Don’t Look Away from Mike Brown (Zizek/Lacan 3)

The death of unarmed teenager Mike Brown is a problem, and a persistent one (explainer). Watching livefeed of the earliest protests, I remember a commenter speculating that the furor would die down in a couple weeks. I was inclined to agree, and yet here we are two months later and Ferguson remains a prominent issue. As I write this, protests are happening all over the country for #O22 and Missouri Governor Jay Nixon is the target of a Twitter storm. This on the heels of the large protests held earlier this month as part of Ferguson October.

The protesters’ reaction to police officer Darren Wilson’s actions has become an action in itself, thereby instigating a reaction in the form of anti-protesters. The anti-protesters range from racists who hurl verbal abuse at protesters to everyday decent folk discomfited by the whole incident, and it is the objections of this latter group that most interest me. I am convinced they know Darren Wilson was horribly wrong that day on Canfield Drive but for some reason still side with him.

In debate, they will say that riots are bad, that protests achieve nothing and that it’s all race-baiting anyway. They will say the police are heroes who protect the people for little reward. They will say the call to arrest Darren Wilson is a witch hunt and we should wait for the results of an investigation. They will say it’s in the past, so let it go. As mind-boggling as it is, they will complain about young men who wear their pants too low.

All of this avoids the central problem of Darren Wilson shooting Mike Brown to death.

They will even blame the victim. They will tell you things that appear to be true, that he hung around with gang members, wrote rap lyrics, smoked marijuana, shoplifted, and physically threatened a store clerk. They will tell you things alleged, that he assaulted Darren Wilson and tried to grab his weapon. They will tell you things proven false, that he beat Darren Wilson so badly the officer had to be hospitalized with severe injuries. And in doing this, they support a position contradictory to what they know to be true.

Namely, a police officer killing an unarmed teenager is bad, bad business.

The arguments of the anti-protester crowd are the result of defense mechanisms for avoiding the ugly truth at the point of origin: A police officer shot an unarmed teenager dead. Specifically, Darren Wilson of the Ferguson Police Department fired repeatedly at unarmed 18-year-old Michael Brown, hitting him at least six times (twice in the head) according to a preliminary autopsy. Mike Brown’s death--to say nothing of broader problems such as social inequality and abuse of power--is a stain on the fantasy view of the world that we often trick ourselves into believing is reality. His death is a threat to a more comfortable view of society and therefore must be repressed.

I suspect that what really rankles the average anti-protestor isn’t anything more than mild distaste for people who go into the street (or online) and make a scene. They find all the tears and the gnashing of teeth to be unseemly. Raising a fuss and being an eyesore in public spaces isn’t what decent people do. It may sound trivial, but there is a culture in America within which this is motivation enough to ignore the unjust death of a boy at the hands of the law.

Mike Brown’s death is indeed a stain, a blot, a blemish on the face of American society, and this is less figurative than you might think. Mike Brown’s body was eventually removed from the street, but his face continues to show up in photographs in the news and his name appears on the protesters' signs and in their chants. This week, a mural in New Jersey showing Mike Brown’s face accompanied by the phrase “Sagging pants is not probable cause!!” had to be painted over because it made the local police uncomfortable.

Stain removed. Blemish hidden. Truth repressed.

Through terminology such as defense mechanism and repression, I am applying rudimentary psychoanalytical theory to a social phenomenon. I just read in Lacan by Lionel Bailly that French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan believed some signifiers buried in the unconscious were so integral to the psyche’s coherence that unearthing them would cause the patient to come unraveled. Thus, they were better left untouched. But as individuals faced with Ferguson, we are not facing a truth as psychologically identity-shattering as that, are we?

So you have a choice. Assuming you do know in your heart of hearts that police officers gunning down unarmed teenagers is wrong, you may face this or avert your gaze. You may identify with the victim and say “I am Mike Brown” (earlier post), or you may keep making excuses to avoid looking at the ugly truth. If you choose the former, the world will not fall apart, only your picture of it will. If you choose the latter, you will have further chances to redeem yourself: The next Mike Brown, the next Eric Garner, the next Trayvon Martin will be along all too soon.

