Manifest Destiny Revivalism

By Sikivu Hutchinson

During the 19th century, the “Manifest Destiny” of the United States was one of “God-ordained” expansionism. African slaves, indigenous peoples, Mexican nationals and other “non-Europeans” were deemed aliens and enemy combatants, anathema to the democratizing force of America. Using that “old time religion” to shepherd the flock on the 47th anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington Glenn Beck’s “Divine Destiny” revival deftly mines this history. Beck’s decision to hold the event on the March on Washington anniversary has elicited outrage amongst civil rights organizations who accuse him and the radical right of hijacking the legacy of the civil rights movement. Reeking of sulfur, hubris and the visionary charlatanism of 1920s revivalist Aimee Semple McPherson, Beck claimed that the Divine Destiny event will provide “an inspiring look at the role faith played in the founding of America and the role it will play again in its destiny.”

Decrying the cultural primitivism and backwardness of the Muslim world, twenty first century Christian zealots seeking to preserve human rights as the province of white supremacy continue to put the lie to American exceptionalism. Over the past week the Islamphobic vitriol of demagogues like Beck, Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich have paid off in cold blood. The recent stabbing of a Muslim cabdriver in New York and the hate attack against a Fresno, California Islamic center (by an organization calling itself the American Nationalist Brotherhood), are the tragic but all too predictable results of the nationalist chest beating that masquerades as empathy for the victims of 9/11.

In a climate in which the militant right wants to dismantle civil rights freedoms guaranteed in the Constitution, Beck’s evocation of “divine destiny” is all of a piece. Throughout American history, recourse to the transparent word of God has always been the last refuge of scoundrels wielding the Bible and the bayonet as protections from the ungovernable hoard. Thus, it is fitting that this naked evocation of the language and legacy of Manifest Destiny comes during a period when the right has launched a campaign to repeal the 1868 14th amendment, which was originally initiated to confer citizenship onto freed African slaves. As Kevin Alexander Gray writes in Counterpunch, “in the Reconstruction period, as now, racism and white supremacy loomed large in public debate. Back then, opponents of the amendment talked about ‘public morality’ being threatened by people ‘unfit for the responsibilities of American citizenship.’’ Now the self-appointed defenders of public morality have come full circle, drunk on a cocktail of xenophobia, anti-immigrant hysteria and jingoism.

Vaulting ahead of the pack, Republican Congressman Lamar Smith, one of the staunchest critics of the 14th amendment’s provision of birthright citizenship, introduced the Birthright Citizenship Act of 2009 into the House. The statute would deny citizenship to children born in the U.S. to undocumented women, stripping away yet another civil right that ostensibly distinguishes the U.S. from fascist governments. Smith’s legislation is a reminder of the connection between slavery and expansionism. In the 1840s, the concept of manifest destiny was used to justify the U.S.’ brutal occupation of Mexican territory. Cultural propaganda demonizing and dehumanizing indigenous Mexican populations provided American imperialism with the aura of moral righteousness. Commenting on the U.S.-Mexico War, it was no less than “radical” poet Walt Whitman who stated: "What has miserable, inefficient Mexico—with her superstition, her burlesque upon freedom, her actual tyranny by the few over the many—what has she to do with the great mission of peopling the new world with a noble race? Be it ours, to achieve that mission!"

Back in the good old days of docile slaves and vanquished savages, there were no ambiguities about who deserved to be accorded rights. God ordained the universality of European American experience, civilization and moral worth. Non-white peoples either submitted to the Enlightenment principles and values of the culturally superior West or were extinguished. States rights were citizens’ last vestige of protection from the trespasses of big government. So it is no mystery then why the ideology of 19th century expansionism and evangelical Christian revivalism has gained fresh currency amongst a “reloading” white nationalist insurgency. As the freshly inked graffiti on the vandalized Islamic Center in Fresno proclaimed, “Wake up America, the Enemy is here.”

Sikivu Hutchinson is the editor of blackfemlens.org and a senior fellow for the Institute for Humanist Studies.

The Milk of Sorrow: "The Frightened Tit"

By Claudia Llosa, the film stars Magaly Solier as Fausta,

Plot: Our heroine Fausta (translated, means a girl who is full of fear) suffers from "The Milk of Sorrow" (which is, in the Peruvian-indigenous tradition, an illness), suffers from the desease she believes is transmitted through the breast milk of women who were raped in the Shining Path’s war of terror in Peru. The film begins with scenes from the death of her Mother followed by her obtaining sleep-in work in a wealthy home in Lima.

The plot and narrative are half the story. Providing a view into Peru from the vantages of both its very wealthy and its very poor is the other half. There is endemic cruelty, callousness at both extremes: a rampant lack of sensitivity among all parties. This even-handed expose is what helps to make The Milk of Sorrow a great film, a politically irrefutable statement.

Personally I would be depressed if I had to live the lonely life of the wealthy woman whose life is propelled by her drive for general recognition. The paucity of people in her life to meet her innate human need to be loved, wanted/needed, appreciated propels her onward and forward to the stage where she sings to so many people who when lumped together in the audience look like specks of confetti. No wonder she is depressed, detached and addicted to pills to stay "healthy".

But equally depressed and depressing is the depiction of the poor woman, Fausta, who suffers from the Peruvians illness the Milk Of Sorrow. the spoiled, Beast Milk – milk contaminated during the violent acts of Rape (during the 1980 Shining Path’s war of terror) that resulted in her birth.

The insensitivity to Fausta, the now grown woman with a potentially ripe vagina of her own and the weight of her mother's dead body that must be buried, is overwhelming horrifying partly because of the emotional cruelty heaped upon her by a community that refuses to empathize with the demands her poverty places upon her.

The juxtaposition of the her cousin's wedding festival and all that it entails with the wealthy woman's onstage performance is augmented with the internal contrast of the wedding versus Fausta's pressing need to bury her mother.

First, the mother's body is stored under a bed on top of which is the bridal gown for the plump, happy, soon-to-be-wed cousin and then, what was to be a grave for Fausta's mother's body to be buried in, becomes a watering hole for the delight and fun of the overheated travelers.

In every aspect the film Director offers the scenes as internal contrasts to each other. This is not an easy feat to achieve. Claudia LLosa's success is what makes this film so special.

Even the terrain, the pictures of what Peru looks like, are presented with such severity of difference from the daily needs for a gardener because of the wealth of flowers, plants, and trees versus the striking lack of anything other than the brown dust in the hot, arid world in which Fausta lives


There is nothing to cry about in this film. It is too serious, too depressing for tears. Maybe that is why it didn't win the 2009 Oscar award for best film or best foreign language film It was too real, it's message too clear. The obvious conclusion being that Socialism, where the class distinctions are less severe is the only real solution for a better world.

Winner:
2009 Berlin Film Festival Top Award ; The Golden Bear

Opens August 27th
New York City
Village Cinema

Altiplano: A Black Madonna revealed! 2009

Directors:
Peter Brosens
Jessica Hope Woodworth

Writers:
Jessica Hope Woodworth
Peter Brosens

Cast: (Credited cast)
Magaly Solier ... Saturnina
Jasmin Tabatabai ... Grace
Olivier Gourmet ... Max

The icon of Western culture is very tangible in this intense reality drama,Altiplano, set in rural Peru. The scenery, the depiction of the terrain, the intimate understanding of Peru's native people: the clothes they wear, and their holiday and wedding and funeral services, give understanding of unique groups of people. This is the focus of the film's narrative. The antagonist is the threat to their existence by the on-slought of corporate forces robbing the resources of their land and compromsing the peoples health.

The story is all the more compelling because of the music. It brought goose bumps to my skin, as it rose up to fill my ears, my senses with its power, its beauty.

Altiplano will bring a new world experience into your cultural life and bring out the fighter within you. Save the past. Save the native Peruvian life style, embrace the forces of the young soon to be married girl as she becomes a modern day Joan of Arc, a symbolic Virgin Mary, a hero for millions world wide who cherish the world they live in and don't want to give it up for the sake of the almighty dollar.

Altiplano is an interesting film for those who love films. It tells an unusual story punctuated with beautiful scenery and wonderful music. What else can you ask for?


Opens this Friday at New York’s Village East Cinema.

CATFISH: A love story about you, me and the Internet

Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman

Five years ago, before Facebook and Twitter, and before cell phones came into the hands of ordinary people who want to be “connected”, Catfish could not have been made. Before animation was reintroduced into the tent-pole films of today, Catfish would have been something less than it is.

The plot is a simple take on man meets girl/woman:
Megan, Abby’s older sister, and Nev, age 24, meet on the internet. Abby is an eight year old girl who does drawings of Nev’s photographs. Megan and Nev talk intimately on their cell phones and form a strong emotional bond without ever actually meeting.

When they go face to face the film turns from the ordinary to the extraordinary. It is when the inner life of an emotionally repressed woman, Abby's mother Angela, comes to the fore despite the lack of imaginative strivings of her seemingly practical-minded husband who hasn’t a clue about his wife - how she thinks, feels, nor how she spends her time when she is not tending to his needs and the special needs of their children.

