse of that eternal newness and redemption just beyond the horizon.

I love Ash Wednesday for the way that it symbolizes—so concisely—what it means to be a Christian. It’s not about being beautiful or powerful or triumphant; it’s about being scarred and humbled and sacrificial. But it’s not like this is a defeatist exercise in self-flagellation or something. No, on the contrary, to “give up” or “sacrifice” in the name of Christ is (or should be) the height of our joy. We should strive to be like Christ, “who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame…" (Hebrews 12:2). For the joy set before him… That should be why we endure suffering and embrace self-denial. It’s paradoxical and mysterious and counterintuitive—certainly. But when I feel those cold ashes spread across my forehead, it all makes some sort of wonderful sense.

Paul Tillich once said that “man’s ultimate concern must be expressed symbolically, because symbolic language alone is able to express the ultimate.” And I think in Christian sacraments and rituals (like communion, baptism, or the imposition of ashes), we can see how true this is. Ash Wednesday is more than just a day that follows Mardi Gras and kicks off the Christian period of Lent. It’s a symbol that exists within and yet points beyond the materiality and ephemera of this place and this time to the transcendent and restorative oneness of the “ultimate concern” which is God Himself.

Politics of Spectacle

I was watching something on Fox this week and was struck by some of the ads I saw for the Super Bowl. The ads were advertising that a full day of coverage on Super Sunday would begin with a morning of Fox News political coverage on “the other big contest” going on: the presidential election. Following this would be the main event: the Patriots vs. Giants. The ad seemed to suggest that together it was a day of utter and extreme Americanisms: our “two favorite pastimes: sports and politics.” Pull up a chair, get some beer and pizza, and revel in the spectacles of debate and conflict and fighting and smash-em-up democracy!

There are many things wrong with this framing discourse of “Super Sunday” (not least of which is the obvious untruth that Americans care as much about politics as we do about sports!), but the thing that most disturbs me is this equivocation of our electoral process with something as airy and insignificant and superfluous as the Super Bowl. Are we seriously trying to say that the current presidential election is mass entertainment? A spectacle?

Unfortunately, this is not really a new trend. For decades now, American media have been turning politics into a spectacle—a three ring circus of strategy, intrigue, danger, rousing victories and epic defeats. Turn on cable news on any given night and you get some grade-A melodrama posing as political discourse.

Exhibit A of the spectacle-ization of American politics happened on Thursday night in (the very appropriate location of) Hollywood. It was the Democratic debate on CNN—live from the Kodak theater (aka the home of the Oscars and nexus of all that Hollywood represents). Did anyone watch this debate? First of all, it was hardly a debate. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were as chummy as any two competing politicians have ever been. There was very little actual debate and even less clarification for the voters.

But it was compelling TV! It was a spectacle! And boy did the stars turn out in force to drive home that point… Every time the camera panned to the audience it focused on another celebrity’s face. Liberal stalwarts Steven Spielberg and Rob Reiner were there, along with familiar faces like Diane Keaton (in her Charlie Chaplin/Annie Hall getup), Stevie Wonder (stood up and cheered a lot), and Pierce Brosnan (wait—can he even vote? Isn’t he British?). But what can explain the presence of Brandy? Or Topher Grace? Or the guy who plays Andy on The Office? What are they doing here? To give CNN the glitz and glamour that Anderson Cooper and Angelina Jolie have tried so hard to achieve?

In any case, it was funny to watch the reaction shots of various B celebrities whenever Obama or Clinton said something about how ridiculously awful George W. Bush has been. It’s almost a Pavlovian instinct for many of them, I think: “Bush ruins everything”=clap and cheer! (because who wants to cheer for boring and complex solutions to issues like healthcare and social security?). It’s much more fun and gleefully vague to “cheer for change”!

Indeed. What fun this all is! There should be an “Election 2008” reality show or something. Ryan Seacrest could host it and every night millions could call in and vote on how well each candidate looked and performed during whatever debate or speech had just happened. It would be a ratings hit for whatever channel it was on, and doubtless way more people would get “excited” about our electoral process (as long as we could text in our vote). And then perhaps one day ads during Super Tuesday will sell for just as much as on Super Sunday. A Super Week of consumerist pop-hedonism/politics! Totally win win.

Jacob Wants Us Lost

I don't know what is going on on Lost (I never really have), but I do know that it is still the most consistently thought-provoking show on television. And the season four premiere last night did not disappoint.

