Spicoli in Tehran
Libertas
— Jason @ 3:16 pm
Yes, I’ve read it too. Sean Penn, representing the San Francisco Chronicle (the LA Times is experiencing cutbacks), is now visiting Tehran in order to document/facilitate/agitate toward global peace and harmony. See here.
Whether this is related to a Team America sequel is unclear.
The Paranoid Left and Their Movies
— Jason @ 3:13 pm
This unbelievable article appears in today’s IndieWire about the forthcoming Human Rights Watch International Film Festival. Here is the article’s introduction, as written by Howard Feinstein:
Many of us used to feel that films about human rights were more often than not about “them,” victims of abuse in foreign climes with whom we might empathize but feel little kinship … That’s changed. Events following September 11 have brought human rights abuse not just closer to home, but home. Twisted and manipulated, the tragedy provided the rationale for the neo-con dream of invading Iraq (to protect Israel and, okay, to spread democracy), the reelection of a Republican president and Congress on a platform of terrorist fear-mongering (Pamela Yates’ well-documented “State of Fear” exposes a similar strategy in Peru in the ’90s), stockpiling right-wingers in judicial and other posts, detentions without charge, and torture and homicide in Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, and even worse facilities provided by less restrained foreign powers. American democracy is in serious peril – though it doesn’t keep the powers-that-be from paying lip service to such useful authoritarian governments as those in Russia and China. This 16th edition of the Human Rights Watch International Film Festival is more relevant than ever.
Feinstein goes on to discuss several films in the festival, including something called The Education of Shelby Knox - a film about sex education in Lubbock, Texas, where (horror of horrors!) abstinence-only teaching is the rule. Feinstein remarks thusly: “[t]he zeitgeist created by Republicans and their retro evangelical base has an impact on everyone.”
This poor young woman was subjected to abstinence-only sex-ed.
Also, a saucer carrying John Ashcroft landed in her backyard.
(Note patriotic apparel in background.)
Now, here is my fervent hope - and perhaps the readership of LIBERTAS can help turn my hope into a reality. I’m hoping that some day we refer to this period of ours as ‘the Michael Moore era’ in the same way many refer to the 1950’s as ‘the McCarthy era.’ ‘The Michael Moore era,’ for those of you who don’t know, is an era of intense paranoia and domestic witch-hunts against ostensible ‘enemies’ to American society. These ‘enemies,’ of course, are Christians, conservatives, the Department of Homeland Defense, Don Rumsfeld, John Ashcroft, etc.
Some day, if I get my wish, we’ll look back on films like The Education of Shelby Knox and people like Howard Feinstein and see them as epiphenomena of deep, delusional paranoia - just the way we’re now told to look back on 1950’s films like Invasion of the Body Snatchers or The Thing.
There will be one major difference, though: the 1950’s produced better movies.
libertyfilmfestival.com |