The image of Angela sitting in a chair looking at Nev, the film’s hero - her smile, her love, the very fiber of her emotional wealth, so tangible - is heart wrenching.

Oh..............

when the beauty within is perceived........that is what makes this documentary so compelling, so beautiful, so extraordinary.


For me Angela is a hero extraordinaire!

Catfish opens this fall. Watch for it!


Linda Zises
WBAI Radio

Boxing Helena DVD 1993: Sex/longing/love

Boxing Helena 1993
Written and directed by
Jennifer Chambers Lynch


Plot:

A surgeon becomes obsessed with the seductive woman he once had an affair with. Refusing to accept that she has moved on, he amputates her limbs and holds her captive in his mansion. Is he crazy, or is this his fantasy based on a strong love and an inability to express it?

My Opinion:

Only a woman would be so brutally honest in the presentation of the basic sexual/self-worth fantasies and fears experienced by men and woman.

For a man it is his sexual performance that plagues his self-concept, and premature ejeculation is a potent hindrence to his self-concept. If not remedied it is certain to become a strong basis for bizarre fantasies and constant concern.

For a woman her basic fear is that she is only a sexual object rather than appreciated for being a woman with self-worth stronger than her appearance.

In Boxing Helena both of these fears get brought into prominence with a heavy dose of fantasy, nightmare and, ultimately, love that binds both of these fears together. In the end, mature love triumphs over all else.

I can’t imagine this film as it played on public television, denuded of its explicit sexually/sensually rich scenes. For me, watching an uncut version, the experience was funny at times, beautiful often and rewarding in its imaginative unfolding.

I strongly recommend the uncut version. If cut for a general television viewing audience, the film would be just so-so.

Linda Zises
WBAI RAdio
Ladisfilmclub

Angels and Innocents: By Sikivu Hutchinson

I have a vivid memory of the first time I became aware that children could die. It was early evening in the leisurely dusk of summer, and after eating with my mother at a local coffee shop, we passed by a newspaper vending machine outside. A child victim, kidnapped, murdered and disposed of like garbage, stared ominously out at me from the front page of the paper in grainy black and white. I remember my sense of horror when my mother told me that the child, who was approximately my age, would never see his parents again. Associating death with old people, I was stupefied by this seeming contradiction. Although raised heretically in a secular household, I had been corrupted by the prayer-saturated social universe of waxen blue-eyed Jesus’ plastered on my friends’ living room walls. Alone in my bed that night, I wondered how “God” could have countenanced such unspeakable evil.

Decades later there is an aching space where this child’s life would have been, his personhood “frozen” at abduction. Violent death by homicide at an early age is a grim reality for many youth of color. Gangsta rap romanticizes it and dishes it up for the voyeurism of white suburbia. Mainstream media ignores it or relegates it to social pathology. Every semester when I ask my students if they’ve had a young friend or relative die violently at least half will raise their hands. Their tattoos, notebooks and Sidekick phones are filled with vibrant mementoes for the dead. It is not necessary to go to Iraq, Afghanistan or some other theatre of American imperialism to experience the devastation that the killing fields of disposable youth inflicts. Yet, God takes care of children and fools, or so the shopworn saying goes. In the midst of sudden death there is refuge in the belief that the Cecil B. De Mille epic doomsayer of the Old Testament must have a special place in his heart for this tender constituency. Pied Piper religionists pat children on the head and whisper into their dewy ears that the murder of an innocent child is part of some grand design. They dish up the concept of divine providence like hard candy. They lure sweet-toothed youth with a ready “antidote” to the quandary of trying to make sense out of the senselessness and randomness of evil. The Wynken, Blynken and Nod bedtime story of grand design is chased down with the simple carrot of eternal reward for slain innocents. The inexplicable is assimilated. Senseless evil, evil that befalls the good and stalks the innocent, is legitimized as part of the divine’s hardscrabble boot camp for the living.

If it can be understood, it isn’t God, said Augustine. In ambiguity then, prayer is the great equalizer and potential redeemer. As American children we grow up with recurring images of kneeling girls and boys, hands clasped solemnly in prayer. These images propagandize faith as a normal, natural phenomenon. The magic bullet of prayer is trotted out as an escape hatch from the small indignity to the unspeakably cruel act of wild-oats-sewing youth. Bad kids pray obsessively for forgiveness. Good kids pray strategically in crisp starched pajamas for family members, friends, and Fido to be delivered to the top of God’s check list. Sinful thoughts can be defused by requesting a special audience with God. Good thoughts can be “deposited” into one’s virtual piggy bank of moral worth.. CONT. http://blackfemlens.blogspot.com/2010/08/angels-and-innocents.html

The Sicilian Girl; Director Marco Amenta, Altiplano; Writers / Directors BROSENS & WOODWORTH,

And Virgin Women

We haven’t traveled far from the ideology of the virginal woman with a fiery spirit who turns the world around to meet the moral imperative as she sees it. Although the setting of each film is radically different, the similarities are striking: societal evils are the villain; combatted by our hero, the young woman of marital age with love strong in her heart, thwarted on the precipice of marital fulfillment. With all their bottled up sexual energy demanding an outlet, these women come to the screen with a force that is compelling in its strength and intriguing in its source: the woman who has since time immemorial been prayed to, as she sits on high in our minds, our hearts; she is our fantasy companion, our helper, our conscience.

She is the Virgin Mother, The spiritual Mother of us all.

It helps to have had a juvenile acquaintance with this fantasy figure, that seemingly requisite brainwashing with all the appeal of glitter and funny looking men dressed in long skirted garments or masks to accent the separation of the real from the super-normal experience informed by our senses. But even with all of that religiosity put to the side, one can not help but be sympathetic to the cause these women champion. The Sicilian Girl goes after the Italian Mafia. In Altiplano, the evils of mercury exposure from drilling in Peru that destroys the indiginous population is the villain. In both films the women speak for the masses against the forces of evil and in both films the women give their lives and become Joan of Arc, the Virginal figure who promises hope in a hopeless world of needless, senseless destruction.

Both films are beautifully photographed, which is a delight. The music in Altiplano is breathtaking, thrilling, sending goosebumps up and down my spine; the plot was very confusing (even the short film synopsis is difficult to follow) but after a while it didn’t matter that there was little to hang on to. There was a dignity, an emotional force that informed on the sorrowful loss of times forever gone and painfully mourned.

Does this mean that like the suicide bombers, the terrorists of today, we should think of giving our lives for a cause we truly embrace?
I hope not. Youth is too precious to be wasted on the decadence and cruel immorality of elders.

THE SICILIAN GIRL Opens Wed, August 4 at Film Forum

ALTIPLANO Opens August 20 at Village East in N.Y.C.

Prospect Park Geese elimination: saga explored

As I sat on the lawn looking out over the all too quiet water amid all
too few people by the Prospect Park lake, I remembered a time not so
many years ago when there were plenty of Geese, although I didn't know
they were Geese, and plenty of children throwing bread into the water.

And there were boats, with turning blades in the water, cleaning up
the lake, it was said, of green algae.

I remember that scene. It played out over and over maybe for a year
and then I started to see the Geese coming out of the water to graze.
Graze on the grass (there were no algae anymore) until the grass was
gone and brown dirt took its place with nothing to impede its erosion
into the lake.

And then the tragic day when the solution to the Geese and their
"destructive" eating needs and ways came to the fore and the people
learned that the Geese were gone, exterminated which, given our not so
distant knowledge of peoples exterminated with the same gas, the same
lack of individuality respected, well................
this does not
make for good public relations and with the Audubon Society not
stepping up to the plate to say, "no, don't do it,"
well....................

It is all very ugly. Dare I say stupid; lacking in foresight?

Yes.

for more on this subject visit:
http://washingtonsquarepark.wordpress.com

PRINCETON HOLT'S Cookies & Cream and Uptown on DVD

Two films, Cookies & Cream, and Uptown were released on DVD July 21st. .Attached are the press releases. Links to stores, availability, theatrical screenings can be found at the official websites:
www.cookiesncreammovie.com and www.uptownfilm.com

Both films reviewed below. Again, I find these films compelling in their use of technics that brought scenes into a casual immediacy difficult to capture in larger than life films.

Paper Man (DVD) revisited: and Saturday night TV viewing

The banality of Saturday night television viewing even with the insertion of multiple cable programs seems designed to make the viewing audience forget what life is all about. Comedy with an edge, with a theme that in some way or other resonates with the daily experience of its viewers is far better than the slapstick on the edge of not funny but rather boring films that predominate the nightly selections.

Even the multiple scenes of blood splattered on faces or the transcendence of animals to escape the perils of earthy denizens as provided in HBO’s True Blood is an improvement over the English comedy films that I could never and still can’t laugh at or with.

I don’t know what would satisfy my need to feel connected. I seem to be getting more and more on the periphery of life’s experience that others appear to be part of but I think it’s more to the point that we are all sitting waiting for something to happen albeit, another deastrous hurricane, an abrupt change in the stock market, another bubble burst, a return to or a drastic deviation from what we once took for granted(both would be traumatic).