What is most compelling right now (and, to an extent, what has been the most compelling thing about the show since day one) is the way Lost plays with time. For the first three seasons each episode featured a flashback where the mysteries of the shows were broadened and the characters deepened. But now it appears that this season (and I suspect the rest of the seasons) will feature flashforwards--glimpses of the "after rescue" future of Jack, Kate, Hurley, and whoever else makes it off the island. But this raises the question: is this "future" actually the "present"? Is the island in some alternative space-time-continuum? Does what we do now really change our path for the future?

Indeed, the show has a very complicated fixation on time and fate. The whole Desmond deja-vu storyline, for example, has always been one of the most intriguing threads of the Lost web. I really hope the writers have a grasp on all of it and can tie it together semi-coherently as the final few seasons play out.

In the meantime, season four is raising the deliciously provocative question of whether or not our beloved castaways are better off lost or found? Is it really freedom to be "in control" of one's own life? Or are we better off at the mercy of "others"--both seen and unseen? From the looks of it, Lost could quickly become the 21st century version of The Matrix: a sci-fi pop treatise on fate, free will, and the nature of reality.

I'm especially intrigued by this "Jacob" character--the ghost-like, (mostly) invisible force that lives on the island and seemingly calls all the shots. Is he meant to represent some Judeo-Christian deity? Is he a loving or malevolent being? On freeze-frame Jacob looks faintly like Jack's dad, Christian Shepherd (can someone say Jesus!), which is another piece to the puzzle. In any case (Spoiler alert!), I suspect that when Hurley calls out to Jack and says something like "I think he wants us back!" he is referring to Jacob--obviously the source of Hurley's apparent mental asylum issues...

Whether or not this theory is correct (it probably isn't), we can all be happy to have a watercooler show back on TV which we can all wildly theorize about!

In lieu of a real posting…

Do you ever have those moments when your mind is so utterly frenzied and unsettled and all-over-the-place that you couldn’t possibly articulate a coherent thought? Well I had a moment like that last night, and it was kind of wonderful.

I was sitting in church (the place I usually get all my blog post ideas… even about things that have nothing to do with church) and found myself in one of those totally involuntary mental overdrive moments. I tried and tried to think of a good topic to think and then write about, but too much else was in my mind. So in lieu of a real posting, I’ll just do what I tell my English 3 writing students at UCLA to do: freewrite.

So it’s been ridiculously rainy in L.A. all weekend. For like five days straight now. And cold. Tonight as I drove to church and the sun was setting, the clouds were ominous and I even saw lightning and what looked like a funnel cloud. Things were whirling and wispy and foggy and alive…

At church the sermon had something to do with Adam and Eve: the knowledge of good and evil, the tree, the serpent, the whole shebang. There was a good point about Othello and Desdemona (and Iago as the serpent)… and then there was some point about Martin Buber (who I love). He’s a Jewish theologian and not typically cited in protestant settings, but his I-It / I-Thou ideas are brilliant. Here’s one of my favorite Martin Buber quotes: “Spirit is not in the I but between I and You. It is not like the blood that circulates in you but like the air in which you breathe. Man lives in the spirit when he is able to respond to his You.”

The “You” is God I think, or perhaps the bit of God that we can touch and feel and “breathe,” as Buber writes.And I think that the “You moments” are the key to some sort of Joy. Buber calls these moments “queer lyric-dramatic episodes”—which reminds me of Lost in Translation or Once or any of a number of Richard Linklater films.

But this is but one of the many things bouncing around my head during church. I was also thinking about the millions of things I have to do this week, and then self-consciously thinking about how unholy it was to be thinking about such trifles in a time of worship. And then all of a sudden I became totally mesmerized by the word “Jesus” that was up on the screen during some mediocre Matt Redman worship song.

Jesus. How odd that this massive collection of wealthy white people is passionately singing about a Jewish guy named “Jesus.” J-E-S-U-S. Have you ever taken a step back from words like that? It’s a trip.

But then there was something in the sermon about how we should never ask the question: Is God really a loving Being? After all, Satan tried to get Eve to question what she thought about God… and look how that turned out. Hmm… I don’t know. I’m not sure that questioning God’s relative benevolence or malevolence is even a question I’m qualified to ask. Isn’t God beyond those categories? Aren’t those just words, anyway? Oh, deconstructionism. Death to Derrida (who, incidentally, is already dead).

