In December of 2020, when it became clear we were not going to be returning to normal life any time soon, we purchased a big honking 55-inch 4K TV and settled in for a year of watching movies at home. By Dec. 31, 2021, we had watched 236 movies either together or separately. This is one of series of blog posts about those films.
Dear Wife and I love older movies, especially the film noirs of the 1940s and ’50s. Film noir means literally “black film,” and these are typically black & white crime dramas with lots of shadows that take place at night in the dark places of men’s and women’s hearts.
Things never turn out well for our anti-heroes and heroines, in large part because the Production Code (also known as the Hays Code) said that criminals could never get away with their bad behavior – they always had to pay. In some of the movies we will look at in later editions of this series we’ll see that the writers and directors sometimes had to go to elaborate (and fascinating) lengths to come up with an ending that would satisfy both audiences and the Code rules.
This time I’d like to talk about one of our favorites from our year of movies:
The Narrow Margin, 1952, directed by Richard Fleischer; starring Charles McGraw, Marie Windsor and Jacqueline White. We saw it, as we so often do, on Turner Classic Movies’ Noir Alley program with an introduction and afterword from host Eddie Muller, one of the leading writers on noir.
Narrow Margin is the story of an LAPD detective sergeant who is assigned to protect a mob boss’s widow who is traveling by train from Chicago to Los Angeles to testify in a trial. Throughout the movie the detective, his colleagues, and the widow are all menaced by assassins who will do anything to stop her from testifying. If you are going to watch this movie, don’t do any digging about the plot before watching. You don’t want to spoil any of the numerous twists and turns it takes.
The film goes at a breakneck pace, with much of the action taking place within the narrow confines of a transcontinental train. It also moves quickly because it has a running time of only 71 minutes – impossible to believe today in this age of bloated, over-long movies. Narrow Margin was considered a “B movie” with a low budget, fast shoot, and a cast of relative unknowns, but it rises above its humble roots to be one of the most exciting movies we saw in 2021.
In March of this year Dear Wife and I also got to see the 1990 remake of The Narrow Margin by thriller director Peter Hyams; starring Gene Hackman, Anne Archer, James B. Sikking, J.T. Walsh and M. Emmet Walsh. The plot is roughly the same as the 1952 original, but it’s moved up north with much of the action taking place in the Canadian Rockies. Although the movie bombed in the box office, we still thought it was a lot of fun. And with a 97-minute run-time, it mostly maintains the tight pace of the original.
In December of 2020, when it became clear we were not going to be returning to normal life any time soon, we purchased a big honking 55-inch 4K TV and settled in for a year of watching movies at home. By Dec. 31, 2021, we had watched 236 movies either together or separately. This is one of series of blog posts about those films.
No fancy introduction this time. Just an assortment of four movies framed by a pair of prominent monster stories.
1976’s edition of King Kong, directed by John Guillermin, starring Jeff Bridges, Charles Grodin and Jessica Lange. For whatever reason — nostalgia, watching it for the first time at age 16, some great actors (it was Jessica Lange’s starring debut!) — this is my favorite of the Big Monkey movies. It also has added poignancy from featuring a very early look at the recently completed World Trade Center’s twin towers. It carries an emotional wallop now that the film maker never could have anticipated. But I won’t call it a guilty pleasure movie given that even the ever-acerbic New Yorker movie critic Pauline Kael liked it. (Watched this with my dear Mum-in-Law, who liked monster movies, too.)
Witness to Murder, 1954, directed by Roy Rowland; starring Barbara Stanwyck, George Sanders and Gary Merrill. This is of the woman-sees-a-murder-and-no-one-believes-her genre, an is a fun film noir. It also includes the ever-popular “denazified Nazi” bad guy. Unfortunately for Stanwyck and the rest of the cast, Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window came out at about the same time and likely took away audiences. Still, it’s a fun little period thriller.
That Hamilton Woman, 1941, directed by Alexander Korda; starring Viven Leigh and Laurence Olivier. Most Americans will have heard of Trafalgar Square and might know that it has something to do with the Napoleonic Wars era. A more engaged person will know that it’s a memorial to Admiral Horatio Nelson. But you might need to be a bit of Napoleonic-era nerd to know about Nelson’s scandalous affair with Lady Emma Hamilton. This film tells the story through flashbacks of the rise and catastrophic fall of Lady Hamilton. It also functioned as a World War II propaganda film to make people more sympathetic toward Britain. More than a bit soapy, but a lot of fun. (Again, one that was just for Mum-in-Law and me.)
