Grizzly Man

This bear is one of the first you encounter in Werner Herzog's documentary about Timothy Treadwell, a man who spent 13 summers living among the grizzlies of the Alaskan Peninsula before getting eaten by one.

The logistics of the film are this: for the last five years of his trips, Treadwell started bringing a camera out with him to the Peninsula and began taping the bears and himself, combining personal reflections with some stirring and "holy crap, he's going to get his face ripped off," very personal close-ups of some of his "friends." What Herzog has done is edit the 100+ hours of film (all the way up to the day he died, the last year's film recovered after his death) and bring you even closer—but closer to Treadwell, not the bears. This documentary is a psychological examination and evaluation, and it works because of Herzog's deep understanding and Treadwell's intriguing and charismatically quirky, yet alienating persona.

Herzog has always been attracted to Heart of Darkness type stories—tales that reveal the beast in man, the depth of his connection with the darkest parts of human nature. Human nature—the tensions that lie in that combination of words— the combat between "civilization" and primal order for a man's soul—and the non-difference between the two—that is what has always obsessed Herzog. In Aguirre: the Wrath of God and Fitzcarraldo, he searched for the slippery edge between human and nature in the jungle, and indeed Treadwell refers to the bear's world as a jungle quite often, but I believe that Herzog's triumph in Grizzly Man is that he has found a character he could not create, and the vibrant reality of this character both overpowers and draws in the viewer and, clearly, the director.

I think few who watch Grizzly Man will see Treadwell without reservations in liking him. He is paranoid, delusional, and both to the point of harm—to himself and the bears. Many experts testify that his actions were environmentally stupid, if not detrimental to the bears' safety. And his legacy is clearly mixed—his death does not allay any fears of bears.

Treadwell's needs and fears are simply not our needs and fears, but he is so completely human in his quest for a pristine world untarnished by humanity that he does represent very vividly and unmistakably an enormous part of human endeavor. The same impulse lies in Treadwell that has been found in all great utopians and all great arcadians—those who would create a new, perfect civilization and those who would abolish civilization to its roots. Treadwell is just one fairly fucked-up guy, but he's also Herzog's stalking horse for humanity.

Herzog's brilliance lies in his meticulousness and artistry, but also in his narrative discipline. He brings order out of chaos in bringing Treadwell's story into focus.

The Review investigates Hipsterism

My good friend Brendon Bouzard received a blitz awhile back from the Review asking him to expound on his ideas about hipsters—what constitutes a hipster, whether Brendon is himself a hipster, etc.

Brendon posts the original blitz and his follow-up here.

I'm eagerly awaiting this article. Actually, I'd be even more excited about the Beacon doing an article on hipsters, in which one could probably find gems of insight like, "Listening to Interpol leads to questionable sexual ethics," or "Wearing thrift store clothing is just one more sign of America's moral decadence and social degradation."

Hey, to end this, I'll just tell a WASP joke.
How does a WASP propose marriage?
"How would you like to be buried with my people?"

The World Question Center 2006

What is your dangerous idea?

The Edge asked this question to various intellectuals and the few answers that I've read so far are interesting. There are also archives of previous years on the site.

An Apology is in order

I'd just like to apologize for Joe Malchow's light blogging. I'd also like to apologize for his fondness for self-referential posts (3 in a row now!). I'd also like to apologize for the existence of this:




If someone created a Little Green Blog bear (and further had the hackneyed aesthetic sensibilities of a street artist in putting the damned thing in front of a sunset), I'd rethink my stance on gun control (aiming for the bear, of course, not the person who created it!).

Edit: Joe upped the count to 4 in a row with a mammoth retrospective post, then did something totally surprising and posted a really, really ridiculously long entry on technology.

My New Year's Resolution:

To have a better year than George W. Bush.

Shouldn't be too difficult; I managed it this year, narrowly (thanks, Scooter!)

The Hookies

Last year, David Brooks created an award for quality political and cultural essays. Named after Sidney Hook, Brooks chose the following essays this year.

