the chutry experiment: September 2006 Archives

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September 30, 2006

Booked Solid

Peter tagged me with a book meme, and after a long week of cranking out the finishing touches of a (slightly) overdue article for a book collection, I'm looking for a good excuse to procrastinate on grading and other important tasks (at least until the mighty Boilermakers steamroll Notre Dame this afternoon). By the way, I caught Quinceanera last night at the local art house. Solid, enjoyable film. Not sure I'll have much else to say about it, but given the dearth of movie choices around here, I was pretty much starved to get myself into a theater. Now about that meme....

1. One book that changed your life?
It's not really a stand-alone book, but I always find myself returning to Walter Benjamin's essays collected in the book Illuminations (and to a lesser extent, the essays in Reflections). Pretty much everything I've written owes something to Benjamin's "Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction."

2. One book that you have read more than once?
I've read dozens of books more than once. It comes with the territory of teaching literature courses. One of the books I've most enjoyed re-reading (and teaching) is Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay.

3. One book you would want on a desert island?
Peter's choice of David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest is tempting, since I haven't read it and know that it's a demanding text. But to throw out a similarly dense and big novel that I've never read, I'll suggest Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow (so what does it mean that I'm confessing to a list of books I haven't read?).

4. One book that made you cry?
Katherine Patterson's Bridge to Terabithia, when I was about eleven years old, is the last one I remember. Glad to see that it's still in print.

5. One book that made you laugh?
Kurt Vonnegut's novels helped get me through the most stressful moments of my graduate school years. Breakfast of Champions is one of my favorites. The satire of the Hoosier car dealer was especially meaningful for someone living in West Lafayette, Indiana.

6. One book you wish had been written?
This is a difficult question simply because there are a number of books I wish I'd written. I've always admired Ralph Ellison's Invisble Man, so I'll go with that.

7. One book you wish had never been written?
This is a difficult question simply because it verges on censorship. Maybe the collected works of Anne Coulter?

8. One book you are reading currently?
Michael Berube's latest, What's Liberal About the Liberal Arts? I've been finding it incredibly valuable in helping me to think about my new teaching position here at Fayetteville State and my teaching career in general. And I'm not just saying that because he's on my blogroll (hoping to write a longer review here a little later).

9. One book you have been meaning to read?
I've been dying to read Zadie Smith's On Beauty. I'm a huge admirer of White Teeth and also liked Autograph Man quite a bit. Maybe I'll find some time over Thanksgiving break. This reminds me, I really miss riding the subway in DC. I had so much more time for pleasure reading when I was commuting by train rather than having to drive everywhere. End rant.

10. Pass it on
Versions of this meme have been floating around for a while, so I'll just issue an open invitation to partciipate. Don't feel obligated to hyperlink your titles. I'm not even sure why I did.

Posted by chuck at 10:48 AM | Comments (8) | TrackBack

September 28, 2006

25 Years

Andy Horbal is conducting a survey, asking one simple (or not so simple) question: "What is the single best American fiction film made during the last 25 years?" Be sure to drop by a leave Andy a comment or send him an email naming your choice.

I chose Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing, a film I always enjoying teaching in my Introduction to Film classes because of the discussions it invariably sparks (in fact, I just taught DTRT last week). What often gets lost, however, is that it's a beautiful film, with Ernest Dickerson's cinematography bringing the film's Brooklyn neighborhood vividly to life.

So far, about 35-40 people have responded to Andy's question with some interesting results.

Posted by chuck at 12:07 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBack

September 27, 2006

Wednesday Afternoon Film and Video Notes

I'm in the midst of some heavy-duty writing and grading this week, but I just wanted to mention some news about a couple of very cool indie films. First, I've learned that Tara Wray's Manhattan, Kansas, a fascinating personal documentary (my review) about a daughter dealing with a mentally unstable mother, is now available on a limited-edition DVD, with each DVD packaged in a hand-made origami case. Manhattan, Kansas will also be making the rounds through the Southern Circuit film series from October 29-November 6. If you're in or near one of the relevant cities, Tara's film is well worth checking out.

I also want to congratulate Chris Hansen for winning the best feature award at the South Padre Island Film Fest for his mock doc, The Proper Care and Feeding of an American Messiah (my review).