Family Plot, 1976, directed by Alfred Hitchcock; staring Bruce Dern, Barbara Harris, William Devane and Karen Black. A late-career black comedy from Hitchcock, it features a post-Jaws, pre-Star Wars score from John Williams – the only score he would do for Hitch. (I don’t have a count of how many Hitchcock films we saw in 2021, but his films would almost certainly be the most frequent director for us.) BTW, this has one of those fun Hitchcock-hosted trailers. You want to see this.
Sealed Cargo, 1951, directed by Alfred L. Werker; staring Dana Andrews, Claude Raines, and Carla Balenda. A fun World War II story of about an American fisherman (Andrews) going up against a German U-boat in a rather far-fetched story that also involves a square-rigged Danish ship. Along with seeing a lot of Hitchcock movies, we also saw a lot of fighting-the-Nazis movies as well.
Godzilla: King of the Monsters, 2019, directed by Michael Dougherty, staring Kyle Chandler, Vera Farmiga, Millie Bobby Brown, Bradley Whitford, Sally Hawkins and Charles Dance. Part of the Titan series of monster films set in the common universe of the 2014 Godzilla reboot. There have been a number of films in this series, and we’ll be watching more of them before the year is out. I first saw King of the Monsters in the theater and wasn’t overly impressed. Then I listened to the audiobook of the novelization of the movie, and I started liking it a lot better. It has a fun cast with Vera Farmiga from Bates Motel, Millie Bobby Brown from Stranger Things, Bradley Whitford from Tick, Tick…BOOM!, and Charles Dance from Game of Thrones. Stupid fun, if you aren’t expecting too much from it. And with that, we are back to roughly where we started with 1976’s King Kong.
Coming up next: One of the most exciting noirs we saw in 2021
The New York Times is getting a fair amount of static for the opening paragraph of their editorial about the First Amendment and free speech this morning. Here’s the headline and first two paragraphs:
America Has a Free Speech Problem
For all the tolerance and enlightenment that modern society claims, Americans are losing hold of a fundamental right as citizens of a free country: the right to speak their minds and voice their opinions in public without fear of being shamed or shunned.
This social silencing, this depluralizing of America, has been evident for years, but dealing with it stirs yet more fear. It feels like a third rail, dangerous. For a strong nation and open society, that isdangerous.
There are certainly a lot of concerns today about free speech, but the central policy claim that we have a fundamental right to say what we want without “fear of being shamed or shunned” is something I would have hard time accepting from my commentary students.
Dr. Rosemary Pennington (who recently wrote a guest blog post here about media framing of the Russian war against Ukraine) points out that this is not at all what the 1st Amendment has to say:
There are consequences to speech & there should be.
All we are guaranteed is that the government won’t get in the way of our speech.
That’s it.
And as members of the news media the New York Times should know that.
Defense attorney and legal commentator Ken White, who tweets under the handle @Popehat, gives a scathing analysis of just the first paragraph of the Times’ editorial:
Dr. Jeremy Littau of Lehigh University points out the absurdity of the editorial by looking at things the Times has written in the past:
Alissa Wilkinson, a senior culture reporter and critic for Vox.com and a tenured associate professor at King’s College in New York City, points out the absurdity of the Times’ arguments:
And for those of you, like me, who do not have James 3 from the Bible memorized, here would seem to be the relevant portion:
5 Likewise, the tongue is a small part of the body, but it makes great boasts. Consider what a great forest is set on fire by a small spark. 6 The tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole body, sets the whole course of one’s life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell.
7 All kinds of animals, birds, reptiles and sea creatures are being tamed and have been tamed by mankind, 8 but no human being can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison.
9 With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse human beings, who have been made in God’s likeness. 10 Out of the same mouth come praise and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this should not be. 11 Can both fresh water and salt water flow from the same spring? 12 My brothers and sisters, can a fig tree bear olives, or a grapevine bear figs? Neither can a salt spring produce fresh water.
So if you use this NY Times editorial in either a commentary or media literacy class, here are some discussion questions to start with:
What protection does the 1st Amendment provide us with?
Does freedom of speech imply freedom from criticism? Why or why not?
Why should someone speaking critically be protected from responding criticism?
What responsibility do we have for what we say in public? In private?
American journalist/documentarian killed covering war in Ukraine
Our Nieman Fellow Brent Renaud was gifted and kind, and his work was infused with humanity. He was killed today outside Kiev, and the world and journalism are lesser for it. We are heartsick. https://t.co/ZbQWAtiGp4
Disney top management and Disney employees have very different outlooks on Florida’s “Don’t say gay” law.