In the end, the chaos in my brain gave way to a strange sort of epiphany. Most epiphanies, I think, might also be called “moments of clarity,” but in this case it was the opposite of clarity. But it was clarity, in a sense, because for a brief flutter of a moment I saw—or imagined—some large-scale meta connection in my life and the world and the weather and the cross. In and through the fragments and puzzles pieces of my schizophrenic cognition a truth revealed itself, though I couldn’t tell you what it was exactly. It was like a Picasso or Kandinsky painting or something—a thoroughly messy tapestry of colors and lines and ideas that somehow, inexplicably, coheres.You might not “get it” in the sense that you think you should, but it nevertheless brings you into a mysterious communion that transcends labels and categories and rationality. 

My Oscar Nominations

So the Oscar nominations came out yesterday, and you can view them here. Now notwithstanding the fact that the ceremony might not actually happen this year, the Academy Awards are still the most prestigious, desired trophy in Hollywood. Unfortunately the Academy tends to get things right only about half the time with who they nominate and award... And this year is no different. The following is how I would have narrowed the field of nominees for the eight major categories:

Best Actor:Daniel Day Lewis, There Will Be Blood Viggo Mortenson, Eastern Promises Ryan Gosling, Lars and the Real Girl Emile Hirsch, Into the Wild Christian Bale, Rescue Dawn

Best Actress Julie Christie, Away From Her Marion Cotillard, La Vie En Rose Keri Russell, Waitress Amy Adams, Enchanted Laura Linney, Jindabyne

Best Supporting Actor Hal Holbrook, Into the Wild Casey Affleck, The Assassination of Jesse James… John Carroll Lynch, Zodiac Steve Zahn, Rescue Dawn Paul Schneider, Lars and the Real Girl

Best Supporting ActressCate Blanchett, I’m Not There Amy Ryan, Gone Baby Gone Catherine Keener, Into the Wild Tilda Swinton, Michael Clayton Charlotte Gainsbourgh, I’m Not There

Best Director David Fincher, Zodiac Paul Thomas Anderson, There Will Be Blood Joel and Ethan Coen, No Country for Old Men Todd Haynes, I’m Not There Richard Kelly, Southland Tales

Best PictureInto the Wild Zodiac There Will Be Blood No Country for Old Men I’m Not There

Best Original ScreenplayJuno Lars and the Real Girl I’m Not There The Savages Once

Best Adapted ScreenplayNo Country For Old Men Zodiac There Will Be Blood The Diving Bell and the Butterfly Into the Wild

Godzilla for the YouTube Age

There is something really frightening about Cloverfield, and I don’t think it has much to do with the giant lizard-esque monster that destroys Manhattan. To be sure, Cloverfield is a top-notch thriller/horror/disaster/monster movie. It’s Godzilla meets Blair Witch meets 9/11 with some Independence Day mixed in. Most of all it’s a thoroughly 21st-century movie. This is the first classic of the YouTube era: a film that references YouTube in subject, style, and marketing. Which brings me to the “really frightening” thing about this movie. Why does it feel so enticingly real?

For a movie that is about a mutant beast that sheds bug-like minions all over midtown Manhattan, you’d think it’d be a fairly easy film to write off as fanciful popcorn bombast. But I was totally engrossed in the film in a way that goes beyond “suspension of disbelief for the sake of fun.” I got sucked in and felt—against all my mechanisms of logic—that this might actually happen. But how in the world could I think that?

Perhaps it is the same reason why scores of office workers, fratboys, and otherwise bored computer users can be so utterly enthralled by “amateur” videos on YouTube. Whether it’s a tasing caught on cellphone camera or a safari-cam capturing a three-way battle between lions, buffalo and crocodiles (this was viewed more than 24 millions times), we are totally in love with the “stumbled upon” aesthetic of “stuff Hollywood can’t make up.”

Thus, even when what we see on screen is stuff Hollywood can, and often does, make up (destructive monsters in Manhattan), the fact that it is seen through a trustworthy “one of us” lends the whole thing a compelling layer of authenticity. Even if we know deep down that this is a fake film shot just like other fiction films, we still feel it to be more believable (or at least I did).

The guy behind the camcorder in this film is a hapless fratguy named “Hud,” clueless about most things but, interestingly, completely devoted to documenting everything that goes on (because “people will want to know how it all went down”). Maybe it’s instinct. Maybe it’s narcissism. Maybe he’s nervous and needs something to do. But what I really think it is—and what really gives this film a creepy resonance—is that Hud thinks his camera can shield himself from the reality of the situation. As long as the camera is rolling, Hud is directing a dramatic story that is “just a movie” (he even composes shots and “directs” emotional dialogue scenes like a pro might). As the chaotic events unfold all around him and his friends, everyone feels like they are in a movie. Their first instinct is to make it so.

As the decapitated head of Lady Liberty crashes into a crowd of confused New Yorkers standing out in the street… everyone does what we all are now conditioned to do: take cell phone pictures. Some horrific stuff is going down… but it might make the news if we get a good picture.

