I watched this DVD last night: compelling enough, even exciting, but overlong in the standard fashion now (where every film must skirt at least 2 1/2 hrs) and unnecessarily unclear about the politics of the area, Sierra Leone, in which it was set. The interesting fact is that (spoilers) the film follows the same narrative route as Children of Men and The Constant Gardner : a cynical, amoral or at least disengaged, white men sacrifices his life for a ‘racial other’–thereby presumably redeeming himself, establishing his credentials as part of humanity and making it possible for a black man/woman to escape from the horrifying conditions of his/her current environment. What gives with this move–white guilt which can nevertheless not find the strength to step out of the limelight, the economic necessity for major films to have major (mainly white) stars, a condescending attitude toward Africa and Africans or a persistent religious impulse in which it is necessary to achieve salvation by good works? do you regard this narrative standby cynically–a kind of artistic condescending post colonialism–or more generously as the persistence of a moral viewpoint, evident in so many stories, emphasizing the need to transform the individual “from within”–something no doubt that many white westerners could use? by the way here’s a useful article on the history and current issue of the “conflict diamond”
how long did it take you to watch it, michael? i keep sending you emails. are you not getting them or are you not replying?
I watched it all in one go! I think I have neglected my email–I will check it now!
congratulations!
Whoopee!
michael, it is generous of you to consider the second possibility. i tend to see only the first and to react to this kind of movies with great annoyance. i’d also like to add to your list of ideological moves behind this mini-genre (i haven’t seen this specific movie) the strong individualistic underpinning. in children of men it is particularly prominent, because the clive owen character acts specifically in opposition to the will of a revolutionary (and originally — or potentially, i don’t remember now — well-intentioned) group. you rarely see collective action celebrated in hollywood movies — schindler’s list, hotel rwanda…
i often think of schindler’s list as the originator of this style of save-the-world filmmaking, but don’t know enough to be sure. would you say it’s true?
i think those generous readings are viable in their own right, or perhaps it is a sort of deep christian structure that permeates these kinds of narratives, but at the same time watching and agonizing over films like these becomes a substitute for politics or for global awareness.
the distortion that results is particularly pronounced in the case of those set in african locations because africa has long been a cultural site where white people work out their crises. as you point out, it is always a generic AFRICA, never a particular place with a particular history. and africans themselves are by and large either hapless victims in need of white saviours or murderous brutes. i am nonetheless drawn to wacth this film–if it merits actual discussion of specifics perhaps we can talk about it in more detail in a week?
There was a time when Hollywood celebrated collective action. Sorry to invoke genre again, but the musical seems to be the repository of collective ideals, the sense of community, and the greater good (and although, in the musical, the collective is just putting on a show on Broadway, some have argued that “putting on a show” was simply an expresison of the New Deal ethos). In Capra, the collective is moved to bring about change, or at least resist the notion that problems are best solved by a single gesture by one individual–in fact, one of the reasons why I love films from the 30s is that they remind me that America didn’t use to be (and doesn’t have to be) like it is now.
The collective is anathema to the Classical Hollywood style, which, as these comments show, still dominates.
The films I’d add to Gio’s list are Mississippi Burning and Dances With Wolves.
I’m willing to get this one and join in. I’m of about seventeen minds on the issue–I can imagine defining a genre and then lumping ’em together (and then lumping) as a schematic narrative with suspect ideology.
But I’m also unwilling to simply dismiss the generous reading possible. (I think Denby in the New Yorker praised Blood D as an old-school morality tale, perhaps in line with Michael’s and Arnab’s reading of such generosity.)
And I’m also on record–and will continue to affirm–seeing Children of Men very differently than many of you, and I’m curious about which films we embrace and which we disparage. I’ve yet to see Last King, but I’m curious how that avoided the suspicion evoked by these other texts.
And I’m also interested in throwing this out: Arnab wondered if “watching and agonizing over films like these becomes a substitute for politics or for global awareness.” I’d wonder if we (the collective critical “we”) bashing such films are included in A’s critique? I.e., is it less of a substitute for politics/awareness if we name an ideology than if we take pleasure in films that (seem to) reinforce said ideology?
yes.