These are the chaotic times, not so unfamiliar to generations that came before us but no one taught us, prepared us for how to deal with these turbulent days. We are spoiled Americans who seem for the most part to assume food is there for us to eat, the weather will follow a predictable pattern, the seeds of life ever after are laid firmly for us and we assume their presence; but all of that serenity, all of the foundation of our security seems to be eroded and only on the ever expanding television screen does life go on as if there is nothing else except what we know, have known and expect to know regardless of the defiance of an inescapable reality.

Maybe the youth of today will teach us how to live without work, how to fill our days without feeling the emptiness that twins with idleness, how to make a film for general consumption that reflects the emptiness of our hands that have so little value in the creative process of our lives.

We make nothing, we do little, we wait to be called up for what we don’t want to know about or listen to, the sound of man-less drones as they further the cause that we don’t support and never will.

See Michele Mulroney & Kieran Mulroney' Paper Man (DVD)
starring Jeff Daniels, Ryan Reynolds, Lisa Kudrow, Hunter Parrish and be assured that the future of television viewing and film sellection might one day speak to you and me about us.

Commentary by
Linda Zises
WBAI Radio

The New York Philharmonic: Andrey Boreyo. conductor

The New York Philharmonic performed a free concert in Prospect Park's Long Meadow Ball fields where sheep once grazed.

The evenings program included

Tchaikovsky, Polonaise from "Eugene Onegin"

Bernstein, Symphonic Dances from "West Side Story"

Prokofiev, Selections from "Romeo and Juliet"

Each selection had the theme of love and violent death and the program ended on a similar note with colorful red, white, some green or almost blue fireworks projected in multiply patterns simulating the sound of gun shots in their assent to the heavens above.

The concert used a state-of-the-art sound system with a wireless broadcast network and 24 15-foot speaker towers that brought clarity and beauty to the professionally executed music heard by thousands of lounging spectators.

The sound quality was extraordinary!

Of course there was a reason for The New York Philharmonic' selection of love and violent vibrant death onto the serenity of domestic/environmentally rich Brooklyn park bliss but what inspired this program was not disclosed.

I sat in the midst of my YogaSole school friends
happy that in Brooklyn partying with yoga students and teachers is not an unusual event. At YogaSole there is an inclusion without rancor, a generosity that precludes the intellectual substance of the concert's theme.

We are friends, not lovers, not violent but Yogis getting together for a night in the park where trees are again the winners. The shade and lower temperatures they afford reaffirmed our commitment to think green while we cherish the extensive nature that exists in our backyards as much as we cherish the production of excellence in art; even in these violent times when War hovers over us.

It sure beats the sound of helicopters or jets or even subways underground that shake rattle and roll throughout the Borough.

Thank you to all the many sponsors for making this night possible and thank you YogaSole for making this evening another special moment to remember.

Linda Zises
criticalwomen.net

DNA and the Banality of Evil: By Sikivu Hutchinson

The intersection of Figueroa and Slauson in South Los Angeles is an unremarkable one, a mundane swath fronting a gas station, an old train right of way, and a Harbor freeway overpass. It is the site of a spate of serial murders committed during a ten year period by serial rapist and murderer Chester Dwayne Turner. Like the Grim Sleeper serial killer, Turner, aka the South Side Slayer, stalked South L.A. from 1987 to 1998 in pursuit of African American female victims. Until DNA evidence revealed Turner's identity in 2004, his background fit the banal profile of the misogynist sexual predator operating right under the nose of local law enforcement. He was a “cipher” who bounced in and out of menial jobs; unstable, irresponsible, abusive towards and financially dependent on the women in his life. While Turner was an obvious miscreant, Lonnie David Franklin, the recently arrested suspect in the Grim Sleeper murders, was a bit more complex. Neighbors have described him as a stable, congenial Mr. Fix-It type whose only known “quirks” were “issues” with women (including, apparently, showing off nude pictures he’d taken of and underwear he’d collected from various women) and a nebulous criminal record.

Franklin’s street was not far from my own, in a generally quiet well-kept area of single family homes that lazy mainstream media hacks are fond of dismissing as “gritty” and crime-ridden. Franklin’s arrest was made possible through the decades’ long struggle for visibility waged by the victims’ families and community activists like Margaret Prescod, who founded the Black Coalition Fighting Back Serial Murders in the 1980s. The LAPD’s identification of the serial murder pattern was first reported in a 2008 article by white LA.Weekly journalist Christine Pelisek, who dubbed the killer the “Grim Sleeper.” Shortly after Franklin’s arrest Pelisek stated that she'd been deluged with film and TV queries about the case. Pelisek’s comments on the budding media interest are telling. As of this date, there have been no TV movies on the South Side slayer case nor, for that matter, any mainstream dramatic treatment on serial murders of black women. Given this disparity it is not difficult to see a big budget Nancy Grace-style treatment with Pelisek at the center. Because Franklin and Turner are black male killers of black women it is safe to say that there will be no cable-ready film made psychoanalyzing their childhoods, no Lifetime channel melodrama on the lives and last days of their victims trumpeted in flashy national billboard campaigns, and no pathos inspiring media blitz chronicling the anguish that these murders elicited in South L.A. communities.

Rather, what has captivated much of the mainstream media is not the hide-in-plain-sight atrocity of a prolific killer of black women puttering innocuously about his well-maintained single family home, but the 21st century “marvel” of familial DNA . Without the familial DNA piece it’s doubtful there would be any continuing national coverage of the story. Sensing a national angle and an easy way of redeeming its image as a print relic repository for the white Westside, the L.A. Times has outdone itself with daily coverage on the case’s DNA trail. Mainstream media fixation on the DNA evidence has eclipsed focus on the victims’ families as well as consideration of the case’s double-edged implications for communities of color in the U.S.

According to Brandeis law professor Jeffrey Rosen, “African-Americans represent about 13 percent of the United States population but 40 percent of the people convicted of felonies every year.” The wholesale over-incarceration of African American communities means that many African Americans are related to someone who has been convicted of a felony. Right wing pundits and champions of unregulated familial DNA use would argue that since blacks are committing a disproportionate number of felonies they have every right to be subjected to the heightened scrutiny of DNA profiling. Yet national data on sentencing indicates African Americans are over six times more likely to be convicted of and harshly sentenced for felonies than are whites who commit similar crimes. The proposed expansion of California’s DNA database to include the DNA of arrestees—the database is currently comprised of DNA from convicted felons—would further criminalize blacks and Latinos. Unchecked law enforcement use of familial DNA is almost certain to be a bellwether of civil liberties infringement for innocent people of color.

The initial marginalization of both the South Side Slayer and the Grim Sleeper cases were brutal testimony to the devalued lives of women of color in the mainstream media regime. With the arrest of Franklin, the grieving families of Janecia Peters, Valerie McCorvey, Princess Berthomieux, Alicia Anderson, Lachrica Jefferson, Mary Lowe, Bernita Sparks, Barbara Ware, Thomas Steele, Henrietta Wright and Debra Jackson might be able to achieve some degree of closure. In the ultimate yet uniquely American irony, science has fleetingly “humanized” the lives of victims deemed expendable by the media regime. Yet uncritical embrace of familial DNA will potentially reinforce the very disenfranchising conditions that allow a vicious predator like the Grim Sleeper to “sleep” for two decades.

Sikivu Hutchinson is the editor of blackfemlens.org and a senior fellow with the Institute for Humanist Studies.

Alamar: González-Rubio: Before BP Oil Destruction

"By photographing and developing a story based on the current relation between man and his habitat in Chinchorro (Mexico), I portray my love for this region and the admiration and respect I have towards the lives of its fishermen." (written before the BP oil spill)


Alamar is a rich compelling documentary film that captures life in the Gulf of Mexico before the modern day encroachment from tourists, (luxury hotels with all their destruction and a long pier for cruise ship docking that cut into the longest coral reef on the planet.) oil and the like.

The film takes us on the long trip from urban Mexico to this remote fishing town and onto the water, into the water via scuba diving and into the house built on stilts in the water where a seemingly normal life ensues. Normal, living on top of water, no land around and a little boy with his father and grandfather spending their time eating at a table, reading books, checking the weather, writing with paper and colored pencils while spending the majority of the day at sea; fishing, unloading the fish into another ship, watching the dismantling of the fish into eatible bits of what we call food, fit for a King or Queen.


and then it is night and the hammock is the only place to sleep, covered with netting to keep the bugs away; repose is full, relaxing, in tune with the movement of the stilt house and that is a way of life that will be removed from our earth, from the people who want nothing more than to join with nature and enjoy what is there to be enjoyed, cherished and complied with.

Alas this film will be a relic, a testimony to times past. Although there is no tragic moments in this film, the film itself reflect a tragedy of unknown proportion.

NOTE:
In 1996 UNESCO declared Banco Chinchorro, the main location where the documentary takes place, a National Reserve of the Biosphere.

How sad, How Poignant. How beautifully captured. Alamar!

González-Rubio’s , Alamar, will open theatrically in New York City at Film Forum on July 14th, courtesy of Film Movement.

Linda Zises
wbai radio
criticalwomen.net

FIRST ENCOUNTER : FICTION

I know. I know from the moment the door opens I will be entering a world and that fist impression will stay with me for the rest of my life.