• David Samuels's "In a Ruined Country: How Yasir Arafat Destroyed Palestine"


• David Gelernter's "The Inventor of Modern Conservatism"


• Louis Menand's "Missionary: Edmund Wilson and American Culture"

I'm a little unclear why Brooks chose Sidney Hook as the award's namesake and not Lionel Trilling or someone else similar. I've read Hook (actually, I wrote a 30-some page paper on him) and I never found him to be original (almost all his ideas are reactions to or extensions from John Dewey, his mentor) or even a very good writer. His prose is limpid, arid, and tedious.

I suppose that's why Brooks admires him.

The First Funny Thing Steve Martin Has Done Since...

"Why would you add a second to the year unless you’re an anti-American hate monger?"

Martin ventriloquizes Bill O'Reilly's fear of the leap second this year.

Somalian Kids

Buried in the Times today is an article about how a lot of children of the Somalian refugees who emigrated within the past 10 years or so aren't being educated. It's pretty fucking outrageous and the reporter catches the superintendent in a bunch of lies.

The long and short of the situation seems to be this:
1) The kids don't speak English. A lot of the time a ninth-grade teacher or whoever can't go back and reteach some kids from square one, which is completely understandable.
2) The school system can't afford to pay a bunch of translators. Also understandable. But they have hired two people on a part-time basis, which is a start.
3) The school system, instead of doing the sensible thing and putting all the kids or most of the kids in one place so they can get as much help as possible from the translators, has chosen to stick them all over the city, sending two kids from the same family in different high schools. The reason they're doing this is because having a bunch of kids who don't speak English in one place will lead to the school being designated as "failing" under the No Child Left Behind act, which will do who knows what to property taxes etc.

Obviously the right thing to do is to say "fuck the No Child Left Behind Act, these kids need to be educated." Then they could get their state legislature to tweak the act for NYC. There are 26,000 of these kids, and that isn't unreasonable.

Hopefully, that will lead to a review of the No Child Left Behind Act, which as any child knows is designed to cut funding for public schools so that the federal government has more money to spend on things that will lead to the economic enrichment of President Bush, his family, and their asshole friends.

Quotes of the year

"Link

• "I think the President should look across the country and find the most qualified man, woman, or minority."
  - Senator Trent Lott, on Bush's potential Supreme Court nominee


• "I think with a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court, you can't play, you know, hide the salami, or whatever it's called."
  -Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean, urging President Bush to make public Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers's White House records


• "You work three jobs? … Uniquely American, isn't it? I mean, that is fantastic that you're doing that."
  - President Bush, to a divorced mother of three in Omaha, Nebraska


• "When a virgin screams your name, you know you've made it."
  - Kelly Clarkson, on being asked whether it was the ultimate validation when Steve Carell screamed "AhhhhhhhKellyClarkson!"

2005: The Year of Political Film-making

Crash. Syriana. Munich. Good Night and Good Luck. Paradise Now. The Constant Gardener. The Corporation.

Add in Brokeback Mountain, Jarhead, and A History of Violence and you have not only a half-way decent top ten list, but you also have a slew of films that rely on political tensions, current events, or contemporary sociological paradoxes and problems for their impact. Compared to the "best" films of last year (Sideways, The Aviator, Before Sunset, Eternal Sunshine, Closer, Bad Education, Kill Bill, House of Flying Daggers/Hero, Ray), this year has seen a much greater focus on engagement with contemporary social issues, and not in a very covert way.

True, last year had Million Dollar Piece of Shit Baby, Maria Full of Grace, Moolaade, and Vera Drake, all of which fit in with this sociopolitically-engaged zeitgeist, but this year is still pretty notable for the number of films that try to have a political message or valence.

I find this interesting because it is conventional wisdom that people prefer escapist fantasies when the news is all too real and all too intrusive. I mean, think of all the spectacularly dégagé films made during the Great Depression and WWII—It Happened One Night, The Thin Man, His Girl Friday, The Adventures of Robin Hood, The Wizard of Oz, Gone With the Wind, The Maltese Falcon, all the MGM musicals—they are at least what the era is remembered for—the glamour and glitz. This year's films, and last year's as well for the most part, trade grit for glitz almost as a convention.