Well, I obviously imply no, which means I deserve a flat “yes.” But I’m serious: I’ll step back in shortly and try to make a case for the politics of pleasure, for the contrary possibilities of pop cinema, but I’m also going to lob the bomb back at you–if you can get the leftists lathered up naming ideology in texts, you can probably distract ’em from other activities. Which more effectively drains “resistance” from the system: seducing the masses into pleasurable catharsis (that seems like action) or to draw the critics of the system into endless obsession with the signs (in a criticism that seems like action)? I obviously don’t simply buy that, but it’s the simplicity (or the “obviousness”) of the model of ideology, with good critics (and criticism) versus bad films, that gets under the skin. So… sell me on that “yes,” G.
well, i don’t know that i can sell you on it, mike. the model you posit is very extreme: all catharsis, all critical erotica, no action. but one can have criticism and action, no?
i must say that i find it pretty easy in my personal case, but, too, i am a person who is always, almost obsessively, linking theory and practice in her mind. i’m constantly reevaluating my practice in the light of new theoretical discoveries, and vice versa (this endless self-examination is pretty fucking exhausting). i find i can’t escape it, actually, even when i want to. but i see other people, many people i’ve met in the university, who can’t, or won’t. as an aside i’ll say that i think this is why intellectuals are hesitant to embark on investigations of class issues, why the discourse of class is less covered than other cultural studies discourses. i think it is because class is the one issue in which we are all at fault. we manage more or less to be egalitarian from the points of view of race/gender/sexuality, but class? do we really want to give up the five figure income? and what after that? where to draw the line?
i think obsessive theorization can become paralyzing when you think you need to be as practically radical and you are theoretically. but i think that’s a mistake one has to try to avoid. we don’t need to do that. we need to do just a little bit.
anyway, the dilemma of the cushy intellectual is here to stay. thinking of it in terms of a dichotomy between ideology and activity is not particularly useful.
I think I misstated my response, or focused it in the wrong way. I’m most frustrated by the sense that there is a kind of viewing that simply gets it wrong, that is not viewing (in any active sense) but is merely consumption or absorption or mirroring–where the audience simply soaks up the ostensibly bad ideology of a ‘bad’ movie (like Blood or Children). The counterpoint to this is that viewer who, by being a good critic and hating the text, is therefore resisting ideology, who is an “active” viewer and therefore somehow is more active. I don’t really buy the distinction between ideology and activity, or theory and practice. Nor do I buy this distinction between the passive consumer and the active critic.
Perhaps I’m overstating or misreading your case–or perhaps I’m just rehearsing an olde debate recollected from that distant gradschool past. But I was most invested in challenging a notion that it’s somehow better–more political–to say that a film is colonial or racist than to enjoy the film. Both strike me–tying back to a point Michael made on the thread about Children of Men–as actually bound up in processes of consumption that do not address the material realities of production, of economics, of political systems. So… a hardline materialist stance would scoff at the notion that, say, writing a nasty review of a film–or even teaching its evils to the youngsters–does any more good than enjoying that film. (And might even be worse, because it produces a more disabling illusion of action, which divorces criticism from real engagement.)
Do I agree? No. But in bringing up that materialist stance, I was trying to define some common premises. We agree that textuality, or at least interpretive practices, matter. And we reject a crude distinction between the interpretive or intellectual and the active/material. Right? So then, in the realm of the textual, there seems much more room for nuance and ambiguity on all parts; it seems harder to say that Children, for instance, does nothing but reductively reproduce an ideology of individuality. (For instance, Clive/Theo may reject a certain revolutionary group’s approach, but his goals are to bring Kee and future child to another group; he reaches those goals only through collective action and sacrifice, on the part of the midwife, Jasper, various of the refugees in the camp.) The film seems pretty damn explicit about that, but in seeking out a reductive model of the “bad film” I think we recreate oppositions like criticism versus consumption, which lead us into the morass of theory and practice, etc. No?
What would generally strike me as most useful is a mapping of the possible readings of these films, various interpretive possibilities–the kind of collective, contentious readings that emerge on this blog, for instance–rather than the creation of a category to define (away) any of these film’s complexities and lament their ideological impact.
And, admittedly, I think I’m rehearsing this argument here among people who avoid such reductive thinking, primarily because these are the exact issues we’re debating in my class right now (on how to read action films as transnational or global “contact zones,” following Meaghan Morris)–and I’m trying to get my ducks in a row. So sorry if it seemed a simplistic attack, G–it’s more mapping the territory, and only a little bit staking my own claims.
more later, when I have time–but a brief remark on the possibilities of linking theory and practice under the current conditions (including those of the university): you can’t polish a turd, or as my grandfather said more bluntly, “you can’t shine shit.”
more later, when i’ve read mike’s comments twelve or thirteen times. just wanted to say, briefly: how is “polishing a turd” less blunt then “shining shit,” exactly?
well, “turd” is marginally more polite than “shit,” no? I wanted to clarify a bit what I meant: I think in the context of society at large, practice (in itself guided by unexamined “theoretical” assumptions) dominates so completely that it is difficult to sustain any kind of analysis with consequences; however, the contexts, like the university, that promote ‘theory’ (itself involving an implicit practice, that also mostly goes unexamined)do not for the most part honor its practical consequences….they rely on the ideological split in order to give “theory” its due, thereby strengthening that split already made in the society at large. Does that make any sense or am I merely rambling?
