Prime Suspect

Olivia and I watched the first half of Prime Suspect 4 last night.  Those movies are riveting!  It took much willpower not to watch the second half.
Funny how I didn’t think so when I first began to watch them, half-heartedly and never all the way through, when they were actually on TV in the 90s.  I was in high school and college then, and I found so much about the movies disturbing and off-putting.  Not just the fact that the crimes usually seemed to be sexual and deviant in nature – but also Jane Tennison’s personal life, the atmosphere at the office, how colorless most of the scenes were, even the accents.  I guess I just couldn’t accept a view of England “from below.”  Now I love all that stuff.  I also remember thinking that there was a lot of animosity between Tennison and her male co-workers; now I like they way they treat her – business-like, usually respectful, sometimes straining against her authority, and solicitous on very rare occasions, like when a man that she’s interrogating all of a sudden jumps in her face and violates her personal space.
Even the sexual nature of the crimes…I haven’t minded that nearly as much in the two Prime Suspects I’ve watched recently (¬¬¬2 and 4).  Have I just gotten more sinful and fallen further than ever from Philippians 4:8?  Or am I more aware that there is evil and tragedy in the world, and open towards art (very broadly speaking) that attempts to portray that?  I hope the latter.
To be honest, I think the sexual themes of both 2 and 4 do make the movies more interesting. With 2, for most of the movie the more interesting part to me was the ethnic tension between the black immigrant neighborhood in which a body had been found, and the mostly-white police force.  But once it started to be revealed who the rapist/killer was, I found it very realistic and satisfying that he was a professional pornographer who derived sexual satisfaction from venting his rage on powerless victims.
And in 4, of which I’ve only seen half, I’d never seen anything like the videos from a pedophile rehab clinic in which the patient (who is also the prime suspect) describes how he goes about winning a 5-year-old girl’s trust and how beautiful their love is.  What’s so scary is that he has no idea (on the surface) that he is a predator.  And I think it’s really great that both Tennison and her main assistant, D. I. Tony Muddiman, are so motivated to solve the crime.  You eventually find out, though, that both of them have a personal reason for caring so much, which in the case of Muddiman leads him to compromise his judgment and go to illegal lengths to break the alibi of the suspect, which indirectly leads to the latter taking his girlfriend and her kids hostage.  The scene where Tennison, with whom he’d always had a good relationship, tells him “You’re finished!” and “You put them there!” is so sad.

I know nothing about actual police investigations, but I was noticing during the show that Tennison and Muddiman seemed a lot more motivated and personally invested to solve the crime than in other shows. I wonder if the filmmakers are trying to raise that possibility that the ones who care the most (and seem like heroes, in my book, at least until things go wrong) are the ones who can’t separate the case from their own personal tragedy and may end up making bad decisions that jeopardize the whole investigation and other people’s lives.  The balance between caring too much, and letting yourself get so hard that you don’t care enough, seems nearly impossible to find.

Addendum

OK, I also think Swallowed in the Sea (from X & Y) is kind of adolescent.

Why is it that some repetition is good, even sublime, like in Everything’s Not Lost (Parachutes) or Pachelbel’s Canon, whereas other times it just feels like it’s appealing to the lowest musical common denominator? Is this purely a matter of personal taste? I bet the harmony underpinning the melody (and it the melody allows for good, surprising harmonies) is part of it.

X&Y

I finally got Coldplay’s X & Y, and it’s become the soundtrack of my move (just down the road). It’s almost as good as Parachutes! In fact better, in my opinion, in that the songs aren’t quite as hypnotic, which means maybe I won’t listen to them as obsessively and then get sick of them. And I think it’s way better than A Rush of Blood to the Head (though that title rules), which had some songs that I thought were kind of adolescent. I’m sorry, Clocks? The Scientist? Well, I have to grant that “What If” is kind of adolescent, music and lyrics-wise, as well as hypnotic (the two often go together), but it’s what got me playing the CD over and over. Now I’ve discovered Low, The Hardest Part, Twisted Logic, and Till Kingdom Come, which I think are solidly good songs, rather than shots of heroine to the musical veins.

