Though the tourists flock to places like Cancún and Puerto Vallarta pretty much like they always have, Mexico is in the midst of a drug war in which an estimated 10,000 people have been killed since last year.
I don't mean to sound like an alarmist, but twenty years of this will leave Mexico looking like Lebanon way back in the 1970s and 1980s. Places like Cancún and Puerto Vallarta will likely recede back into the jungle.
Don't worry: U.S. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton is behind Mexico's President Felipe Calderón all the way. If the Mexicans want helicopters, they've got 'em. If Mexico wants the Immigration and Naturalization Service to beef up its border patrols so that the gangs can't gets its product to places like Houston and Phoenix, hey, the INS will do that, too.
What the U.S. and Canada really need to do, however, is to curb their demand for illegal drugs like marijuana and cocaine. As well, the U.S. needs to close loopholes that allow gun dealers at gun shows to sell firearms without doing background checks. No more dancing Kalashnikovs for the likes of the Mendoza!
That's right, we're talking gun control here. Nobody thinks that more background checks is going to solve the problem completely, but you can't let criminals buy guns with impunity— just like you can't let people who are unqualified to drive motor vehicles or let kids who are underage drink. That's just common sense.
As a Canadian, I am particularly incensed about the fact that most of the illegal guns confiscated in Canada have been traced to the U.S. Is it that the whole world will have to train its nuclear warheads on the US to make it pass simple, common sense gun laws like better background checks? Maybe the North Koreans are onto something here.
Though they claim that Mexico has stricter gun laws than the U.S., I suspect that it's just National Rifle Association propaganda. Article 10 of the Mexican Constitution of 1917 reads:
"The inhabitants of the United Mexican States are entitled to have arms of any kind for their protection and legitimate defence, except as expressly forbidden by law, or which the nation may reserve for the exclusive use of the Army, Navy, or National Guard; but they may not carry arms in public without complying with police regulations."
I don't think Mexico has stricter gun laws. Does the NRA really mean to say that you can carry a concealed weapon without a permit in the U.S.? Does the NRA really think that you can keep a World War I-vintage Howitzer in your backyard and fire it on New Years' Day?
The Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution reads: "The right to bear arms for the maintenance of a militia shall not be infringed."
It sounds to me like you have to join the National Guard before you can keep an M-16in your closet in the United States. You don't have to join the National Guard in Mexico. However, the U.S. has been known to be lax in enforcing certain amendments to its Constitution. I'm sure African-Americans didn't have the same right to bear arms in the Deep South during the Jim Crow era as whites did, for instance.
Okay, you could spend five years in prison if the Mexican customs opens up your trunk and finds a spent casing. But you have to ask yourself: why would a Mexican have a spent casing in his trunk? Why would anybody have a spent casing in his trunk? If you had bullet holes in your car, chances are that the Mexican federales would be looking for more than just spent shells. They might be looking for drugs or dead bodies, because who knows what hobgoblins run through the minds of customs officials anywhere in the world?
But let's get back to our sheep, eh? It sounds to me like Mexico has a problem with law enforcement. If Mexico has any laws vis-a-vis background checks when it comes to purchasing weapons, the authorities there obviously aren't enforcing them very well. If you slip them a few pesos, they might not find anything in your trunk (which could be a big part of the problem).
As for drug laws, possession of both marijuana and cocaine are illegal in Mexico, but that hasn't stopped the Mendoza Brothers from trying to link up with street gangs in East Los Angeles. Nor did it stop the drug cartels in Medellin and Cali in Colombia from smuggling their product in the U.S. When the war on drugs got too hot in Colombia, their suppliers in Peru started selling their cocaine through Mexico. That's where the Mendoza Brothers come in.
It's called "supply and demand." If people want condoms in countries where all forms of birth control are illegal— like in Ireland right around the time of "The Troubles"— somebody steps up to meet that demand. That's how the Irish Republican Army was able to buy weapons from the Libyans.
Part of the problem is that the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency thinks that it's winning the war on drugs— or was, before the war in Mexico. The DEA bases its assumption on this: If the number of hard-core users stays constant over a long period of time, say thirty years, while the number of "weekend warriors" decreases long term, then victory is soon at hand. Eventually, it will become a matter of putting all your hard-core users in one room and shooting them. Then you can declare victory and be home in time for Christmas.
Of course, the DEA (or the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, for that matter) is not winning the war on drugs. Nobody ever thought that Pablo Escobar would raise a white flag and yell, "I surrender!" Nor will the Mendoza Brothers do the same.
As long as people think that getting high on weekends is fun, people will do it. As long as there are addicts resorting to crime and selling themselves in prostitution, a demand for illegal drugs will persist. Eventually, you will have to legalize marijuana and cocaine (and maybe even heroin).
However, now is not the time to legalize drugs. You cannot possibly regulate the manufacture and sale of these drugs as long as streets gangs are terrorizing a good portion of Mexico and the United States. Before the United States, Canada, and Mexico can think long term, they must act short term.
If anything good has come out of the drug wars in Mexico, it is that the United States, Canada, and Mexico seem to be working more closely together than ever before. However, the Mexican army and police need more than just helicopters; they also need to keep up data bases and fingerprint files. They need all the things that U.S. and Canadian police take for granted: forensics experts and computer programmers, ballistics reports and yellow tape around crime scenes.
This is not to say that large Mexican cities like Mexico City and Veracruz don't already have these things, but in comparison to small U.S. cities like Lincoln Park, Michigan, or small Canadian cities like Hawkesbury, Ontario, law enforcement has yet to filter down to the local level. Even resorts like Cancún and Puerto Vallarta— where the tourists go— lack crime labs, or anywhere within a six hundred mile radius that they can send crime reports.
The US and NATO could speed Mexico along by allowing Mexicans to enlist in the US military as part of a Foreign Legion. That way, the best and brightest among them can learn NATO military tactics and computer skills, and NATO can train forensics and ballistics experts through its military police. Instead of simply throwing young Mexican men and women who are of draft age into jail while they await deportation for trying to enter the US or Canada illegally, why not give them the choice of serving in Afghanistan? What has Mexico done to keep the Persian Gulf safe from insurgents anyway?
Of course, this is something that would need lots of time and lots of money. As well, Latin American soldiers have a long history of mutiny, as the evidence of numerous military coups will show.
Whatever the US and Canada do, they must shore up an impoverished Third World country in their hemisphere. Events in Mexico are affecting Canada and the US.
Sunday, May 3, 2009
Friday, April 24, 2009
Open Letter to Timothy Geitner
Dear Mr. Secretary,
The problem that Americans have always faced is what they are going to do when they retire. Congress addressed this problem during the Great Depression with the Social Security Act of 1933. When unions were strong, they were the custodians of retirement funds for their members. Today many people have Keoghs and 401 K pension plans.
The problem with social security, Mr. Secretary, is that Congress has long "borrowed" money from it to balance the budget, and there is the danger that there will be no money in it by 2020. As for union pensions, only about 7 per cent of all workers belong to unions, and with the Jimmy Hoffa scandal back in the 1960s, we found out that union pensions funds could easily be raided by union bosses so that they could live in style while the members that they were supposed to serve had nothing.
Then there was Enron: Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling were convicted of robbing their employees' 401 K plans and pouring the money back into the company to make it look to investors on Wall Street that Enron stock was profitable.
Since I lost my 401 K in a divorce, I have tried to put my money into a personal savings account, in the hope that I might be able to build it up enough so that I might be able to invest it in certificates of deposits, save up to buy a house or a car, or have something with which to retire. The problem is that the interest rate on my personal savings accounts is only about .01 per cent a month. Then, I have to pay income taxes on the interest every year.
Because of hard times, Mr. Secretary, there is a vast underground economy where people do odd jobs in order to survive. They may paint houses or do carpentry, work on their neighbors' cars, remove snow in the winter time, play in rock and roll bands on weekends, or even do waitressing and fail to report their tips as income. Many people do these odd jobs in order to supplement meager unemployment benefits, or because their benefits have run out.
We need to encourage people to put their money into savings. That way, they could save to buy a car or a house, start a business, or have something for retirement. If you and the President, Mr. Secretary, are really serious about tax cuts for the middle class and the working class, how about making all interest income in personal savings tax deductible with no penalty for withdrawal?
My proposal is quite simple:
1) The interest in all personal and business savings accounts shall be tax deductable.
2) Everybody will be able to put an unlimited of money into their Individual Retirement Accounts each year without being taxed, instead of $2,000.
3) Americans will have greater freedom to transfer money from Keoghs and 401 Ks into their personal savings (or transfer money into Keoghs and 401 Ks).
