Your Moral Guardians At Work

Bill Maher lost his job at ABC because of 'insensitive' comments made after September 11th. Don Imus lost his job at MSNBC for comments considered racist, though he rebounded quicker than any decent human being would've hoped. So let's see what, if anything, happens to the resident Aryan Brother of the Fox News Channel, John Gibson, in light of his mocking and nauseatingly hateful radio attack on Heath Ledger even before the young actors corpse had cooled. Don't hold your breath for anything significant to happen at all of course, because in the world of right-wing radio hatred is not only next to godliness, it's considered an acceptable substitute for God himself. Hate is the central motivating factor behind these societal jihadists. If there is no hate, there is no existence for them. I'm not going to repeat a word of Gibson's descent into nihilistic pathology, but suffice to say Roger Ailes is as happy as a 500lb blob of vomit-inducing sewage can be at all the free publicity FNC will be getting. These are the same ultra right-wing stormtroopers who lament the liberal 'culture of death', mourn our vanishing morals, castigate and condemn all non-fanatics for our secularism, and lay at our feet the blame for every ill imaginable. Will we hear any of them come out against Gibson's staggering contempt for human life in this instance? Please. Being a right-winger means never having to obey the standards by which you mercilessly judge others. Sure, there was the obligatory 'Hey, I'm sorry if you were offended by what I said' non-apology Gibson offered up on his Thursday TV show (while sitting next to vapid and soulless Stepford Host Heather Nauert), but then Maher and Imus both gave the same PR-dictated pleasantries as well. It didn't do them any good and hopefully it won't in this case either, but talk radio and Fox News are not known for their concern for public decency. They appeal to the rabid fringe of American life, the losers who think that being a white, Republican, born again male is a ordination to rule by decree. They are concerned with one thing and one thing alone - maintaining their own power over the minds of the mindless. By all accounts, Gibson's hatred for Ledger was motivated by a single role in the actors career - Brokeback Mountain - which Gibson slammed in 2005 as a 'gay-agenda movie'. Sound clips from that film were played while Gibson callously snickered about his death. One can only imagine how Gibson would have responded if Ledger had actually been gay. The good Christian folks who follow the honorable Fred Phelps see little distinction either. They've already announced their intention to protest and picket his funeral, holding up their infamous 'God Hates Fags' signs. And while John Gibson may not be there in person, he will certainly be with them in spirit. A very dead and heartless spirit.

Just A Thought For The Day

I wonder just how much turpentine and mineral spirits one must inhale before neurological alteration begins, and at what point such mutations become permanent? Did you know that pancreatic cancer is a risk you take for lacquering or varnishing a piece of furniture? Check your dusty old cabinets thoroughly. Anything with the word butoxyethanol in it is an enemy. Either dispose of it in an environmentally safe manner or secretly empty out its contents into the house of someone you despise. But for God's sake, Roscoe, get rid of it. Thank you.

To Praise 'Contempt'

While rummaging through a drawer in the 'junk room' the other day (you know, that room in your house that slowly accumulates piles upon piles of stuff until you just finally give up on ever cleaning it and declare it to be 'the junk room'; every home in America has one, I honestly believe) I came across one of the very first DVD's I ever bought, one that I had nearly forgotten about. It was the Criterion Collection's 2-disc release of Jean-Luc Godard's 1963 classic Contempt. I hadn't seen it in years, and I was so excited when it just sort of reappeared that I made some time for myself to sit down and watch it all over again. Now, I'm always hesitant to recommend movies to other people. Books are one thing - you will immediately weed out people who don't read by discussing a book. Movies are different. Everybody watches them, although most people, being idiots, tend to watch movies geared towards their idiocy. Contempt is a movie that a lot of people will not like, and a passionate few may even despise. It has little in the way of an active plot line. It moves at a pace that will torture the ADD generation (not that they don't deserve to be tortured in the most grisly manner possible anyway). It has the kind of 'arty' aesthetic that was a calling card of European movies of that era (and hell, maybe of all eras). And yet, watching it all over again I realized why I once called it my favorite movie ever. It is the most visual film imaginable; widescreen Technicolor portraits of paradise in Capri, Brigitte Bardot looking more majestic than she ever did before or after, cinematography that makes emphatically clear how far the standards of filmmaking have plummeted over the years. It's one of the very few films that ravish your eye without letup. I don't know if I'd bring this movie up in a casual conversation or not. In a way it's almost too special. But if you ever have the chance to see it (in its original aspect ratio, of course) sit still for a while and give it a chance. It is not a movie like other movies; Godard couldn't do that if he tried, and he probably did try at least a little with this one. What it is however is one of cinema's great testaments to a time when movies stood shoulder to shoulder with novels, art movements and noted intellectuals as harbingers of a living and at least somewhat healthy culture. It didn't last long, and it doesn't exist at all now, but for a while there was glory to behold indeed. Contempt was among the most glorious.