Cloverfield is very 9/11-inspired, not just in the NYC disaster sort of way, but in the way the horror feels so very mediated. Some of the most striking imagery of the film heavily references 9/11, especially the 9/11 as seen on TV or through the amateur lenses of people running on the streets. One scene in particular—of victims fleeing a wall of ash after a tall building collapses—is a direct quote of the now famous 9/11 footage from the Naudet brothers (the French filmmakers who happened to have a camera rolling when the first plane hit the North Tower… and kept it rolling for the rest of the day). At other points in Cloverfield there are surreal moments when looters or dazed bystanders crowd around TVs to watch the live news coverage of the mayhem happening just blocks away. Perhaps it is a comfort to see the monster framed in a 42 inch plasma screen—even while the ground rumbles and screams echo throughout the city.

Cloverfield packs a wallop, in part because it takes our media-obsessed curiosity and slaps it in our face. We are increasingly prone to gawk, to see what the fuss is about, to be “in on” whatever gruesome or unlikely anomaly is out there to be recorded. This is why Cloverfield’s cryptic “what is this about” marketing campaign worked so well. We have to know. We have to look. We must be a witness. People will want to see how it all went down... It's entertainment.

The Simple Way of Shane Claiborne

It was quite the sight to see Shane Claiborne speak at my church Tuesday night. Here’s a guy wearing a homemade monk’s robe, bandana and dreadlocks (his everywhere outfit), standing on the stage of Bel Air Presbyterian Church. That’s Bel Air… as in Fresh Prince. We are a wealthy, comfortable church, looking majestically over the Valley from our pristine perch atop the Hollywood Hills. It’s not a church Shane Claiborne probably feels that comfortable in… but that’s exactly why he needed to be there—to ruffle our feathers.

As Claiborne likes to say, his message (i.e. the message of Jesus) is meant to comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable. And it certainly did that Tuesday night.

Speaking to a crowd of about five or six hundred young people (the combined junior high, high school, college, and young adult ministries at the church), Claiborne recounted his conversion from the Christianity of his youth (alter calls, chubby bunny youth group games, televangelists) to the “simple way” that he now follows. He’s been written up in Christianity Today under the headline “The New Monasticism," portrayed as the leading edge of a new movement of younger evangelicals committed to re-visioning the gospel through the eyes of the poor. Another one of his quips falls along these lines: “Christianity is not about gaining better vision” (i.e. faith healers/prosperity gospel), “but seeing with new eyes.”

Claiborne is a radical guy, and if he wasn’t so earnest and joyful and rhetorically sincere, his radical ideas might be easily written off. Obviously not everyone can (or should) sell everything and start a commune on the north side of Philadelphia (as Claiborne did). Not everyone can take off ten weeks to work alongside Mother Theresa in Calcutta (as Claiborne did). And few have the guts to live and work with maimed children in Baghdad while a war is going on outside (as Claiborne did). But as unthinkable as it all sounds on paper for us practical-minded suburbanites, Claiborne makes it sound not only doable, but desirable.

Claiborne is fashioning a new kind of Christian—in the lineage of Dorothy Day and Mother Theresa—that is radically different than the sort of deep-pockets, high-powered political machine that gets all the headlines these days. This is a Christianity uninterested in all forms of power except that of love… and community in Christ. Though it’s maybe not perfect as an all-encompassing rhetoric of new-school Christianity, it’s definitely provocative, inspiring, and quietly revolutionary.

The Deep/Wide Divide

I wrote an article two years ago this week for Relevant magazine entitled “Deep and/or Wide.” In the article I explored the tensions between depth and breadth that so characterize many of my chief frustrations in life. Reading it again recently I found that I resonate more than ever with the feelings I was exploring then. Now that I’m a graduate student, the tension between knowing a lot about everything and everything about one thing is never more pronounced. Sometimes I go crazy thinking about the sacrifices of knowledge that must be made in order to be an “academic.” We are encouraged to specialize, specialize, specialize… otherwise who will remember us? But even if it means I won’t “stand out” in the massive field of scholars, is it really worth forsaking a broad, multi-disciplinary approach to life? At some point I guess we all have to limit our selves and our interests to what is marketable… or at least what pays the bills. But that thought weighs heavy on my heart.

In any case, here are a few excerpts from what I wrote two years ago about deep and wide:

"Can we have both? Can the fountains of our lives flow both deep and wide? Perhaps someday, but the more I think about it the more I think it is a dream. Our world pulls us one way or the other. It’s almost impossible to be both deep and wide, and that leaves us with a decision.