If we allow people to write off personal and business savings account interest on their taxes, people will put money into savings accounts and have money to buy things like houses, cars, and household appliances. They may even have money to start businesses and invest in the stock market.
I know that stock brokers will not like my proposal, because they still want people to invest their social security in the stock market. However, millions of Americans would have lost their social security with the recent stock market crash, if George W. Bush had successfully persuaded Congress to pass legislation allowing people to put part of their social security into the stock market.
However, banks would find it profitable to raise their interest rates on personal savings accounts, because more people would be putting their money in savings.
Let us not deceive ourselves: the stock market is not an indicator of economic vitality but a reflection of corporate values. At a time when the US automobile companies were making a profit selling sport utility vehicles, Wall Street decided to penalize Ford and GM by lowering their stocks to junk bond status because they were paying their employees high wages and high benefits, and investing lots of money to upgrade their factories in the United States.
At the time, Wall Street wanted corporations to invest in China and India, where wages are low and benefits are practically nonexistent. As the leak of poisonous gases from the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, India, showed in 1983, environmental standards are very lax in the Third World— something that businessmen and stock brokers also like.
Wall Street also wanted corporations to form mergers like the one between Chrysler and Daimler Benz. Stocks in both companies hit the roof when that merger was successfully concluded, though Daimler Benz ended up selling their shares to Cereberus, who is trying to unload their shares onto Fiat. But we don't need to go go into great detail about Chrysler.
According to Samuel Morison in his History of the American People, the stock market didn't recover from the crash of 1929 until 1960. While there was the Great Depression and World War II during that time, there was also a postwar boom that was the greatest period of economic prosperity in world history. That was, in part, because people started putting their money in savings rather than the stock market during the Depression, and got a much higher rate of interest than they are getting now.
In the Parable of the Three Stewards, one servant invested his master's money, the second put his master's money in the bank and let it collect interest, and the third buried his master's money in a hole in the ground, where it did nothing.
These days, no wise master would want his servant to invest in the stock market, and banks have made it almost impossible to collect interest by putting money in the bank. But if you put your money in a hole in the ground or inside a mattress, at least the tax man won't get it.
Of course, that is not the kind of economy we want, Mr. Secretary. So I suggest that we make personal and business savings account interest tax deductible.
The problem that Americans have always faced is what they are going to do when they retire. Congress addressed this problem during the Great Depression with the Social Security Act of 1933. When unions were strong, they were the custodians of retirement funds for their members. Today many people have Keoghs and 401 K pension plans.
The problem with social security, Mr. Secretary, is that Congress has long "borrowed" money from it to balance the budget, and there is the danger that there will be no money in it by 2020. As for union pensions, only about 7 per cent of all workers belong to unions, and with the Jimmy Hoffa scandal back in the 1960s, we found out that union pensions funds could easily be raided by union bosses so that they could live in style while the members that they were supposed to serve had nothing.
Then there was Enron: Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling were convicted of robbing their employees' 401 K plans and pouring the money back into the company to make it look to investors on Wall Street that Enron stock was profitable.
Since I lost my 401 K in a divorce, I have tried to put my money into a personal savings account, in the hope that I might be able to build it up enough so that I might be able to invest it in certificates of deposits, save up to buy a house or a car, or have something with which to retire. The problem is that the interest rate on my personal savings accounts is only about .01 per cent a month. Then, I have to pay income taxes on the interest every year.
Because of hard times, Mr. Secretary, there is a vast underground economy where people do odd jobs in order to survive. They may paint houses or do carpentry, work on their neighbors' cars, remove snow in the winter time, play in rock and roll bands on weekends, or even do waitressing and fail to report their tips as income. Many people do these odd jobs in order to supplement meager unemployment benefits, or because their benefits have run out.
We need to encourage people to put their money into savings. That way, they could save to buy a car or a house, start a business, or have something for retirement. If you and the President, Mr. Secretary, are really serious about tax cuts for the middle class and the working class, how about making all interest income in personal savings tax deductible with no penalty for withdrawal?
My proposal is quite simple:
1) The interest in all personal and business savings accounts shall be tax deductable.
2) Everybody will be able to put an unlimited of money into their Individual Retirement Accounts each year without being taxed, instead of $2,000.
3) Americans will have greater freedom to transfer money from Keoghs and 401 Ks into their personal savings (or transfer money into Keoghs and 401 Ks).
If we allow people to write off personal and business savings account interest on their taxes, people will put money into savings accounts and have money to buy things like houses, cars, and household appliances. They may even have money to start businesses and invest in the stock market.
I know that stock brokers will not like my proposal, because they still want people to invest their social security in the stock market. However, millions of Americans would have lost their social security with the recent stock market crash, if George W. Bush had successfully persuaded Congress to pass legislation allowing people to put part of their social security into the stock market.
However, banks would find it profitable to raise their interest rates on personal savings accounts, because more people would be putting their money in savings.
Let us not deceive ourselves: the stock market is not an indicator of economic vitality but a reflection of corporate values. At a time when the US automobile companies were making a profit selling sport utility vehicles, Wall Street decided to penalize Ford and GM by lowering their stocks to junk bond status because they were paying their employees high wages and high benefits, and investing lots of money to upgrade their factories in the United States.
At the time, Wall Street wanted corporations to invest in China and India, where wages are low and benefits are practically nonexistent. As the leak of poisonous gases from the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, India, showed in 1983, environmental standards are very lax in the Third World— something that businessmen and stock brokers also like.
Wall Street also wanted corporations to form mergers like the one between Chrysler and Daimler Benz. Stocks in both companies hit the roof when that merger was successfully concluded, though Daimler Benz ended up selling their shares to Cereberus, who is trying to unload their shares onto Fiat. But we don't need to go go into great detail about Chrysler.
According to Samuel Morison in his History of the American People, the stock market didn't recover from the crash of 1929 until 1960. While there was the Great Depression and World War II during that time, there was also a postwar boom that was the greatest period of economic prosperity in world history. That was, in part, because people started putting their money in savings rather than the stock market during the Depression, and got a much higher rate of interest than they are getting now.
In the Parable of the Three Stewards, one servant invested his master's money, the second put his master's money in the bank and let it collect interest, and the third buried his master's money in a hole in the ground, where it did nothing.
These days, no wise master would want his servant to invest in the stock market, and banks have made it almost impossible to collect interest by putting money in the bank. But if you put your money in a hole in the ground or inside a mattress, at least the tax man won't get it.
Of course, that is not the kind of economy we want, Mr. Secretary. So I suggest that we make personal and business savings account interest tax deductible.
Monday, March 30, 2009
Review of "The Trinity Sessions"
I have a confession to make: I have a crush on Margo Timmins, lead singer of the Cowboy Junkies. She's a beautiful woman, with auburn hair and sea-green eyes, and she has the voice of an angel. You can't fault Tony Bennett for wanting to sing with Canadian chanteuses like Celine Dion, Dianne Kral, or kd lang (he sang with lang), but for my money, I would rather listen to the Cowboy Junkies on the night of an Aurora Borealis north of Sixty than listen to any of the other three in a smoky bar.
It's because of the ethereal vocals of Margo Timmins. Dion, Kral and lang have garnered more acclaim south of Point Pelée, but Margo Timmins' vocals are more in line with what you would expect to hear in heaven after you die. Her voice is soothing, like a lullaby. This is the voice that the poor, wayfaring stranger would expect to hear in the afterlife after his or her tale of woe has ended. That's what I mean by "ethereal."
The Cowboy Junkies are siblings Margo Timmons on vocal, brother Michael on guitar, and brother Peter on drums, and cousin Alan Anton on bass. They are generally classified as "alternative country." What makes them country, you could say, is their choice of some of the material on their 1988 "The Trinity Session" CD: Hank Williams' "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry," "Dreaming My Dreams with You," and the Patsy Cline standard, "Walking after Midnight," as well as Cowboy Junkies originals like "Blue Moon Revisited (Song for Elvis)" and "To Love Is to Bury." Plus, there's lots of fiddle, pedal steel, and dobro here, and some lonesome harmonica on the last two cuts, "Postcard Blues" and "Walking after Midnight."
What make the Cowboy Junkies decidedly alternative is the way they render their material. On Williams' "I'm So Lonesome," Margo Timmins bends notes more like a blues singer rather than a country singer. It's the blue notes that make her sound like somebody who comes from much further north than Nashville, strange to say. There's no hillbilly twang in her vocals, and not much Bessie Smith or Ma Rainey, either. She doesn't sound anything like Patsy Cline on "Walking after Midnight," yet makes the song work.
And then there's the choice of material: the Cowboy Junkies' biggest hit, Lou Reed's "Sweet Jane," is off of this CD. What could be more alternative or non-country than Lou Reed, New York-born and bred? Yet the Cowboy Junkies brought out the beauty in this song by slowing down the tempo and made it a hit. It was something different, and that's what alternative music is all about, isn't it?