Recommended: David Cronenberg - Author or Film-Maker? by Mark Browning

One of the best Christmas presents I received this past holiday season was Mark Browning's fascinating examination of the career and influences of David Cronenberg, perhaps the most overlooked and under-appreciated filmmaker of the past several decades. With the exception of 1986's The Fly, few of his movies have been box office smashes, and yet taken as a whole they constitute a virtually uninterrupted 30-year streak of intelligence and excellence that, in my humble opinion, cannot be matched by any of Cronenberg's peers. While his hardcore fanbase has grumbled about his last two 'mainstream' films, A History of Violence and Eastern Promises, it was his earliest works that instantly divided audiences into blissful devotees and repulsed detractors. As a kid, I vividly remember how it actually meant something profound to say you saw one of his films. Of course, we were just suburban teenage boys impressed with exploding heads, armpit parasites and stomach vaginas, not really aware of the deeper significance of his plots, but then again there were all kinds of horror movies we were eager to see back then that you couldn't pay me to watch nowadays. I own all of Cronenberg's movies on DVD; I could watch them all back to back with no problem. Clearly, something was there far beyond the now-dated special effects.
And that is what Browning's book delves into, taking several key films from Cronenberg's career and exploring not only their themes but also their (perhaps uncredited) inspirations. I won't attempt an official review after just one reading, but Browning delivers the most penetrating look at Cronenberg's creativity in action (albeit the creativity underneath the surface - clearly a risky and subjective task) that I've ever encountered. Of course, Browning has himself mentioned that his is only the second English-language book devoted to such an attempt; there is hopefully much more to come, but Browning does set a very impressive bar to reach.
For someone like me, unfamiliar with J.G. Ballard until Crash was filmed, and unaware of the 1977 novel Twins by Bari Woods and Jack Geasland even years after I saw Dead Ringers, discovering the literary parallels to Cronenberg's work was interesting just in its own right, but it's the ambiguous relationship Cronenberg seems to have to the source material that makes for an intriguing read. Browning provides ample evidence of filmmaker-as-frustrated-novelist, and perhaps frustrated just enough on occasion to resort to a subtle plagiarism that seems quite odd in light of Cronenberg's uber-intellectual demeanor. And while I find Browning's closing line a bit too harsh, I admit it isn't something that can be easily refuted despite my knee-jerk desire to do so immediately upon reading it. (And no, I won't quote it to you here. Treat yourself to your own copy.) But Browning is definitely not one of the repulsed detractors of Cronenberg's films; quite the contrary. And one of the things that makes this such an impressive and entertaining book is the respect he maintains while probing deeper into the flesh of Cronenberg's movies than has ever been done before.
If all goes according to plan (and the plan goes according to press release), Cronenberg's first novel will be published by Penguin Canada in 2010. While Browning may have to write a new afterward, everything else will remain relevant for a long time to come. And while I'd be a bit reluctant to recommend this to someone unfamiliar with the movies themselves, this is obviously a must-have for anybody who might chuckle at the realization that the guy that made Shivers wound up becoming one of the most brilliant minds in modern cinema.