And finally, at some point, I want to return to Matt Clayfield's discussion of videoblogging, in part because it's related to some issues I'll be addressing in paper for the Flow conference in a few weeks (thanks to David for the link).

Posted by chuck at 5:53 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

September 26, 2006

Believing is Seeing

I'm doing a unit on "visual literacy" in my freshman composition classes this week, and because the photographs in our textbook aren't that interesting, I've been trying to find images that will make class discussion a little more compelling. With that in mind, I'm thinking about introducing the recent debate over Thomas Hoepker's "Brooklyn, New York, September 11, 2001," discussed most recently in this Richard Cohen Washington Post op-ed. Hoepker's photograph became the ubject of some controversy when it was mentioned in a Frank Rich editorial published in the subscription-only section of New York Times. The CBS news blog, Public Eye quotes Rich as arguing that

Mr. Hoepker found his subjects troubling. ''They were totally relaxed like any normal afternoon,'' he told Mr. Friend. ''It's possible they lost people and cared, but they were not stirred by it.'' The photographer withheld the picture from publication because ''we didn't need to see that, then.'' He feared ''it would stir the wrong emotions.'' But ''over time, with perspective,'' he discovered, ''it grew in importance.''

Seen from the perspective of 9/11's fifth anniversary, Mr. Hoepker's photo is prescient as well as important -- a snapshot of history soon to come. What he caught was this: Traumatic as the attack on America was, 9/11 would recede quickly for many. This is a country that likes to move on, and fast. The young people in Mr. Hoepker's photo aren't necessarily callous. They're just American. In the five years since the attacks, the ability of Americans to dust themselves off and keep going explains both what's gone right and what's gone wrong on our path to the divided and dispirited state the nation finds itself in today.

Hoepker found his phoographs so troubling that he withheld publication of the photograph for five years until it was included in the recently-published anthology, Watching the World Change: The Stories Behind the Images of 9/11 (see David Friend's blog entry on the discussion).

Of course, as Slate's David Plotz and others have pointed out, the subjects of the photograph do not appear as if they are enjoying just another relaxing fall afternoon but instead look as if they are engrossed in the events taking place across the water in Manhattan, and while I wasn't present when the photograph was taken, it's not hard to guess that they are discussing the attacks, a reading confirmed by two of the photograph's subjects, Walter Sipser and Chris Schiavo. Slate has also included a response to the controversy written by the photographer, Thomas Hoepker. I don't know that I have anything specific to add to the debate about the photograph, but I think the debate itself would be interesting to teach.

Posted by chuck at 10:01 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

Drinking Liberally Reminder

Just a quick reminder that the next Fayetteville, NC, Drinking Liberally will take place Thursday from 7-9 at Huske Hardware. If you're in the neighborhood, be sure to drop by, and if you can't make it tonight, we'll be meeting on the 2nd and 4th Thursdays of every month.

Posted by chuck at 9:56 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

September 25, 2006

Netflix Neighbors

The cinetrix mentioned an LA Times slideshow on Netflix's "local favorites" feature, which lists the top DVD rental picks in a given zip code. The results offer an interesting glimpse of the tastes of your friends and neighbors, inspiring both Andy and the cinetrix to list the local favorites in their neighborhoods. And after seeing their lists, I couldn't resist checking out the local faves here in Fayetteville:

7 Seconds
The Land Before Time
My Boss's Daughter
Why Did I Get Married?
SpongeBob SquarePants: The Movie
Code Breakers
VeggieTales: Sheerluck Holmes and the Golden Ruler
The Last Castle
Men of Honor
Bloodrayne

A little further down the list: A Beautiful Mind, The Cooler, and at least three of Tyler Perry's Madea movies. The unusual number of children's movies can probably be explained by the presence of Fort Bragg and and the large number of military families with young children. The Cooler is probably the "most surprising" film on the list. The 'hood around Catholic University (where I taught last year) is a little more interesting, with Our Brand is Crisis, The War Room, and All the President's Men cracking the top twelve for reasons I can't quite figure out. So what are the Netflix picks in your neighborhood?

