"Slumdog Millionaire" is one of those movies I think about the next day, and that's a high bar. I haven't read the criticism of the film, but a few impressions:
It's a great merger of western documentary and Bollywood. Bombastic characters/schmaltz mixed with cinema-verite Mumbai. A true mingling of cultures, with a Hollywood budget. Beautiful.
How great to see a movie without one caucasian face in it, at a suburban multiplex, the hall jammed.
It is the thin end of the wedge. This sort of east/west syncretism is just going to keep happening, Obama being our exemplar.
There's joy in this. It must soon extend to Arabs. It is just a matter of time before Arabs/Palestinians are humanized for an American audience, even at the behest of Jewish Hollywood, which is alive to the zeitgeist.
Some of the difference that is being removed here is economic. We're in a tailspin, they're on the rise; it is easier to relate to material suffering now that we're many of us jobless. I can't forget those Asian faces all over the Academy awards. Global media will assist in global democratization. Export schmaltz not guns.
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I saw it last night also in a packed auditorium (mostly older white people, what in the hell is going on?) and had very similar feelings.
I plan on seeing this movie because it sounds like an uplifting story–and plus, I like seeing movies about other cultures. Always have, always will.
But I have to admit I'm tired of the self-conscious racializing of EVERYTHING libs engage in. It just gets melodramatic and fakey sounding after awhile.
"We're in a tailspin, they're on the rise." I don't think any economy continues to rise amidst the global economic meltdown. It was interesting to hear that Obama now gets a daily global economic briefing from the CIA, so as to stay on top of instability caused by economic upheaval overseas. Your comment suggest a zero sum game, with others benefiting from our woes, while the world is in the dangerous throes of a big negative sum game. The cute little boy actor got beaten by his Dad when he got back to the slum. The good news: amid the economic fall, box office receipts rise. The world goes to the movies, and they're improving.
Speaking of movies, I saw Doubt last night. I had avoided it, having seen too many Hollywood depictions of Catholic priests as evil deviants. It was much better than expected, a very strongly acted study of the unknowable nature of much of what goes on around us, the instinctual sense that something is amiss versus inconclusive analysis of the evidence available. The commitment to combat evil versus the will to do good. Propriety versus virtue. Priests versus nuns. Fascinating.
Phil may be overly optimistic at times, but at least here he draws a distinction between the Indian Muslims of Slumdog, and Arabs. Good to be realistic about the difference, because the chasm between Indian Muslim and Arab Muslim is huge for American audiences.
Consider the recent episode of ABC's famed Lost series. This show has a multi-culti cast, and spares none of its characters in revealing their flaws. But this last episode (you can watch it on ABC's website; season 5, episode 7: The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham; first 10 minutes) reserves a particular dark portrayal of 'flaws' to a group of anonymous Tunisians–Arabs–in a desert.
What do we see? We see a band of crazies driving like maniacs and shouting to each other as they kidnap the Locke character, who is injured. They carry him to their van very un-carefully even though he has a broken bone sticking out of his knee. Next, in a yellow-hued tent-clinic of some sort we see them throw him unto a bed while they are being frantically yelled instructions at by a doctor who is both sadistic (he forces a rather quick and painful 'fix' to Locke's broken leg, while Locke screams in agony) and clumsy (he pours some brown-looking water into a cup and grabs a handful of pills which he stuffs into Locke's mouth, followed by the unsanitary water). Everything wreaks of the most base anti-Arab stereotypes. It is all worse than I can describe.
"How great to see a movie without one caucasian face in it"
Anti-White much, Phil?
Unless they are sephardic or Ethiopian Jews. In which case they are still scum in the "Pig Weiss" pantheon.
yeah except for the fact that indians are caucasians. not white but still caucasian nonetheless. let's get beyond the color barrier and the whole tribalism thing. i think that is what slumdog flick phenomenon is getting at, don't you think?
SOG missed that, cipher. His giant MOT mote, you know…
I'd like to share with you a personal vision of Jerusalem I find in internet.
Its the firts blog that show Jerusalem from a distant of conflict and politics.
http://miradasdesdejerusalen.blogspot.com/
It is simultaneously amusing and sad to read the crocadile tears of an ignorant VusVus racist like SOG. See Not the Enemy Israel's Jews from Arab Lands for the divide between ethnic Ashkenazim like SOG and the Jewish Arabs that have been enmeshed in Zionist crimes.
Yep. As we all know, SOG especially hates people like Eva with what he considers Polish last names. Poland was occupied by NAZI Germany. Israel is not occupied by anyone except 2nd class Arabs amounting to 20 %, and the rest jews–all armed to the teeth and handed luxury welfare by the USA. Yet, despite all the data given on this blog over the last two years,
SOG insists to hold later generation fancied Poles accountable for the jews they did not save during the WW2 years, although the Israel government itself recognizes the Poles (at the time oppressed in their own land) the most significant "righteous gentiles."