I am twenty-two years old. I have met the man who i want to be my husband, the father of my children. Although I haven't told him this, there is a silent understanding, not yet officially breached.

He has invited me to his former home, the home of his parents. I will be entering their abode with all the foreboding of budding youth, hope, future, stretched out before me.

I am shaking, and the world is turning oh so slightly, spinning in time to the beating of my heart, the pounding in my temples from freight.

Richard stands seemingly disconcerted beside me. He is humming softly to himself as we wait for the answer to his incessant knocking, the sound of a man saying, open up, I belong here. This is my home.

He forgot his keys.

Of all days to forget his keys, the day he is bringing me, his maybe "intended" into the family fold for the first time.

That all-important meeting of the people, his people, them and me.

The door handle moves. Richard turns towards me, his eyes peering slightly over the top of my head.

"Nervous?" he asks.

I think I am about to faint. Am I nervous?

My mouth is dry, my lips feel as if they haven't moved in hours, or is it days.

I am standing next to Richard with his close proximity as my sole support. Am I nervous?

I smile slowly, letting the pull of my feelings force the opening of my lips as I am about to lie, to say "Oh no," in that nonchalant, almost coquettish gesture I've used so often. But I know this time I would never be believed.


Richard sees me struggle and laughs.

"Don't worry, ma petite," he says. "You'll get through it. After all, think of the many years I survived with them".

'That isn't the point,' my internal self rebels against his attempt to soften my edges, to calm me down. You might have survived them but what if... what if they hate me, what if they have no other intention for the rest of their lives than to devote themselves to my destruction, to our destruction, of rendering you and me asunder, finito, gone and done forever and ever...

Oh, can this be happening to me! I moan on and on, internally wishing, hoping this moment would end and somehow it would just be me and Richard alone and then


I hear a lock unlock and a second lock unlock and the door opens and two people, not one, but both of them stand before us.

They are in the doorway, we are still outside

and they said in unison

"Welcome to our home" and they kiss me, they kiss me "hello."

And Richard says, "I warned you."

Linda Zises

[blackfemlens] Pink Princesses, Blue Commandos

By Sikivu Hutchinson

My daughter is no princess. Loud, assertive, and headstrong, she would just as soon as stomp on a castle drawbridge with her big size six feet than pine coyly from it, twirling a dainty lock of hair waiting for a Ken doll suitor. Yet the multi-billion dollar media marketing regime is poised to shoehorn her 2 year-old self into being one. As any parent with eyes and a pulse knows, a trip to Americana’s favorite non-unionized big box retailers is a crash course in the enduring power of gender segregation. Trundling through the “girls’” toys aisle, maneuvering the explosion of pink frilliness, one expects to bump into June Cleaver or Donna Reed. Baby dolls, play ovens, play houses, strollers, dress-up kits, make-up and the ubiquitous princess accessories, addle the senses. Around the corner in the boys’ commando-in-training section, trucks, balls, science kits, building sets, Legos, blocks, action figures, guns and other rough n’ tuff paraphernalia signal a return to the jungle of discovery, adventure, violence and enterprise.

In the ostensibly secular democratic West, this surfeit of consumer options represents “choice,” rather than cultural indoctrination. Parents can just vote with their pocketbooks and not buy these products. Unlike in the fundamentalist monolithically gender repressive Middle East little American girls certainly aren’t programmed to be subservient. Women in power broker positions abound and capitalist consumption is politically "neutral."

Indeed, proponents of shattered glass ceilings point to recent job data that suggest American women are actually making bigger employment gains than are men. The decline of the construction and manufacturing industries has severely limited men’s job opportunities. Coupled with the higher proportion of women in four year colleges, American women would seem to be making out like gangbusters.

There are serious flaws in this premise. First, the gender wage gap shows no signs of narrowing. According to the Center for American Progress, women are the primary breadwinners in over 1/3rd of American families. Women are still relegated to the lowest paying service industry jobs in child care, clerical work, domestic work, and teaching. And black women, who are more likely to be single working parents than are women of other ethnicities, remain at the bottom of the gender wage ladder. Secondly, and most egregiously, the new job data fail to account for the double and triple burden of women’s work. Regardless of whether they are custodians or corporate execs, women continue to be saddled with the majority of child care, housework and adult caregiving. The minute a working mother hits the door down time and breathing space are sacrificed for an array of cleaning, parenting, cooking and counseling duties. Sacrifice is a woman’s creed and to-die-for duty. And it is this message that the big box retailers’ flotilla of pink baby dolls, strollers, play houses, et al. are designed to instill in little sacrificial princesses in training.

The ubiquity of this social programming inspired two British women to start the Pink Stinks campaign, which targets retailers who market gender segregating toys and accessories. Yet the flip side of pink stinks is the dominion of blue. When my students presented a workshop on gender stereotypes in retailing to a group of their peers, the sole male participant commented that he had been targeted for not conforming to the model of “hard” masculinity because he liked to do hair. For young men, any activity that is remotely associated with caring or nurturing is feminine and therefore “gay.” As feminist writer Derrick McMahon notes in his article “Boys and Baby Dolls:” “Boys who wish to play with baby dolls are seen as punks, sissies, and weak…parents are quick to tell little boys that they have no business playing with baby dolls.” While young girls who “crossover” and express interest in traditionally masculine pursuits like car maintenance or science are tolerated as tom boys going through a phase, boys are punished with the heterosexist stigma of being less “manly.”

The consequences of this are exemplified by the epidemic of black male homicide. Trained to be hard, swaggering, aggressive and indifferent to the value of each others’ lives as mere “niggas,” young black males are inured to the violence they inflict upon each other. What would it mean then for the future of African American communities if there were a paradigm shift, and boys were raised to be caring and nurturing? Biological determinists argue that boys gravitate to cars and guns because they are genetically hard wired to do so. In her groundbreaking book Pink Brain, Blue Brain, neuroscientist Lise Eliot debunks this assumption through painstaking analysis of scientific studies on alleged innate sex differences. She argues that there is “little solid evidence of sex differences in children’s brains” and that adult perceptions of gender difference strongly influence children’s behavior.

As my daughter begins to navigate the minefield of gender norms and expectations she’ll be constantly told what is proper for a girl. She’ll be hounded by peers, adults, the media and organized religion to be sexually desirable to men on the one hand and chaste and virginal on the other. In a nation of liberated “post-feminist” women, she’ll be propagandized with the contradictory message that romancing kitchenware, cooing after baby dolls, and being a precious, sweet “daddy’s angel” are the keys to fulfillment. And as a third generation feminist she’ll be ably equipped with her loud mouth and big feet to storm the drawbridge of gender conformity.

Sikivu Hutchinson is the editor of blackfemlens.org and a Senior Fellow with the Institute for Humanist Studies.

Yoga on the Great Lawn:New York City 10,000 strong

So this is what women's liberation looks like, I thought, sitting on the grass of the great law in New York City along with more than 10,000 mostly women awaiting the start of a yoga class followed by a drumming session.

It hadn't rained yet and on the stage was this pot-bellied man sporting a huge Afro, fully clothed with a huge beard that hid everything except his eyes. Clearly, he did not fit in. But neither did the images projected onto a larger-than-life screen viewed by the assembled many and by the helicopter circling overhead, images of first a man's head and then a woman's projected without benefit of neck or a hint of shoulder. How un-yogish can you get!

But the women didn't seem to mind or notice. The audience of thousands did what Yogini's do. They focused, ignored what didn't belong, and had a good time. They sat in groups, teacher and students all mixed up talking, looking at their fellow yoga practitioners.

It would be hard to find a more strikingly beautiful group of woman anywhere in the world; and on full display, clad mostly in spaghetti-strap tank tops and tight Lycra pants. Only the privileged members of the "work crew" were told to wear the uniform: grey, knee-length pants and light blue tops which covered everything (which in this place, at this setting, was less than "in the spirit"). Tank tops would have been more appropriate.

The Cooperate stage show seemed to go on endlessly while the audience awaited their fate. To go on or cancel and promise a "Rain date".
A compromise was struck.

A little Yoga - downward facing dog, plank, upward facing dog, mountain pose, hands to heart in prayer to whatever or whomever, and the sound of a long long long OHMMMMMMMMMMMM filled the Lawn and entered into the minds and hearts of all.

The benefit of being seen in public without having to "cover up" and without fear of man's stares are extras to the benefits of Yoga, the spiritual, physical, emotional discipline that women are embracing world wide.


This day's event is the result, almost the culmination of a new Woman's Liberation Movement and I'm loving it!


Next onward to California's Love Fest
then back to New York for a promised Rain Date.

Maybe this time it will be 20,000 strong and more.

Linda Zises
Criticalwomen.net
WBAI Radio

The Milk of Sorrow: "The Frightened Tit"

Claudia Llosa's hotly debated film with strong political/social content. When compared to the Oscar 2009 winner of the Best Film (Slumdog Millionaire), the Milk of Sorrow shines as a star far above all others.

Beautifully written and Expertly Directed.