Update: Just wanted to add the observation that the fact that Netflix tracks this information is a little creepy, as Mary Ann Johanson and this CNN article point out. What's interesting is that the CNN article seems to assert that taste is relatively uniform across the country (and across time), but I'm not so sure that the differeing results from city to city bear that out. Even if Crash is the "most popular" film in a number of cities they surveyed, that probably says as muchabout the marketing of that film (which I still regard as the most overrated film of the last five years) and the role of awards ceremonies in taste-making than anything else.

Posted by chuck at 11:30 PM | Comments (16) | TrackBack

September 23, 2006

Memory Prosthesis

I mentioned the SenseCam, a tiny camera that allows "continuous, verbatim recording of an individual's life" a couple of years ago when it first came out, but I've been thinking about technologies of memory for an article I'm writing and didn't want to lose track of a few links. I'm also intrigued by Sunil Vemuri's "What Was I Thinking?", which records audio and organizes it by memory triggers, but Josie Appleton's "Slices of Life" is also worth checking out.

Posted by chuck at 1:41 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

September 22, 2006

Blog Issues

We've been having some server problems here in 'herd country, hence the lack of updates and the inability to leave comments. Hopefully things will be resolved soon, but if you're starved for some good reading (and I know you are), take a look at some of the blogs in my blogroll to the right.

I probably won't have time to write extended entries on these topics, but I didn't want to lose David Hudson's link to David D'Arcy's discussion of Michael Tucker and Petra Epperlein's follow-up to Gunner Palace, The Prisoner, or: How I Planned to Kill Tony Blair. the new film focuses on the Iraqi journalist, Yunis Khatayer Abbas, who was briefly featured in Gunner Palace in one of the film's most dramatic scenes, with Abbas being arrested under suspicion of being part of the insurgency and spending nine months imprisoned in Abu Ghraib with his two brothers.

Also worth checking out: Joe of Kansas City Soil has an insightful review of Jesus Camp that points to the film's strengths in depicting the Pentecsotal subculture and comments on the film's lack of a historical context for the Pentecostal movement.

Posted by chuck at 12:33 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

September 19, 2006

Jesus Camp Revisited

Because I had the good luck of being one of the first people to see and review Jesus Camp, I've been getting quite a bit of traffic from people curious about the film. I think my initial review pretty much represents my current take on the film (although I'd like to see it again). I also think that Grady and Ewing have crafted a fascinating film about how children are educated in this Pentecostal subculture, one that is only a small part of the larger and more diverse evangelical movement. And I'll assume it's relatively clear from my initial review that I disagree with the political beliefs of pretty much everyone depicted in the film, and as an educator, I'm equally troubled by the homeschooling techniques, including the debunking of "science," depicted in the film.

But the intentionally provocative ABC report on the documentary has sparked a number of misreadings of a film few people have seen. Most notably, the ABC article describes the scene in which the campers pray for a cardboard cutout of Bush as worshipping him. While the camp is clearly politically-charged in ways that my church youth camps never were, I think it would be a mistake to read the scene in this way, in part because there's a mild jokiness to the presentation of the cardboard figure, even if the prayers themselves are sincere. And it's also worth noting that the members of the Pentecostal cultures I knew were not completely blinded by their political leaders, often expressing ambivalence about the conservative credentials of someone like Bush's father (especially when he invoked the ominous concept of a "new world order"). Many of the comments about the film have been decontextualized, and I think that has led to a number of unnecessary misinterpretations.

Posted by chuck at 11:56 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

September 18, 2006

The Last Kiss

In one of the key dramatic scenes in The Last Kiss (IMDB), the 30ish Michael (Zach Braff) confides that "I've been thinking about my life lately, and everything feels pretty planned out. There's no more surprises." This knowledge leaves Michael feeling as if his life--one that features a lovely pregnant girlfriend, Jenna (Jacinda Barrett), a job as an architect, and an income that would allow him to purchase a home--is "in crisis." At another point in the film, another character reflects that today's accelerated culture requires us to grow up too quickly. But as A.O. Scott suggests in his review, Michael "behaves less like a man for whom adulthood is already a burden than like a child for whom maturity is a scary and seductive abstraction." I'm not sure I'm faulting the film for exploring these questions of "arrested development," but Michael's plaintive remarks about his impending (?) adulthood left me feeling a bit perplexed and disappointed.