Let's look at the other musicians in this group. Drummer Peter Timmins uses lots of high hat and brush, like Nick Mason of Pink Floyd. As for the guitar of Michael Timmins, Margo's other brother, there's more rockabilly than Chet Atkins. The guitar work of Michael Timmins probably owes more to Carl Perkins or Shadowy Men From a Shadowy Planet, or even Mike Campbell of the Heartbreakers, than Chet, except that the music of the Cowboy Junkies is much more laid back. Michael Timmins is a guy who seems to like his toggle switch in the fourth or fifth position.
Another Timmons, John, contributes guitar and backing vocal on "Misguided Angel" and "200 More Miles," while Jeff Bird plays fiddle, mandolin, and harmonic. Kim Deschamps contributes pedal steel, dobro, and bottleneck slide guitar while Jaro Czerwinec plays accordion. Steve Shearer plays harmonica on "I Don't Get It," "Postcard Blues," and "Walking after Midnight."
In listening to the Cowboy Junkies, one senses that Margo Timmins is always singing a cappella, which she actually does on the first cut, James Gordon's rendition of the traditional "Mining for Gold." This isn't to say that she seems unaware of her band mates. Rather, she stands apart from them. There's the sense of solitude in a crowded room, or in a crowded subway terminal. Everything is happening around her, like she's off on her own trip, yet somehow still a part of it all.
Here, she's like Bryan Ferry, formerly of Roxy Music, accept that her delivery is all smooth, with no jagged edges.
It may take a couple listens to appreciate this CD. If you are country purist, you will probably prefer Reba MacIntyre, Gretchen Wilson, or Patsy Cline. But if you're willing to listen with an open mind, you might find that there are lots of directions that country can go.
God may like Reba, Gretchen, or Patsy, but the angels probably prefer the Cowboy Junkies. When I die, I hope to hear the Cowboy Junkies in heaven.
It's because of the ethereal vocals of Margo Timmins. Dion, Kral and lang have garnered more acclaim south of Point Pelée, but Margo Timmins' vocals are more in line with what you would expect to hear in heaven after you die. Her voice is soothing, like a lullaby. This is the voice that the poor, wayfaring stranger would expect to hear in the afterlife after his or her tale of woe has ended. That's what I mean by "ethereal."
The Cowboy Junkies are siblings Margo Timmons on vocal, brother Michael on guitar, and brother Peter on drums, and cousin Alan Anton on bass. They are generally classified as "alternative country." What makes them country, you could say, is their choice of some of the material on their 1988 "The Trinity Session" CD: Hank Williams' "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry," "Dreaming My Dreams with You," and the Patsy Cline standard, "Walking after Midnight," as well as Cowboy Junkies originals like "Blue Moon Revisited (Song for Elvis)" and "To Love Is to Bury." Plus, there's lots of fiddle, pedal steel, and dobro here, and some lonesome harmonica on the last two cuts, "Postcard Blues" and "Walking after Midnight."
What make the Cowboy Junkies decidedly alternative is the way they render their material. On Williams' "I'm So Lonesome," Margo Timmins bends notes more like a blues singer rather than a country singer. It's the blue notes that make her sound like somebody who comes from much further north than Nashville, strange to say. There's no hillbilly twang in her vocals, and not much Bessie Smith or Ma Rainey, either. She doesn't sound anything like Patsy Cline on "Walking after Midnight," yet makes the song work.
And then there's the choice of material: the Cowboy Junkies' biggest hit, Lou Reed's "Sweet Jane," is off of this CD. What could be more alternative or non-country than Lou Reed, New York-born and bred? Yet the Cowboy Junkies brought out the beauty in this song by slowing down the tempo and made it a hit. It was something different, and that's what alternative music is all about, isn't it?
Let's look at the other musicians in this group. Drummer Peter Timmins uses lots of high hat and brush, like Nick Mason of Pink Floyd. As for the guitar of Michael Timmins, Margo's other brother, there's more rockabilly than Chet Atkins. The guitar work of Michael Timmins probably owes more to Carl Perkins or Shadowy Men From a Shadowy Planet, or even Mike Campbell of the Heartbreakers, than Chet, except that the music of the Cowboy Junkies is much more laid back. Michael Timmins is a guy who seems to like his toggle switch in the fourth or fifth position.
Another Timmons, John, contributes guitar and backing vocal on "Misguided Angel" and "200 More Miles," while Jeff Bird plays fiddle, mandolin, and harmonic. Kim Deschamps contributes pedal steel, dobro, and bottleneck slide guitar while Jaro Czerwinec plays accordion. Steve Shearer plays harmonica on "I Don't Get It," "Postcard Blues," and "Walking after Midnight."
In listening to the Cowboy Junkies, one senses that Margo Timmins is always singing a cappella, which she actually does on the first cut, James Gordon's rendition of the traditional "Mining for Gold." This isn't to say that she seems unaware of her band mates. Rather, she stands apart from them. There's the sense of solitude in a crowded room, or in a crowded subway terminal. Everything is happening around her, like she's off on her own trip, yet somehow still a part of it all.
Here, she's like Bryan Ferry, formerly of Roxy Music, accept that her delivery is all smooth, with no jagged edges.
It may take a couple listens to appreciate this CD. If you are country purist, you will probably prefer Reba MacIntyre, Gretchen Wilson, or Patsy Cline. But if you're willing to listen with an open mind, you might find that there are lots of directions that country can go.
God may like Reba, Gretchen, or Patsy, but the angels probably prefer the Cowboy Junkies. When I die, I hope to hear the Cowboy Junkies in heaven.
Friday, March 20, 2009
Elisabeth Eaves' Bare: The Naked Truth About Stripping
The next time you go to a gentleman's club, maybe you should ask yourself this: who pays for it all? Who pays the dancers, the bartender, the waitresses, the deejay, and the bouncer?
Chances are, you think that all the money that you pay at the door, a cover charge that may cost you ten dollars, and the outrageous price for a beer (about ten dollars) pays all the people that I have just mentioned.
Well, that isn't what I get from Bare: The Naked Truth About Stripping. Elisabeth Eaves' memoirs about her life as a nude dancer in the Seattle area in the 1990s. In her years at the Lusty Lady in Seattle, Eaves had to give a cut to everybody that I mentioned, except the waitresses (who also make most of their money in tips). She had to tip the bartender, the deejay, and the bouncer; otherwise she couldn't work, because the deejay wouldn't deejay and the bouncer wouldn't bounce.
Not that Eaves was complaining about the money that she made in tips. Where else can a woman make $500 or more working four to six hours a night but at a topless bar? When you get down to it, dancing topless or naked for women is about as close as most of them will ever get to playing a professional sport for men.
Trust me: the only people who have any reason to complain are people who work with the Internal Revenue Service. But that's only if the IRS doesn't get its cut too.
Granted, there are very few strippers making 100 million dollars over seven years like Alex Rodriguez, but not many people make a thousand dollars a night only working part time either. And while comparing topless dancers to professional athletes may be stretching it for some people, isn't injecting your breasts with silicone the feminine equivalent of taking copious amounts of steroids like male athletes do?
There are those in both dancing and sports who might consider the use of silicone and steroids to be cheating.
However, what athletes like A-Rod don't have to deal with are groups of spectators masturbating as they step up to the plate. Nor will they likely see everybody in the front row box seats flicking their tongues at them. I doubt that the janitors at sports arenas have to throw away very many used condoms, or the handy wipes that were used to clean up semen that somebody left in the seats.
People like Elisabeth Eaves usually are not considered athletes, but when you look at the bodies of some of the women who are actually worth watching as they dance aux seins nus, you have to wonder why they aren't considered athletes. They help to keep Fitness USA going too. Lots of dancers run a few miles a day and spend a few hours each day at the exercise bike, just like A-Rod.
However, we consider nude dancing to be a form of prostitution. And it is, isn't it? When you pay a woman to rub herself all over you body in what is called a "lap dance," you are paying for what is called frottage, or "rubbing." And even if you only watch, isn't that voyeurism? You're still paying for sex, even if you only get to first or second base with her.
Well, here's an uncomfortable truth for some people: a woman can be both an athlete and a prostitute. It's what some men would like from a woman in bed. The advantage that some women have is that they can make lots of money by renting out their bodies for a few hours a week while most men can't. We don't like to tell our daughters that money for sex can be a good way to discover America while hitchhiking, but we all know that women can see the world that way, if they really want to.
Feminists like to point out the hypocrisy behind the sex trades. Good girls don't, but guys want them to. And when they do, they had better kiss their reputations good bye. When a woman like Elisabeth Eaves takes off her clothes, then she's a slut or a whore. It's what feminists call "the double standard."