By Claudia Llosa, the film stars Magaly Solier as Fausta,

Plot: Our heroine Fausta (translated, means a girl who is full of fear) suffers from "The Milk of Sorrow" (which is, in the Peruvian-indigenous tradition, an illness), suffers from the desease she believes is transmitted through the breast milk of women who were raped in the Shining Path’s war of terror in Peru. The film begins with scenes from the death of her Mother followed by her obtaining sleep-in work in a wealthy home in Lima.

The plot and narrative are half the story. Providing a view into Peru from the vantages of both its very wealthy and its very poor is the other half. There is endemic cruelty, callousness at both extremes: a rampant lack of sensitivity among all parties. This even-handed expose is what helps to make The Milk of Sorrow a great film, a politically irrefutable statement.

Personally I would be depressed if I had to live the lonely life of the wealthy woman whose life is propelled by her drive for general recognition. The paucity of people in her life to meet her innate human need to be loved, wanted/needed, appreciated propels her onward and forward to the stage where she sings to so many people who when lumped together in the audience look like specks of confetti. No wonder she is depressed, detached and addicted to pills to stay "healthy".

But equally depressed and depressing is the depiction of the poor woman, Fausta, who suffers from the Peruvians illness the Milk Of Sorrow. the spoiled, Beast Milk – milk contaminated during the violent acts of Rape (during the 1980 Shining Path’s war of terror) that resulted in her birth.

The insensitivity to Fausta, the now grown woman with a potentially ripe vagina of her own and the weight of her mother's dead body that must be buried, is overwhelming horrifying partly because of the emotional cruelty heaped upon her by a community that refuses to empathize with the demands her poverty places upon her.

The juxtaposition of the her cousin's wedding festival and all that it entails with the wealthy woman's onstage performance is augmented with the internal contrast of the wedding versus Fausta's pressing need to bury her mother.

First, the mother's body is stored under a bed on top of which is the bridal gown for the plump, happy, soon-to-be-wed cousin and then, what was to be a grave for Fausta's mother's body to be buried in, becomes a watering hole for the delight and fun of the overheated travelers.

In every aspect the film Director offers the scenes as internal contrasts to each other. This is not an easy feat to achieve. Claudia LLosa's success is what makes this film so special.

Even the terrain, the pictures of what Peru looks like, are presented with such severity of difference from the daily needs for a gardener because of the wealth of flowers, plants, and trees versus the striking lack of anything other than the brown dust in the hot, arid world in which Fausta lives


There is nothing to cry about in this film. It is too serious, too depressing for tears. Maybe that is why it didn't win the 2009 Oscar award for best film or best foreign language film It was too real, it's message too clear. The obvious conclusion being that Socialism, where the class distinctions are less severe is the only real solution for a better world.

Winner:
2009 Berlin Film Festival Top Award ; The Golden Bear

Opens August 27th
New York City
Village Cinema

The Disappearance of Alice Creed: terror flick with a taste of humor

Director: J. Blakeson

Producer: Adrian Sturges

Composer: Marc Canham

Cast:
Gemma Arterton
Martin Compston
Eddoe Marsan
Exras need not appy

A thriller turned into an almost comedy and the triumph of women over the minds and brawn of the stronger men in their lives. It might be difficul to find a man to enjoy the turns and twists of this solid thriller but women seemed unanimous in their enjoyment of The Disappearane of Alice Creed.

This is a violent film and yet it is funny, light hearted almost not believable but in the fun of it all, these otherwise important details don't seem to matter. Of the three cast members Alice Creed (Gemma Arterton) got the worst of the nudity and violence that rippled throughout the film because she is tied and gagged for most of the scenes. Her seemingly endless screams and squairming body would stay with me long after the film ended if they hadn't been upstaged by the most compelling innovative sounds, the music of composer Marc Canham that thundering with Dolby clarity filling the theater to capacity.

And then the silence, the long protracted moments of no music, just action and the men's voices and I knew then I was in the presence of genius. The genius of great music composers who know what to play when and when not to. Music that doesn't talk to emotions either present or anticipated but the use of deep bass tones like mellow velvet vibrations and other unidentifiable instruments that enhance and augment the thematic needs of every filmed moment.

Marc Canham, the composer, comes from a Game background so perfect for this film because basically The Disappearance of Alice Creed is a game of cat and mouse with many a playful gesture mixed with a deadly foray into the minds and methods of professional crooks, ex cons and the seedy sort that inhabits our immediate environment.

Thete was a tangible feel of humanity, of likeable features even in the crooks turned kidnappers. Surprsingly Alice, the victim was the weakest , least likable person on screen; (poorly cast; I thought her too old for the part). She was cruel, one dimensional, and pehpas less than a seasoned actor. But that didn't dampen my applause.

The Disappearance of Alice Creed is fun, playful, memorable.

Enjoy!

MINE: Contested ownership of Canine

MINE examines how we treat animals as an extension of how we view and treat each other.

Place: New Orleans post Katrina: uninhabited by man and beast

Subject: the new owners of the animals rescued from the hurricane
disaster and the owners who come back to claim "their own".

Director/producer: Animal Defence League

Trailer: http://www.minethemovie.com/trailer

An enjoyable, compelling view of humans and their animals. It highlights the best, the most loving aspect of our human nature.


Hailed by the New York Times as “Smart, sincere and affecting”.

Irresistible!

Released On DVD

Not Knocking on Heaven’s Door:* Black Atheists, Urban America

By Sikivu Hutchinson

Late Saturday afternoon, like clockwork, the street corner preachers on Crenshaw and King Boulevard in South Los Angeles take to the “stage.” Decked out in flowing robes and dreadlocks, they fulminate into their mikes about the universe, God’s will and “unnatural” homosexuals to a motley audience waiting for the next express bus. Members of the Black Israelites, they are part of a long tradition of performative religiosity in urban African American communities. This particular corner of black America is a hotbed of social commerce. Kids who’ve just gotten out of school mingle jubilantly as pedestrians flow past fast food places, mom and pop retailers, street vendors and Jehovah’s Witness’ hawking Watchtower magazines. The Israelites have become a fixture of this street corner’s otherwise shifting tableaux. Exclusively male and virulently sexist and homophobic, they are tolerated in some African American communities in part because of the lingering visceral and misguided appeal of Black nationalism.

While the Israelites’ millennialist “racial uplift” ethos ostensibly fits right in to the bustle of this prominent South L.A. street, other belief systems are not as easily assimilated. Since 2006, the L.A.-based street philosopher Jeffrey “P Funk” Mitchell has been documenting his conversations with everyday folk on questions of atheism and faith. Using the handle “Atheist Walking,” Mitchell also conducts free-ranging inquiries into Christianity’s contradictions with a rolling video camera and a satirically raised eyebrow. Adopting the role of the bemused urban flaneur, ala the commentator- pedestrian immortalized by French poet Charles Baudelaire, he delves into “atheist spirituality,” biblical literalism and the paradoxes of faith. Mitchell is a member of the L.A.-based Black Skeptics, a group that was formed earlier this year to provide an outlet and platform for secular humanist African Americans. The Skeptics are part of a small but growing segment of African Americans who are searching for humanist alternatives to organized religion. In May, the Washington DC Center for Inquiry’s first annual African Americans for Humanism conference drew over fifty participants. Chat groups and websites like the Black Atheists of America have sprung up to accommodate the longing for community amongst non-theist African Americans who feel marginalized in a sea of black hyper-religiosity. Organizations such as the Institute for Humanist Studies cultivate African American secularist scholarship and advocacy.

With over 85% of African Americans professing religious belief, black religiosity is a formidable influence. Racial segregation, the historical role of the Black Church, and African American social conformity reinforce Christianity’s powerful hold on black communities. Indeed, I was recently told that I’d been deemed an unsuitable culmination speaker for a bourgie philanthropic organization’s young women mentees because of my decidedly unladylike public atheism (Perhaps the Israelite’s Old Testament shout-out to silent prostrate women would be more acceptable). Proper role models for impressionable black youth are, at the very least, skillful church lady pretenders with ornate hats in tow. Secular organizations that seek to build humanist community with a predominantly African American base and social justice world view are challenged by the association of charitable giving, philanthropy, poverty work and education with faith-based communities. For many, successfully emulating the strong social and cultural networks that have sustained church congregations is an elusive goal.

And then, there is the deep and abiding desire for belief in the supernatural, the ineffable faith-passion that propels some through the trauma of racial indignities and personal crisis. Yet, humanism asks why we should cede enlightenment and the potential for restoration to the supernatural. Humanism challenges the implication that the sublimity of the natural world, and our connection to those that we love, admire and respect, is somehow impoverished without a divine creator. In one of his bus stop monologues, Mitchell comments, “I want people to look at each other with the same reverence that they look at God and realize that ‘we’ did this, we made this happen.” The “we” represents will, agency, and motive force; qualities that many believers would attribute to God as omniscient architect and overseer. Non-believers are compelled to ask whether individual actions (for good or ill) are determined by God, or whether human beings simply act on their own volition in a universe overseen by God. Since time immemorial, non-believers have questioned whether God exercises control over those who commit evil acts or whether hell is the only “medium” for justice. By refusing to invest supernatural forces with divine authority over human affairs, humanism emphasizes human responsibility for the outcome of our pursuits. Morality is defined by just deeds, fairness, equality and respect for difference; not by how blusteringly one claims to adhere to “Godly” principles.