Is this the overheated but half-baked work of liberal activist filmmakers, then? But why are the critics praising these politicized products from such puerile pundits? And it's not like Crash didn't do well commercially, and all the others that have gotten wide release have done respectably. Is it simply because so many of the big-budget films of the past few years have been so bad that we have convinced ourselves that if a film has a politically relevant message, it's more worth our time?

I think it's also interesting that so many seemingly innocuous films get politicized or latched onto by an interest group so quickly today—March of the Penguins or Chronicles of Narnia, for instance. What's going on with our society when we see penguins as an argument against same-sex marriage and for "family values"?

I guess I should be happy somehow that our society is so conscious of these issues. I mean, "consciousness-raising" is essentially the blogger's mission, and one I heartily subscribe to. And the issues brought out in this year's movies definitely deserve our attention and our movie screens. But something about this all makes me a little uneasy.

Maybe it's my being in Indiana, where overwhelming homogeneity makes so many potentially divisive questions seem unimportant next to the need for unity and strong communities. In some ways, to a lot of America these films about politics seem as distant and unrelated to everyday life as films noir or special effects extravaganzas or musicals. Crash simply plays differently in Nebraska or rural Illinois than it does in LA or NY or DC. How do we deal with this, and why are we dealing with it in film?

Striking Resemblance, my ass

Dateline Nashville: Thief robs pastry store of prized possession: a cinnamon bun bearing a striking resemblance to the soon-to-be-canonized Mother Teresa.



Link

To tell you the truth, I think it looks more like that crazy tree spirit/hag from Pocahontas.

Did I just let on that I've seen Pocahontas? Shit.

New Year's Resolution

So when I was doing high school debate I learned two things:
1) Robert H. Bork is hilarious.
2) An argument consists of a claim, a warrant, and an impact. A claim is just an assertion. A warrant is a causal link which demonstrates, using known principles and inference, that the claim is true. An impact should be self-explanatory. It's the part that answers the question "so what?"

While I was reading Franken's book I realized that to have any effect on the American public generally the lefties, and specifically the lefty bloggers, are going to have to do a much better job with impacts. All too often we assume the "so what" part to be self-explanatory, when a bunch of people feel that it isn't.

For example, I believe that literally every action taken by the Bush administration can be directly traced to the end of economically enriching Bush, his family, and their asshole friends. So if I were to write about social security, I will no longer write something like this:

"It is clearly documented that the aim of Bush's privatization program, in keeping with the ideology held by the Cato institute, Americans for Tax Reform, and other backers of the plan, is to dismantle social security."

I always assumed that "dismantle social security" was bad enough. What I will do is take it a step further and say:

"It should be obvious at this point that the individuals who stand to gain the most from the removal of the primary social safety net against the ravages of unchecked capitalism are wealthy pricks like Mr. Bush, his family, and their asshole friends."

It is my further contention that this logic chain, from any administration action to the concurrent enrichment of Bush/family/asshole friends will consist of no more than six degrees of causality. Kevin Bacon can eat a dick. This shit is important.

I am going to play this one note until you motherfuckers get it. I am going to hammer it over and over until it's in your head like Kylie Minogue. This shall be my one-man stand against assholery. It will be glorious! Yes! 2006!

"You! Vermin woman! Who did you vote for? Did you even vote? Do you even have thumbs?

Show me your thumbs!"

Book Review: The Sea

John Banville's novel The Sea won this year's Man Booker Prize, so I felt it was somehow required of me that I read it. I'm intensely glad I did.

The Sea, unfortunately, is nearly unreviewable in that its even elegance and grace repels the highlighting of any particular aspect as especially good or even especially noticeable. Not everyone liked it (NYT's Michiko Kakutani called it "stilted, claustrophobic and numbingly pretentious," but I think she's just projecting her own character traits), but they are probably the same people that find Nabokov tiresome and Eliot cold—in other words, people who probably shouldn't be spoken with.