 ***

Earlier posts in this series:

Ferguson: How Did We Get Here?

Identifying with Ferguson as Symptom

The Rise and Fall of Kate Kane aka Batwoman

“Kate Kane survived a brutal kidnapping by terrorists that left her mother dead and her twin sister lost. Following in her father’s footsteps, she vowed to serve her country and attended West Point until she was expelled under ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.’ Now she is many things: estranged daughter, grieving sister, proud lesbian, brave soldier, determined hero. She is Batwoman.” --Batwoman 

Successful superheroes inspire their corporate backers to create spinoffs. Thus, Superman gets a whole family complete with pet dog Krypto, while Batman has Batgirl and the lesser-known Batwoman (profile). This kind of gimmick may sound corny to those who don’t read comics, but when DC Comics rebooted Batwoman in 2006, they weren’t messing around.

One thing to know about Batwoman is she is a lesbian. As I remember it, her new incarnation’s very first appearances were unremarkable, but her sexual orientation raised eyebrows among comic book readers. I remember gay men appearing in comics before, but I don’t remember any lesbians. This was when I first heard the term “lipstick lesbian,” because Kate Kane--the woman behind the mask--exhibits traditionally feminine traits such as wearing makeup.

At first, it seemed DC intended to relegate this bold move to a practically unknown character, but that proved untrue. From 2009 to 2010, Batwoman was the main feature in issues #854-#863 of Detective Comics, one of DC’s longest-running titles and the one that introduced Batman in 1939. The creative team was top-notch, consisting of writer Greg Rucka and artist J.H. Williams III. They developed what was to become, for a time, one of DC’s better characters.

Rucka/Williams--and later Williams and W. Haden Blackman--handled Batwoman’s sexual orientation with skill. It was no joke or cheap thrill, and while an egalitarian message did appear from time to time, it was never ham-fisted. Instead, the series simply showed what it would be like for a woman who happens to be gay to also be a superhero.

For years in comics and film, we have seen Bruce Wayne try to balance his life as a crimefighter with his love life, and Kate Kane must do the same. Her main love interest is Maggie Sawyer, who gets jealous when vigilantism or other women take too much of her girlfriend’s time. There’s kissing, cuddling and lazing in bed, but it’s never voyeuristic. And while there are plenty of hotties hanging around--a busty blond here, an exotic femme fatale there--Kate is no playgirl. The relationships come across as more meaningful than the customary Bruce Wayne fling.

 

What intrigued me most was how the creative minds behind Batwoman balanced a socially conscious hero with the traditional eye-candy approach of comics. In regular life, Kate Kane is a petite and cute redhead with a wardrobe that blends Goth, girly and menswear à la Coco Chanel. But as Batwoman, she’s a busty, leggy wonder in skintight black latex with red highlights.

 

 

However, the approach was always respectful. Often when comics decide to focus on women, the result is a gaggle of bodacious superheroines lounging around like Victoria’s Secret Angels before launching into battles that require flouncing in ways that plant their special parts right in your face. By contrast, Batwoman always manages to look good, and there’s a healthy eroticism at work, but she’s never there for drooling over.

Feminism has taken a liking to comics, and Batwoman satisfies its demands well without preaching. Rereading early arcs of Batwoman’s own monthly title, I was surprised at the degree to which powerful and professional women dominate the cast of characters. Kate’s girlfriend Maggie is a captain in the Gotham City Police Department, she maintains a rocky working relationship with Agent Cameron Chase of the Department of Extranormal Operations, and her sidekick is Bette Kane (aka Flamebird). The villains tend to be women as well, from her twin sister Beth to the Medusa operative Sune. Aside from Kate’s father, who serves as Kate’s primary backup, men come and go and generally carry little weight.

In addition to addressing timely issues, Batwoman was for years simply written and drawn better than most comics. The writing maintained the carnivalesque atmosphere of Batman and combined it with a gritty, noir realism. Meanwhile, the art was stunning.

But comic book publishers excel at ruining a good thing.