However, in communities that are plagued with double digit unemployment and a sense of cultural devaluation, notions of self-sufficiency and ultimate human agency may be perceived as demoralizing if not dangerously radical. As a child preacher steeped in the fiery oratory of the Black Church, writer James Baldwin recounted his growing cynicism about spreading “the gospel.” Lamenting the grip of religion on poor blacks, Baldwin said, “When I faced a congregation, it began to take all the strength I had not to…tell them to throw away their Bibles and get off their knees and go home and organize.” In Baldwin’s view organized religion’s requirement that believers suspend disbelief and submit to “God’s will” is a liability for working class African Americans. Religious dogma anesthetizes as it bonds, a dangerous combination in an era in which the proliferation of storefront churches in urban black communities is a symptom of economic underdevelopment.

Echoing Baldwin, Chicago-based Education professor and atheist Kamau Rashid argues that “Freethought is an extension and expression of the struggle that African Americans have waged for self-determination. In fact it represents a heightened phase of such a struggle wherein one of the final stages of ‘conceptual incarceration,’ the belief in a God or gods, is discarded for a belief in the human potential, for a belief in ourselves.”

And why, in a heritage steeped in the revolutionary thought of such dirty outlaw skeptics as Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. DuBois, Baldwin, Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes, Nella Larsen, A. Philip Randolph, James Forman and Alice Walker, would this be so viscerally frightening?

Sikivu Hutchinson is the editor of blackfemlens.org, a member of the Black Skeptics Group and the author of the forthcoming book Moral Combat: Black Atheists, Gender Politics and Secular America.

*With apologies to Bob Dylan

Aging, Cancer, Genes: Science for All

"A lot of people think we're biologically programmed to die, but the truth is that we're biologically programmed for survival" - Dr. Robert Kane Pappas


So why do we get old and die? Why do some people get cancer and others don't?

I. "Treatment: The Difficulties of Making a Cancer Drug" - Malcolm Gladwell New Yorker Magazine May 17, 2010

II. To Age or not to Age, a documentary by Doctor Robert Kane Pappas to be released on July 16, 2010

III. Dr Stanislaw Burzynski The Movie. Director: Eric Merola. Winner of the "Humanitarian Vision" award at the Newport Beach Festival

Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski the Movie reveals the results of the doctor's treatments administered to paying, hopeful patients and his seemingly endless battles against the FDA. The film might have been called: Dr. Burzynski Has the Answers'

At the heart of the matter as presented in these three popular efforts to communicate with us, the laymen of the world, and the potential or actual financial backers of the endless quest to Know, is the question Why: Why Cancer, Why Age?

For the Drug industry, as discussed in the New Yorker Magazine, the question is answered with an indirect reference to the chemical makeup of the human body. If only we can find the right chemicals, the right cocktail, the problem of Cancer containment, then cure, will be solved. This is a long, expensive, exacting endeavor the fruits of which are a long way from realization. But the scientists are on their way, sort of. And the total cost to date is well beyond our collective imagination.

There are literally millions of known chemicals and many of them are being tested - going through the mandated protocols from phrase I to phase 2, then phase 3. All remedies seem to have failed to pass all three phases but hope has not died, not yet.

The outstanding question is what is the cause of Cancer - without knowing the cause can a solution ever be found? Is it the chemical composition of the body that causes cancer, and if so, isn't the emotional component as much responsible for our chemical composition as the physical mechanisms that cancer infests. Maybe it isn't an injection of the "right chemical" that is needed but someone who addresses our emotional problems with the intent of achieving mental health and stability with subsequent alteration in our chemical makeup. The Psychoanalysts of the world could possibly be in competition with the invasive substance that the scientists want to inject.

Dr. Burzynski has another idea that he has been investigating through injections into live subjects who want desperately to be cured. He thinks and acts upon the belief that the cause of Cancer is in the genes. It is our Genetic makeup that causes cancer and with the right injection of a substance to alter our genes our cancer can be controlled and eliminated or put into remission.

In effect he is refocusing our attention away from the millions of chemicals known to man and onto the chemicals that would alter genes. But....he hasn't gone through the phase 1 or 2, or 3 of the mandated process established by "legitimate" medicine, with the unfortunate result that he is constantly brought to account by the legal profession (and FDA) for his treatment method and administration and his results.

His results are not perfect - far from it - but he claims to have cured enough people with his efforts that the Federal Government (FDA) wants to shut him down for fear that..........well, that is yet to be revealed. Maybe just cutting corners (and costs) is the crime for which he has been harassed.

But what does Cancer have to do with Age and Aging? Dr. Pappas has convincing evidence that aging, that threat and reality of our bodies ever changing, does not have to be. What causes aging, he asks - a question we had hitherto decided was answered by life observed, lived and then ended most commonly before the age of 100. But Dr. Pappas says that we should live on and convinces those who watch his documentary To Age or Not to Age that aging is not normal.

Not normal! What I see and experience every day is not in sync with reality. Wow. How does he get to this conclusion?

Genes: That is the answer. He goes beyond the theory that if we consume fewer calories per day during our life time, our time on earth will be greatly elongated, our healthy life span will be seemingly endless. Beyond food means that the cause of aging is not just what we eat or fail to eat. He says the cause is in the Genes.

My observations (I am a complete layperson), based on my friends and acquaintances, are that the descendants of slaves in the southern United States come from a long-living and healthy lineage. In fact the slaves didn't just live longer than their owners, which is well documented, but the slaves and their descendants who are the parents of those in my age range outlive their children by a significant statistical margin. If Aging was just a matter of genes this could not be the case.

In summary, based on my limited observations:

The first generation were slaves
They lived the longest (discounting those murdered)
The second generation were black share croppers, small farm owners who worked the land and ate food that was unprocessed by corporations. They lived as long or almost as long as their parents.
The third generation were the children who came up North to seek fame and fortune - or just fortune enough to secure food, shelter and clothing without land of their own; they enjoyed a significantly shorter life span than their genetic inheritance would have predicted. Indeed, they often died before their parents.

Conclusion: emotional, physical factors not related solely to genes might be a significant cause of life span.

Genes are not a stand-alone cause for cancer or aging. Then why are we being exposed to gene analysis or given the rudiments of cost and future possible research for cancer at this time? What is going on? Coincidence or...... what is the Cause.

We seem to be bombarded with so much more information about the world, the Universe, the foundations of life in a test tube and the ability to replicate what had once been thought of as God giveth, and God taketh away, that there is an ever widening gap in applicable knowledge. Knowledge that will improve our lives and the lives of those we love and care for. Too much information seems to bread ignorance

This is the dilemma that confronts us every day. What food to eat, what clothes to buy, what cloth to touch our skin, what to drink, which water to avoid, which juice is okay and which is too sugary... is sugar bad or is it corn syrup or should both be avoided. These are some of the easy unanswered questions. Imagine having to think about, to live with, the uncertainty of which treatment to select, which doctor to see, which theory to bring to bear on our desire to continue to live... if living at all cost is what we want. Now there is the potential question of when should I die, should I register for prevention because I have the Gene or don't.

Chemical, emotional, physical, germ, infection, virus, bacterium, genes and more genes and the list goes on and on....

No wonder people choose to die rather than live in terrifying uncertainty.

See the films, read the New Yorker Magazine and feel like you are not alone because.........that's one truth that is indisputable: we are all in this together.

TO AGE OR NOT TO AGE
Opening July 16, 2010

Dr. Burzynski The Movie
available on DVD

Mother and Child: Now playing in New York theaters

writer-director Rodrigo Garcia (Nine Lives) and executive producer Alejandro González Iñárritu (Babel)

“MOTHER AND CHILD”

Opens Friday, May 7th in NY at the Landmark Sunshine and Lincoln Plaza Theaters

Starring
Annette Bening, Naomi Watts, Kerry Washington
Samuel L. Jackson, Jimmy Smits

with
Shareeka Epps, Cherry Jones, S. Epatha Merkerson, Amy Brenneman, David Morse, Marc Blucas, Elizabeth Pena

plot: Three women's lives share a common core: they have all been profoundly affected by adoption.

Mother and Child opened on May 7th to coincide with the great Mother's day recognition/celebration events that bode only good, kind and charitable warmth on women who assume the role of Mother.

While the phrase "happy mother's day" is repeated often throughout the day from even strangers to women they think might be a mother the phrase reemphasizes our fantasy notions of mothers which is even more potent when combined with "mother and child" Almost like the idealac Madonna recreated in all those perceived to be mothers, an image that is more destructive to human relations than supportive of women as real, complex vital contributors to society.

In Mother and Child the Mother is difficult to like and the child is adopted; Not of the mother's loins.
And the men........they are quietly supportive or not, in contrast to the role that men of this generation of new fathers are assuming.

To experience our fantasies crumble, delivered with brilliant actors and unusal clarity with attention to minute details is an experience that is essential for sorely needed change.


