Political Animals

I was really disappointed in Political Animals on the USA network. I had been looking forward to it, and then... pfffft. Awful. Did someone fall asleep while writing the script or what? (How do you get hired to write that stuff, anyway? Maybe I should send them a resume; apparently, they are hiring entry-level screenwriters at USA.) Sigourney Weaver, usually very good at sarcasm and power-tripping games, was a tremendous letdown. She seems to have phoned in her lines. I could do as well, and so could you.

The story is a juicy one. It's all about an ambitious, take-no-prisoners, ex-president's wife named Elaine Barrish, who is now the Secretary of State.

Gee, wonder who that's about?

And maybe that was the problem. They didn't know whether to "evoke" Hillary (see above link, wherein Weaver equivocates on the subject matter) or just "recreate" a Hillaryesque character. Is she a good witch or a bad witch? They don't seem to be able to make up their minds, and the screenplay veers indecisively back and forth. As a result, they can't really take any meaningful stand. It therefore turns into just another soap opera, this one set in Washington, D.C.

At one point, Weaver/Hillary/Elaine delivered what I think was supposed to be a heartfelt monologue about her convictions, and it just rang false. This savvy, cutthroat politician who craves power, suddenly cares all about the little people? Well, maybe so--that is the very definition of "complex"--isn't it? But Weaver failed to deliver on this emotional complexity and seemed to be reciting hackneyed lines that had just been given to her five minutes previously. Awful. Avoid, avoid. Do not be taken in by the commercials, which are pretty good. (In fact, whoever made the bang-up commercials should be assigned the overhaul of the whole series, but I doubt that will happen.)

Besides Weaver phoning it in, they have Ciarán Hinds, an Irish actor, playing the character based on Bill Clinton (here named Bud Hammond). They couldn't find a SINGLE SOUTHERN ACTOR? Because Hinds' southern accent is one of the worst I have heard since Jane Fonda in Otto Preminger's feverish Hurry Sundown. Are they kidding with that? It was atrocious, insulting and utterly cringe-inducing. Where exactly in the south is he supposed to be from? (Answer: North Carolina) More like Nowhere-in-the-Real-South, USA.

And it's also notable they turned Bud into Elaine's EX husband. Why? So she could make sardonic little jokes about his legendary "other women" without any moral discomfort from the audience. And then Bud and Elaine can meet each other in a motel room, post-divorce (as Secret Service agents wink knowingly at each other and at us) and it really isn't considered wrong. Or something. The fact is, the Clintons are NOT divorced, and showing reality the way it really is, would have been far more honest (and less like hedging your bets).

Further, the "scandal" of one of Elaine's sons being a suicidal druggie (borrowing from the Kennedys now) would be regarded as a scandal for a good feminist reason: one explosive, nasty charge often leveled against ambitious women (across the political and occupational spectrum) is that they are lousy/absent mothers. THIS is why such a story might be covered up by Hillary's people, as well as the stigma surrounding addicts and addiction in general. And yet, neither of these reasons was seriously addressed by the show--that would get too (haha) POLITICAL, and soap opera is obviously where they are going with this.

Too bad. They missed a great opportunity. I will stay with the series, just to see what happens (I like soaps as much as the next person), but I hope Weaver is given the script a whole week in advance next time and/or stops reading cue cards. And please, better scripts? Please? Witty banter and snappy comebacks doesn't seem like a lot to ask from writers accustomed to making six figures.

Or maybe its always risky to try to dramatize politics. SOMEBODY might get offended and networks seek as many viewers as possible. Again, that's too bad. Offending people means you have made an impact and actually matter.

Nobody can be too offended by a soap opera.

Old movie trailers

... from movies you've never seen. Unfortunately, I didn't find certain ones I was looking for. However, finding some of these was worth the whole expedition, and you are in for a real treat.

And I regret to say the various uploaded trailers for "It's Alive" (1975 version) are not nearly as funny as I remember.

~*~

A forgotten movie of the 70s, almost qualifies as cinéma vérité. The two leads seem not to be "acting" at all.

I suppose it also matters that these are my favorite actors. :)

Scarecrow (1973)



~*~

This is an old-school trailer for one of the best B-movies of all time.

The movie had a famous fake-out ending, which catapulted director Jonathan Demme to the top. (He later went on to fame and fortune as director of "Silence of the Lambs.") And B-movie queen Barbara Steele takes center stage, which makes us wonder how this proper British lady ended up as warden of a nasty American women's prison.

The right woman for the job!

Caged Heat (1974) (caution: nudity, NSFW, sexism, violence, etc)



~*~

Brian DePalma's horror movie about conjoined twins, which simply defies rational description. Margot Kidder was stunningly beautiful!