To be fair to the film, it is at least somewhat honest about the fallibility of romatic love. Michael acts on his pre-midlife crisis by pursuing a flirtation with Kim (Rachel Bilson), a college student he meets at a wedding. At the same time, Michael's friends are confronting similar crises, with Chris (Casey Affleck) finding himself a new father in a loveless marriage and Izzy dealing with an unpleasant break-up and Kenny refusing to grow up by engaging in as much non-monogomous sex as possible. But the stories never seemed quite as profound as the script seemed to believe they were, as this Village Voice review suggests, and I found it difficult to bring myself to care very much about any of the characters.

Much of my disappointment in the film likely derives from what felt like a relatively thin screenplay by Paul Haggis (of Crash fame or infamy), one that didn't seem to take much interest at all in its female characters. Jenna, Michael's longtime girlfriend, seems little more than a foil for allowing Michael to work through his angst about growing up, with her life outside their relationship left virtually unexplored. In fact, despite several mentions of her dissertation, we never learn what her dissertation is about. There are far worse ways to spend a night at the multiplex than seeing The Last Kiss, but I don't think this film offers much to explain Michael's malaise and offers even less to explain why someone like Jenna should put up with him in the first place.

Posted by chuck at 10:05 PM | Comments (12) | TrackBack

Baghdad Reads

Just wanted to mention an article from today's Washington Post about the decline in Baghdad's bookstore culture since the invasion of Iraq in 2003. The article describes an active, vibrant intellectual pre-war culture centered around Baghdad's Mutanabi Street, one that has been all but destroyed by the ongoing sectarian violence. While this topic was a major focus of Sinan Antoon's documentary, About Baghdad, the article conveys yet another aspect of what has been lost because of the invasion.

Also, because our server was down this weekend, I was unable to write a review of The Last Kiss, the Zach Braff twentysomething-in-crisis movie. Not sure I'll get around to treviewing it, but my take was remarkably close to A.O. Scott's, in that I found it to be rather earnest and even more confused. Perhaps more than anything, I felt the female characters (especially Jacinda Barrett's Jenna and Rachel Bilson's Kim) were poorly written. For example, Jenna comments at one point that she's working on her dissertation, but the film never even reveals her field of research.

Finally, I've been getting tons of traffic based on my review of Jesus Camp , in part--I'm assuming--because of a recent ABC report (via) on the documentary. At some point, I'd like to revisit my original review simply because of the discussion the film has already provoked.

Update: Some interesting video responses to the ABC report on Jesus Camp posted to YouTube.

Posted by chuck at 2:34 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

September 16, 2006

Ann Richards at the DNC

Professor B and Jenny have both written posts mourning the death of fiesty Texas politician, Ann Richards, who passed away a few days ago. Like Jenny, I admired Richards' "take-no-crap, hard talkin'" approach to politics, but I'd also like to add that Richards' speech at the 1988 Democratic National Convention is one of the reasons I took a political left turn at an important moment in my life. An audio file and transcript of the speech are available online at the American Rhetoric website, and looking through the transcript quickly, it's an even more amazing speech than I remembered.

Posted by chuck at 11:24 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Iraq for Sale in Fayetteville

Forgot to mention this earlier, but I pre-ordered my copy of Iraq for Sale, Robert Greenwald's documentary about "the lives of soldiers, truck drivers, widows and children who have been changed forever as a result of profiteering in the reconstruction of Iraq." We're working on scheduling a house party screening here in F'ville, during the week of October 8-14, but my apartment would only hold about 8-10 people comfortably. I've written quite a bit in the past about Brave New Films' use of house parties and hope that we can bring something similar here.

Posted by chuck at 10:54 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

September 15, 2006

Lazy Friday Reality TV Links

At this point, the LonleyGirl15 phenomenon has pretty much run its course. There may be new videos, but with the revelation of the actual creators of the series, the buzz has faded considerably. Still, LG15 is a creative use of video podcasting, and I don't want to lose track of Henry Jenkins' blog entry on the series, which aptly notes that LG15 has a number of precedents, including Sadie Benning's pixelvision videos and Sony's Rachel's Room videos in its playful blend of epistolary narratives and reality TV conventions. He then proceeds to explore how we should engage with the many varieties of YouTube fakery that have been crossing our computer screens. If I hadn't had such a long week, involving driver's tests, car problems, and other fun activities, I'd have a bit more to say on this topic.