In 2013, Williams and Blackman suddenly quit because of editorial interference. Apparently it had been going on for a while, and when DC told them Kate Kane and Maggie Sawyer could not get married, it was the last straw. They were on board to do a few more issues, but DC cut them off just as Batwoman was about to kick Batman’s betighted ass.

 

New month, new creative team, new arc (without any resolution to the previous one), and a massive drop in quality. Batwoman has since become a vampire and fought a battle in outer space against monsters so unimaginative that Ben 10: Alien Force, or hell, the Care Bears would sniff in derision. I hate to end on a sour note, but I shouldn’t have kept my subscription as long as I did. Creative teams like those who oversaw Batwoman’s rebirth rarely come along, and now they’ve moved on to other projects.

 

 

Gone Girl: A Basically Spoiler-Free Review

“Mercilessly entertaining.” --Vanity Fair

“An ingenious and viperish thriller . . . twisted and wild.” --Entertainment Weekly

“Will give you the creeps and keep you on the edge until the last page.” --People

 

First there was Gone Girl the bestselling book, now there is Gone Girl the hit movie, so I decided to see what all the buzz was about. Having just finished the novel, I’m halfway through the phenomenon, and while I’m generally not one for murder mysteries, I have to say Gone Girl is one of those rare books whose cover blurbs provide an honest description of what’s inside.

The story begins with the morning of the disappearance of Amy Dunne as told by her husband Nick Dunne. Nick is--as countless reviewers have noted--an unreliable narrator. He leaves out what he was doing at the precise time his wife disappeared, he’s lying to the police, and he knows more than he’s telling you. Other chapters are from Amy’s viewpoint through diary entries starting a few years earlier.

And she isn’t reliable either.

The main question on every reader’s mind is “Did Nick kill his wife or didn’t he?” and chapters pass, chapters told from his viewpoint, without an answer to that question. He’s suspicious as hell and the evidence mounts, but . . . could there be another explanation? This all leads to the Gone Girl Twist that has shocked many a reader:

 

The device is flawlessly executed by author Gillian Flynn. She gets her hooks in with the first chapter and then tugs you along. It’s been a long time since I’ve read a book this engaging--comparisons to Stephen King’s Bag of Bones and Tom Wolfe’s A Man in Full come to mind. The writing was so good that Gillian Flynn’s photo on the back cover irritated me: No one should get to be this talented! And sell loads of books! And get rich! And be pretty, too!

Well, Gillian Flynn does.

The device in the first half of Gone Girl is, however, not without its weakness. Flynn has to take you inside the head of Nick Dunne but pick and choose with care what she reveals. Like many formal devices, it’s borderline gimmick and once you notice it, it stands out and doesn’t quite make sense. After all, Nick knows from the start whether he’s guilty or innocent, so why doesn’t he ever think it in so many words?

Because the author is preparing a surprise and doesn’t want to ruin it.

 

I’m reminded of The Sixth Sense. At the end of the film, we find out that Bruce Willis’s character was a ghost the whole time. To pull this off, screenwriter and director M. Night Shyamalan has carefully orchestrated the drama so that Willis appears to interact with other people but actually only interacts with the kid who sees dead people. Once you notice this, you realize it makes no sense internally to the movie. (Surely Willis would have noticed something sooner . . . “Hey, why doesn’t anybody but that one kid talk to me? What happened to my biological functions? I used to always pee in the middle of the night!”) It only makes sense outside the film, as a trick played by a director on an audience.

As such, authorial hocus-pocus can be a distraction that jerks the reader out of the world of a work of fiction. It might not, however, if the work has more going for it--characters you care about, a gripping plot, fascinating subtexts, etc.--and Gone Girl certainly does. Even after the main twist, Flynn keeps you guessing on a number of fronts up until, yes, the very last page. As an author, she has as many tricks as do the characters of her book.

You can view Gone Girl as about marriage, or feminism, or rape, or the media, or the law, or the economy, or American life today--and this kind of critique is showing up online now that the movie is out--but like many a good author of thrillers, Flynn is more concerned with character and plot. Any deeper themes lie underneath, lending weight to what is above all just one hell of a yarn.