The tension here is about methods of approaching the world. Do you aim to encounter things deeply, perhaps partaking of less in life but experiencing those few things for all they’re worth? Or do you go more for breadth and scope, searching and collecting as much of this enormous, wonderful world that you can, even if that means sacrificing depth for breadth?

My generation is a wide-seeking generation. The heavy-hearted weight and awareness of untouched beauty is extraordinarily strong in us. There are socio-economic reasons for our breadth-seeking as well: We feel lost or impotent if we don’t “keep up” with the trend-setting stamina of the merchants of cool. For these and other reasons, we’ve become the generation of accumulated triviality. We are pop-culture savvy, indie-music credible, aware of art, literature, global politics and history, but only to a superficial extent. We are the keepers of immense amounts of information … but all for what?

I’m beginning to rebel from this broad-minded accumulation mentality. I’m beginning to realize that it’s not a bad thing to not know “what’s hot now.” I’m beginning to relinquish my grasp on the reigns of pop culture. I don’t care that I’ve never heard half of the albums on Pitchfork’s Top 100 of 2005. I don’t want to be a frenzied, know-it-all, “one-step-ahead-of-you” hipster anymore. To the extent that I ever was one, it was a pretty annoying chore.

I want depth. I’ll still feign to be diverse and wide in my consumption of experience, but I’m fatigued and overwhelmed by too much of that. I want to pick a few things and dive in deeply. I want to wrestle with existence on the micro level—like Emily Dickinson, Vincent van Gogh or Yasujiro Ozu. It might not be easier—thinking deeply about something rarely is—but it will be more rewarding I think.

In any case, I’m pretty sure the whole deep vs. wide tension comes from the fact that we were created to live both ways. There will be fountains flowing deep and wide, someday, but for now there is not enough water to go around. If there’s rain in one place there’s a drought somewhere else. It’s the whole “divine discontent” thing, you know? We can only pick one direction, give it all we’ve got, and feel the lack of the roads untraversed."

There Will Be Blood

I’ve finally seen it, and yes, it is all it’s cracked up to be. There Will Be Blood is the best film of 2007.

Paul Thomas Anderson is certainly a distinctive auteur, but until now (with the exception of his first film, Hard Eight) he’s not really been my cup of tea. Yes Magnolia was a great film, but There Will Be Blood is something altogether greater.

It’s an artistic masterpiece on countless levels (cinematography, score, production design, sound design), but is not nearly as tidy and well-coifed as your typical period epic. This is a reckless, unsteady film that threatens to cave in on itself but never does. On the contrary, its gurgling oil, buzzing string music (by Radiohead’s Johnny Greenwood) and fire-and-brimstone foreboding push the film to its boundaries but never over the edge.

It’s a film that pulls us into a character and forces us to fester within him like no other film has done in years. Daniel Day Lewis is remarkable as the Citizen Kane-inspired Daniel Plainview—a man as full of ambition and greed and pain and pride as the country he’s meant to personify. He’s a self-made oil millionaire who doesn’t care much for anything but his own success, and will do anything (and I mean anything) to get to the top.

There Will Be Blood is about a lot of things, but perhaps the most interesting commentary it offers is an examination of America’s unique and at times unholy alliance between religion, politics, and capitalism. In the film Plainview clashes with a fiery young preacher, Eli Sunday (Paul Dano), who is the God opposite Plainview’s mammon. Or so it appears at first. Sunday does all he can to convert the backslidden, mucked-up soul of Plainview, but is it really about saving his soul or tempering his power and influence over the townsfolk? Plainview needs the church to gain legitimacy and trust so he can build oil pipelines and make millions. Sunday needs Plainview for his own purposes. They need each other, but the merger brings blood.

Though not a political film in the traditional sense, Blood nevertheless captures the blood-oil-Iraq-evangelicals-capitalism zeitgeist far better than the countless Lions for Lambs-type films have this year. It got me thinking about the presidential election, and how—like Plainview and his “conversion” to Sunday’s church—so many candidates are pandering to religion not out of spiritual need but material necessity. Like Plainview, it’s not that they necessarily want God on their side; they want God’s people—and the money and support that comes with them. This sort of melding of sacred and secular purposes, however, proves toxic for all involved.

There Will Be Blood is a stunning, thoroughly modern work of art that paints a stark picture of what happens when greedy capitalism and power-mongering is bedfellow with something so contrary as Christianity. As the title forebodes, the results—for all parties involved—will not be pretty.