Well, this double standard cuts both ways. Topless and nude dancers are very willing to take their money, but when men pay lots of money to watch women strip or perform sex acts, dancers are usually the first to think that something is wrong with the men who pay. In other words, good men don't pay for sex, but women want them to. And when men pay, look out! Women lose respect for the men who shill out the cash, no matter how little or how much cash he donates to his favourite charity.
This is a double standard, and it's not about love. It's show me the salad! Those that have get more.
What exists among both clients and servers, however, is an appalling lack of respect, according to Eaves' memoirs. We all know that men who patronize gentleman's clubs can be misogynist jerks who should be grateful to the women who serve their penchant rather than hating the dancers and themselves for being in topless bars. But the same antipathy is also prevalent among the dancers: $500 to $1,000 is easy money for four to six hours work, and dancers are lucky to be making it, particularly in this economy. Yet most of them don't seem to like the men that provide this easy source of income.
If I have any criticism of dancers after having read Eaves' memoirs, it's this: they would love to bite the hand that feeds them, because— like the clientele that they serve— many of them loath both themselves and their customers for being in gentleman's clubs. This is a perverse symbiosis, one based on mutual antagonism between the customer and the provider of goods and services.
Even though Eaves' memoirs were published by a press that specializes in feminist literature, Seal Press, her tone is not strident. Rather, her style is journalistic. She attempts to lay down the facts, and then lets the reader make up his or her mind. That's a good route to take, if you want to win a Pulitzer price for journalism.
If I have a major criticism of Bare, it's this: the writer is like a young musician who really knows her scales but isn't ready to compose yet. I don't have much of a feel for the author's personality, or even the personalities of the dancers that she writes about. The reader gets a descriptive and logical, linear narrative and some biographical information of the dancers Maya, Cassandra, Delilah, and Leila (the author herself), but you won't feel as though you have known these people all your life when you're finished with the book.
If Eaves sought to inform, she has succeeded very well. But if she wanted to get people to question their own values and attitudes vis-à-vis nude dancing and sex, or make you feel some sympathy or empathy for nude dancers, she misses the mark by a mile. Early in this book, she says that some of the dancers were really great people, but you still wonder why after you're done reading this book. Other than physical descriptions, you still don't know these people, though you think that money and material possessions are obviously very important to them.
Unlike the journalist, the writer of memoirs is supposed to inject more of him or herself into the work than he or she would in writing a newspaper article. However, Eaves leaves herself out of it, for the most part— like a good journalist, but not like a good writer of memoirs.
I would like to think that Elizabeth Eaves would be a lot of fun at a party, with a joke and maybe an anecdote or two, but you don't get that from reading Bare. Eaves seems neither interesting as a person or very interested in people, though she might be a fascinating individual and find other people very fascinating. We don't know.
Eaves has a great opening line: "I was naked." The problem is that her style is so matter-of-fact that she could be describing herself taking a shower.
All we get are the basics, and that's a little too bare. Like nakedness itself, Bare feels only skin deep. You still don't know what made an educated and presumably intelligent woman would decide to become a topless dancer, other than the money.
There's no need to write a book about it, if you were only in it for the money. All Elisabeth Eaves had to write was, "I was naked, and I got paid for it."
That seems to be the naked truth about stripping.
Chances are, you think that all the money that you pay at the door, a cover charge that may cost you ten dollars, and the outrageous price for a beer (about ten dollars) pays all the people that I have just mentioned.
Well, that isn't what I get from Bare: The Naked Truth About Stripping. Elisabeth Eaves' memoirs about her life as a nude dancer in the Seattle area in the 1990s. In her years at the Lusty Lady in Seattle, Eaves had to give a cut to everybody that I mentioned, except the waitresses (who also make most of their money in tips). She had to tip the bartender, the deejay, and the bouncer; otherwise she couldn't work, because the deejay wouldn't deejay and the bouncer wouldn't bounce.
Not that Eaves was complaining about the money that she made in tips. Where else can a woman make $500 or more working four to six hours a night but at a topless bar? When you get down to it, dancing topless or naked for women is about as close as most of them will ever get to playing a professional sport for men.
Trust me: the only people who have any reason to complain are people who work with the Internal Revenue Service. But that's only if the IRS doesn't get its cut too.
Granted, there are very few strippers making 100 million dollars over seven years like Alex Rodriguez, but not many people make a thousand dollars a night only working part time either. And while comparing topless dancers to professional athletes may be stretching it for some people, isn't injecting your breasts with silicone the feminine equivalent of taking copious amounts of steroids like male athletes do?
There are those in both dancing and sports who might consider the use of silicone and steroids to be cheating.
However, what athletes like A-Rod don't have to deal with are groups of spectators masturbating as they step up to the plate. Nor will they likely see everybody in the front row box seats flicking their tongues at them. I doubt that the janitors at sports arenas have to throw away very many used condoms, or the handy wipes that were used to clean up semen that somebody left in the seats.
People like Elisabeth Eaves usually are not considered athletes, but when you look at the bodies of some of the women who are actually worth watching as they dance aux seins nus, you have to wonder why they aren't considered athletes. They help to keep Fitness USA going too. Lots of dancers run a few miles a day and spend a few hours each day at the exercise bike, just like A-Rod.
However, we consider nude dancing to be a form of prostitution. And it is, isn't it? When you pay a woman to rub herself all over you body in what is called a "lap dance," you are paying for what is called frottage, or "rubbing." And even if you only watch, isn't that voyeurism? You're still paying for sex, even if you only get to first or second base with her.
Well, here's an uncomfortable truth for some people: a woman can be both an athlete and a prostitute. It's what some men would like from a woman in bed. The advantage that some women have is that they can make lots of money by renting out their bodies for a few hours a week while most men can't. We don't like to tell our daughters that money for sex can be a good way to discover America while hitchhiking, but we all know that women can see the world that way, if they really want to.
Feminists like to point out the hypocrisy behind the sex trades. Good girls don't, but guys want them to. And when they do, they had better kiss their reputations good bye. When a woman like Elisabeth Eaves takes off her clothes, then she's a slut or a whore. It's what feminists call "the double standard."
Well, this double standard cuts both ways. Topless and nude dancers are very willing to take their money, but when men pay lots of money to watch women strip or perform sex acts, dancers are usually the first to think that something is wrong with the men who pay. In other words, good men don't pay for sex, but women want them to. And when men pay, look out! Women lose respect for the men who shill out the cash, no matter how little or how much cash he donates to his favourite charity.
This is a double standard, and it's not about love. It's show me the salad! Those that have get more.
What exists among both clients and servers, however, is an appalling lack of respect, according to Eaves' memoirs. We all know that men who patronize gentleman's clubs can be misogynist jerks who should be grateful to the women who serve their penchant rather than hating the dancers and themselves for being in topless bars. But the same antipathy is also prevalent among the dancers: $500 to $1,000 is easy money for four to six hours work, and dancers are lucky to be making it, particularly in this economy. Yet most of them don't seem to like the men that provide this easy source of income.
If I have any criticism of dancers after having read Eaves' memoirs, it's this: they would love to bite the hand that feeds them, because— like the clientele that they serve— many of them loath both themselves and their customers for being in gentleman's clubs. This is a perverse symbiosis, one based on mutual antagonism between the customer and the provider of goods and services.
Even though Eaves' memoirs were published by a press that specializes in feminist literature, Seal Press, her tone is not strident. Rather, her style is journalistic. She attempts to lay down the facts, and then lets the reader make up his or her mind. That's a good route to take, if you want to win a Pulitzer price for journalism.
If I have a major criticism of Bare, it's this: the writer is like a young musician who really knows her scales but isn't ready to compose yet. I don't have much of a feel for the author's personality, or even the personalities of the dancers that she writes about. The reader gets a descriptive and logical, linear narrative and some biographical information of the dancers Maya, Cassandra, Delilah, and Leila (the author herself), but you won't feel as though you have known these people all your life when you're finished with the book.
If Eaves sought to inform, she has succeeded very well. But if she wanted to get people to question their own values and attitudes vis-à-vis nude dancing and sex, or make you feel some sympathy or empathy for nude dancers, she misses the mark by a mile. Early in this book, she says that some of the dancers were really great people, but you still wonder why after you're done reading this book. Other than physical descriptions, you still don't know these people, though you think that money and material possessions are obviously very important to them.
Unlike the journalist, the writer of memoirs is supposed to inject more of him or herself into the work than he or she would in writing a newspaper article. However, Eaves leaves herself out of it, for the most part— like a good journalist, but not like a good writer of memoirs.
