Daily Archives: November 18, 2020

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Join the Nation Festival for four days of essential conversation and commentary in the wake of the 2020 election.

Join the Nation Festival for four days of essential conversation and commentary in the wake of the 2020 election.

When Sacha Baron Cohen sprang Borat on the American public in 2006, a midterm election year, I thought I was clever to observe that nimble, improvisational, disrespectful laughter had won a landslide victory over the deep emotions and classical filmmaking of Clint Eastwoods World War II diptych, Flags of Our Fathers and Letters From Iwo Jima. Like a blind seer, I had no idea how horribly right I was.

Since then, vast sectors of the audience have abandoned the moviessuperhero sagas exceptedfor the rapid, random snickers of meme swapping. Meanwhile, the kiss-my-ass attitude that I detected in the publics embrace of Borat went on to transform the political landscape, though not as Id hoped. It was Donald J. Trump, rather than any tribune of The Nations fed-up legions, who rose to bestride our narrow world like a Colossus of the Raised Middle Finger.

For these reasons, the release of Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, 11 days before the 2020 elections, posed sharp questions. In a political landscape where the presidency had become a 24/7 Don Rickles set, was Cohens insult comedy a weapon against Trumps or more of the same? And could any movieeven if perpetrated with jumpy rhythms and delivered digitallycompete in a new audiovisual environment made for 60-second attention spans?

To ask these questions is to fall, understandably, into the mountaineering fallacy: the notion that all works of art must rise to the challenge of their time. In defiance of this error, I will later recommend three fascinating pictures that could be made to speak to the present moment only if subjected to critical torture. For now, let me acknowledge that Borat Subsequent Moviefilm is focused so intently on the 2020 presidential election that its end credits include the admonition, in the title characters phraseology, Now Vote. Or you will be execute. These are words to live by, always, but when read after November 3, they stamp a best-if-used-by date on a production that was conceived to mock Trump and his allies during the campaign and then marketed so that its culminating gotcha scene, a humiliation of Rudy Giuliani, was revealed as a teaser shortly before the final presidential debate. I imagine Borat Subsequent Moviefilm might retain some life in years to come. All the same, its a hybrid: part rollicking mockumentary and part get-out-the-base video, of a piece with Samuel L. Jacksons Vote, dammit, vote! ad for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.

Cohen remains as savvy as ever about reaching audiences where they live, so its no surprise that discrete chunks of the movie can be plucked off like grapes from the stem. Within a day of the release, clips were already circulating on dozens of YouTube accounts and beyond, with leave from Amazons promotional department and to the benefit of the films electioneering. Borat Subsequent Moviefilm proved it could fit easily into todays smartphone competition for eyeballs, but if this picture is to be judged by mountaineering standards, lets note that it does not have the field to itself nor is it alone in trying to win hearts and minds through transgressive laughter. As Borat Subsequent Moviefilm acknowledges, in scenes about digital crap slinging and grassroots calls for violencehey, cant you take a joke?Trumpworld has its own memes and sense of humor.

As a reality check, you might watch Daniel Lombrosos documentary White Noise, produced by The Atlantic as a feature-length expos of the alt-right and its normalization (kind of) through the rise of Trump. Released on multiple streaming platforms a couple of weeks before the elections, the film offers a prolonged, close-up look at three of the movements young social media adepts and self-promoters: white-power loudmouth Richard Spencer, conspiracy theory peddler Mike Cernovich, and anti-feminist, anti-immigrant YouTube poser Lauren Southern. I doubt you will think these specialists in short-form outrages are funny, but their followers do, finding mirth in the trios assaults on liberal propriety (or, as you and I might put it, human dignity). Unfortunately, I also doubt that you will learn much from White Noise, assuming youre aware of basics such as the Unite the Right rally and Pizzagate, or that you are likely to fall in love with the films shambling narration and editing. The main achievement of White Noise is to engender a sense of dismayas if you needed that.