My mother was not a likable, lovable person. But she was my mother and as an adult I embraced her as such. If the fantasy of the mother had never existed, to accept my mother as she was wouldn't have been as difficult nor painful

And that is why I recommend this film. See Mother and Child and reunite with reality

Life During Wartime: To Forgive or Forget?

VENICE FILM FESTIVAL 2009 / WINNER – BEST SCREENPLAY
TORONTO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2009
TELLURIDE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2009
NEW YORK FILM FESTIVAL 2009
BOSTON INDEPENDENT FILM FESTIVAL 2010

Directed By Todd Solondz (Welcome to the Dollhouse, Storytelling, Happiness, Palindromes)

Starring: Shirley Henderson, Ciarán Hinds, Allison Janney, Ally Sheedy, Paul Reubens, Michael Lerner, Chris Marquette, Charlotte Rampling, Dylan Riley Snyder and Michael Kenneth Williams

Extraordinary acting! A brilliant Plot: A mature Todd Solondz brings the theme of Happiness into a fuller, ever more intense film about Sex, Crime and the "ideal" Family Life.

Plot:
Separated from her incarcerated husband Bill (Ciarán Hinds), Trish (Allison Janney) is about to be married again. Bill is a pedophile, so Trish couldn't be more excited to have Harvey (Michael Lerner), a “normal” father figure for her two sons. But when Bill is released from prison and the boys finally meet their future stepdad, the family is forced to decide whether to forgive or to forget.

There is so much happening in this intellectual exploration of our prejudices, our frailties that cloud our preceptions and make our decisions often not in tune with our best interest nor of those we care about. At the heart of the film is that all important question of fatherhood, what does it mean to be a father, what does it mean for a man and for his son.
This identity issue looms large while the crimes that the father commits seems often trivial to the lies that surround and permeate us all. But who is the Father.

There is strong evidence throughout this film that the personal father with whom we immediate associate to "father" also refers to Israel, the Fatherland where the same criminality issue felt and experienced for this country that murders, bulldozes homes and has striped life as we know it from huge number of people in the Middle East is the Father exposed in Life During Wartime with all the complexity of feeling/thought/duplicity/longing for a better person /country to embrace.

Pedophilia is a crime. The crime's of the paroled men are multiple. Crime crime crime but even for a criminal there is a humanity and that is the point...to look at our committed lies politically and personally: Do we forget? Do we forgive? And if we forget, will we ever remember again.

Life During Wartime uses brilliant human interactions to carry it's message and there were many moments when I felt certain this film would be one of my favorites of all times but

As with so much of politics, it lack an emotional device to pull me in or get me involved in a primitive non intellectual way and that unfortunately is the life blood of the film viewing experience.

To forgive or forget: that is the question because you can not forgive what you have forgotten.
Life During Wartime is a film you won't want to forget.

Opens theatrically in NY on 7/23

The Solitary Man: middle age woes

Brian Koppelman
David Levien

A car magnate watches his personal and professional life hit the skids because of his business and romantic indiscretions.

Susan Sarandon, Danny DeVito, Mary-Louise Parker and Jenna Fischer


Alone, "talking to your bed at night"; the other side of the bell-shaped U-curve, Michael Douglas, along with Susan Sarandon and Danny DeVito, bring to the screen the ups and downs of a once successful man as he strives to maintain his distinguished position as a "respected" member of society while all the measures of his valued worth crumble.

This is not an easy film to watch. Detailing the loss of vitality in a man who seems unable to adapt to his changed self - the lack of integrity, the unscrupulous behavior, particularly sexually - even the great Michael Douglas loses his appeal in this portrayal of the middle-aged man in our midst.

While the dialogue is consistently strong, the plot construction and scene transitions fail to work at a high level . Overall, the film might not hold the viewer's attention but it does address a serious problem for those who are fortunate enough to live into old age.

For a look at life without that sexy youthful appeal, see The Solitary Man.

Now playing in New York City theaters.

Israeli Assault: To Cover up or Expose. That is the question!

By Yvonne Ridley
edited by Linda Zises

June 01, 2010 "Information Clearing House" --

How many of you remember the hijacking of the Italian cruise ship the Achille Lauro way back in October 1985?

Four members of the Palestine Liberation Front took control of the liner off Egypt as she was sailing from Alexandria to Port Said.

It was a bungled operation in which the hijackers killed disabled Jewish-American passenger Leon Klinghoffer and then threw his body overboard.

The incident created headlines around the world and polarized people over the Palestinian cause.

It also prompted the law makers to create new legislation making it an international crime for anyone to take a ship by force.

And this is the reason for the brief history lesson - under article 3 of the Rome Convention for the Suppression of Unlawful Acts against the Safety of Maritime Navigation of 1988, it is an international crime for any person to seize or exercise control over a ship by force, and also a crime to injure or kill any person in the process.

The treaty necessarily adopts a strict approach. One cannot attack a ship and then claim self-defence if the people on board resist the unlawful use of violence.

In other words, according to international law, the actions of the Israeli military were beyond the law and those involved should be treated no differently than, say, the Somali pirates who are also in the habit of boarding ships by force.

Any rights to self defence in such dramatic circumstances rests purely with the passengers and crew on board. Under international maritime law you are legally entitled to resist unlawful capture, abduction and detention.

What those on board the Freedom Flotilla did was perfectly legal. I believe they acted with great courage in the face of heavily armed IDF commandos, while others might have thought their actions reckless.

Several people paid the ultimate price for their international right to resist.

What will you, what will the World do now?

"Glow in the Dark Penis" revisited:

"Glow in the Dark Penis" a tag/hook, a phrase which appeared years ago on the blog "criticalwomen of film' still attracts "hits"; Internet surfers from around the world; 111 to 116 countries/territories per month are repeatedly registered on the Google scale. At the core of this statistical success is the experience of the hidden desires of those who suffer from guilt; the so called "pervert".

It is a brilliant phrase because it uses the word penis - which is one of those trigger internet suffer words - coupled with the word Dark which denotes hidden/ forbidden secretive sexual thoughts. In short, it appeals to those steeped in guilt

Guilt: How strange, how powerful it is!

It's source can be either: Heinous acts of destruction (murder) or acts or ideations of construction (sex) or anything that makes us feel "bad'.

Did the Ancient Greeks experience guilt? Most likely not.

In the caveman times, was guilt a prevalent emotion? Not likely.

Today almost every adult feels guilt from one source or another and our children are inheriting this crippling emotion as well.

Common sources of quilt:

i didn't separate out the metal cans from the newspapers,
I help pay for the next generation of Drones or the nuclear bomb dropped on civilians or
I killed a man because I was told to..........
I killed a man and I don't know why....
or did I dream it,
imagine it.


I want/crave a man's penis in my mouth.
I want to taste his semen
I want to get into that woman's pants
I want to live..........
without pain
and I can't.

I am guilty because I think about suicide all the time.
I think about masturbating, then I do it
to feel better
but it makes me feel guilty
which is worse.

I killed a man
I watched him die
I saw his blood
it was real,
I saw life flow from his limbs
I am guilty

I killed a child
he was running
i said
I think I said "stop"
but he didn't

I banged open the door
a private space
exposed:
A home
their home
my gun held just so
my fingers worked without thought
I am a killer
A hero

My flesh littered with tattoos
indisputable though revocable
evidence
I am guilty

Yet to be charged
I punish myself
everyday

I live in hell
in silence
in eternal
Agony

Freud said Americans substitute aggression for sex. What he meant is that the processes for guilt-formation and the struggles that this emotion poses are substantially confined to Aggressive acts in this country as opposed to the illness from sexual ideation experienced in the Europe of his lifetime.

Although I think this is changing what has happened is an entire industry propelled by an undertone of religious indignation that is infiltrating the "Women's liberation" movement; a worldwide prohibition against sexual strivings which is ever increasing in its visibility and its wealth of ideas, actions identified as worthy of reprimand/prohibition.

What happens, and we see/hear it in the news to the point that it no longer surprises even the most virtuous among us, is the very people who talk the talk do not act in accordance to the good 'clean" life.

They are and have always been the repressed but repression does not work. The repressed ideas become an energy block, like a huge onslaught of fast moving water stopped at the point of urgent egress it must find an outlet.

We block our human nature to conform to a pathological state of purity.

Into this mix of gratifying both the aggressive drive and the sexual drive is the ever growing sex trade, pornography and all those trigger words that makes a blog, a web page garner notice.

Is this a problem?

Or is pornography a solution, an answer to pathological fallout from War?

Should it be legalized along with Pot and Liquor and masturbation?

"Tell me, Daddy, what did you do in the army? What did you see?" are questions that are seldom answered and for good reason.

Although we know this, my point is that there is a relationship between this obvious omission of communication and the proliferation, the need for pornography to ease our pain.

That is the human condition, our living hell.

Our experience of ever increasing and more urgent feelings of quilt.

The Killer Inside Me: Interesting but............?