I would like to think that Elizabeth Eaves would be a lot of fun at a party, with a joke and maybe an anecdote or two, but you don't get that from reading Bare. Eaves seems neither interesting as a person or very interested in people, though she might be a fascinating individual and find other people very fascinating. We don't know.
Eaves has a great opening line: "I was naked." The problem is that her style is so matter-of-fact that she could be describing herself taking a shower.
All we get are the basics, and that's a little too bare. Like nakedness itself, Bare feels only skin deep. You still don't know what made an educated and presumably intelligent woman would decide to become a topless dancer, other than the money.
There's no need to write a book about it, if you were only in it for the money. All Elisabeth Eaves had to write was, "I was naked, and I got paid for it."
That seems to be the naked truth about stripping.
Saturday, March 7, 2009
Review of Cat's Eye
Canadian author Margaret Atwood is probably best known for The Handmaiden's Tale, in which she envisages a future world where women are forced to wear blinders, much like horses, or pilgrim women in the 1600s. Her follow-up to Handmaiden's Tale was Cat's Eye in 1988.
Unlike Handmaiden's Tale, which is set in the future, Cat's Eye is set in suburban Canada in the late 1940s or early 1950s, when that phenomenon that we call "suburban sprawl" today was just beginning to manifest itself in Canada and the United States. The main character is an artist, Elaine Risley, who has drawn some controversy through her work. A constant motif in her paintings is a cat's eye, which anybody who was an aficionado of marbles as a child in the 1950s and 1960s might remember, was a greenish marble with a möbius strip in the centre that looked like a cat's eye.
However, Elaine doesn't remember why this marble is so important in her work, until she digs up a little girl's purse with the marble inside. The discovery of this marble conjures up all kinds of childhood memories for Elaine, who grew up with her father, an entomologist, in central Ontario. She has two close friends, Carol and Grace, before a newcomer to the neighbourhood, Cordelia, joins the group and makes herself the leader.
Cordelia is, by turns, both cruel and kind to Elaine, Carol, and Grace. Then, at Cordelia's urging, Carol and Grace push Elaine down the slope of a ravine in the dead of winter and leave her there. With just a vision of the Virgin Mary to guide her home, Elaine is half-frozen by the time she gets there, and she concludes that she doesn't need this Ghostly Trio for friends anymore.
Cat's Eye is perhaps Margaret Atwood's most sociological novel, in that we get a slice of post-war Canada, when green spaces in North America were starting to be cleared for development. Suburbia, let alone "exurbia," didn't exist before World War II. Back then, people thought, "Hey, what's a few frogs! They can move somewhere else." But this was before Rachel Carson's publication of Silent Spring in 1964.
What you see in Cordelia, Carol, and Grace are signs of a generation that has little or no connection with nature, because they don't seem to understand that somebody abandoned at the bottom of a ravine in the wintertime (like Elaine) could freeze to death. Somehow, I doubt that people of previous generations in that part of Canada would have done something like that, unless they intended to commit murder. Cordelia just wanted to be mean, it seems, and Carol and Grace were only playing follow the leader. However, Milgrom probably wouldn't have been surprised if the results of their action had been tragic.
We also get a glimpse of the sexual mores of the 1950s when Elaine was at university. Atwood reminds us that adolescents in the 1950s were quite active sexually, yet "going all the way" was severely frowned upon. In her formative years, Elaine makes out with lots of boys, but they never get past "first" or "second base" with her. Not only was sexual intercourse a taboo, but "good girls" didn't let boys lift up their skirts or squeeze their breasts. When Elaine finally loses her virginity at university, she moves in with the boy and seriously considers marrying him.
The character of Elaine Risley is part autobiographical for Margaret Atwood. Like Atwood, Elaine grew up in the wilds of Canada, where her father was an entomologist who studied insects in their natural habitats. Like Atwood, Elaine was mostly home schooled, and it's a traumatic experience for her when she goes to school with other children and finds that the life that she had been living with her father is considered strange. Children at Elaine's age want very badly to belong to the group, but Elaine is ostracized because she is "different."
Children can be cruel. Atwood's portrayal of the friendship between little girls rings far truer than what you get in The Ya-Ya Sisterhood. "Buds" for life? Few people can be both as treacherous and as moralistic as a child. In childhood, you keep your friends close and your enemies even closer. With friends like Cordelia, Carol, and Grace, Elaine doesn't need enemies.
Cat's Eye is also a study in mental illness, because Elaine meets Cordelia many years later and finds that Cordelia has had several nervous breakdowns and has been in and out of psychiatric hospitals. Of course, some of the signs of mental illness manifest themselves early in Cordelia, for instance, her vacillation between kindness and cruelty towards Elaine, Carol and Grace. She also has delusions of grandeur, thinking that she was named after the Shakespearean character because she was destined to be a great actress when most likely, her mother probably only liked the sound of the name.
Elaine wants to feel sorry for Cordelia, even thinking that she ought to, but she can't, because what her friends, Carol and Grace, did to her at Cordelia's behest is still too painful. Here, you could say that Elaine is like the victims of a mass murderer, like Michel Lépine, who shot fourteen female students to death at the Polytechnic School in Montreal in 1989 and then shot himself. Had Lépine been arrested and tried for murder, the families of the dead wouldn't have wanted him eligible for parole in a few years upon conviction. Yes, they might concede, Lépine was mentally ill, but you wouldn't want someone like him ever to walk the streets again, even if he "got better."
In Cordelia, you get a child who is both as wantonly cruel and as moralistic (as opposed to moral) as Adolf Hitler, who was still fresh in the minds of most Canadians at the time Cat's Eye takes place. Most people think that Hitler was mentally ill, too.
As an adult, Elaine understands that something was terribly wrong with Cordelia, but she remembers how evil she thought Cordelia was when they were both children, and she can't easily forgive or forget the pain. Like most people who have been victimized, she's probably afraid that Cordelia might victimize her again. Like the families that survived Michel Lépine's rampage, Elaine doesn't achieve real closure, either.
You might say that the cat's eye is, for Elaine, an all-seeing eye, like the Masonic eye on the U.S. one dollar bill. The eye is able to see the past, present, and future. The discovery of this marble inside a purse allows Elaine to see the past in relation to her present, but she cannot see into the future, though she may try to predict it based on what she has remembered from the past.
Unlike Handmaiden's Tale, which is set in the future, Cat's Eye is set in suburban Canada in the late 1940s or early 1950s, when that phenomenon that we call "suburban sprawl" today was just beginning to manifest itself in Canada and the United States. The main character is an artist, Elaine Risley, who has drawn some controversy through her work. A constant motif in her paintings is a cat's eye, which anybody who was an aficionado of marbles as a child in the 1950s and 1960s might remember, was a greenish marble with a möbius strip in the centre that looked like a cat's eye.
However, Elaine doesn't remember why this marble is so important in her work, until she digs up a little girl's purse with the marble inside. The discovery of this marble conjures up all kinds of childhood memories for Elaine, who grew up with her father, an entomologist, in central Ontario. She has two close friends, Carol and Grace, before a newcomer to the neighbourhood, Cordelia, joins the group and makes herself the leader.
Cordelia is, by turns, both cruel and kind to Elaine, Carol, and Grace. Then, at Cordelia's urging, Carol and Grace push Elaine down the slope of a ravine in the dead of winter and leave her there. With just a vision of the Virgin Mary to guide her home, Elaine is half-frozen by the time she gets there, and she concludes that she doesn't need this Ghostly Trio for friends anymore.
Cat's Eye is perhaps Margaret Atwood's most sociological novel, in that we get a slice of post-war Canada, when green spaces in North America were starting to be cleared for development. Suburbia, let alone "exurbia," didn't exist before World War II. Back then, people thought, "Hey, what's a few frogs! They can move somewhere else." But this was before Rachel Carson's publication of Silent Spring in 1964.
What you see in Cordelia, Carol, and Grace are signs of a generation that has little or no connection with nature, because they don't seem to understand that somebody abandoned at the bottom of a ravine in the wintertime (like Elaine) could freeze to death. Somehow, I doubt that people of previous generations in that part of Canada would have done something like that, unless they intended to commit murder. Cordelia just wanted to be mean, it seems, and Carol and Grace were only playing follow the leader. However, Milgrom probably wouldn't have been surprised if the results of their action had been tragic.
We also get a glimpse of the sexual mores of the 1950s when Elaine was at university. Atwood reminds us that adolescents in the 1950s were quite active sexually, yet "going all the way" was severely frowned upon. In her formative years, Elaine makes out with lots of boys, but they never get past "first" or "second base" with her. Not only was sexual intercourse a taboo, but "good girls" didn't let boys lift up their skirts or squeeze their breasts. When Elaine finally loses her virginity at university, she moves in with the boy and seriously considers marrying him.