Fearsome Facebook

Without a doubt, Facebook was this year’s Youtube. That is: a novel new Internet fad that in one year hit an explosive tipping point of ubiquity. Over the past few weeks it’s really became clear to me just how obsessive the Facebook craze is. Most of the people I know (between the ages of 10 and 30) are constantly on Facebook: checking their feed dozens of times a day, updating statuses, poking various people, seeking out new “friends,” and stalking persons they seek more information about.

This last use of Facebook—“stalking”—is perhaps the most disturbing function of the whole thing. Whenever anyone meets someone else or wants some more information about them (as a friend, significant other, employee, etc), Facebook is the perfect place to do a little surveillance. Who are this person’s friends? What activities and groups are they a part of? What kinds of pictures are they tagged in?

The problems with this sort of information-gathering on Facebook are obvious. The “person” represented on a Facebook profile is a highly constructed, constantly tweaked avatar. It is a painstakingly composed projection of a person, but not a person. But perhaps more problematic is the way that Facebook has come to stand in for traditional forms of interpersonal relationships. “Peeling away the onion” in relationship formation was formerly a delicate, imperfect, rocky road of physically present social penetration. With Facebook it has become an impersonal, easily-confused, mechanistic process with efficiency—not humanity—at its heart.

I recently took my Facebook disdain public in a year-end article for Relevant magazine in which I characterized Facebook as part of a disastrous digital-era trend toward meaningless, mechanistic communication. This is was I wrote:

At a time when our culture needs a primer on meaningful communication, new tech wonders and digital “advances” increasingly led us in the opposite direction (what I call “superfluous communication”) this year. Things like iPhones and the latest hands-free gadgets have created millions of meaningless “let me talk to someone via this fun device because I CAN” conversations worldwide in 2008. Add to this the irrevocable damage Facebook and its various counterparts have done to meaningful communication, and 2007 was a banner year for the tech-driven trivialization of communication.

Predictably, reactions in the comments section singled out my criticisms of Facebook (and yes, “irrevocable damage” is a harsh phrase). “Bryan” had this to say:

Facebook is not the problem. People who spend so much time on it are the ones with the problem. It's the people with the problem. Your argument is like someone claiming that they can't stop looking at porn due to the fact that it exists on the net. Don't wanna spend so much time on there? Then don't spend so much time on there.

What Bryan does here is frame my position on Facebook in terms of technological determinism—the notion that the nature of technology determines the human uses of it. I am not necessarily trying to argue this. What I am suggesting is that the consequences of Facebook—whether the fault is with the technology or the user—are serious… And seriously changing our very basic understandings of how humans relate to and connect with one another. Rather than blast Facebook as inherently evil, I simply want to raise a warning flag—because with every technological or cultural trend that rises and spreads so quickly, some caution is certainly warranted.

Primary Concern

It seems like this should have happened by now, but this Thursday (Jan 3) is the first actual vote in the presidential primary race. For months now (years, in the case of some), the candidates have been darting around America desperately seeking support and momentum for their campaigns. Of course, when I say “America,” I really mean Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and a handful of other states that have somehow secured the earliest caucuses and primaries. If you’re lucky enough (or unlucky enough, depending on your view) to be a resident in one of these states, congratulations: you have the power to speak for the rest of the country in choosing the nominees for Commander-in-Chief.

The Iowa Caucus has been the first major electoral step in the president-nominating process since 1972, transforming the state from humble cornfield country to the dominant locus of electioneering every four years. Whoever wins the Iowa Caucus (in which only a few hundred thousand people participate) automatically becomes the favorite to win the nomination, because, well, I’m not sure why…

Actually I do know why. The race for the president is increasingly a game of “predicting and projecting” winners and losers. And as soon as the media (and by extension the voting public) gets wind of who is or might be a “winner,” that candidate becomes the person to beat. For lack of anything else to influence one’s decision, voting for a perceived “winner” is increasingly the method of most voters.

So what’s so wrong with this “voting for a winner” method? Well, if you have a mind for strategy and pragmatism, then nothing. But if everyone is voting for a candidate because they think he/she has the best chance of winning and not necessarily because they view them as the superior candidate, then something has gone a bit haywire with the democratic process. We fool ourselves by thinking that a candidate’s ability to win an election has little to do with our personal attraction to them as an appealing candidate. It has everything to do with it.

If everyone voted with their gut for the candidate they really wanted to win (even if he or she were last in the straw polls or had little media coverage), then that candidate would have a chance to win the election. It’s like the “Spiral of Silence” theory of communication: When there is some perceived dominant opinion being offered (in this case, the media’s crowning of “top tier candidates”), those inclined against this view will typically keep their opposition silent. Thus, even if the majority of people are in the opposition camp, chances are their silence will spiral out of control, unquestioned (groupthink style).