Excellent thread on Disney having to come to terms with where they stand on LGBTQ+ rights. https://t.co/nmfgmrpRws
— RalphIsNow@rhanson40@threads.net (@ralphehanson) March 10, 2022
Big Three TV network news shows get far more viewers than cable news
Critical Point: We talk way too much about CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC. People who get their news from television mostly get it from the old Big Three networks. https://t.co/4pifIitY6a
— RalphIsNow@rhanson40@threads.net (@ralphehanson) March 10, 2022
And finally – The perfect live shot story from Poland
In December of 2020, when it became clear we were not going to be returning to normal life any time soon, we purchased a big honking 55-inch 4K TV and settled in for a year of watching movies at home. By Dec. 31, 2021, we had watched 236 movies either together or separately. This is one of series of blog posts about those films.
Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca, perhaps the most perfect movie ever made.
I always think of “old movies” being movies from the 1930s or 40s – the ones that were old to me when I first got really interested in films in the 1970s or 80s. I mean, my Dear Wife and I had our second date at a campus movie series showing of Casablanca back in the spring of 1981. Casablanca came out in 1942, so it was 39 years old when we first saw it. Which seemed pretty old to 21-year-old us. The movies we’re going to look at today date from 1937 until 1981 – So they will all be older now than “old movie” Casablanca was on that second date… (I guess since Dear Wife and I will have been married 40 years this summer, we are also old…)
When we left off last time, we had been watching an adaptation of Kipling’s The Man Who Would Be King. And we will start off this time with another Kipling story – 1937’s Captain’s Courageous, directed by Victor Fleming and staring Spencer Tracy, Lionel Barrymore, and Melvyn Douglas.
Freddie Bartholomew plays the snotty rich kid who falls off a steam ship crossing the Atlantic while getting sick after drinking too many milkshakes. He is rescued by a Grand Banks cod fishing boat that doesn’t have a radio on it. The boat, of course, can’t take him to port until it’s full up with fish. Tracy won an Academy Award for Best Actor for playing the fisherman who teaches Bartholomew’s character how to be a human being. Mum-in-law watched it with me but thought it was way too sentimental. I, of course, loved it. (I listened to an audiobook of Kipling’s original story not too long ago as well.)
Next up, we have 1981’s Eyewitness, directed by Peter Yates; starring William Hurt, Sigourney Weaver, and Christopher Plummer. Dear Wife and I likely saw this first when it was new, but it’s now 41-years old, so … officially an old movie. Eyewitness is a mystery/thriller, and it doesn’t bear looking too deeply at the plot, having little connection with reality. But it does have a horse stampede in downtown Manhattan, so it’s all good fun. (There is not a current home video version as far as I can tell, but it shows up occasionally on Turner Classic Movies.)
White Christmas, 1954, directed by Michael Curtiz(of Casablanca fame); starring Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye, Rosemary Clooney and Vera Ellen. It also stars the songs of Irving Berlin. Wonderful silliness about a pair of song-and-dance men who meet up with a couple of song-and-dance women who decide to put on a show together. It is in many ways a remake of the Bing Crosby flick Holiday Inn, but unlike Holiday Inn, White Christmas isn’t afflicted by an incredibly racist minstrel show. Great songs, great dancing, enormous fun. (For those interested, it was shot in larger-format VistaVision.)
Bell, Book & Candle, 1958, directed by Richard Quine; starring Jimmy Stewart, Kim Novak, Jack Lemmon, Ernie Kovacs, Hermione Gringold, and Elsa Lanchester. Novak plays a witch who casts a literal spell on Stewart in this supernatural romantic comedy. The joy of this film comes not so much from the silly plot as from seeing all these great performers come together in a story that helped inspire the 1960s TV series Bewitched (as did the 1942 I Married a Witch that we’ll get to later).
We close out this group with the 1976 mystery/comedy Murder By Death, directed by Robert Moore. It was written by playwright Neil Simon and has an all-star cast of Eileen Brennan, Truman Capote, James Coco, Peter Falk, Alec Guinness, Elsa Lanchester (whom we just saw in Bell, Book & Candle!), David Niven, Peter Sellers, Maggie Smith and Nancy Walker. If you’ve seen 1985’s Clue, you’ve essentially seen this movie. Strangers arrive at a house for a mysterious weekend and end up getting murdered one by one. It’s a movie that doesn’t call on you to think to deeply – just enjoy the silly ride. (Note: Contains one of the horrid yellowface performances Hollywood was so fond of.)