The character of Elaine Risley is part autobiographical for Margaret Atwood. Like Atwood, Elaine grew up in the wilds of Canada, where her father was an entomologist who studied insects in their natural habitats. Like Atwood, Elaine was mostly home schooled, and it's a traumatic experience for her when she goes to school with other children and finds that the life that she had been living with her father is considered strange. Children at Elaine's age want very badly to belong to the group, but Elaine is ostracized because she is "different."
Children can be cruel. Atwood's portrayal of the friendship between little girls rings far truer than what you get in The Ya-Ya Sisterhood. "Buds" for life? Few people can be both as treacherous and as moralistic as a child. In childhood, you keep your friends close and your enemies even closer. With friends like Cordelia, Carol, and Grace, Elaine doesn't need enemies.
Cat's Eye is also a study in mental illness, because Elaine meets Cordelia many years later and finds that Cordelia has had several nervous breakdowns and has been in and out of psychiatric hospitals. Of course, some of the signs of mental illness manifest themselves early in Cordelia, for instance, her vacillation between kindness and cruelty towards Elaine, Carol and Grace. She also has delusions of grandeur, thinking that she was named after the Shakespearean character because she was destined to be a great actress when most likely, her mother probably only liked the sound of the name.
Elaine wants to feel sorry for Cordelia, even thinking that she ought to, but she can't, because what her friends, Carol and Grace, did to her at Cordelia's behest is still too painful. Here, you could say that Elaine is like the victims of a mass murderer, like Michel Lépine, who shot fourteen female students to death at the Polytechnic School in Montreal in 1989 and then shot himself. Had Lépine been arrested and tried for murder, the families of the dead wouldn't have wanted him eligible for parole in a few years upon conviction. Yes, they might concede, Lépine was mentally ill, but you wouldn't want someone like him ever to walk the streets again, even if he "got better."
In Cordelia, you get a child who is both as wantonly cruel and as moralistic (as opposed to moral) as Adolf Hitler, who was still fresh in the minds of most Canadians at the time Cat's Eye takes place. Most people think that Hitler was mentally ill, too.
As an adult, Elaine understands that something was terribly wrong with Cordelia, but she remembers how evil she thought Cordelia was when they were both children, and she can't easily forgive or forget the pain. Like most people who have been victimized, she's probably afraid that Cordelia might victimize her again. Like the families that survived Michel Lépine's rampage, Elaine doesn't achieve real closure, either.
You might say that the cat's eye is, for Elaine, an all-seeing eye, like the Masonic eye on the U.S. one dollar bill. The eye is able to see the past, present, and future. The discovery of this marble inside a purse allows Elaine to see the past in relation to her present, but she cannot see into the future, though she may try to predict it based on what she has remembered from the past.
Friday, February 6, 2009
Review of Gran Torino
First of all, let me say that Clint Eastwood new film, "Gran Torino," is Oscar bait. It won't win an Oscar this year because it wasn't released in time to qualify, but wait till next year. All the elements are there: a plot, a cast, and a director that has been there before, many times.
Though the central character, Walt Kowalksi, has a name, you probably won't remember it very long after you have seen this film, because Walt is really a cinematic reincarnation of The Man With No Name, the central of character of Sergio Leone's genre-defining "spaghetti westerns" that launched Eastwood's film career in the 1960s.
The plot: a retired Polish-American assembly line worker in Highland Park, Michigan, who defines himself as a "Polack," finds himself in the middle of a turf war between Hmong and Hispanic street gangs. He's the last "Polack" on the block, and he just wants to be left alone, but he only gets more and more involved until the whole thing explodes with deadly violence at the climax as he confronts a Hmong gang trying to force a recalcitrant Hmong youth, Thao (played by Bee Vang), to join their fight against the Hispanics. Then Thao's sister, Sue Vang Lor (Ahney Her) is beaten and raped.
The cast: the last white man on the block and the Hmong neighbours that surround him. Though Highland Park is besieged by Detroit, Walt is a senior citizen who refused to join the white flight to the suburbs in the 1960s and 1970s. With the funeral of his wife after the opening credits, there's only him, his house, and his Gran Torino from the 1970s. Walt is a relic, like his car, while his neighbours are the wave of the future: non-white.
Among the Hmong, Thao, you could say, is "Old Country," shy and timid, seemingly afraid of his old shadow. As for Sue, well, she is sure to become a feminist once she goes to university in the States, because she's a feisty one, ready to confront the gang members while Thao is not. Sue is as American as Gloria Steinem.
The director, of course, is Eastwood himself. As director, he puts to use what he learned from three films with Leone ("The Man With No Name" trilogy) and ten films with Don Siegal (the Dirty Harry films), among others.
Not that he's a neophyte as a director: he directed himself in "The Outlaw Josey Wales" and "Unforgiven," as well as the biography of jazz great Charlie Parker in "Bird." And Eastwood is certainly no neophyte as an actor, going back more than fifty years, first gaining renown as Rowdy Yates in the western television series, "Rawhide."
If Eastwood's fans were the types to find many layers of ambiguity in films, they might look at "Gran Torino" at many levels. Yes, Walt Kowalski is a reprise of Dirty Harry, Eastwood's urban anti-hero, and The Man With No Name, his western anti-hero. But Walt is also the old cowboy in "Unforgiven," who only wants a little peace before he dies.
Somehow, I think that, over time, Eastwood has come to realize that, if you live by the six-shooter, you die by it. That look of haunted menace that he perfected in Leone's films, he got from Korean War veterans. I know, because my father had the same look. My father was decorated for valour, and he never told anybody why. While Eastwood never made it to the front, he undoubtedly had seen the men who came back from "The Forgotten War" forever changed. Eastwood is probably haunted by that war, because he would have been there, but he had to testify in a hearing about a helicopter crash. Maybe he thinks he should have been there.
When the hero is an anti-hero, it's because he is confronted with a situation in which he must bend or break the rules of the society that he was raised in. The western hero is almost always an anti-hero, even Gary Cooper in "High Noon." Whether you're the outlaw or the sheriff, you break the rules of society when you have a "draw" in the middle of Main Street on a Sunday afternoon. Civilized people just don't do it.
Eastwood probably understands that there's the element of the absurd in westerns: all you want to do is get out of Dodge, but some badman is holding captive the woman that you knew in a biblical sense the night before. It sounds absurd, but what do you do? Heroes in western movies are faced with these kinds of situations all the time.
I think Albert Camus, the French Nobel laureate, would have appreciated Eastwood's films, because "Gran Torino" plays out like a movie from the Theatre of the Absurd. Kowalksi survives Chinese Red Army and North Koreans trying to kill him, only to get killed when he reaches for his Zippy Lippo lighter, as if he wants one last cigarette before his execution.
Talk about dying for a cigarette! But, hey, the killer thought he was reaching for a gun. Self-defence, right? Not in a court of law.
If you're willing to look, you can find all kinds of nuances in a Clint Eastwood film, because the good, the bad, and the ugly are all the same, yet different from each other. You probably won't find any memorable lines in "Gran Torino," like "Make my day," but the good cinematographer knows that it's what the movie goer sees on the screen that beguiles, not the dialogue. People don't watch films in Braille.
I can't wait to see Eastwood's upcoming biopic of Nelson Mandela, "The Human Factor." Which Nelson Mandela are we going to see: the terrorist, or the martyr for human rights who wasted twenty-seven years of his life in prison isolation? Will Eastwood's Nelson Mandela be the Walt Kowalksi at the end of the bullet, or the Hmong gang member at the beginning of it?
If Eastwood is true to form, his Mandela will be some combination of both. You will see in Mandela the good, the bad, and the ugly, like you see in Walt Kowalksi, and all of Eastwood's heroes.
Though the central character, Walt Kowalksi, has a name, you probably won't remember it very long after you have seen this film, because Walt is really a cinematic reincarnation of The Man With No Name, the central of character of Sergio Leone's genre-defining "spaghetti westerns" that launched Eastwood's film career in the 1960s.
The plot: a retired Polish-American assembly line worker in Highland Park, Michigan, who defines himself as a "Polack," finds himself in the middle of a turf war between Hmong and Hispanic street gangs. He's the last "Polack" on the block, and he just wants to be left alone, but he only gets more and more involved until the whole thing explodes with deadly violence at the climax as he confronts a Hmong gang trying to force a recalcitrant Hmong youth, Thao (played by Bee Vang), to join their fight against the Hispanics. Then Thao's sister, Sue Vang Lor (Ahney Her) is beaten and raped.