Here’s the implication for this election and the primary system in general: Since the media is covering this thing like flies on roadkill, it is clear that who they focus on in their coverage (and subtly cast as the “frontrunner”) will be the perceived “winner” by the masses who are planning to vote. Thus, even if said voters secretly wish for candidate “underdog” to win, they will most likely view a vote for him/her as a waste. And no one wants to waste a vote. Instead, they will likely vote for candidate “frontrunner,” placing themselves within the consensus and boosting momentum for the person most likely to make a strong showing in the national race. Do you see how this goes counter to the whole purpose of democracy?

The primary system is concerning to me, not because I don’t think states like Iowa or New Hampshire are unthinking anomalies that don’t represent the country as a whole, but because they have so much power to decide the winners and losers. In the 2000 election, George W. Bush won the Iowa Caucus and South Carolina primary handily, forcing all the other Republican candidates out the race by February (with the exception of John McCain and Alan Keyes). In 2004 on the Democratic side, Howard Dean had all the momentum going into the Iowa Caucus, but placed a surprising third (behind Kerry and Edwards), which then destroyed his chances in New Hampshire (he lost to Kerry there too), forcing him to withdraw from the race even before Super Tuesday. To summarize the impact of these early primaries: If you don’t win them, you’re not going to be president.

This harsh truth is a reality because unfortunately the American populace has been conditioned by the media to reduce everything down to winners and losers (one facet of the overarching black/white binary so pervasive in the press). If a candidate appears to be a “winner,” more people will begin to vote for him or her. Not so if there is a “loser” or “dark horse” perception. But why is this so? Why are we so simple-minded in this manipulative, herd-mentality electoral process?

Sadly I think this is all a result of our general ignorance of the issues and the actual positions candidates represent. Even in the digital era in which finding out what a candidate has to say is no harder than a Google search, most Americans have no idea what distinguishes one candidate from another. We might be able to distinguish Mike Huckabee from Mitt Romney in a lineup (though I shudder to think how many Americans couldn’t even do this), but as far as how their platforms on immigration or health care differ, the majority of us would be hard pressed to come up with anything. It’s not that we don’t care or don’t pay attention to the media, it is that we do pay attention to the media. And the media has little concern for the issues. For the media it’s not about the ingredients, it’s about the overall taste. Unfortunately for our country and its longterm democratic health, a sweet and palatable taste is not what we need in a president. We need to check the label, read the ingredients, and assess the nutritional value before we pick our next poison.

Top Ten Movies of 2007

Here it is: the granddaddy and finale of my listmania month. Aren’t your relieved? Seriously, I’ve spent a LOT of time at AMC, Landmark, and various critics’ screening rooms this year, and the culmination of all that “hard” work comes here at the end of 2007, when I can give proper shoutouts to the best that I’ve seen. 2007 was a remarkable year for American cinema, with celebrated new films from American auteurs like David Fincher (Zodiac), Paul Thomas Anderson (There Will Be Blood) and Todd Haynes (I’m Not There), not to mention the triumphant return of the Western. Eight of my top ten films are American productions, and six of them deal directly with questions of what it means to be an American. Thus, even as American politics proves more depressing by the day, it appears there is something of a renaissance in our homegrown cinema—and that’s something we can all be happy about.

10) Southland Tales: Richard Kelly’s postmodern cinematic menagerie defies all categorization. It is intensely ambitious (perhaps overreaching), trippy and mind-bending, and certainly the most unique film of the year. It’s about a lot of things (Iraq, religion, America, pop iconography, media, technology, time travel, David Lynch, etc) but, strange as it sounds, feels remarkably cohesive. More than anything, Tales is a cautionary statement about who we are and where we’re going as a culture. And it’s a crazy good piece of pop entertainment to boot. 9) Once: This summer’s Irish indie import proved to be the feel-good audience charmer of the year. Equal parts Lost in Translation and Before Sunrise/Sunset,Once spins a tight little yarn about music, love, and temporality in the setting of modern day Dublin. Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova are wonderful as unnamed “guy” and “girl” who share a sudden close connection, and they harmonize beautifully on the lovely original songs that make up the soundtrack.