Coming Attractions: From 1976’s King Kong to 2019’s Godzilla King of the Monsters
Yesterday morning while I was reading Twitter, Dr. Rosemary Pennington, associate professor of journalism at Miami University of Ohio, had a great thread on how the news media have framed the story of what is happening in Ukraine so very differently from what has happened in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan. She was kind enough to edit her Tweets into this guest blog post. Great reading on a part of this story that doesn’t get enough attention.
I've been sitting and retweeting stuff about Ukraine because, while I have done a lot of reading on the subject of the former Eastern Bloc – I am not an expert. (Though I have a loved one in Kyiv I am terrified for.)
What I am an expert in is media representation. 1/
For the last week, I’ve been sharing information on social media about Ukraine. Most of this information has been authored by other people because, while I have done a lot of reading on the subject of the former Eastern Bloc, I am not an expert on the subject.
What I am an expert in is media representation; specifically, the representation of Muslims and cultures/countries that were once imagined as the Orient in media.
News media and pundits have brought those two things – Ukraine and the representation of the imagined Orient – clashing together this week.
By now, you’ve likely seen video of the CBS reporter who implied Ukraine is different from Iraq or Afghanistan because, unlike those nations, Ukraine is a “civilized” country.
There’s a lot to unpack there.
First, I would turn you onto the Twitter feed of Kimberly St. Julian-Varnon, a scholar of race and Blackness in the USSR and GDR (socialist East Germany) and a PhD student in the University of Pennsylvania’s History Department. She’s been tweeting about race in Ukraine, but also about the way that Ukraine has been othered, and at time racialized, in the European imagination.
Like I said, I’ve been advocating for Ukraine’s Black and Brown communities, and before I had a profile, I wrote and spoke to the public about it. https://t.co/0kwCNhPBXV
While Ukraine is being embraced right now as European as it fights off a Russian invasion, it hasn’t always been.
Second, this framing – that Ukraine is somehow civilized while MENA nations (Middle East and North Africa) like Iraq and Afghanistan and Syria are not – is Orientalist. It’s Eurocentric. It’s racist.
If we unpack the whole “Iraq and Afghanistan are uncivilized” frame it takes us back to discussions of European and American imperialism and militarism which we, as a collective “West,” have not truly reckoned with.
And, frankly, it is a framing no one needs to make.
We are watching the destruction of a nation on the internet and on TV. It is terrible. There is no need to do some sort of comparison. There is no reason to be racist to make people care about Ukraine. I saw the “Russian warship: Go fuck yourself” video. I saw the hard-core woman tell a soldier to carry seeds so sunflowers will grow when he dies. I watched explosions rip apart cities. How can one be human and watch this happen and not feel? Not care?
You do not need to compare the suffering of Ukrainians to the suffering of Afghans or Iraqis or Syrians in order to prove Ukrainians are worth protecting or saving. All human life is worth protecting and worth saving.
I almost kept my mouth shut after watching that CBS reporter spew that Orientalist and Eurocentric claptrap. But then – oh, there’s always a “but then” – I saw other reporters use the same sort of language. I saw pundits, not all speaking in English, using the same framing.
So, here I am, yelling into the internet at people who do not pay attention what some academic in Washington, DC, has to say. But, I am a former journalist and a journalism professor. My hope is always that the profession can do better, be better. So I yell.
If we don’t call out problematic, racist, things as we see them, then that framing continues. It’s why those reporters and pundits are so comfortable suggesting that Iraqis or Syrians or Afghans are somehow less human – it’s the implication, even if it’s not the intent – because not enough people have called them out on their dehumanizing coverage of conflicts in those places in the past.
Instead, journalists continue producing news coverage of places like Afghanistan or Syria that is Islamophobic in nature and which helps fuel anti-Muslim sentiment.
Right before Russia invaded Ukraine, I’d started listening to The Trojan Horse Affair podcast. It deals with a similar issue. Listen to the podcast, if you haven’t. I won’t spoil it. But, the gist is the UK government took an Islamophobic letter at face value and used it to wage a very anti-Muslim campaign of terror against Muslims in the UK.
A mysterious letter shocked Britain. But who wrote it? “The Trojan Horse Affair,” hosted by @BriHReed of “S-Town” and @HamzaMSyed, is an investigation bigger than we ever imagined. All eight parts are out today. https://t.co/43TxRXLJSg
At the time, this witch hunt had a fair amount of support because of the historic framing of Muslims (and Muslim countries) as somehow less civilized, less modern, less human than non-Muslim countries.