With jews like SOG, does Jewish peoplehood need any other stark enemies?
Eva's kin murdered Jews when they tried to return to their homes after being liberated from the death camps.
With antisemites like citizen and eva, do Jews need another enemy?
>It is just a matter of time before Arabs/Palestinians are humanized
>for an American audience, even at the behest of Jewish Hollywood…
Consider "The Visitor," which was quite popular in the artsy wing of the mainstream last year: Tarek, the young man whose travails are the axis of the story, is an Arab, and he's portrayed very sympathetically, as is his mom. He's introduced as a Syrian (which is pretty remarkable in itself), but if you pay close attention, you eventually discover that he's actually from a Palestinian refugee camp in Syria.
"It's a great merger of western documentary and Bollywood. Bombastic characters/schmaltz mixed with cinema-verite Mumbai. A true mingling of cultures, with a Hollywood budget. Beautiful.
How great to see a movie without one caucasian face in it, at a suburban multiplex, the hall jammed.
It is the thin end of the wedge. This sort of east/west syncretism is just going to keep happening, Obama being our exemplar.
There's joy in this. It must soon extend to Arabs. It is just a matter of time before Arabs/Palestinians are humanized for an American audience, even at the behest of Jewish Hollywood, which is alive to the zeitgeist."
***
My God. This sounds like a hideous parody of a Brooks/Freedman NY Times op ed.
Why do white liberals get such kicks from using dark-skinned people as moral fetish objects?
I agree with Henry Norr about the Visitor. I showed it to my Migration and Borders class and they loved it. Richard Jenkins does a great job in the movie. He plays the American professor. The sound track is also out of this world. But, having watched the film three times it is not clear that Tarek and his mother are from a refugee camp. She tells an Egyptian from Alexandria working at a coffee shop in Queens that she is a Palestinian from Damascus. She says nothing about any refugee camps.
For Chris Berel.
Jews were up to their eyeballs in mass murder, ethnic cleansing and genocide in the Soviet Union before Hitler took power.
While the initial victims of Soviet Jews included Russian Germans, who were economic competitors, it was not long before Jewish Soviet officials got around to Russian Poles. The treatment of Poles and Lithuanians by Jewish Soviets during the Russian occupation from 1939-1941 was particularly brutal.
The increasing hatred of Jews in C. and E. Europe after the establishment of the Soviet Union is hardly incomprehensible.
As for Kielce click here.
See also The Truth about the Katyn Massacre".
Until Jews as a group begin to show awareness and remorse for the crimes that have grown out of Jewish politics just as Jews expect non-Jews to show awareness and guilt for anti-Jewish crimes that have arisen from non-Jewish politics, non-Jews and decent Jews should have nothing but contempt for racist Jewish ranters like SOG or Berel.
Zionism is ethnic Ashkenazi Nazism every bit as evil as German Nazism if not more so.
At this point in time there is probably no greater threat to the USA and the world than Zionism or more correctly the imperial system which has been established by the Virtual Zionist Colonial Motherland or Judonia. (See the The Dystopic Future.)
Not only is the brutality with which Jews have treated Soviet-ruled populations and Palestinians beginning to come to America, but Jewish incitement of hatred is at a fever pitch. (See Followup: Boston (Stoughton) Jews Go Wilders.)
Joachim, go back on your meds. Your rantings and ravings are quite disturbing to sane people.
Really, everyone here, except LD and his clone Ed, think you are a lunatic. Even Phil does little more than humor you.
By the way, did you really expect me to read any of your bullshit? Don't you realize that your name is officially a seal of insanity?
lol! I was thinking the same thing: meds wore off after a good 2 week stretch.
"How great to see a movie without one caucasian face in it, at a suburban multiplex, the hall jammed."
That's not very post-racial. At best, it's a nutty statement, and at worst, it fits in with Joachim's claims of Jewish racial and ethnic attitudes.
I know that Jews are Caucasians, but I have heard Jews complain about the "white man" so many times that I automatically assume that Caucasian refers to Gentile whites when used by Jews in informal matters of race. Correct me if I'm wrong.
Chris and Suzanne:
What exactly do you disagree with Joachim about? Where is he wrong? The two of you know Jewsih history, right? Set the record straight.
Well, ummm…gee Todd, why don't you send me some of your anti-psychotic meds so I can communicate with you and Joke on the same wave length?
Seriously, give it a crack. Set the record straight on Jewish finance, Bolshevism, Zionism, U.S. infiltration, the holocaust and Israel. Disprove all the Judonia talk. It would make life less stressful if you would.
Asking Suzanne to be persuasive or coherent on her own is kind of like asking a dog to walk itself and clean up its own mess. Without commands from above, little Suzy's just lost.