Still, the films study of alt-right zanies has its uses. It can confirm for you, by means of comparison, that Cohens insult comedy is not just more of the same.Current Issue

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Directed valorously by first-time-filmmaker Jason Woliner after a long career in television and scripted more tightly than the original Borat despite having been written by Cohen with eight others, Borat Subsequent Moviefilm: Delivery of Prodigious Bribe to American Regime for Make Benefit Once Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan is at heart a tender story of father-daughter love. Never mind that the semi-feral Tutar (Maria Bakalova) is discovered under a layer of straw, rags, and facial grime in the corner of a barn, where Borat is astonished to learn shes part of his, as he puts it, livestock. When he undertakes his ensuing knockabout journey through America, unwillingly accompanied by the adolescent Tutar, the incidents may be designed, one by one, to deride Trumps supporters, but the plot is machined to forge emotional ties between father and daughter, until the two transform Kazakhstan into a feminist nation, like US of A and Saudi Arabia.

What unites the loose string of sketch-comedy episodes with the steady emotional arc? Satiric rage against the belittlement of women, which Cohen identifies as central to Trumps strongman cult. Borat Subsequent Moviefilm scatters its assaults against other targets, tooassault rifle enthusiasts, casual racists, Jew haters, Roma haters, and coronavirus deniers all get their lumpsbut the main enemy throughout is male supremacy, whether in the imaginary Kazakhstan or the America whose attitudes Cohen prankishly exposes.

Among the actually existing people who are played for suckers this time by a disguised Cohen and Bakalova: a coach for young women who want to sell themselves to sugar daddies, the operator of one of those crisis pregnancy centers that intercept women seeking abortions, a plastic surgeon who proposes making Tutars titties monumental, the guests of a debutante ball in Georgia (whose gentility in declaring young women marriageable is mugged by a traditional Kazakh fertility dance), and for the finale, old lech Rudy. The orange Sun King who reigns over this realm of pussy grabbing remains unseen, except for a Kazakh animated movie in Disney style and a full-body disguise worn by Cohen. Trumps influence, nevertheless, is omnipresent.

Which brings me to a contradiction. The trick of the first Borat was to concoct an impossibly crude, depraved Kazakhstan and then, through the title characters adventures, show America as its mirror image. The new Borat takes the same approach, but past a certain point the pattern breaks down. Even the QAnon adherents who shelter Borat in one sequence insist that women in America have the same rights as men and cant simply be sold or gifted. Even the members of a Southern Republican womens club, whose evening meeting is interrupted by a wandering Tutar, welcome this strange, uncouth figure with gentleness and respect, until she drives them to wonder if they shouldnt call her an Uber. Borat Subsequent Moviefilm lays bare an American culture of misogyny, except when it doesnt.

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And then there are Jeanise Jones and Judith Dim Evans.

The first, who works as a babysitter, is hired by Borat to kennel Tutar for a day but instead decides to educate the young woman, convincing her with infinite patience that she is an independent human being with a mind of her own. The second, encountered in a synagogue, is a Holocaust survivor who offers Borat food and a kiss, while gently informing him that his Jew disguise is a little off. (The talons, for exampletoo much.) Watching these scenes, which provide contrasting images of a decent America, you might feel that middle-aged Black women and elderly Jews have problems of their own and should not bear the burden, as they do so often, of being deployed as exemplars of charity and understanding. Yet these are the real Jones and Evans (to whom the film is dedicated), responding as themselves to ridiculous, constructed circumstances, and though they are far more developed in their fellow feeling than most butts of Cohens impostures, they dont stand alone in Borat Subsequent Moviefilm.

This is where Cohens insult comedy departs from Trumps and the alt-rights. (I should add Bakalovas comedy as well. Though seemingly runtish next to the elongated Cohen, she thwacks herself off him and everybody else in sight with a headlong mummers energy that knows no embarrassment, only joy.) One side thinks it funny to demean and dehumanize. The other gives people latitude to shame themselves but also allows glimpses of the better angels of our nature.

Im not going to kid myself that audiences are watching Borat Subsequent Moviefilm for the sake of its passing visions of kindness. People want to laugh their asses off at the dumb, the rude, and the grotesque, and theyre getting their moneys worth. What will be left of the movie, though, now that its electoral purpose is obsolete and even the most prominent of its political targets, such as Mike Pence and Giuliani, begin their inevitable fade-out from popular memory? After rising to the challenge of its moment, must this film fall off the peak and be forever buried in snow?