The cast: the last white man on the block and the Hmong neighbours that surround him. Though Highland Park is besieged by Detroit, Walt is a senior citizen who refused to join the white flight to the suburbs in the 1960s and 1970s. With the funeral of his wife after the opening credits, there's only him, his house, and his Gran Torino from the 1970s. Walt is a relic, like his car, while his neighbours are the wave of the future: non-white.
Among the Hmong, Thao, you could say, is "Old Country," shy and timid, seemingly afraid of his old shadow. As for Sue, well, she is sure to become a feminist once she goes to university in the States, because she's a feisty one, ready to confront the gang members while Thao is not. Sue is as American as Gloria Steinem.
The director, of course, is Eastwood himself. As director, he puts to use what he learned from three films with Leone ("The Man With No Name" trilogy) and ten films with Don Siegal (the Dirty Harry films), among others.
Not that he's a neophyte as a director: he directed himself in "The Outlaw Josey Wales" and "Unforgiven," as well as the biography of jazz great Charlie Parker in "Bird." And Eastwood is certainly no neophyte as an actor, going back more than fifty years, first gaining renown as Rowdy Yates in the western television series, "Rawhide."
If Eastwood's fans were the types to find many layers of ambiguity in films, they might look at "Gran Torino" at many levels. Yes, Walt Kowalski is a reprise of Dirty Harry, Eastwood's urban anti-hero, and The Man With No Name, his western anti-hero. But Walt is also the old cowboy in "Unforgiven," who only wants a little peace before he dies.
Somehow, I think that, over time, Eastwood has come to realize that, if you live by the six-shooter, you die by it. That look of haunted menace that he perfected in Leone's films, he got from Korean War veterans. I know, because my father had the same look. My father was decorated for valour, and he never told anybody why. While Eastwood never made it to the front, he undoubtedly had seen the men who came back from "The Forgotten War" forever changed. Eastwood is probably haunted by that war, because he would have been there, but he had to testify in a hearing about a helicopter crash. Maybe he thinks he should have been there.
When the hero is an anti-hero, it's because he is confronted with a situation in which he must bend or break the rules of the society that he was raised in. The western hero is almost always an anti-hero, even Gary Cooper in "High Noon." Whether you're the outlaw or the sheriff, you break the rules of society when you have a "draw" in the middle of Main Street on a Sunday afternoon. Civilized people just don't do it.
Eastwood probably understands that there's the element of the absurd in westerns: all you want to do is get out of Dodge, but some badman is holding captive the woman that you knew in a biblical sense the night before. It sounds absurd, but what do you do? Heroes in western movies are faced with these kinds of situations all the time.
I think Albert Camus, the French Nobel laureate, would have appreciated Eastwood's films, because "Gran Torino" plays out like a movie from the Theatre of the Absurd. Kowalksi survives Chinese Red Army and North Koreans trying to kill him, only to get killed when he reaches for his Zippy Lippo lighter, as if he wants one last cigarette before his execution.
Talk about dying for a cigarette! But, hey, the killer thought he was reaching for a gun. Self-defence, right? Not in a court of law.
If you're willing to look, you can find all kinds of nuances in a Clint Eastwood film, because the good, the bad, and the ugly are all the same, yet different from each other. You probably won't find any memorable lines in "Gran Torino," like "Make my day," but the good cinematographer knows that it's what the movie goer sees on the screen that beguiles, not the dialogue. People don't watch films in Braille.
I can't wait to see Eastwood's upcoming biopic of Nelson Mandela, "The Human Factor." Which Nelson Mandela are we going to see: the terrorist, or the martyr for human rights who wasted twenty-seven years of his life in prison isolation? Will Eastwood's Nelson Mandela be the Walt Kowalksi at the end of the bullet, or the Hmong gang member at the beginning of it?
If Eastwood is true to form, his Mandela will be some combination of both. You will see in Mandela the good, the bad, and the ugly, like you see in Walt Kowalksi, and all of Eastwood's heroes.
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Review of The Reader
The Writer (now a movie starring winsome Kate Wimset) is Bernhard Schlink's novel about the love between an older woman and fifteen-year-old boy set in Germany in the 1950s. Then, a decade or so later, the woman stands trial for war crimes. However, she does almost nothing to aid in her defence, thinking that she has a secret even more shameful than having participated in the deaths of innocent people at Auschwitz during World War II.
Born Oct. 22, 1922, Hanna Schmitz, the female lead in The Writer, was 10 years old going on 11 when Adolf Hitler rose to power in Germany in 1933. She was of the generation that Hitler and the Nazis wanted to reach most, because they were young and impressionable when the Nazis ruled Germany. Indoctrinated with Nazi hate by the Hitler Youth, Hanna gave up a promotion to supervisor at a Siemens plant at the age of eighteen to join the SS. During World War II, she was a concentration camp guard at Auschwitz, where she undoubtedly committed unspeakable crimes. Then, 20 years after the war, she is tried and convicted of war crimes, and sentenced to life in prison.
Naturally, one would think that Hanna Schmitz was a repulsive person, regardless of how beautiful the narrator, Michael Berg, might have thought she was. She and six other female concentration camps were involved in an incident where several Jewish female concentration camp inmates were locked in a church in Poland that caught fire during a bombing raid and burned to death. Since Hanna and the other guards had the keys to unlock the church doors, it stands to reason that she and the other guards could have prevented the inmates' deaths. But at her trial, Hanna pleads indecision: she and the other female guards were abandoned by their unit during the air raid and left to fend for themselves. Like girly-girls, they panicked and didn't know what to do.
Since the incident took place in the winter of 1943-44, Hanna was not yet 22 years old. The oldest of the guards involved was probably no more than 25 years old while the youngest might have been only 16 or 17 years old. Therefore, you could say that the women involved were at a young and impressionable age, though they were still all adults, and therefore responsible for their actions. But hey, we have all dones things in our youth that we are not proud of, right?
About 15 years after the war, Michael Berg, a boy of 15, finds himself involved in a passionate affair with this woman after she walks him home after he starts to show symptoms of the hepatitis that will cause him to miss much of the school year. It's sort of like Robbie Benson and Jennifer O'Neill in The Summer of '42, except that Michael's beloved is a Nazi war criminal. But hey, that's the risk a teenage boy in Germany took back then, if he fell in love with a thirty-ish German hausfrau.
Back in the 1960s, there was a huge scandal when it was discovered that the President of West Germany, Heinz Karsten, was a member of the Hitler Youth during the war. Then it was revealed in the 1980s that Kurt Waldheim, the former Secretary General of the United Nations and President-elect of Austria was an officer in the Waffen SS. Both Karsten and Waldheim pleaded that they had to join the Hitler Youth and the Nazi movement; according to Waldheim, he became a Nazi officer to "advance his career." He wanted to "be all he could be," I guess. Could be, both men were getting spanked at home by wives who were former concentration camp guards.
Let's look at the nature of the relationship between Michael and Hanna. Hanna is a cleanliness freak who insists that Michael take a bath before they make love. Then she insists that he read to her love poetry and plays by writers like Schiller. It's obvious that Michael has a brain, whereas Hanna has had very little schooling, but it's obvious who's putting who through the paces. You could say that Hanna is domineering and manipulative: it's either her way or highway, and whenever they have a disagreement, she withholds her love until he gives in (and he always does).
On at least one occasion, she resorts to physical violence, when she hits him across the face with a leather strap because he left her alone in a tent on a camping trip without telling her where he was going. Michael had left her a note, but his red-hot Nazi mama can't read a word, either because she's dyslexic, or because she has never been to school. Obviously, it's bad boys get spanked with Hanna.
So you might ask yourself what Michael sees in Hanna, and the answer is, most likely: sex, sex, and über-sex. Hanna was a blond-haired, blue-eyed Aryan fräulein from a farming family in Bavaria with no education and plenty of Bäyern Kürves, like the ride at Cedar Point. When she suddenly leaves him, he's naturally in a funk because he's no longer getting any sex, and his Willi is really sad.
When the trolley company where Hanna works offers her a promotion to trolley driver, she not only turns it down flat, but she quits and joins the world of missing persons. She's obviously management material, if she has the wherewithal to herd Jews into a burning church to keep them from running away, but she gets cold feet whenever anybody wants to make her a manager because she can't read.
Around the time that she was born, the 1920s, a lot of Germans were still illiterate, particularly the children of agriculturalists in places like the Black Forest. Apparently, you didn't have to know how to read to be a member of the SS.
Hanna doesn't resurface again until she faces charges for war crimes. Predictably, Michael goes through a period of self-loathing (and loathing for Hanna) because of his country's Nazi past. His whole generation was mad at their parents because they didn't resist Hitler and his Nazi horde sufficiently enough.