Thank goodness for our awesome public library and the university library, from which I just got OK Computer! (My pop music taste has only recently branched out from the 80s.) Now I just have to decide whether my new-found financial responsibility is going to affect my feelings about ripping CDs….

Reaction to Zizek’s “A Plea for Leninist Intolerance”

I’ve finally read one of the Zizek articles that Ksenya recommended in response to my post of 7/11/07. Unfortunately I didn’t understand a lot of it – it presumes familiarity with lots of things I don’t know much about (e.g. Marx, Lenin, Soviet history, Hegel); also he gets into some analysis of Soviet music and film that is completely beyond me.

I can’t even say that I fully understand his basic premise. The title is “A Plea for Leninst Interolerance” (Critical Inquiry 28 [2002]: 542-66, available online). He’s saying that in today’s world, any critique is allowable, as long as it functions within and does not question from outside the basic, reigning situation that makes such critiques possible: capitalism underpinned by parliamentary democracy. As opposed to “formal” freedom, “the freedom of choice within the coordinates of the existing power relations” (544), I think he is holding up the ideal of “actual” freedom, “the freedom to question the predominant liberal-democratic post-ideological consensus (545).”

I appreciate the insights of some of his illustrations. E.g., when he says

In sex, the effectively hegemonic attitude is not patriarchial repression but free promiscuity; in art, provocations in the style of the notorious ‘Sensation’ exhibitions are the norm, an example of art fully integrated into the establishment. (545)

As someone who is not promiscuous, and who studies Mesopotamian literature, which was largely commissioned by non-literary elites for the bolstering of their own power, or composed by scribes themselves for the purpose of passing down a certain worldview to their students – I naturally appreciate these insights about the status quo. Further observations that I appreciated:

“Ulrich Beck introduced the notion of “reflexive society,” in which all patterns of interaction, from the forms of sexual partnership up to ethnic identity itself, have to be renegotiated or reinvented. (542)

“the shattering impact of the digitalization of our daily lives….” (would like to read more about this) (544)

Habermas designated the present era as that of a neue Undurchsichitigkeit, the new opacity. More than ever, our daily experience is mystifying. (545)

…the ultimate goal of ethics [in this postmodern era] is to guarantee the neutral space in which this multitude of narratives can peacefully coexist. (547)

His observations on Peter Singer, who

“radicalizes and actualizes Jeremy Bentham, the father of utilitarianism” by leveling “the animal/human divide. Better to kill an old suffering woman than healthy animals. Look an orangutan straight in the eye and what do you see? A none-too-distant cousin, a creature worthy of all the legal rights and privileges that humans enjoy. … he proposes a new ethics meant to protect the quality, not the sanctity, of human life. (548) …. In Singer’s universe, there is a place for mad cows but no place for Indian sacred cows (550).

I don’t really understand what Zizek is arguing for, however. I agree with his analysis of the situation – e.g. that people who want to “do something” usually act “within the hegemonic ideological coordinates,” e.g., join Doctors without Borders, which he presents as a palliative measure that perpetuates the situation that required it. We are exhorted to follow the example of Lenin, who didn’t get caught up in the fiction that any point of view is really allowable, but admitted point blank that if his opponents insisted on making their views known, he would insist on putting them in front of a firing squad (543). Zizek seems to be saying that truth is always partisan (550), which I agree with as far as I understand it – but what is the partisan truth that he is advocating? What he seems to be praising Lenin for (again, this is complicated – he never puts it in a nutshell) is that he did question the ideological coordinates of his day, e.g. he aimed to “smash the bourgeois state, which means the state as such, and to invent a new communal social form without a standing army, police, or bureaucracy, in which all could take part in the administration of the social matters.” (552) I don’t know much Soviet history, but as far as I know none of these things were successfully eliminated. I guess Zizek acknowledges that Lenin didn’t really do anything that we could repeat (and anyway he is not urging us to repeat his actions but to engage with the “field of possibilities that he opened up,”) when he says, in the last paragraph, that “to repeat Lenin is to repeat not what Lenin did, but what he failed to do, his missed opportunities (566).” Given how hegemonic the ideological coordinates of pluralism and democracy are, though, I wouldn’t even know where to start – and Zizek hasn’t shown a way, as far as I can tell.