Sisters (1973)



~*~

Rosemary's Baby and The Exorcist go to the drive-in, starring Juliet Mills, who played Nanny in "Nanny and the Professor." (really) This trailer was shown for weeks on late-night TV, and was very popular with 70s potheads.

Beyond the Door (1974)



~*~

In this movie, a nice middle-class white couple go broke and decide to go into robbery to make ends meet. (Why don't they make heartwarming family tales like this any more?)

Jane was heavily into her JANE FONDA'S WORKOUT phase, and she looks mah-velous!

Fun With Dick and Jane (1977)



~*~

I guess you didn't know that the infamous Gates of Hell have to be guarded? And how exactly would one audition for THAT job?

Well, it probably won't surprise you to learn that you get DRAFTED for the position, and you have no say in it at all. (screams)

The Sentinel (1977)



~*~

Before Terry O'Quinn got mega-famous on LOST, he was a very believable serial killer.

The Stepfather (1987)



~*~

O'Quinn reprised his bang-up role in the rather cheesy and predictable Stepfather 2. This movie came out the same year John List was arrested. It is widely assumed the first movie was inspired by John List, but in fact, List was still at large in 1987. By 1989, the "List story" had entered the national consciousness and you can clearly see the influence of List on the narrative.

Stepfather 2 (1989)

War is hell

At left: Jane Fonda's mug shot during her infamous "Hanoi Jane" period.









I don't usually get a multitude of comments on my blog, but I am hoping this time yall will jump in and add your two cents. A rather heated exchange on another blog has resulted in this post. I'm not really prepared to write it, and it keeps coming out all wrong, or at the very least, it sounds limited. Thus, I need some of you folks to help: clarify, add, subtract, criticize, correct me, whatever it takes. I welcome it. No offense at all will be taken. I would like to have a serious discussion. Canadians and other non-USA-citizens are particularly welcome: Please don't be shy.

Here are the questions for discussion:

Can one "support the troops" without supporting the war? How?

Can one criticize the atrocities of the war without actually describing in some detail WHAT "the troops" have done?

I don't think so, unless one is deliberately, determinedly vague. Yes, it's nasty over there. How nasty?

And then, the discussion grinds to a halt.

~*~

Some time during the presidency of Ronald Reagan, the mantra "Support the troops!" developed into a full-fledged battle cry; a compulsory litmus test of any criticism of American military adventures abroad, which are constant and never-ending. The United States has had it's fingers in the business of so many countries, I couldn't begin to name them all. As people here at home die from no transplanted kidneys and no health insurance, we have propped up corrupt dictators with millions of dollars. We have funded covert operations in every nook and cranny of the world. We have kept countries from having elections (as we nullified the election of Ho Chi Minh), and forced others into having elections they weren't ready to have, or perhaps, didn't even want. We have invaded countries, supposedly on the behalf of other countries. The list is interminable. I am ashamed of it. This was never my decision; I wasn't consulted, although they HAVE used my money to do it. Just as I belong to the biggest bully of Christendom, the Catholic Church, I belong to the biggest bully of the nations, the USA. It is my task (my destiny?) to reform both, to do whatever I can to humanize these institutions. I seek to increase and magnify the good in them (and there IS so much good) and minimize or eliminate the bad. Needless to say, I have my work cut out for me.

Since Vietnam and the abolition of the draft (and certainly, even before), the army has been drawn from the poor and working classes of the USA. This has been deliberate. Ashley Wilkes went dashing off to fight the yankees, but that is probably how long it has been since large numbers of upper-class men enlisted, William F. Buckley and a few other adventurous rich men notwithstanding. As the Bruce Springsteen song reminded us, prisons have habitually been emptied in times of war, with poor kid-car thieves and dope dealers used as cannon fodder. During the Reagan Admin, an increase in the "college funds" incentive was added to the formidable list of military benefits in the existing G.I. Bill. Obviously, kids who already have college paid for, wouldn't find this any kind of incentive to enlist. The class element is very clearcut and unapologetic.

Eliminating the draft army and using only volunteers meant there had to be SOME incentive to enlist; three-hots-and-a-cot wasn't enough. (As my brother once said, you can get that much in JAIL, forgodsake, and jail is safer than the battlefield.) Health care for life (however slipshod, it's better than none), preference in Civil Service jobs, life insurance packages, social networking for future employment leading to a solid place in the middle class--these are valuable incentives. But above all, the free-college bribe, the G.I. Bill? That was the big enchilada, and poor kids from the ghettos, the barrios, the farms, the projects, all saw a way out.

And so, the US military had a ready supply of cannon fodder, as needed.

I will never forget the documentary film Soldier Girls, in which the girls from the Bronx tell each other they have to hang in there--they MUST endure the abusive basic training drill instructors--because then they will go back to the neighborhood in uniform, looking fine. "Everyone will see that we made it!" one girl says to the other, embracing her as she cries that she can't go on.