Allowing people to be framed as somehow less human, or less worthy of our empathy and compassion, often means that when violence is committed against them, we fail to speak out. Rather than stand as witnesses to violence, we turn away and pretend we don’t see it.
I watched people talk about The Trojan Horse Affair podcast, particularly those not in my field, saying things like, “How could this happen?” I wanted to yell, “Because you watched 24! Because you bought the weapons of mass destruction lie! Because you believe the Middle East to be unmodern! You have for centuries, fueled by European imperial expansion into the Near, Middle, and Far East.”
How could this happen? How could experienced and educated journalists report on one tragedy – and Ukraine is a monumental tragedy – while dehumanizing the tragedy of certain other people?
Because those people are generally a) brown, b) non-Christian, and c) from non-European countries. That combination has for a very long time been portrayed in political, media, and cultural discourses as though it was foreign. As though the people with those characteristics are others not worth our time, care, or compassion because they are uncivilized and unmodern.
And, for the record, this isn’t some screed along the “Why are we talking about Ukraine and not X other conflict” lines. (Though, I think those are conversations we also have to have at some point.)
This is very much about how reporters are framing a current crisis and how troubling and, frankly, unethical it is to dehumanize one group (or many groups) of people in order to make your point.
It’s also just lazy journalism.
We should care about the violence in Ukraine because human beings deserve to live in dignity. We should care about the violence in Syria because human beings deserve to live in dignity. We should care about the violence in Afghanistan because human beings deserve to live in dignity.
It has nothing to do with civilization or modernity. (Who gets to decide who is civilized or unmodern anyway?)
It has everything to do with ethics, compassion, and humanity.
There is amazing reporting coming out of Ukraine, but if we don’t call out the racist coverage as we see it, it will continue. And the ethical mandate for journalists to “minimize harm” will be something we can never live up to.
Dr. Rosemary Pennington is an associate professor of journalism at Miami University, where she also serves as the area coordinator of the journalism program. She’s the co-editor of two books from Indiana University Press – On Islam: Muslims and the Media with Hilary Kahn and The Media World of ISIS with Michael Krona.
The term “saint” gets thrown around pretty easily at times to describe people who seem to be perfect in a moral/religious sense. That’s a tough standard, and I don’t think many people, especially actual saints, can live up to the idea of being perfect.
As Fr. James Martin has written, the canonized saints have been egotistical, difficult, impatient, struggle with their faith, and struggle with the world. Saints can also have a sense of humor about themselves and their responsibilities. They have not led blameless lives. What they have done is devoted their life to carrying out God’s will the best they can.
Fr. Martin writes that Dorothy Day, founder of the Catholic Workers Party, is in the early stages of being considered for sainthood and might seem like an unlikely candidate. She got pregnant out of wedlock and had an abortion. She later had a common-law husband with whom she had a child. But what mattered most in her life was her devotion to the lives of the poor and the church’s commitment to them. That was how she directed her life after an adult conversion to Catholicism. She saw her call to “work among the poor and marginalized in the big cities.”
In my mind, Dr. Paul Farmer, who died at age 62 earlier this week, was a saint. He was far from perfect. He was egotistical, impatient, and demanding. But he also insisted that people who were poor or lived in remote areas still deserved high-quality medical care for difficult diseases like HIV/AIDS or drug-resistant tuberculosis. He co-founded Partners In Health, a non-profit designed to build sustainable clinics in the poorest, most under-served areas.
I first learned about Farmer from Tracy Kidder’s book Mountains Beyond Mountains that told of Farmer’s campaign to bring care to the hardest to serve – people living in the mountains of Haiti or in Russian prisons. Kidder’s book got started as an article for The New Yorker 22 years ago called “The Good Doctor” that has been a staple for years for my feature writing class. As an example, Kidder tells of Farmer treating a young man with AIDS in a remote area of Haiti:
“My situation is so bad,” the young man said. “I keep injuring my head, because I’m living in such a crowded house. We have only one bed, and I let my children sleep on it, so I have to sleep under the bed, and I forget, and I hit my head when I sit up.” He went on, “I don’t forget what you did for me, Doktè Paul. When I was sick and no one would touch me, you used to sit on my bed with your hand on my head. I would like to give you a chicken or a pig.”
When Farmer is relaxed, his skin is pale, with a suggestion of freckles underneath. Now it reddened instantly, from the base of his neck to his forehead. “You’ve already given me a lot. Stop it!”