Seriously, though, it is a fine novel. It works not so much because of the plot—a book with similar tone and theme but far better plot can be found in Coetzee's Disgrace—but for the absolute gloriousness of the prose. It is a book you must read with deliberation and a little bit of diligence to really appreciate the fineness of each sentence and turn of phrase. Banville's plot occasionally drifts into melodrama or plot twists that mostly stand dead still, but every sentence is crafted as if he spent a week perfecting it. Some see this as a major flaw, but goddammit, few writers today can summon a command of language like Banville's, and I feel he should be read just for that.

However, there are moments of raw poignancy, and it is a strange gift that the cool eloquence of the prose can also bear such strong and powerful emotional immediacy. I spent a week in a bad mood because of the novel's intensity and depth. Banville's narrator, Max Morden (a particularly apposite surname—Max is sublimely mordant), has retreated to the sea-side resort he frequented as a child to mourn the death of his wife. So complete and totalizing is the subtlety of Max's coping that I could not help but be caught up in his mental acts of "quiet desperation." Max attempts to make his life into a crude simulacrum of Alfred Prufrock—measuring his life out in coffee spoonfuls and forcing himself into indecisions and revisions, both in his narration and his actions.

Max veers suddenly from the present and near past to a childhood past when he met a family with whom he became curiously entangled. It is an old story, but Banville keeps it interesting with the exactness of his characterizations. The oscillations between his reflections on his wife's death and the more narrative passages depicting his childhood aren't, I believe, meant to exist in tandem—if there is order, it is simply the spontaneous progressions of an ordered mind. I don't feel that these recollections accrete, building one upon the other, and if they are supposed to do so, I think Banville failed. They are nevertheless powerful, taken singularly. I appreciated the novel not because of any internal connections or plot, but because it is simply a bold and moving, lyrical tone poem. It is not orchestrated as a novel, but as a musical composition—a sonata perhaps. And it succeeds wildly in that capacity.

Glabe/Franken

My brother got a copy of Al Franken's new book for Christmas and I'm reading it before I head out to Cali-fo-nie-ay. I thought this was interesting (from p257, referencing the "Brat Pack" of young contractor overseers hired by Bremer to replace the guys who left with Jay Garner):

"Among the new hires were Casey Wasson, twenty-three, a recent college grad who needed a job... Scott Erwin, twenty-one, a former intern for Dick Cheney and Tom Delay, who didn't need a job because he was still in college... Erwin soon landed a gig as the top Coalition Provisional Authority official managing the finances of Iraq's civilian forces- fire units, customs, border patrols, and police. What a great job! Almost as much fun as his previous job, which he told the Richmond Times-Dispatch was "my time as an ice-cream truck driver."

"Erwin was one of the six youngsters given control of Iraq's $13 Billion budget. 'The Brat Pack,' as they inevitably came to be known, were understandably startled to find themselves with awesome new jobs in Baghdad, especially since they hadn't applied for them. Each had recieved an unsolicited e-mail from the Pentagon inviting them to join in the liberation effort. After comparing noted, the twenty-somethings realized the one thing they all had in common. They had all sent their resumes to the notoriously unreliable Heritage Foundation."

Wait a second. Glabe is in college, and he was in college when Bremer took power. Glabe worked for the Heritage Foundation, but I'm not sure when. Thus the obvious question is raised: Why wasn't Glabe called?

One theory, and this is unconfirmed, posits that Glabe, beyond simply being a stupid asshole, is in fact such a stupid asshole that he was unable to convince even the Heritage Foundation of his worth as a partisan agent. God, I hate that guy.

Not that you asked, but overall the book is pretty good, although the "self-calls" about authorial narcissism don't make the narcissism any less irritating.

In other news, I introduced myself to Michael Ellis a couple weeks back when he returned some CDs to the music library, where I work. He was kind of put off once I told him who I was and he said something about looking forward to seeing me slander him in print or some bullshit. I laughed and said something quippy but what I should have said was "Ha, ha, you are such a huge dork." Have you seen this guy? Hilarious.