When Michael figures out during the trial that Hanna can't read, he starts sending her tapes of himself reading to her while she's in prison, but he can't bring himself to visit her or write to her and ask how she's doing because she has become, more or less, like a leper to him, or like someone who gave him a social disease during one of their rendezvous. Visiting her in prison would be like visiting a leper colony, more or less. Many foreigners visiting Germany had the seem impression for a long time after the war, I'm sure.
After spending 18 years in prison, Hanna is released. Many years after a divorce, Michael finds it in him to set Hanna up with a job and an apartment, but Hanna commits suicide the day before her release. Go figure!
Probably few readers will mourn Hanna's passing. Very likely, many of them will think that her suicide was many years too late, that it should have come before she and the five other female concentration camp guards allowed those Jewish women to burn to death in that church in Poland. But like most criminals, Hanna Schmitz feels "misunderstood" and feels herself to be a victim. Her main goal at her trial is to "be understood."
In her will, to make amends, Hanna bequeaths a small amount to some Jewish society to fight illiteracy among Jews in Germany, but few holocaust survivors and their families will want to join in a love fest with repentant Nazis even after reading this book.
Bernhard Schlink's Michael Berg is like Günther Grass's Oskar Mazerath in The Tin Drum, because both characters are crippled by experiences that have everything to do with World War II and Nazism. After his relationship with Hanna, Michael refuses to grow emotionally and ends up married and divorced, whereas Oskar refuses to grow physically and ends up a midget who nevertheless becomes a millionaire in the postwar economic miracle in Germany. But while Grass's novel is satirical, Schlink's novel is elegiac and mournful when there is nothing to be elegiac and plenty to be mournful about. Okay, Germans maybe had reasons to mourn their loved ones killed in the war, but should they really mourn the passing of the Third Reich?
Maybe Hanna was a good roll in the hay, but why should Michael want to spend the rest of his life with a farmer's daughter with sadistic tendencies who joined the SS because she couldn't read? Hanna Schmitz is proof that Germany was full of stupid people during the Third Reich. The SS provided employment for people like her at a time when even intelligent people couldn't get jobs.
I can just hear the voiceover of Saturday Night Live's Dan Ackroyd saying, "Hanna, you ignorant slut!"
Born Oct. 22, 1922, Hanna Schmitz, the female lead in The Writer, was 10 years old going on 11 when Adolf Hitler rose to power in Germany in 1933. She was of the generation that Hitler and the Nazis wanted to reach most, because they were young and impressionable when the Nazis ruled Germany. Indoctrinated with Nazi hate by the Hitler Youth, Hanna gave up a promotion to supervisor at a Siemens plant at the age of eighteen to join the SS. During World War II, she was a concentration camp guard at Auschwitz, where she undoubtedly committed unspeakable crimes. Then, 20 years after the war, she is tried and convicted of war crimes, and sentenced to life in prison.
Naturally, one would think that Hanna Schmitz was a repulsive person, regardless of how beautiful the narrator, Michael Berg, might have thought she was. She and six other female concentration camps were involved in an incident where several Jewish female concentration camp inmates were locked in a church in Poland that caught fire during a bombing raid and burned to death. Since Hanna and the other guards had the keys to unlock the church doors, it stands to reason that she and the other guards could have prevented the inmates' deaths. But at her trial, Hanna pleads indecision: she and the other female guards were abandoned by their unit during the air raid and left to fend for themselves. Like girly-girls, they panicked and didn't know what to do.
Since the incident took place in the winter of 1943-44, Hanna was not yet 22 years old. The oldest of the guards involved was probably no more than 25 years old while the youngest might have been only 16 or 17 years old. Therefore, you could say that the women involved were at a young and impressionable age, though they were still all adults, and therefore responsible for their actions. But hey, we have all dones things in our youth that we are not proud of, right?
About 15 years after the war, Michael Berg, a boy of 15, finds himself involved in a passionate affair with this woman after she walks him home after he starts to show symptoms of the hepatitis that will cause him to miss much of the school year. It's sort of like Robbie Benson and Jennifer O'Neill in The Summer of '42, except that Michael's beloved is a Nazi war criminal. But hey, that's the risk a teenage boy in Germany took back then, if he fell in love with a thirty-ish German hausfrau.
Back in the 1960s, there was a huge scandal when it was discovered that the President of West Germany, Heinz Karsten, was a member of the Hitler Youth during the war. Then it was revealed in the 1980s that Kurt Waldheim, the former Secretary General of the United Nations and President-elect of Austria was an officer in the Waffen SS. Both Karsten and Waldheim pleaded that they had to join the Hitler Youth and the Nazi movement; according to Waldheim, he became a Nazi officer to "advance his career." He wanted to "be all he could be," I guess. Could be, both men were getting spanked at home by wives who were former concentration camp guards.
Let's look at the nature of the relationship between Michael and Hanna. Hanna is a cleanliness freak who insists that Michael take a bath before they make love. Then she insists that he read to her love poetry and plays by writers like Schiller. It's obvious that Michael has a brain, whereas Hanna has had very little schooling, but it's obvious who's putting who through the paces. You could say that Hanna is domineering and manipulative: it's either her way or highway, and whenever they have a disagreement, she withholds her love until he gives in (and he always does).
On at least one occasion, she resorts to physical violence, when she hits him across the face with a leather strap because he left her alone in a tent on a camping trip without telling her where he was going. Michael had left her a note, but his red-hot Nazi mama can't read a word, either because she's dyslexic, or because she has never been to school. Obviously, it's bad boys get spanked with Hanna.
So you might ask yourself what Michael sees in Hanna, and the answer is, most likely: sex, sex, and über-sex. Hanna was a blond-haired, blue-eyed Aryan fräulein from a farming family in Bavaria with no education and plenty of Bäyern Kürves, like the ride at Cedar Point. When she suddenly leaves him, he's naturally in a funk because he's no longer getting any sex, and his Willi is really sad.
When the trolley company where Hanna works offers her a promotion to trolley driver, she not only turns it down flat, but she quits and joins the world of missing persons. She's obviously management material, if she has the wherewithal to herd Jews into a burning church to keep them from running away, but she gets cold feet whenever anybody wants to make her a manager because she can't read.
Around the time that she was born, the 1920s, a lot of Germans were still illiterate, particularly the children of agriculturalists in places like the Black Forest. Apparently, you didn't have to know how to read to be a member of the SS.
Hanna doesn't resurface again until she faces charges for war crimes. Predictably, Michael goes through a period of self-loathing (and loathing for Hanna) because of his country's Nazi past. His whole generation was mad at their parents because they didn't resist Hitler and his Nazi horde sufficiently enough.
When Michael figures out during the trial that Hanna can't read, he starts sending her tapes of himself reading to her while she's in prison, but he can't bring himself to visit her or write to her and ask how she's doing because she has become, more or less, like a leper to him, or like someone who gave him a social disease during one of their rendezvous. Visiting her in prison would be like visiting a leper colony, more or less. Many foreigners visiting Germany had the seem impression for a long time after the war, I'm sure.
After spending 18 years in prison, Hanna is released. Many years after a divorce, Michael finds it in him to set Hanna up with a job and an apartment, but Hanna commits suicide the day before her release. Go figure!
Probably few readers will mourn Hanna's passing. Very likely, many of them will think that her suicide was many years too late, that it should have come before she and the five other female concentration camp guards allowed those Jewish women to burn to death in that church in Poland. But like most criminals, Hanna Schmitz feels "misunderstood" and feels herself to be a victim. Her main goal at her trial is to "be understood."
In her will, to make amends, Hanna bequeaths a small amount to some Jewish society to fight illiteracy among Jews in Germany, but few holocaust survivors and their families will want to join in a love fest with repentant Nazis even after reading this book.
Bernhard Schlink's Michael Berg is like Günther Grass's Oskar Mazerath in The Tin Drum, because both characters are crippled by experiences that have everything to do with World War II and Nazism. After his relationship with Hanna, Michael refuses to grow emotionally and ends up married and divorced, whereas Oskar refuses to grow physically and ends up a midget who nevertheless becomes a millionaire in the postwar economic miracle in Germany. But while Grass's novel is satirical, Schlink's novel is elegiac and mournful when there is nothing to be elegiac and plenty to be mournful about. Okay, Germans maybe had reasons to mourn their loved ones killed in the war, but should they really mourn the passing of the Third Reich?
Maybe Hanna was a good roll in the hay, but why should Michael want to spend the rest of his life with a farmer's daughter with sadistic tendencies who joined the SS because she couldn't read? Hanna Schmitz is proof that Germany was full of stupid people during the Third Reich. The SS provided employment for people like her at a time when even intelligent people couldn't get jobs.
I can just hear the voiceover of Saturday Night Live's Dan Ackroyd saying, "Hanna, you ignorant slut!"
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)