In another case, Farmer was working with a sick teen-aged girl:
A thirteen-year-old girl with meningitis had arrived by donkey ambulance. The young doctors on duty hadn’t done a spinal tap, to find out which type of meningitis, and thus which drugs to give her. “Doctors, doctors, what is wrong with you?” Farmer said. Then he did the tap himself. Wild cries from the child: “Li fe-m mal, mwen grangou.” Farmer looked up from his work and said, “She’s crying, ‘It hurts, I’m hungry.’ Can you believe it? Only in Haiti would a child cry out that she’s hungry during a spinal tap.”
Farmer routinely worked in clinics serviced by a “donkey ambulance” – literally sick people brought in by donkey. Not where you would expect to see someone with a Harvard medical degree and doctorate in antrhopology and two faculty appointments at major US universities.
Paul’s basic belief was that all human beings deserve equal respect and care, especially when they are sick. His dream, he once told me, was to start a movement that would refuse to accept, and would strive to repair, the grotesque health inequities among and within the countries of the world. When I first met him — in Haiti, in 1994 — he had already created a growing health care system in a desperately impoverished area. I thought he’d done a lot already. Now, looking back, I realize that he was just getting started.
When Farmer was a medical intern, he would sometimes get his paycheck and immediately sign it over to an AIDS patient who was in danger of becoming homeless. He did not come from a wealthy family and by normal standards, he could not afford to do this. But Farmer says he was never in any danger of going homeless himself by giving away his pay. There was always be someone who could loan him money. (You can view this whole conversation between Farmer an Kidder that aired on C-SPAN back in 2003 in the video embedded below.)
Farmer was, as I mentioned at the beginning, far from perfect. Kidder told wonderful stories about his impatience with the world. He could be harsh toward those who weren’t trying hard enough, who were cutting themselves too much slack.
Little sleep, no investment portfolio, no family around, no hot water. On an evening a few days after arriving in Cange [Hatie], I wondered aloud what compensation he got for these various hardships. He told me, “If you’re making sacrifices, unless you’re automatically following some rule, it stands to reason that you’re trying to lessen some psychic discomfort. So, for example, if I took steps to be a doctor for those who don’t have medical care, it could be regarded as a sacrifice, but it could also be regarded as a way to deal with ambivalence.” He went on, and his voice changed a little. He didn’t bristle, but his tone had an edge: “I feel ambivalent about selling my services in a world where some can’t buy them. You can feel ambivalent about that, because you should feel ambivalent.Comma.”
This was for me one of the first of many encounters with Farmer’s use of the wordcomma,placed at the end of a sentence. It stood for the word that would follow the comma, which wasasshole. I understood he wasn’t calling me one—he would never do that; he was almost invariably courteous.Comma was always directed at third parties, at those who felt comfortable with the current distribution of money and medicine in the world. And the implication, of course, was that you weren’t one of those. Were you?
Farmer was responsible for one of my favorite concepts/catch phrases – one that has spread throughout my family: the “H of G.” Kidder writes:
“An H of G” was short for “a hermeneutic of generosity,” which he had defined once for me in an e-mail: “I have a hermeneutic of generosity for you because I know you’re a good guy. Therefore I will interpret what you say and do in a favorable light. Seems like I’m the one who should hope for as much from you.”
The H of G says that we should always be looking for the best in people or a situation, even if it isn’t necessarily earned.
I must admit I have felt inadequate trying to write about Farmer. He was such a complex character who demanded so much of himself that his actions serve as a challenge to us. Kidder admits that he was at one point reluctant to write about Farmer because he knew it would challenge his own privileged life. “I knew if I followed this guy around, it would disturb my peace of mind.”
Fr. Martin did not call Farmer, a devotee of Catholic liberation theology, a saint, but it was his writings that convinced me that this funny, prickly, demanding doctor was emphatically one. In a prose poem/prayer, Martin writes:
Help me to believe that your Spirit can do anything: raise up saints when we need them most, soften hearts when they seem hardened, open minds when they seem closed, inspire confidence when all seems lost, help us do what had seemed impossible until it was done.
If Farmer hadn’t done the things he did, it would have been easy to call them impossible. I know that Farmer would have been uncomfortable being called a saint. He was just doing what he needed to do, comma…
"The idea that some lives matter less is the root of all that is wrong with the world." RIP Paul Farmer pic.twitter.com/GdBFNP7DPR
Are radically fewer people watching the Olympics this year?
The simple answer is no. The more complex answer is, “What do you mean by watching?” As University of Main media historian Dr. Michael Socolow writes today in Slate, obviously the traditional television ratings for the Beijing Olympics on NBC and related television networks are way down. But millions more people are watching Olympic videos through YouTube and TikTok. And when you combine all the viewership of NBC-produced video, you are seeing record-breaking audience sizes. This all goes back to the question I ask my students every semester: What does it mean to say you are “watching television”? (Click image below for video)
Why has ViacomCBS changed its name to Paramount?