But speaking of reality TV, I've discovered that there must be something in the water here in Fayetteville that breeds reality TV contestants. According to our very cool local newspaper, one of the finalists for this season's Survivor is from right here in Fayetteville, as is 2003 winner (Survivor: Pearl Islands), Sandra Diaz-Twine.

Posted by chuck at 6:25 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

September 12, 2006

Studio 60

Thanks to KF, I just caught the pilot episode of Aaron Sorkin and Thomas Schlamme's new TV series, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, and after watching it, I'm really looking forward to the series. Studio 60 is a backstage look at an SNL-style variety show, and like other Sorkin series (Sports Night and The West Wing), it's filled with taut dialogue, interesting characters, and a stellar cast including Bradley Whitford, Matthew Perry, Amanda Peet, and Timothy Busfield.

And, adding just a few more points to the cool quotient, the pilot even namedrops one of my favorite 1970s movies.

Posted by chuck at 10:54 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Closer to Spock

I heard about this potentially NSFW Star Trek slash video (NIN's "Closer" plays on the soundtrack) a few days ago but hadn't thought to mention it here until now. Of course there's a long history of Star Trek slash fiction, so this video is picking up on a much longer tradition, but it's still very funny stuff (interesting discussion in the comments at Smart Bitches Who Love Trashy Novels). Also didn't want to lose track of this video because I may address it in the project I mentioned a few days ago.

Posted by chuck at 2:17 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Mountain Goats in the Triangle

Via Scrivenings, one of my go-to blogs for news about indie rock: news that The Mountain Goats will be playing in Durham at the Troika Music Festival on October 20. Given that I'm going to a conference in Austin the following weekend, I'm not sure I can justify the trip up to hear them play, but I have been wanting to catch some live music for a while.

Other bands playing at the Troika Music Festival: Asobi Seksu, Two Ton Boa, The Moaners, Portastatic, and another personal fave, Okkervil River.

Posted by chuck at 11:46 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

September 11, 2006

Fayetteville Drinking Liberally

Quick reminder that the Fayetteville, NC, branch of Drinking Liberally will be meeting this Thursday night at Huske Hardware from 7-9 PM. If you're in the neighborhood, be sure to drop by (if you can't make it tonight, we'll be meeting on the 2nd and 4th Thursdays of every month). We had a good turnout for our debut a couple of weeks ago, and hopefully we can build on that momentum in the weeks ahead.

Posted by chuck at 9:32 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

September 10, 2006

Lazy Sunday Links

While digging around on the web tonight, I came across the news that Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady's The Boys of Baraka will be airing on PBS on Tuesday night. Ewing and Grady more recently made the controversial documentary, Jesus Camp, which I had the good fortune of seeing earlier this summer at Silverdocs. Not sure I'll get a chance to watch it--I'm insanely busy right now--but wanted to give the doc a quick mention.

Lance Mannion has an interesting blog entry on the ABC docudrama, The Road to 9/11, in which he addresses the transparently partisan marketing of the series through screeners sent to right-wing bloggers. I've been too exhausted and saddened by the incessant discussions of the fifth anniversary of the attacks to want to spend four hours watching a miniseries of questionable veracity. I don't have any specific problems with the docudrama genre--I think it worked quite well in The Road to Guantanamo, but my sense is that Road to 9/11 is not only nakedly partisan but also poorly made, so I've decided not to watch it. In part, this probably stems from the fact that I find the relentless memorializing of 9/11 to be rather morbid, and Road to 9/11 is caught up in that for me. And while I realize that I can choose to avoid watching it, I also find CNN's decision to replay the coverage of the 9/11 attacks online to be similarly morbid.

I also wanted to mention another web TV series that has recently come to my attention. Based out of Pittsburgh (where I believe I have at least two regular readers), the series Something to be Desired focuses on a group of DJs who work at a Pittsburgh radio station. I'm just now checking out the series, which is in its third season, but given my recent obsessions with web TV series such as Young American Bodies (probably NSFW), the whole LonelyGirl15 phenomenon, and the "webisodes" promoting the new season of Battlestar Gallactica, I figured this series deserved a mention, too. I'll try to watch some episodes later this week and write a longer review.

