Democracy's Blooper Reel

"Dead Checking"

A new word I wish I hadn't learned...

Dead-checking (n.)

"...when you enter a room where guys are wounded you might not know if they're alive or dead. So they teach us to dead-check them by pressing them in the eye with your boot, because generally a person, even if he's faking being dead, will flinch if you poke him there. If he moves, you put a bullet in the brain. You do this to keep the momentum going when you're flowing through a building. You don't want a guy popping up behind you and shooting you."

Read more from a formerly embedded-reporter here.

The Camera Adds 10 Pounds

A few months ago I began trolling Craigslist Los Angeles looking for cash gigs. I came across a number of ads looking for overweight people to star in a reality series. Though I was qualified (fat, ambivalent, a camera-whore) the whole thing smelled like trouble. I ended up answering a different ad and becoming a contestant on a pop culture quiz show instead. Though I was ultimately stymied by my inferior recall of Hilary Duff and Freddie Prinze Jr. arcana (I conveniently forgot to Tivo my subsequent humiliation) at least I avoided becoming a contestant on The Biggest Loser.

Fatsploitation is the new trend in Reality TV and Liz Penn has a great article on Slate which gets right to the diseased heart of this issue. One choice observation:

These contests are billed as a chance for the participants to strut their spunky self-esteem, but for all the carefully rehearsed pride, there's no question that the show's organizing principles are voyeurism and humiliation. In one of last week's challenges, the red team was presented with a gooey cinnamon roll and a telephone and told that whoever consumed the roll would be allowed a phone call home. The way this trick was set up—if you eat the treat, you get to make the phone call—was particularly diabolical in that it equated gastronomic deprivation with emotional restraint and face-stuffing with familial love.

OK, so I haven't actually watched these new shows, and I don't plan on it. To their credit, it might be a novel experience just to see fat people shot from the waist up for a change. Most news reports on obesity have those unnerving anonymous video images of chubby legs and butts in short shorts, shot from the belly down. In an effort to preserve the dignity of the fat people in their stock footage, the media dehumanizes them instead. And all of it is done in the name of some pious message about "health" and nutrition.

So, yeah it might be cool to root for Gary who just wants to be "healthy enough to see his kids grow" or Andrea, a "go-getter" who "feels she needs this show to help conquer the only thing she can't control!" At least, these fat people have faces and names, and mostly realistic expectations for themselves. But, the bottom line is that these shows are cruel by design. No matter how sincere the individual contestants may be, the shows are rigged to bring out the worst in all parties.

There's a lot of talk in this town that reality TV is on its last legs. If that's true, it will be very good news for writers and actors, for whom the whole reality TV phenomenon has been a kind of union-busting silver bullet.

I don't see how the crass producers of the genre can take it much further anyways. Perhaps America's Next Bumfighting Champ? Or Desperate Amish Housewives?

(By the way, just in case, those pitches belong to me.)

On Fair Play

The media is having lots of fun with the Pistons' recent basket-brawl. Pushed to the back pages is the announcement by the International Committee of the Red Cross condemning the "utter contempt for humanity" displayed by all sides in the Iraq war.

Right wing talkers had been bitching last week about the scrutiny paid to the videotaped killing of an unarmed, wounded Iraqi by a US soldier. Just more evidence of an anti-US bias in the media, they claim.

But now with the seemingly ubiquitous footage of the Pistons-Pacers brawl (CNN calls it a "growing war between players") running 24/7 on all the networks, we've found a bloodless stand-in for the real war.

All of this focus on out-of-control (subtext= black) athletes complete with scowling mug shots seems like a huge distraction from real news.

But maybe the media is afraid of being called traitorous for reporting on foul play in Iraq. Kevin Sites, the formerly-embedded reporter has a blog. It may the only way you'll ever hear the real story about that shooting.

How the "Liberal Media" Sanitizes the War

Tomdispatch has an advance article by Michael Massing which analyzes how the US media failed to report the real story in Iraq. It's worth reading.

One thing I've noticed in mainstream reporting is the tendency by commentators to use the phrase "war on Iraq" (my emphasis.) I heard Lou Dobbs on CNN use this phrase and a Google search shows the terms "on" and "in" being used pretty much interchangeably. Aren't we fighting for the freedom of the Iraqi people? Is the media prepositionally-challenged or are these lapses just one peek behind the fig leaf of the Pentagon spin machine?

Fly the Unfriendly Skies

From US News and World Report:

In late September, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) began allowing security checkpoint screeners to manually pat down women's breasts and the genital and derriere regions of both sexes during searches. The point is to find hidden explosives while machines that might perform the job are still being tested.