8) The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford: The subject matter of this film is compelling enough—the last days of America’s most notorious train robber—but the atmosphere is what makes this a great film. Taking a page out of Terrence Malick’s stylebook, director Andrew Dominik turns this story into a contemplative existential portrait told through images and sound, not so much with words. Brad Pitt does a lot of iconic posing in the film (and he’s nicely tormented), but the real star is Casey Affleck, whose “cowardly” Robert Ford is one of the most striking cinematic performances of the year.

7) The Diving Bell and the Butterfly: This French-language film from director Julian Schnabel is a “tale of human triumph” sort of film—about a man (Dominique Bauby) with “locked-in syndrome” who composes an autobiography by blinking his one functioning eyelid. Butterfly is one of the most beautifully shot films of the year, fluidly weaving the worlds of imagination, memory, and dreams into a tapestry of one man’s point of view on a world both tragic and hopeful.

6) Zodiac: This film is a stellar return to form for David Fincher (director of 90s classics Se7en and Fight Club), and one of the most intriguing, taught thrillers of the year. Fincher’s sleek visual style (I might call it digi-age noir realism) is totally unique among American directors, and he has a way of building unsettledness (not necessarily jump-out-of-your-seat horror) that lingers in your mind far after you leave the theater. Zodiac, the tale of an average Joe (Jake Gyllenhaal) who inserts himself into a decade-long investigation into the Zodiac killer, is a gorgeously made period piece (60s-80s), yet feels totally pertinent in theme to our DIY, collective-intelligence culture today.

5) Lars and the Real Girl: This film, which tells the unlikely tale of a man and his life-size doll, is the perfect blend of comedy and artsy drama, and the feel-good film of the year. A lot has been said of Ryan Gosling’s portrayal of Lars (which is remarkably humane and believable), but the supporting actors (Emily Mortimer, Paul Schneider) are also amazing in this actor’s showcase film. Sometimes the most unlikely, offbeat stories are the ones that surprise you in their deep emotional resonance. Lars is definitely such a story—and the most pleasant surprise of 2007.

4) No Country for Old Men: In a year in which America and its stark western landscapes were on full display, the Coen Brothers’ adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s No Country For Old Men is the astonishing Exhibit A. On one level the film is a pulsating cat-and-mouse thriller (in which the creepy Javier Bardem stalks the hapless cowboy Josh Brolin), but as it progresses we begin to see that it is about much, much more. The presence and subsequent absence of violence at the film goes along reveals a white flag weariness that matches the arid and emotionless Texas landscape. It’s a film that intentionally refuses satisfaction or answers to its audience, leaving us, like the older characters in the films, to stand stumped and disillusioned by the mundane nightmare of the modern world.

3) Into the Wild: This is a film that hits all the right notes. It’s a great true story, beautifully shot in dozens of scenic locations, with top-notch acting, music, editing, and direction by Sean Penn. Emile Hirsch deliver an Oscar-worthy performance as the passionate young Chris McCandless, and Catherine Keener and Hal Holbrook should be recognized as well for their strong supporting performances. It’s a film that packs an emotional wallop, even if you know (or sense) how it is going to end. But far from a downer, Wild is the most stridently alive of any film released this year.

2) I’m Not There: Todd Haynes’ much anticipated Bob Dylan biopic (that isn’t really a biopic) is not at all accessible. For many, it’s probably not even that entertaining. It’s not an easy film by any means, but it is a work of art. There is a lot to admire about the film’s style (cinematography, period costumes, stunning editing) and its acting (Christian Bale, Heath Ledger, Richard Gere and especially Cate Blanchett are amazing), but the brilliance of I’m Not There is far less quantifiable. Just as the film—through the case study of Bob Dylan and the 60s—shows us how identity is an elusive thing in postmodernity, so too does it evade any standard understanding of story and cinema. Like the era in which it exists, I’m Not There is made up of disparate images, moments, sounds, feelings, frustrations—small pieces loosely joined by the fragmenting, universal quest for identity.

1) There Will Be Blood: There Will Be Blood is an American masterpiece--a Citizen Kane for the postmodern Net-generation. It's a stunning, thoroughly modern work of art that paints a stark picture of what happens when greedy capitalism and power-mongering is bedfellow with something so contrary as Christianity. As the title forebodes, the results—for all parties involved—will not be pretty. Though not a political film in the traditional sense, Blood nevertheless captures the blood-oil-Iraq-evangelicals-capitalism zeitgeist far better than the countless Lions for Lambs-type films have this year. For this and other reasons, it is both the most important and riveting film of 2007.

Honorable Mention: The King of Kong, Juno, The Darjeeling Limited, My Best Friend, Rescue Dawn, The Savages, Into Great Silence, Atonement, Jindabyne, Grindhouse: Death Proof, Amazing Grace.