Tuesday Update: Via Risky Biz, an interesting interview with Jesus Camp filmmakers Rachel Grady and Hedi Ewing, plus the news that Magnolia Pictures, the film's distributor, is platforming Jesus Camp throughout the midwest before playing the film in national spotlight cities such as New York and Los Angeles. I'm still getting tons of hits here from people looking for reviews of the film (it's currently one of my most visited reviews), which suggests that there's lots of interest in this doc.

Posted by chuck at 11:50 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

September 7, 2006

September 6, 2006

Late to the Party

I'm very late to the LonelyGirl15 party. The basics as I understand them: Bree, a sixteen-year old homeschooled girl living in the middle of nowhere ("300 miles from the nearest mall") has been posting videos on YouTube for the last two months, in which she complains about her parents, talks about her friend Daniel, and discusses everything from Richard Feynman to religion. The videos have recently spawned a number of debates about their authenticity, including a recent discussion of her "Swimming" video, in which one attentive viewer identifies a plant that appears to be native to Southern California (to name just one example of the details that viewers are poring over).

I've only just begun rewatching the videos and reading the forums, but my current take on the "LonelyGirl15 conspiracy?" Brian Flemming is right: It's all about the game, and I'll be playing all night. More later, but I've got a lot of catching up to do.

Update One (the first of many, I'm sure): Lonelygirl15's MySpace page, Virginia Heffernan's NYT blog entry with an email from Bree; her arguments that LonelyGirl15 is a fraud; and yet another email from Bree. I'm fascinated by the conspiracies, whether true or not, including one theory that makes much of the coincidence that the outdoor footage appears to have been filmed in a section of SoCal not too far from....wait for it....the headquarters of YouTube.

Update 2 (yeah, there will probably be more): Jon Fine has done some digging and believes that LonelyGirl15 is the work of a performance coterie working to get a deal for a web serial, a theory that seems mildly convincing, especially given some of Brian's questions about Bree's decision to post "I Probably Shouldn't Post This..." And, he's right, the Aleister Crowley allusions are a great plot twist. Also notable, while I'm in the neighborhood: Brian reads the "proving Science Wrong" videos much like I do. They are clear parodies of anti-science videos that actually seem to imply that scientific reasoning is right. What that means for the larger narrative is a whole 'nother matter. I've officially been at this for 2.5 hours tonight.

Update 3: Also worth checking out: Terryfic's very funny video response to LonelyGirl15, "I am the very model of a popular YouTube auteur."

Update 4: I'll start a new entry on LG15 soon, but I just wanted to mention Dee Cook's interesting post about the LG15 phenomenon on the Alternate Reality Gaming Network.

Posted by chuck at 9:11 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Converging in Tempe

Interesting New York Times article about the "EnterTech" program at Arizona State University, which focuses on the convergence between entertainment and technology, with the hopes of preparing students for the massive changes taking place in Hollywood, due in part to new media technologies.

Posted by chuck at 7:34 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

September 5, 2006

Jump Cut Archives

David at Green Cine mentioned this a few days ago, but it's worth mentioning here as well: Jump Cut has made its entire archive, dating back to 1974, available online. As David points out, this is an incredible resource for film scholars and fans alike. The most recent issue, featuring a number of essays on documentary, looks like a great read.

Posted by chuck at 10:51 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

TV on the Web

More details later, but one of my planned projects this year will be an article on the "future" of science fiction television. One area I'm planning to explore will be webcasts of material not broadcast on television, including these "webisodes" of the Sci-Fi Channel series Battlestar Gallactica, which will be appearing every Tuesday and Thursday from now until the season premiere in October. Interesting stuff and a cool way to generate enthusiasm for the new season (thanks to Atrios for the link).

Update: A quick pointer to Grahame Weinbren's "In the Ocean of Streams of Story" from the Spring 1995 issue of Millennium Film Journal for another, more immediate deadline.

Posted by chuck at 4:26 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

September 3, 2006

C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America

Just wanted to mention that I caught Kevin Willmott's compelling mockumentary, C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America (IMDB), which imagines a world in which the Confederacy won the "war of northern aggression," with General Grant surrendering to General Lee, and setting in motion an alternate history of North America in which slavery remains legal even a century after the Civil War. I mention this news in part because I had the strange surprise of seeing a friend and former colleague from Georgia Tech with a bit part in the film, but I also found it to be a remarkably interetsing, smart, and disturbing take on the history of race in the United States.