I love that US News uses the word "derriere" instead of "ass" or "buttocks." Is that in their style book?

If the new searches sound invasive, don't worry, cause they're working on new machines called "trace portals" that will:

blow puffs of air at passengers to dislodge and sniff for bits of explosive material

If all of this makes you a bit uncomfortable, count your blessings that you weren't booked a seat on one of America's secret torture flights.

Some DVD reviews

Though post-election blogging and the search for Hopkin Green Frog have consumed most of my free time, my real passion is movies. Periodically, I'll be writing some longish reviews like the one below for Kichiku and hopefully some shorter capsules like these.

The following are all new(ish) on DVD:

Happy Birthday to Me- Tagline: "John Will Never Eat Shish Kebab Again." 80s Canadian horror flick directed by J. Lee Thompson (of Cape Fear fame.) When I was a kid, they put this on at a slumber party and it scared me so bad, I called my mom and she picked me up in the middle of the night.

Passion of the Christ- When this premiered at the Arclight in Hollywood, the usher announced that it was "OK" for viewers to cry if they became emotional during the film. At which point my companion blurted out: "Is it OK to laugh?" In truth, neither response is likely. Instead Mel's Jew-baiting epic seems uniquely tailored to arouse more carnal urges. S&M fetishists will get their best kicks since Miike's Audition, and all in loving slo-mo. In its defense, any movie that encouraged huge segments of the American moviegoing public ("values voters" and Bush-haters alike) to actually read subtitles can't be all bad.

Fat Girl- French provocateur Catherine Breillat's disturbing coming-of-age drama follows the rivalry and sexual awakening of two teenage sisters.Though deceptively naturalistic and clinical, the movie builds to a hypnotic and jarring finale. There are two great perfomances from the (very young) actresses here and a probing intelligence behind the camera. See this before Breillat's Sex is Comedy (a fictionalized "making of") which is opening in major cities now.

Happy Together (Special Edition)- Wong Kar Wai won best director at Cannes in 1997 for this elliptical meditation on breaking up. Lensed by the great Christopher Doyle, shot in Buenos Aires and starring two of Hong Kong's biggest male stars (Tony Leung & the late Leslie Cheung) "Happy Together" is a masterpiece of tone and texture. Legend has it that the director tricked the straight Leung into shooting this film by showing him a bogus script. If Leung was at all queasy about playing a gay man, it's not evident in his generous performance. It's easy to quibble with the rambling third act and "everything-but-the-kitchen-sink" visual style, but the film pulses with genuine feeling and leaves some indelible images in its wake.

The Day After Tomorrow- Though it doesn't reach the pulpy greatness of Irwin Allen's disaster pics, this Roland Emmerich monstrosity has its virtues. For one thing, it's a zeitgeist blockbuster, ripped from the
headlines (OK, buried in the back of the paper) about the dangers of
global climate change. There are some cathartic images, like toronadoes destroying Hollywood and some unavoidably disturbing ones, like the mass panic in the streets of Manhattan. Movies like this work because of the way they transform our legitimate fears into popcorn hyperbole. With some fun jabs at Dick Cheney along the way, this makes an excellent post-election alternative to both CNN and the Weather Channel.

Control Room- Jehaine Noujaim's sobering behind-the-scenes look at the Al-Jazeera news network is one of the best documentaries of the year. The approach is more traditional and personal (read: NPRish) than the year's other high-profile lefty docs. While the film reveals the mechanics of the Pentagon spin machine and documents its share of American outrages in Iraq, its real focus is on people. Noujaim trains her camera on journalists, producers, reporters and the US military's own press flack. She finds complicated, serious individuals struggling to make sense out of a violent, polarized world. Rent this.

Kichiku

Conceived as a feature-length student film and shot over the course of a year on a shoestring budget, 1997s Kichiku (just released by DVD import label Artsmagic) is one of those foreign films that managed to score international distribution precisely because of its notorious reputation.

In a candid interview on the DVD extras disc, young director Kazuyoshi Kumakiri admits that he made the film during a turbulent period. Then 23, he was still licking his wounds from a breakup and he wanted to weed out the friends who "understood" him from the pretenders.

"I wanted to be a hate figure," he says without a trace of irony.

So he made one of the most violent and disturbing movies of all time.

I've seen my share of violent horror films (what Kumakiri calls "extreme cinema") but even I was blindsided by the brute force of Kichiku's shocking third act, which apparently inspired film festival walkouts and a mea culpa from a festival programmer.