No, I understand. “Turd” is marginally more polite than “shit.”
michael: i’ll get back to you when i’ve read your comment fifteen or sixteen times.
mike: yes, you’re right. tout court dismissiveness can make one complacent. you invoke, if i understand you correctly, more nuanced, sensitive responses to films that, textually, are more complex that just on the right or the wrong side of an issue or a particular approach to an issue. not having seen blood diamond i can’t say anything about it. but let’s talk a little bit more about children of men which many contributors to this blog found textually compelling, specifically in the ways in which it challenges and implicated the viewer in whatever criticism one felt like levelling at it.
i still resist children very much. i should, of course, watch it again. but, that day at the movies: i didn’t enjoy it. i felt repelled by it on a variety of levels. what are the politics of pleasure here? where does my displeasure come from? i found clive owen viscerally unappealing. i have liked him elsewhere (croupier, derailed, inside man — though inside man maybe shouldn’t count!), so i’m not placing my dislike in the viewer-actor relationship. he was, well, disengaged, moping, spineless. maybe i don’t like my heroes to be spineless? maybe i want them to be less virtuous and goody?
the women: julianne moore gets snuffed quickly. kee is sheparded around like little more than a lump of meat. i am always focused on the women. explicitly denying agency to women is almost a clincher for me.
my pleasure, or displeasure, is, clearly, deeply connected to philosophy. should i try to question the philosophy that undergirds my pleasure? should i ignore my displeasure and work harder at engaging with films that initially repel me?
the answer is: of course! but why should i do that, i ask you, with lightweights like blood diamond (which i haven’t seen) and children of men?
michael: yes, to an extent. but intellectuals operate sometimes in places other than the university — even those who get their paychecks from universities.
My problem wouldn’t be with a map of your displeasure, G–it’s when someone’s specific displeasures becomes a sweeping condemnation of a film’s politics, thus impugning my pleasures, erasing any ambiguities…
This is, of course, unfair to you; you are not doing any impugning, and you’re pretty damn generous in your willingness to engage past your displeasures. It’s more a critical move, that tout court judgmental strand of cultural criticism that has always gotten my goat. I’m protecting the goat.
I will come back about pleasures and politics–maybe with Children, maybe with Grindhouse…which I (goes without saying?) loved.
Gio, it’s fine to not enjoy Children of Men. It was not a perfect movie. I liked it because it made me think about how humans would react to the knowledge that they are the last generation of humans (despair, revolution, anarchy, retreat to a private art gallery..), and then, when some small hope that all is not lost for the human race appears, how, if at all, that might change us (heroism, fear, violence…). Still, you can view the movie and see it very differently. That, I think, is its strength: that it is open to so many readings; it never imposes one on the audience.
But I must disagree about the portrayal of the female characters. Agency is not an absolute: it is always exercised within constraints (something that Marxists have always understood better than third wave feminists). That is why appeals to agency so often have an essentialist quality. In this movie the space for choice and the capacity to choose are no different for the male and female characters. Moore is the leader of the resistance, she displays all the characteristics of leadership, and she chooses the initial strategy. She is never denied agency: she is killed (as are scores of male characters). Nor is Kee denied agency. She makes the crucial choice to seek out the Human Project rather than remain with the Fishes, and she chooses Owen to help her (which he does only reluctantly). Her choice drives the rest of the movie. In both cases, the choices are constrained (Kee is heavily pregnant, Moore’s leadership is under challenge within the Fishes, the entire British army is after them all), but the actors exercise agency within those choices.
Nice point, Chris. But I’d like to go back to Gio’s critique of the film for a second. Gio did not “not enjoy” the film, as you say Chris. She was, I take it, not just a little repelled. Gio did not “not enjoy” the film because it was not perfect. She resisted it, which is different.
Resisting a film while watching it, I think, undermines the film in a very different way than criticism written afterwards does. I know that I’ve found myself to be chatting in silence with myself and sometimes aloud with the person I’m watching the film with–this chattiness is “interference.” My ego is supposed to be diminished and reinforced simultaneously: diminished in that I “shut up” and disappear for 2 hours; reinforced in that I take on the egos of my bigger-than-life screen surrogates. This is how we derive pleasure from spectatorship–the pleasure reynolds is talking about.
I know I’m basing my comments on a very old assumption that the pleasure cinema affords is psychic, not intellectual. But I think that this is the right assumption–though I know I’m simplifying.