I think something does remain alive after November 3: hope in the power of decency, hope in women, and pride in constructing a fully thought-out 97-minute film, even if a lot of people no longer want anything but clickbait. Thats hardly enough of a foundation on which to rebuild America, but its more than we were owed by a British comedian and a young actress from Bulgaria, home of the world-famous Museum House of Humor and Satire.

If you cannot remember the last time a film deeply excited you, please do yourself a favor and watch Pietro Marcellos Martin Eden, now available through various virtual cinemas, including Film at Lincoln Centers. Marcello and his co-screenwriter, Maurizio Braucci, claim to have based their film freely on Jack Londons semiautobiographical novel, but except for relocating the action from Oakland, Calif., at the turn of the 20th century to Naples, Italy, in the 1970s (more or less), theyve been stunningly faithful to Londons story of the intellectual and emotional awakening of a young proletarian writer and the personal and artistic catastrophe of his failure to awaken politically as well. By cleverly mixing tinted archival footage from Londons time into the re-creation of 20th century Italy, Marcello implicitly expands the title character from an individual case to a recurring type: the working man of exceptional talent and energy who struggles against all odds to educate himself and win a daughter of the bourgeoisie, only to discover in the end that the world is stronger than me. Marcello deserves credit for the bold conceptual move, but the true author of the movie might be Luca Marinelli, who plays Martin. With shoulders broad enough to bear the yoke of a two-ox team and a loose, slant-lipped smile that invites and offers confidences, Marinelli charges not only the character but the entire film with power, intelligence, and an allure that ultimately turns tragic.

Oliver Laxes Fire Will Come, available at virtual cinemas such as the Metrograph in New York and the Acropolis in Los Angeles, is a film of changing seasons and impressive yet fragile landscapesincluding the facial topographies of the nonprofessional performers Amador Arias and Benedicta Snchez, who play the main characters. Amador, in the story, is a taciturn, middle-aged man with sorrowful features that could have been carved with a pocketknife. Released from prison after serving a sentence for arson, he returns to his 83-year-old mother and her three-cow farm in the mountains of Galicia in Spain and settles into the annual round, meanwhile suffering abuse from townspeople who regard him as both an idiot and a threat. In the first half of the film, the neighbors get ready to accuse him of starting the next of the devastating fires that rage each summer through the woods. In the second half, as the screen explodes in flame, you hold your breath shot by shot to see Laxe and his crew daring to capture this infernowhile you wonder how any one man could be blamed for something so overwhelming.

Finally, moving on from the transhistorical drama of Martin Eden and the ecological cycle of Fire Will Come, you can go all the way to Neverland, otherwise known as the Three Treasures Temple, thanks to the new restoration of King Hus 1979 Raining in the Mountain. One of only two films that the master of martial arts sagas made in South Korea, Raining in the Mountain places Hsu Feng, as a thieving adventuress, amid towering vistas, labyrinthine architecture, balletic chase sequences and fights, and massed ensembles in color-coded costumes, all assembled for the sake of a folkloric fable and synchronized to a bang-up musical score by Ng Tai Gong. The experience is no more substantial than our transient world (to adopt the viewpoint of the storys Buddhist monks), so why not escape to it? Raining in the Mountain is streaming exclusively at the virtual cinema of New Yorks Film Forum.

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Living in Borats America - The Nation

Contrary to former Republican Del. David Ramadan's insistence that Republicans have to "denounce Trumpism" and go back to the "basic conservative principles" which cost them several elections, especially with Mitt Romney as their 2012 candidate, Trump's stronger than expected showing shows them the way forward is by reaching out to the very constituencies conservatives in the past ignored. Nearly one-third of black Midwestern men backed Trump because they understand that today's Democratic Party is one of free trade, internationalism, and Wall Street, which appealed to former Republican constituencies at the expense of American workers. Black rappers Li'l Wayne and Ice Cube, whose lyrics appeal more to non college-educated black men than to college grad or female blacks backed Trump's re-election.

Ramadan insists Republicans have to stop "winking at white supremacy and nationalism." Now that he's ensconced in the ivory tower at George Mason University, shouldn't he wonder what would become of the Republicans if voters he might shove into these categories didn't vote for them?