Kumakiri's story concerns a group of leftist student radicals which begins to fall apart organizationally and morally while their leader sits in jail. The group, left in the charge of the leader's psychotic (and sexually-predatory) girlfriend takes to petty crime and infighting. After their leader's suicide, the gang explodes in an orgy of horrific torture and murder.

Kumakiri claims that he was inspired by films like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre but also by a famous childhood documentary about the Japanese Red Army, a left wing militant group with a bloody track record in the 70s. He must also have drawn some "inspiration" from the rise of Aum Shinrikyo, who staged a sarin gas attack on Tokyo's subways just two years earlier. There is definitely overt political imagery here including the controversial hinomaru being splattered with blood in a particularly gruesome murder sequence. Like Battle Royale (another recent Japanese "kids killing kids" flick), the movie clearly comments on the culture of ijime (bullying) and how it reinforces hierarchical, militaristic and nationalistic social structures.

But as incendiary as some of this imagery is, Kichiku is mostly apolitical. The young actors definitely look the part of 70s fringe-dwellers, but not a political word comes out of their mouths. They've got long hair, bell bottoms (hell, they even play folk music a la Manson) but there doesn't seem to be an ounce of political conviction pulling them together.

Worse, the movie pins most of its blame for the kids' downfall on a duplicitous woman, who gets her comeuppance in one of the most misogynistic moments I've ever seen.

Because Kumakiri's characters are apolitical, poorly-drawn and unpleasant from the get-go, it's almost impossible to care about what happens to them. This makes it marginally easier to sit through the emetic, snuff-flick conclusion.

About that conclusion: Kichiku's final moments are some of the most graphic and convincing scenes of violence I've seen in any movie. Kumakiri and his fellow student filmmakers are clearly in command of their craft. This film has more visual intelligence and mastery of tone than most any Hollywood horror product.

But there's something uncomfortable about watching them gleefully construct these scenes in the included "making of" footage on the extras disc. It will be hard for most people to watch this without being reminded of recent horrors like the images from Abu Ghraib and the multitude of downloadable beheadings. Just a few years ago I could stomach a film like Kichiku and even take pleasure in seeing the special effects whiz put his finishing touches on a severed head (hell, I grew up reading Fangoria.) But that was back when I never imagined I'd see a real snuff video in my lifetime. That Kichiku is drawn from the real life horrors of political violence is only a small part of the irony.

Kumakiri is a gifted and precocious talent. He concedes that he now finds his debut film "immature" and his sophomore feature (a romantic drama) was reportedly too slow, too melancholy and too long by half. But I'm glad that he was able to put some of his demons to rest with this film. I can't recommend Kichiku to any but the bravest horror and Japanese exploitation fans. For those whose senses have been too rattled by real life torture and dismemberment, Kichiku may feel too real (or too unreal.)

E tu, Leahy?

From today's New York Times:

Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, who is the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, told reporters after meeting with Mr. Gonzales for 35 minutes that he believed Mr. Gonzales would win "substantial votes on both sides of the aisle" when his nomination comes before the Senate.

"The president could have picked a polarizing figure," Mr. Leahy said. "He did not. I applaud him for that."

Hello, Senator Leahy, but what the fuck are you smoking? Alberto Gonzales is the guy who buried Dubya's DUI. He's the guy who helped speed up executions in Texas. And he's the guy who argued that torturing prisoners at Gitmo was legally-defensible.

Gonzales isn't a polarizing figure? Consider this voter polarized. If the Senate Democrats don't even make token efforts to oppose the right wing juggernaut, then perhaps it's them who have become "quaint" and "obsolete."

Hmmm....

No doubt you've seen this. More paranoid academics.

Online Hunting

Spotted on Memepool:

LIVE-SHOT is similar to a trip to the rifle range with one very notable exception. Everything is done through a computer and the internet. A paid membership will allow for access to the range viewing camera(s) at any time. Members can then schedule a reserved session time which allows exclusive control of the shooting system to fire at a choice of various reactive targets. Please note that the shooting range is an outdoor facility located on a secluded ranch in the Texas hill country. Please take this into consideration while shooting is taking place, as weather can affect accuracy.

At all times during a shooting session, someone is at the shooting station and is available to answer questions (e-mail, instant messaging), provide assistance, and ensure a quality experience. This person has the ability to override the firing mechanism of the system to minimize the chance of a dangerous or illegal discharge from occurring.

Just one more example of how blue-state technology has enhanced the lives of housebound red-staters. Online hunting.