I think the “dismissal” of a film tout court (ah, what a lovely phrase) is not such a simple affair. I think it takes a lot of mental work to do that–particularly when a film is as powerful as Children of Men. In fact, I applaud Gio for winning the battle of wills, here. And, to be fair, her dismissal of the film has brought about some really wonderful comments, has sparked some really smart dialogue (present comment excluded).
Arnab,
I got this message again:
Sorry folks. I wish I could edit my previous comment so that it made more sense. I’ll leave it to someone else to either polish this turd or flush it down the toity.
I get the same message when I try to edit my comments within a couple of minutes of posting them. But the edit nonetheless seems to take.
well yeah, chris, agency can simply mean “choosing,” but then you kind of gut it, no? everyone, even the most agency-deprived people, get to choose something. in any case, that was probably the wrong word…
i know what you’re saying, mike, about the potentially unidimentionality of cultural studies. why does it all feel so personal, though? have i introjected the ideology? become the ideology’s mouthpiece? or is the ideology speaking to, maybe for, me? giving voice, inside me, to things i didn’t even realize were crushing me, making me feel small? so that, when i discover them, intellectually, i feel — aha! that’s what it was! that’s why i always hated this! or, other times, i feel: oh, it’s okay to feel bad/good about this! this is making my feelings feel legitimate!
Gio, I’m not sure of the way you are using the term. I understand agency to be a function of the space for choice (degree of constraint), the capacity to exercise choice, and the exercise of choice itself. In those terms, I don’t see the primary women in COM as any more denied agency than the male characters. That is all I’m saying. But hey, I’m a pretty old-fashioned (vulgar) Marxist so I don’t really believe in agency at all.
One way of looking at the issue of agency: life under current conditions is one big doo sandwhich and we all get to take a bite! (thanks to Phil Hendrie)
just saw this and it made me cry. films that make me cry lose points immediately in my book, because i don’t cry when there’s a reason to cry, only when i’m being basely manipulated into crying. did you cry, arnab?
i have not seen the film. i cry very easily though. like when the cat fell into the river in homeward bound, even though i don’t like cats. but it wasn’t just any cat, it had sally field’s voice.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/11/world/africa/11sembene.html?ref=africa
Watched this last night, and we were both trying hard not to cry (my wife has an odd habit of cracking her knuckles when she’s trying not to cry. It’s quiet…it’s an intensely emotional moment…will Dia shoot his father?…CRACK!!!).
This is a good movie in parts, but it has its faults. First, I wasn’t particularly thrilled with Jennifer Connolly’s role. I’m thankful she and DiCaprio didn’t get romantically involved, though there’s certainly no doubt they are falling for each other.
It’s funny, but not surprising, how frequently explosions and gunfire contrive to intervene at crucial moments in the narrative: will Solomon be spotted hiding the diamond? Thankfully we learn he won’t, as a pressure valve gives and distracts the RUF guards. He then goes into the forest to hide the diamond, and just off screen we hear the dreaded “Give it to me.” He’s dead, right? No, a sudden burst of gunfire from the military which has arrived just in the nick of time, and Solomon escapes. But then, in Freetown, Solomon is confronted by Danny. Will Solomon trust him? How will he make that decision? Doesn’t matter, as there’s a sudden burst of gunfire from RUF, who lay siege. The choice has been made for him. Then, Maddy, Danny and Solomon are separated on a crowded press bus. A roadside ambush, some RUF gunfire, and poof! The three of them are together in their own jeep! I know Sierra Leone is immersed in violence, but you’d think the violence would make things more difficult for our heroes. Not easier.
SPOILER:
I know I’ve brought up the Classical Hollywood Cinema’s thematic paradigm countless times, but here it is again in its purest form: a moral center (Solomon/Maddy) and an interest center (Danny). The greater good vs. self-interest. Somehow, the two complement each other perfectly and the film defers the need to choose between them until, by the end, the need to choose magically disappears. Danny dies–sacrifices himself, really.
Van De Kaap = De Beers.
Last but not least: I wonder if anyone would like to take up the issue of crying at the movies. Why is being made to cry deemed manipulative (are the movies being manipulative only when we find ourselves crying? Obviously not, so why is this particular form of manipulation the source of such resentment?). If a political movie makes me cry, why does it lose points? What if it makes me crack my knuckles?
when i cry i get a headache. also, i feel embarrassed. the other thing that bothers me is when movies’ use of sexual abuse turns me on, but at least no one has to see that.
seriously, though, did solomon get to keep the 2 mil?
why did you people make me watch this movie? bastards.
Arnab, did you cry? And if so, did you crack your knuckles too?
no, and i failed to see what part of this movie anyone might have cried at–other than perhaps di caprio’s accent.
Arnab, it’s okay to admit you cried. In fact, maybe you need to listen to this…
you know what this blog needs to do?
it needs to