Nationalism is in full flower the world over -- in India, Great Britain, Brazil, Hungary -- because the alternatives' answers to public policy challenges have been so inadequate. Ramadan's "basic conservative principles" presumably include the interventionist notion that, "When the World dials 911, America picks up the phone," which Trump has been loath to do thanks to the many quagmires into which this "basic conservative principle" has mired us. "Trumpism" and "nationalism" offer an opportunity for the former "Party of Wall Street" to reach out to Main Street which the modern economy has grievously failed and which the Democrats, who have cornered all the country's financial centers and their suburbs, have abandoned.

Some would have us believe that America's founding documents embody "white supremacy," but far from "winking" at white supremacy, Trump showed the "alt-right" and "alt-light" elements of his coalition such as Steve Bannon the door, while, almost as soon as he dumped his hard-line tough-on-crime Attorney General Jeff Sessions, he helped revive the First Step Act giving felons, disproportionately minority, early release from their federal prison sentences. His actions supporting blacks were so far-reaching that former Alexandria resident and white nationalist leader Richard Spencer announced he's so fed up with Trump that he's voting for Biden. In Florida and Texas, Trump's Latino support reached mid-40%, dashing Democrat hopes of flipping either state. The more generations Latinos have been here, the more the high levels of immigration Wall Street wants, with the job competition, wage depression, and social costs they entail, disadvantage Latino citizens.

Trumpism shows the way forward for Republicans -- it nearly proved enough to save Trump from the personality defects which cost him re-election -- because it appeals to large constituencies which the alternatives -- both the Democrats and those Republicans espousing "basic conservative principles" who defected to Biden -- have abandoned.

Dino Drudi

Alexandria

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Opinion: Letter to the Editor: Trumpism Shows Way Forward for Republicans? - Virginia Connection Newspapers

I FEEL the response to Boris Johnsons analysis of Scottish devolution has been a tad harsh. In a private briefing on Monday night with MPs, the Prime Minister is reported to have described devolution as a disaster. Too right its been a disaster, Prime Minister, but only for you and the far-right cultists whom youve permitted to run your party.

Those who were present at this briefing were probably startled at such honesty from Johnson, something which is about as common as vegan sharks. Perhaps such refreshing candour from the Prime Minister will be regarded as the first green shoot of veracity in the post-Dominic Cummings era.

The chatter amongst the special advisers must have spread like news of a decent investment opportunity: By jingo, Boris has actually said something he really means. And yet, our response has been churlish in the extreme.

You can see why Johnson is exasperated by devolution. He and his party had been long assured by their glove puppets in Scottish Labour that devolution would leave the independence movement dead in the water. Why, dear old George Robertson, the red Baron of Port Ellen (insert laughing emojis here) had assured his Unionist chums that Scottish independence wouldnt even last as long as the century in which it was conceived. In 1995, when he was plain old George Robertson, MP for Hamilton South, he said: Devolution will kill nationalism stone dead.

READ MORE:Kevin McKenna: Englands north is learning the lesson No voters did in 2014

Less than two decades later as the spectre of Scottish independence began to haunt his worst nightmares, the Baron began to panic. The loudest cheers for the break-up of Britain would be from our adversaries and from our enemies, His Lordship told a Washington business group.

Later he would compare the battle for the Union with Abraham Lincolns fight against slavery in the American Civil War.

This was a comparison that only the very delusional or the very infantile would seriously entertain. Which is probably why it became the entire basis of Scottish Labours position in the first independence referendum.

Those of us who wondered why Baron Robbie seemed to be deploying allegories with American history and policy to US audiences received a confirmation of sorts a few years later. This was when the laird of Port Ellen became an advisor to the Washington-based Cohen Group, a consulting and marketing firm.

The Baron later became General-Secretary of Nato.

Shares in Russian and Chinese weapons manufacturers must have seen a sharp spike in their value when that announcement was made. I also had visions of those wee aliens in the old mashed potato television adverts pishing themselves at the humans stabbing potatoes with their steely knives.

Its not difficult to understand Boris Johnsons vexation at devolution. Life would have been so much easier in the knowledge that a key component of the United Kingdom was safely in the hands of a collection of the Tories Scottish Labour lickspittles. All that was required in those good old days to keep the tribunes of the people sweet was to hold out to them the prospect of a few gongs and life peerages as a reward for a career bending the knee to their superiors in Westminster.