The simple answer is, “Why not? Everyone knows who Paramount is.” The more complex answer is: Given that most of my media literacy students have never heard of Viacom before enrolling in my class, it’s no surprise that the broadcast/cable/movie giant is taking on Paramount as its brand name.Viacom got its start as a production company run by CBS back in the 1960s, but the broadcast company was forced to spin Viacom off in 1971 because it was too much power in the hand of one company (isn’t that quaint!). Viacom was then bought in 1987 by movie theater owner Sumner Redstone, who added Paramount Studios to his portfolio. And then, given the big changes in the FCC’s feelings about ownership, Viacom bought out CBS. They danced around having separate stock for several years, and then, in 2019, following an extended and rather ugly battle among management and members of the Redstone family, the two companies came back together with the rather awkward name ViacomCBS. So the new name not only makes the company more identifiable, it also helps put the internal battles for control of the company into the past.
Why did Sarah Palin lose her libel suit against the NY Times? The simple answer is that Palin never had a case. The more complex answer is that both the judge and the jury ruled that the former Alaska governor and Republican vice presidential candidate had not demonstrated the high legal status of “actual malice” that public figures are required to meet. The NY Times did print a false statement in an editorial that was relatively quickly corrected. And Palin was unable to show that she had really been harmed by the quickly corrected error.
And finally…
Has there ever been a more perfect hour of low-key television thanMicahel Palin crossing from Dubai to Bombay on a dhow on his Around the World in 80 Days travel show? The simple answer is “no.” There is no complex answer.The show aired on the BBC back in 1988 and not long afterward on PBS. I saw the series when it first aired in the United States, and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve managed to watch the TV series or listen to the audiobook since then. Palin’s challenge was to make it around the world in 80 days or less without the use of modern air travel.The people he meets and the experiences he has (including being shaved by a blind barber in India) all unroll at an unhurried pace of another era. Palin is accompanied on his travels by a small film crew he refers to as his Passepartout (the valet for Jules Verne’s original hero Philias Fogg).
The best episode of the series is where Palin has to cross the Persian Gulf on an old-school regional cargo boat (a dhow) that runs on a diesel engine supplemented by a sail when feasible. During his eight-day crossing, Palin connects with perhaps the purest part of his entire journey. He has only an open deck with a tarp cover for accommodations, and the toilet is an open seat over the sea. (Note: All is not well with Palin’s stomach for several days.) The journey across the Persian Gulf was slow, it could be scary at times, and it was often incredibly dull. But Palin writes that it was the part of the trip he will never forget. There’s no official way to see the series in the US anymore, but you can find a reasonably good copy of the series on the Internet Archive. It’s worth digging up.
P.S. PBS is currently showing a reimagined version of Jules Verne’s Around the World in 80 Days that has been absolutely excellent, staring British actor David Tennant as Fogg, French actor Ibrahim Koma as Passepartout, and German actress Leonie Benesch (from Babylon Berlin) as journalist Abigail “Fix” Fortescue. Highly recommend getting caught up on it if you have access to PBS Passport streaming.
I raised the question on Twitter earlier today on why the Washington Post had to put the results in the subject line of their e-mail and tagged several media reporters in a followup. I heard back from Post news media reporter Paul Farhi:
People have been complaining about this since the invention of emails and news alerts. You can always cancel your alerts (or suspend them for two weeks), I guess.
Which to me begs the question – Why keep doing it?
Years ago I used to watch a lot of motorcycle racing from around the world (MotoGP and World Superbike) and the United States that typically was on a multiple-day TV delay. Websites, like SuperbikePlanet.com, that gave real-time coverage of the races would send out e-mails with results of qualifying, supporting races, and the main events. And for all the final races they would use a subject line along the lines of “Italian MotoGP Results!” If you wanted to know the results, you clicked on it, if you wanted to wait you ignored it.
I understand that it’s vastly easier to avoid spoilers for obscure sports like motorcycle racing. But news outlets like the Washington Post or New York Times could do better on this. Especially since, “People have been complaining about this since the invention of e-mails and news alerts.”