Thus, there is also significant pride in military service, a sense of some lofty accomplishment that is preserved as long as the mystique of the military is preserved. To question that mystique is to puncture the egos of anyone who subscribes to it, including people who have spent their lives being proud of the uniform.

The Reaganites knew all of this. Reading The American Spectator and other right-wing publications throughout the 80s, one could read their open discussions regarding how to capitalize on these emotions, the need to build "a poor man's ego" and the accompanying need to feel accomplished, important and useful. The working class/poor have so little to be proud of--we can give them this... and fight our colonialist wars in the bargain. We can make them The Few, The Proud. Be All You Can Be, was the 80s army recruitment slogan.

And now, in America, it is virtually verboten to discuss WHAT soldiering is. As a consequence, many soldiers are stunned when they find out. "Peacekeeping forces"--after all, doesn't sound so bad, as Orwell's WAR IS PEACE doesn't either. Hey, it HAS TO BE DONE. Somebody has to keep the peace, right? The PR of "peacekeeping" served two functions, one for politicians to ask for more warbucks from the voters, and one to keep the soldiers in the dark. Many soldiers have no idea whatsoever of the politics of the countries they are deployed to. They don't know the languages, religion or cultures. The army likes to keep it that way. No classes in any of that are included in Basic Training, beyond what is necessary to find one's way around. (History? We don't need no stinking history!)

~*~

In the discussion I refer to, someone actually used the phrase "they were only following orders"--apparently with no irony and no memory of the Nuremberg Trials, where that line was first popularized.

Let's backtrack a minute.

My first introduction into world politics was the Indochina Peace Campaign, a road-tour by Tom Hayden, Holly Near and Jane Fonda. I loved them all, so I went to hear them. I was 14 years old. I still have the flyer in an old scrapbook, advertising their visit to the Ohio State University campus. They had just come from their highly controversial (putting it mildly!) FTA Tour, which was made into a movie that few people have ever seen. The concept was to go to the troops directly, based on some of the ideas presented above: the soldiers are often poor and working class, and need to be educated that Vietnam is a quagmire, a no-win situation, that benefits a certain class of American profiteers. A review of the movie fills us in:

During 1971 and 1972, Jane Fonda and Donald Sutherland led a quasi-USO tour that played in towns outside of U.S. military bases along the West Coast and throughout the Pacific. Fonda referred to the tour as "political vaudeville" and the show itself was called "FTA" (the acronym standing for "Free the Army" and "Fuck the Army"). The audiences were primarily the men and women of the U.S. armed services, and during the tour Fonda and her company interviewed the various soldiers, sailors and marines regarding their thoughts on the Indochina slaughterhouse.

Viewing "FTA" today is like opening a long-forgotten time capsule. The film's true power comes in the frank, often rude comments from the servicemen and women who openly question the purpose and planning of the American involvement in Vietnam. Most memorable here are the members of the U.S.S. Coral Sea, who presented a petition to their superiors demanding a halt to the bombing in Vietnam; African-American soldiers and marines who angrily decried racist attitudes among the white commanding officers at the U.S. military installations, usually with an upraised fist of the Black Power movement; women serving in the U.S. Air Force who talk unhappily about sexual harassment from their male counterparts; and soldiers who pointedly refer to the dictatorial government in South Vietnam which was being presented as the democracy which they were supposedly defending. The extraordinary air of dissent that rises out of "FTA" provides a rare glimpse into a unhappy and demoralized fighting force stuck in a war which they did not believe in.

Here we clearly see that the soldiers themselves often didn't agree with what they were doing.

If there are any who do not NOW agree, we certainly aren't hearing about them.

Perhaps the "Support the Troops!" mantra only refers troops that have accepted their fates? Can we support dissident troops? (Are there any?)

~*~

In 1970, one of the bloodiest years of the Vietnam engagement, Hollywood gave us some blatant, pro-war propaganda in the movie PATTON. General Patton, of course, was a commander during World War II, not Vietnam, but in this manner, Americans could look back to a time in which we had been on the morally-correct side of a military action. It was a cozy, well-acted valentine to Richard Nixon and General Westmoreland. George C. Scott earned himself an Academy Award, which he famously refused.

Despite the fact that Hollywood is supposedly so liberal, then as now, precious few openly anti-war movies have EVER been made. (One fascinating fact is that one of the co-authors of this screenplay, Francis Ford Coppola, DID go on to make one of the greatest anti-war movies ever made, Apocalypse Now.)



~*~

Speaking personally, I will do anything to end this war. Playing games about what war is, avoiding the truth, is not the way to do it.

"You cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will. War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it; and those who brought war into our country deserve all the curses and maledictions a people can pour out."

Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman
Letter to Mayor Calhoun of Atlanta,
September 12, 1864