By the time the SNP had gained power in Scotland in 2007 a collection of dutiful Scottish Labour stalwarts were beginning to form an orderly queue at the Westminster trough. Jack McConnell became Baron McConnell of Glenscorrodale; Alistair Darling became Baron Darling of Roulanish and dear old George Foulkes is still to be seen slumbering away in the Upper House as Baron Foulkes of Cumnock.

Indeed if I were advising the UK Prime Minister Id suggest getting these old political trenchermen together (a few bottles of decent Scotch and a small non-exec should do it Prime Minister) and Id be asking them what in the name of the wee man was happening to Scotland while they were all collecting their baubles and telling the Tories that everything was cushty in the northern approaches.

Well, I think we all know what was happening while the UK Tories and their Labour scouts were asleep on the job. The people of Scotland began to realise that there was a clear divergence of doctrine and philosophy between Scotland and England in key areas such as education, health and attitudes towards immigrants and refugees.

AS Tony Blair and Gordon Brown squandered a three-term Labour government pandering to big business and reneging on commitments to reverse Margaret Thatchers anti-trade union legislation questions were being asked in Labours Scottish heartlands. Just what do this pair of political opportunists actually stand for?

As the New Labour project crashed and burned under the weight of its own hubris and Cool Britannia trinkets it morphed seamlessly into David Camerons Conservative government. Cameron, who possessed as few political scruples and principles as Tony Blair, benignly gave way to a hard-right form of Conservatism. This would immediately impose a one-sided austerity programme on the UKs working-class communities while fashioning a suite of tax breaks and other fiscal inducements for its traditional fanbase.

READ MORE:Kevin McKenna: Are we Unionists, Nationalists or something else altogether?

Inevitably, immigrants and refugees would come to be blamed for the resulting economic hardship in Englands northern communities. The Windrush generation would soon be receiving their orders to pack up and leave and Nigel Farage would weaponise extreme xenophobia and become the conscience of a new and insidious form of mainstream conservatism.

In Scotland, a collection of indolent and worthless Tory fanboys gained some seats at Westminster and deployed a studied policy of looking the other way as Scottish interests and existing devolved powers were being traduced during the Brexit process. With all this going on you neednt have been a lifelong, Saltire-waving devotee of Scottish nationalism to have begun to view independence in a favourable light.

And all the while, Scottish Labour was asleep, only coming groggily and shambolically to life to shout Feck! and Drink! at appropriate times like old Father Jack on Craggy Island. You can see them still asleep in their comfy Holyrood chairs any day of the week.

Following Boris Johnsons clumsy burst of honesty, Laura Kuenssbergs ubiquitous Downing Street source, attempted to clarify his remarks. Devolution is great but not when its used by separatists and nationalists to break up the United Kingdom.

The truth of the matter is well-known to the 58% and counting of the Scottish population who now favour independence. English nationalists not Scottish nationalists have hastened the break-up of the United Kingdom. Theyve done this by turning their country into a theme park for the alt-right and a klondyke for global, organised crime.

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Kevin McKenna: Devolution has been a disaster for the Westminster Tory cult - The National

Stormfront does truly unforgivable things during her time onThe Boys.In an interview with Refinery29, Cash mentions how she's received some hatred from fans of the show, saying, "I guess I wasn't expecting people to confuse me with my character. But that's because I know me, and people don't know me."

The Boysmakes a strong attempt to show that Stormfront's ideology is wrong. Even the main villain in the show, Homelander, looks baffled when she brings up the idea of white genocide. The show uses Stormfront to talk about the very real presence of neo-Nazis in the United States in the form of the alt-right.

Cash also says she only took on the role because it took a critical approach to the ideas being perpetuated by Stormfront, saying, "It's a satire, so, obviously, Stormfront flies these people don't fly in our world. But they do a lot of the other things that she does. It was important to show that and to show the newer dangers of white supremacy: the way that they have been using the internet and using narratives."

While Stormfront is the villain ofThe Boysseason 2, it seems like the role has caused Cash more problems then she expected, with some fans thinking the character was a reflection of the actress when that couldn't be further from the truth.

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The woman playing Stormfront is different in real life - Looper