Generally, I have mixed feelings about the Best Animated Feature Oscar category. I mean, if Disney/Pixar comes out with a vaguely credible effort, they generally win. This was particularly true in 2016 when the oh-so-carefully constructed “important message” Zootopia beat out the wildly creative and original Kubo and the Two Strings. Kubo was beautifully told through some of the best stop action animation in recent memory, it was family friendly, it told an uplifting story, and it featured a great cover of “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” from Regina Spektor. But Disney’s Zootopia was a huge success and everybody loved its rank sentimentality. (To be fair, Kubo did suffer from whitewashing, with prominent white actors voicing Asian characters.)
https://youtu.be/8hUOKjy-9-o
There have, of course, been some notable exceptions – most significantly when Sony’s Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse beat out Pixar’s Incredibles 2 and Disney’s Ralph Breaks The Internet. But there was no way the most innovative animated film in decades could have lost.
This year, however, there is a rich, diverse, and exciting field of nominees from three different studios. And I’ve been fortunate enough to see (well, mostly see) all of them.
Disney/Pixar has three nominations:
Encanto – A Columbian-set musical featuring hit songs from wunderkind Lin-Manuel Miranda. If you have small children, you have spent the last month (at least) listening to “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” on rapid repeat. It is also a wonderful film with great dancing, a fantastic Latinx-themed story, and truly vibrant animation. For me, this was the best animation out of the House of Mouse since at least Big Hero Six.
Raya and the Last Dragon – A well-done fantasy adventure set in legendary China, starring the voice acting of the ever-popular actor/comedian Awkwafina, and, to my eyes, looking a lot like a kid-friendly version of Ten Rings.
Luca – A Pixar release that I actually got so bored with I skipped much of the middle to get to the end. I never do this. And I was predisposed to love this movie. I mean, two boys lusting after a Vespa scooter over the course of the summer, right? And yet… It just suffered from a massive lack of storytelling. It felt a lot like a short film that just got stretched beyond its limits.
Sony Animation has one entry – The Mitchells vs. the Machines.Coming from the same studio that brought us Spider-Verse, it’s no surprise that this movie has an animation style that looks like nothing else – it just pops off the screen with bits of text and explosive colors. It tells the story of a teen-age girl who wants to go to film school. She has big issues with her father (and this is the great part) which have nothing to do with her being gay. Dad wants Katie to get outdoors, and Katie wants to shoot and edit films. In fact, her sexuality is an underplayed part of the story – it’s just who she is. There’s none of the “very special episodeness” of the story. I will confess that I’m biased on this film – friends of my eldest and his Dear Wife worked on it. But it would still be one of my favorites.
And finally, there’s Flee, the Danish-language (with segments in Dari) documentary about a real-life teen-aged refugee who has to live a lie in order to escape Taliban-ruled Afghanistan. It takes he and his family years to escape first to Russia and then to various European countries. Like Mitchells, the protagonist Amin is gay, and while it is an important part of who he is, it is not central to his challenges escaping to the West. Unlike all of these other films, Flee is hand-drawn (on computers) with 2D animation. It also switches from a muted earth-toned full-color pallet to gray-and-black lines-and-wash to depict the most perilous moments. Flee is rated PG-13, but it’s not for the younger set. It’s a disturbing and uplifting film that gets at the refugee experience in a way that is interesting, touching, and honest. In addition to being nominated for Best Animated Feature, Flee has also been nominated for Best Documentary Feature as well as Best International Feature.
So there is no questionthat Encanto is going to win Best Animated Feature. It tells a great story, it has fantastic animation, it has multiple hit songs, it hits both fun and serious notes, and it arguably could have been nominated for Best Picture.
Any other year, Mitchells could have been a contender for the win. It was so much fun with the technology-run-amok story line, an adorable pug sidekick, and all the fun moments from Katie’s short films. Mitchells was exactly the kind of escapism we needed on Netflix during the peak of the pandemic.
And then there is Flee. I have to admit that Flee was probably my favorite of all these films. I bought a copy so I could see it, but I can’t say I was looking forward to it. And yet, once I started Flee I don’t think I paused it more than once, if at all. Serious, adult-oriented animated films never win this category. The Breadwinner, Persepolis, The Triplets of Belleville and the Wes Anderson animated features were never in serious contention. I hope that Flee will win one of the other two categories it is nominated in.
Encanto is going to be another win for Disney, and it’s going to deserve it. But don’t miss seeing Mitchells vs. the Machines or Flee. They are equally deserving of your time.
In my mind, Dr. Paul Farmer, who died at age 62 earlier this week, was a saint. He was far from perfect. He was egotistical, impatient, and demanding. But he also insisted that people who were poor or lived in remote areas still deserved high-quality medical care for difficult diseases like HIV/AIDS or drug-resistant tuberculosis. He co-founded 