 

I usually post my “Best of” series in December, but Gone Girl was good enough that I can go ahead and declare it one of The Gleaming Sword’s Best Books of 2014.

 

 

The Grand Hotel Theme as Microcosm

“Grand Hotel . . . People coming, going . . . Nothing ever happens.” –Dr. Otternschlag, Grand Hotel

One of the best films I’ve seen in recent years is an oldie. I first watched Grand Hotel (1932), about the lives of guests and employees at a luxurious hotel in Berlin, when I was on a Greta Garbo kick a couple years ago, but I’ve returned to it since, and I’m always engaged by its microcosmic picture of the world.

The film has given rise to the expression “Grand Hotel theme,” which is used to describe a work of fiction set in a physically limited location--such as a hotel--and following a broad array of characters each going about their lives and sometimes entering into each other’s. The opening scene of Grand Hotel introduces us to many of the characters whose sorrows and joys we will share as the movie progresses:

 

A porter waiting for the birth of this child, a dying man burning through his savings, a ballerina’s maid worrying about her employer . . . 

 

Some of the most important characters are yet to appear: The puffed-up businessman with the pince-nez will hire a young woman named Flaemmchen (Joan Crawford) to be his stenographer, and the man plotting a theft will fall in love with the ballerina Grusinskaya (Garbo). Together, they cover many walks of life--rich and poor, master and servant, male and female, healthy and sick, honest and dishonest, happy and sad, alive and dead--bringing all of the world within the walls of the hotel.

The architecture of the hotel itself aids the film’s microcosmic function. The lobby features a circular desk around which hotel guests and porters are a flurry of activity. The checkered pattern of the floor radiates out from the lobby desk to doors, elevators and phone booths. Overhead, the floors of the hotel are stacked in rings lined with guest rooms. The lobby is the physical center of the hotel and the center of the film’s cosmology.

 

One of my favorite characters is Doctor Otternschlag, a World War I veteran whose face was scarred by an exploding grenade. He now spends his time wandering the lobby, asking the desk clerks if there are any messages for him (There aren’t.), and making dour observations. He has this to say about the hotel:

“What do you do in the Grand Hotel? Eat, sleep, loaf around, flirt a little, dance a little. A hundred doors leading to one hall. No one knows anything about the person next to them. And when you leave, someone occupies your room, lies in your bed. That's the end.”

A fitting summary of life itself, I'd say.

Grand Hotel is microcosmic in genre as well, for it holds many genres within its 112 minutes. While reviewing the DVD for this post, I noticed how the film’s generally light tone masks many dark themes. Greta Garbo’s character alternates between buoyant raptures and deep depression, at one point delivering a melodramatic discourse on death. Later, the dying company man musters his courage to stand up to his big-shot boss, and his boss reacts with palpable contempt. It is to this same scummy but snooty businessman that Joan Crawford tacitly agrees to prostitute herself because she needs money. Underneath the veneer of a breezy romp, Grand Hotel is many things: romance, suspense, human drama, comedy, tragedy, social critique and philosophical reflection.

 

Before I ever heard the phrase “Grand Hotel theme” in English (or had even seen the movie), I had run across it in Japanese:  グランドホテル形式. This literally translates as “Grand Hotel form,” and it is used more generally to refer to films with an ensemble cast. In this as well, Grand Hotel is a world within a world, for its all-star cast reproduces the milieu of Golden-Age Hollywood in miniature. The number of big names on the movie poster would have had the same effect in 1932 that the cast of Ocean’s Thirteen did in 2007 or The Expendables 3 did this year.

Grand Hotel is a little big film.

As I’ve mentioned before, I don’t think classic movies are intrinsically better than movies today, but I do think it’s a shame that while millions in America are familiar with American Hustle, Guardians of the Galaxy or Sharknado, fewer and fewer have seen a Geta Garbo film or even know who Joan Crawford was. I have always been attracted to the black-and-white world of the cinema and television of my grandparents’ day, but even I have only recently begun to explore it in earnest. I’ve missed a lot, but films like Grand Hotel are not to be missed.