THE KILLER INSIDE ME

Michael Winterbottom

Based on a novel by pulp writer Jim Thompson:

An idyllic West Texas town in the early 1950’s:
handsome, charming, unassuming small town sheriff's deputy, Lou Ford (Casey Affleck) has difficulty juggling his long-term girlfriend Amy (Kate Hudson) and a prostitute named Joyce (Jessica Alba). His siopathic tendencies steer him and us, his audience towards an unusual finale.

Does it matter to you if the basis of a file is right, true to its depiction of the potential for human behavior? That is the underling question posed by this film, a difficult one to answer.

There is no question that emotion, such as anger, can trigger behavior that seems to defy intelligent mediation. We have all experienced going from an identified feeling to an action we would later regret. Can this happen with the intellectual/emotional experience of "Love" or is it more to the point that the experience of the sexual orgasm is what triggers an unconscious or preconscious reaction? In this film, The Killer Inside Me this is an essential question because it is the basis of the plot, the foundation of the story.

If the latter is what holds true and the former not, then this raises the question of authenticity - not an easy one to answer, but important nonetheless.

I don't know about seeing the film on a large screen. I recommend The Killer Inside Me be seen, at home, on DVD.


Release date: June 18th
The film will be available simultaneously on VOD

Finding Bliss: pornography in the making

Cast: Leelee Sobieski, Matthew Davis, Donnamarie Recco, Denise Richards

FINDING BLISS, a romantic comedy that explores the adult film industry through the eyes of an idealistic 25 year-old award-winning film school grad, Jody Balaban (LEELEE SOBIESKI).

With sex as the landscape and pornography the issue to be explored, punctuated with visual images that manage to stay on the date-flick side of the divide, it is hard to imagine how this film will not make back the money spent on its creation.

An interesting film that addresses issues rarely spoken about even in those private moments when "the girls" get together: the fear of inability to perform is not limited to men, not in this country, this century. It is a universal fear but women rarely admit to feelings traditionally attributed to men. In Finding Bliss this curtain of silence is lifted and the "good girl", the Virgin of choice, is exposed as a frightened child trying to survive in an adult world.

The film is compelling in content but is amateurish in construction and weak in acting. There is so much good and so much lacking in this film that I recommend it with strong reservations.

Hopefully writer/director Julie Davis will learn more about filmmaking before she attempts to bring her compelling and important ideas onto the screen again.

Release Date: June 4th, 2010 (limited)

Paper Man: funny/poignant, one of the year's best

Written and Directed by: Michele Mulroney & Kieran Mulroney

Cast: Jeff Daniels, Ryan Reynolds, Emma Stone, Lisa Kudrow, Kieran Culkin

Comedic Drama

Richard (Jeff Daniels), a failed middle-aged novelist quirky in his immaturity as contrasted to his wife (Lisa Kudrow), a physician who embodies the ultra-successful adult persona.

Richard embarks on a month-long trip to Long Island's pristine winter setting, a self imposed solitude, to lift his "writer's block". During his stay, he rides around on a child-size bike, a symbol of the child persona that engulfs this 50+ year-old man. While on a trip to town Richard befriends, and hires as his babysitter, Abby (Emma Stone) - a 17 year-old victim of childhood trauma that has left her accepting a masochistic male companion even though or rather because he degrades and hurts her.

The comedic element is mostly based on the contract between Richard and others. Richard relies heavily on his imaginary friend, a costumed superhero known as Captain Excellent (Ryan Reynolds) whom no one other than Richard sees, but his wife knows about. Abby's equivolent "super man" is a fellow ex-"loony bin" friend who follows her everywhere.

Given the details of the plot it is difficult to anticipate that this usual older man/very young girl scenario is a film worth seeing. But this film is very much worth seeing because the dialogue and the hook, an extinct bird, are so compelling that it raises the film into the realm of Great.

Paper Man's extinct bird is America, a country which has outgrown its 'super power of the world' status and along with it the comic book character Superman or Captain Excellent. Richard's problems and our problem are twofold: In a society that has no factories, that makes no thing, what do we do with our Hands? What can we make - Origami, slice up fish, sofas out of books.............nothing of substance, of inherent worth. We are insubstantial people and what we manufacture is unhappiness and we, the denizens of this once productive, thriving super power America are becoming extinct, like the bird.

The political/emotional impact of Paper Man is immense. We are all victims - of the fallout from the cell phones/computers, all means of non communication communication. We don't even type on a substantial Corona typewriter anymore. We tap delicately on our computers, barely touching the keyboard.

The imagery is endless, delivered in the most delightful, funny interactions that resonated deeply.

It all felt so real, as if I was involved in the scene right there with the messy eating of a Lobster, the slicing up of the Fluke, the making of a sofa out of unsold books that otherwise would have remained in unopened boxes for ever and ever, and the arguments between husband and wife.... I've been there, i heard them, I've had them.

I see an average of 7 to 10 films a week, standard for today's film reviewer. But Paper Man was so rich in detail, so compelling a film that I saw it twice within three days. What else can I say?

PAPER MAN opened Friday, April 23rd

Expendable Lives,

Distorted Images: The Murder of Aiayanna Jones

By Sikivu Hutchinson

When a little white girl goes missing, online news, supermarket tabloids and cable network stations bombard us with up-to-the-minute dispatches on the crime, the victim, her shattered family and anguished community. When a little black girl is murdered in cold blood by a big city police department it is up to the community and those who care about social justice to ensure that the case doesn’t fade into the national obscurity that is usually reserved for the lives of people of color. The recent execution of 7 year-old Aiyanna Jones by the Detroit Police Department during a raid while she was sleeping in her home is the kind of atrocity that makes many people of color view the police as an occupying army. According to news reports, the Detroit Police were conducting a raid that was being filmed for an A&E reality show. Searching for a suspect who lived in another apartment unit, officers fired into the home from outside, then lobbed a grenade into the house, killing little Aiyanna.

By exercising a so-called “no knock” policy in poor neighborhoods, the Detroit Police’s criminal disregard for human life and the civil liberties of people of color have kept the community under siege. According to Ron Scott of the Detroit Coalition Against Police Brutality, the Detroit Police have been under a federal consent decree but continue to use military style raids that terrorize citizens in its poorest neighborhoods.

Of course, deeply ingrained racist stereotypes and biases against people of color are a major factor in racial profiling and police misconduct. Disturbingly, Aiyanna’s murder also comes in the wake of a recent CNN study about the impact of skin color bias on young children. CNN presented the findings of Margaret Beale Spencer, a psychologist who utilized the same “doll test” technique as that of psychologists Kenneth and Mamie Clark in 1947. The Clarks’ research documented the destructive impact of racism on black children’s self-image and was used in the 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education suit....CONT.http://blackfemlens.blogspot.com/2010/05/expendable-lives-distorted-images.html

Sikivu Hutchinson is the editor of blackfemlens.org. She is working on a book entitled Moral Combat: Black Atheists, Gender Politics and the Atheism Question.

John Rabe: an enemy of many becomes a hero of some

Florian Gallenberger

John Rabe is an old-fashioned war melodrama replete with all the horrors that "sane "people do to those they deem their enemy.

In 1937 John Rabe, "The Good German of Nanking." was a middle-aged, business man, a self proclaimed Nazi who worked tirelessly to save thousands of civilian Chinese from the Rape of Nanking. He achieved this goal by assisting thousands of Chinese civilians to enter the sprawling International Safety Zone
Estimates go as high as 250,000.

This historical event and the heroism of Rabe, the self proclaimed Nazi, doesn't register much outside of Germany,


Rabe appears to have no understanding of the nature of the Japanese menace or of the Nazi party he belongs to. But when evil rears its head, he cannot in good conscience betray the trust his workers have placed in him.

One of the most startling images here is Rabe's brainstorm to use a giant Nazi flag to deflect Japanese bombers away from desperate civilians crammed into the Siemens grounds. The idea of anyone using a Nazi flag for protection from aggressors is certainly new to World War II movies! the other is the sight of human heads on a wooden ledge, the participatory evidence of a competition to see who could accumulate the most number: the image of blood dripping from multiple heads and necks is one I won't forget.

A 134-minute film, with a clear message. Sometimes, under extreme circumstances, people do the right thing.

Currently P\laying in a limited number of theaters.

MADEMOISELLE CHAMBON, directed by Stéphane Brizé

French: subtitles

Cast: Vincent Lindon and Sandrine Kiberlain

A construction worker whose life is embedded in deep and satisfying emotional ties to his family; wife, son, elderly father, meets a school teacher Mademoiselle Chambon, whose emotional ties are defined by her love, her involvement in the arts: music, writing, reading, painting, teaching.

Each steps into the other's world.

Brick by brick the Director builds the plot, life built one brick on top of another. With delicate, deliberate perfection
we are shown/told the 'Direct Object' of the film is life. The choices we make and don't.

A quiet, compelling love story for those who don't need to be told what we already know but can't accept, not without a struggle.

MADEMOISELLE CHAMBON, is a gem, an intense provocative moment so unlike an American film experience.

For those in search of a film based on philosophical inquiry that forces the viewer to think, to digest, and feel more connected with others, I highly recommend MADEMOISELLE CHAMBON.


Film open at New York's Lincoln Plaza Cinemas and at the Cinema Village in New York on May 28, followed by a nationwide release to select cities.