The documentary is ostensibly made by a BBC-style network offering an overview of the history of the CSA, and we are told at the film's beginning that it is airing "by popular demand" on a local television station, and the parody of documentary form, a staple of independent film, is put to effective use here, reminding us not only of the ways in which authority is established in the kinds of expository documentaries that confer institutional authority on official versions of the truth, with the assumptions of historical victors rarely called into question.

After establishing its context with two or three mock advertisements, CSA then proceeds to tell an alternative version of history that resembles and diverges from our own, recalling P.K. Dick's Man in the High Castle, as several reviewers have pointed out. Using this alternate-reality approach, Willmott is able to imagine the worst excesses of the fantasies of Confederate leaders brought to life. In Willmott's alternative history, Confederate leaders after the war embark on an aggressive campaign to colonize much of South America, leaving only Canada as a significant rival (and an alternative Cold War foe, complete with a wall dividing the two countries) in the Americas. The CSA leadership also provides "tax incentives" for northern factories to return to the practice of slavery even against the country's economic interests, with one contemporary historian reflecting that the country's identity was "too important" in comparison with the financial gain. The CSA even joins in an alliance with Hitler during World War II although they regard his "final solution" as wasteful of human labor. While CSA's history imagines a bleak alternative, many of the policies reflect real goals of some Confederate leaders who imagined an entire continent (or two) under American control "from Maine to Santiago" as one mock children's song would have it.

Willmott, a professor of film studies at the University of Kansas, is at his best when critiquing the hsitory of racist representations in popular culture, especially during mock advertisements and public service announcements that interrupt the documentary narrative. These commercials include ads for a fuel additive along the lines of STP that parodies The Dukes of Hazzard, a show about capturing runaway slaves that recalls the racial dynamic of COPS, and a restaurant modeled on the now-defunct chain, Sambo's. Similarly, the mockumentary features a mock-D.W. Griffith film in which a discredited Abraham Lincoln is arrested while trying to escape to Canada via the "underground railroad," while wearing blackface (sequences that reminded most reviewers, including myself of Spike Lee's Bamboozled). As these mock advertisements and films illustrate, racist images have continued to be used to sell everything from rice to maple syrup, a point that Wilmott hammers home in an epilogue that reminds us that manyof his "mock" ads were based on real products.

To convey many of his arguments about the relationship between history and image, Willmott makes use of quite a bit of archival footage, both manufactured and real, with much of the real footage digitally manipulated in a manner that recalls the techniques used in Forrest Gump, with the film's hero--coincidentally named after a Confederate general--obliviously drifting through the history of twentieth-century America. In fact, CSA might be regarded as the anti-Gump, depicting the ways in which these historical images continue to haunt us rather than Gump's utopian journey through time in which Vietnam, the Civil Rights movement, and the women's rights movement are magically resolved through Forrest's experiences.

I didn't intend to write such a long review of the film, but as I began writing, I became taken by Willmott's attentive critique of the role of images and icons in constructing national identity and wanted to highlight this remarkable little film.

Posted by chuck at 11:12 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

News on the March!

Feeling somewhat lazy this afternoon and eveing after a late, late night of good conversation, one that somehow culminated in watching one of the Muppet movies (I have no idea which one), but just wanted to mention that I've been fascinated by the fact that there are at least two new Hollywood murder mystery films hitting theaters this fall. There's Allen Coulter's Hollywoodland, which focuses on the mysterious death of George Reeves, who played Superman on the 1950s TV series. But there's also Brian DePalma's adaptation of The Black Dahlia, James Ellroy's novel about the murder of a Hollywood starlet in the 1940s. Both films are tapping into film noir imagery and seem nostalgic for the old Hollywood. In particular, I was intrigued to come across Universal's newsreel compilation promoting Dahlia on YouTube (thanks to Risky Biz for the link, also seen at the Movie Marketing blog). The mock newsreel runs a little over four minutes and mixes in grainy archival footage with a "story" on the Black Dahlia murders told in classical newsreel style with a nod to the opening sequence of Citizen Kane, all the way down to backlit reporters discussing the case. It's an interesting little promo clip, especially for a film so self-consciously about the "old" Hollywood.

Posted by chuck at 7:48 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

the chutry experiment