Merry Christmas!

Fuck! I meant to say "Happy Holidays!"

Syriana

The reviews of Syriana show, I think, how little film critics read. If you are used to reading novels (other than those written by someone named Clancy, Grisham, Ludlum or Cussler), you will probably not have a problem watching this film and keeping up.

Sure, Syriana covers an ambitious bit of ground, and its plot is complex and takes awhile to congeal. Sure, you may still not know at the end who all the people work for or even are. But that's not a bug, that's a feature. Syriana makes a statement about the limits of individual action on a global scale through this confusion of characters and about the bidirectional nature of nearly all action, period, through the confusion about who's working for whom. This is about as Foucauldian a film as you'll ever see.

Almost all performances are topnotch because everyone just plays their part. They don't try to steal the show or overact or emote or anything. Gaghan (the director) creates a marvelous character in Nasir Al-Subaai, the would-be reformer prince. The exchange, brief as it is, between Nasir and Matt Damon's character (Bryan Woodman) is illuminating not so much because it proves anything but because it shines a light into the dimness of possibility. It is possible that what Syriana suggests is going on, but I do not feel that Syriana is a polemical film, and I was more than prepared to believe it was. Syriana goes out of its way to confine itself to global connections on a small-scale (if that makes sense)—it doesn't take potshots at the White House or even at Congress, and its conspiracies do not metastasize as some reviews have said.

One thing that struck me about Syriana was how much of the important content is non-verbal. I think Gaghan's use of images to create some plot points, support others, and suggest still others is masterful. You must be perceptive and attentive, but I think a lot is there in every shot that exceeds the dialogue by a long shot.

Syriana is probably a film that will only grow on me, and in a positive way, but it is already cemented in my top 5 for the year.

Fuck You, Johnny Damon

Here's to hoping all your hair falls out.

Top 10 Under-covered stories

Foreign Policy has a list of the top 10 stories that "fell through the cracks" amidst tsunamis, hurricanes, and BradJenAngelinaVince sagas.

Most of them aren't really news to me or to people who read blogs very frequently, but I suppose it's good nevertheless to highlight what America may be missing out on.

More on Posner, Spying

I realize now that I appeared to be a little too zealous in my support of Posner's op-ed in my last post. This was certainly unintentional; I should have expressed more clearly and precisely what I was praising about Posner's argument.

I believe, with Posner, that electronic data-mining presents a different situation concerning privacy than does traditional wire-tapping or other activities of the kind. I believe that we cannot evaluate it solely on the basis of our previous approaches to privacy.

Data mining occurs far more than we probably realize and it will only grow. Wal-Mart has immense databases of our shopping habits and so does Amazon or The Gap or whatever. However, this state of affairs is not univocally bad. It can improve customer service, it can improve production. We must decide whether these benefits are worth re-negotiating our current notion of privacy.

I'm just arguing against a knee-jerk "1984 is here" attitude. Books published in the 1940s and the mentality accompanying them should not be the basis of our thinking or our reactions to contemporary phenomena and issues.

Domestic spying: Posner's take

It's a surprising one, at least to me.

These programs are criticized as grave threats to civil liberties. They are not. Their significance is in flagging the existence of gaps in our defenses against terrorism. The Defense Department is rushing to fill those gaps, though there may be better ways.

Read the rest here.

The power of a good argument: Posner almost single-handedly changes my mind.

The only argument against it is posed by this, the visit of two Homeland Security agents to the home of some student who put Mao's Little Red Book (the official version, mind you) on inter-library loan. Sure it's kinda creepy, but it's also just stupid. Potential terrorists aren't reading the Collected Quotations of Chairman Mao any more than Communists read the Koran. As Posner says, the people behind all this surveillance seem confused about who their targets are or should be. If the system is as benign as Posner believes, then that's fine I guess, but it wastes time, energy, and resources on certain dead ends.

Basically, I guess, I'd feel better if Richard Posner were running the NSA or the FBI or whatever it is that is monitoring my blogging right now.

More: The opposition here and here. The second one is quite a bit better.