The Return of the King

Watched The Return of the King for the third time last night. I really do love that movie. The first movie of the trilogy, Fellowship of the Ring, frustrated me with its endless need to make any given scene cuter, funnier, more touching, more hanging in the balance, etc. than in the book. Most of the attempts at portraying innocence and simple joys are so overdone they embarrass me to watch – and there is some of that in RotK, e.g. Smeagol and Deagol fishing in the opening scene, before they find the Ring.

But for the most part, I love this movie! The way some of the orcs are somehow so English looking; the language, so simple yet weighty (e.g. “Feast on his flesh!”); the medieval war technology; the values, so different from today’s (and I’m not saying they’re better) – valor, glory, honor, ancestry, posterity, where and how one is buried – and the insight into human nature and the Meaning of Life.

The sets and costumes alone, especially for Gondor and Rohan, would make it worth watching. It’s so interesting to think about the different cultural traditions that the designers drew on to create them – what looks like a Norman/Romanesque fashion/architecture theme for the former, and a combination of Celtic and Viking for the latter. (My friend Katherine, who’s a bona fide fan, said the men of Rohan are based on the Saxons, but I don’t know that material culture to recognize it.) Still, in noticing how the three discrete nations of men (Rohan, Gondor, Haradrim) all conform to a certain type (“anglo” looking, pale and brown haired, and Mediterranean looking, respectively), I wondered if this is based on some racist, or at least out-dated, notion of cultural self-identification mapping onto a visually distinct “ethnic” group (whatever ethnic means) – a mythologizing view of the past that valorizes the idea of “pure” ethnic groups? On the other hand, I don’t know that much about the Middle Ages (wish I did!), which must be the ground from which so much of LotR grows – maybe I shouldn’t assume it was as ethnically diverse as my own period (ANE). I’m sure lots of people have criticized that the good guys are European looking and the bad guys not (their clothes, elephants, and ships look sort of Middle Eastern/South Asian, but the actors don’t, they’re just dark) – but this to me is just a secondary outgrowth of the decision to make each nation look alike. Since Tolkien was drawing on his own cultural tradition and extensive academic knowledge to write these books, I don’t blame him for making the men of the “north” and “west” the good guys.

My three favorite scenes:
- when Theoden, my favorite character in the films bar none, rallies the troops to himself by acknowledging the hopelessness of their situation and turning that on its head to inspire them –

Arise! Arise riders of Théoden! Spears shall be shaken! Shields shall be splintered! A sword day, a red day, ere the sun rises! Ride now! Ride now! Ride!
Ride for ruin and the world’s ending! Death! Death! Death! Forth Eorlingas!

- At some point in Morder, when Frodo is completely spent (I think maybe he just escaped the spider), ready to give up, when he’s “caught up” in a vision to Lothlorien, and Galadriel tells him, “If you don’t find a way, no one will.” It’s the idea of hope and comfort being there – but only after you’ve sacrificed all expectation of them – and the serenity and secret joy with which Galariel speaks, despite the direness of the situation.

- the climax of the trilogy, in Mount Doom, when Frodo, at the last minute, is finally seduced by the ring and abandons his mission, planning to keep the ring for himself and invalidate three movies’ worth of blood, sweat and tears. The power and evil of the ring would have no meaning if this didn’t eventually happen – even a hobbit can’t escape forever the lure of sin and self (and yes, I’m reading allegorically here – I can’t not, though by no means do I think the book is a thorough-going allegory). But the day is saved by a competing idolatry, when Gollum, even more enslaved than Frodo, appears out of nowhere for the last time and bites his finger off to get the ring. (And this could only happen because Frodo and Bilbo had chosen to spare Gollum’s life, contra all claims of common sense or just desserts.) I think the best part of this scene is Gollum’s slow-motion, carnivalesque dance for joy above the lake of fire – a perfect picture of the mad euphoria induced by an idol regained – before the other shoe drops and the End of All Things is set in motion.