SUO GAN

No, the title is not a play on words, or a sequence of letters meant to be unscrambled.

It is actually a song that I first heard - God, I wish I remember the year! - when I saw Steven Spielberg's forgotten 1987 film Empire of the Sun.

Even a "forgotten" Spielberg film is a beast that is more well-known than most other movies, but one could be forgiven if one were, as one was aniticipating the premier of this film on December 9, 1987, thinking that it would be unforgettable.

After all, it was a movie of firsts, the first "first" being that it was the first large-scale Hollywood production to be shot in China (not all of it was shot there, but the scenes that were are easy to recognize). The film was also Spielberg's first "serious" movie about World War II. The film had a budget of $40 million, and, as I discovered while watching the DVD, contains a truly terrific theatrical trailer.

Moreover, there was, as there is too infrequently, a sense that Spielberg would recover, and perhaps even be rewarded - as a result of something that happened two years earlier. In 1985, his The Color Purple, dismissed as a Zip-A-Dee-Do-Dah portrayal of Alice Walker's novel of the same name by some, and hailed as a masterpiece by others, launched the careers of Oprah Winfrey and Whoopi Goldberg, and received eleven Oscar nominations. Spielberg won the Directors' Guild Award (after being snubbed for a Best Director nomination).

But on Oscar night, the seemingly impossible happened. The film did not win a single award, thus tying the record for most nominations, zero wins held by The Turning Point (1977).

At this point in his career, Spielberg had yet to make two critical flops (or two films to which critics responded divisively) in a row. So I must imagine that a heightened sense of anticipation attended the release of Empire, based on J.G. Ballard's autobiographical novel of his four-year experience as a Japanese POW in China that began when he was nine.

The book, which I have not read, contained elements that allows one to clearly understand why Spielberg wanted to film it. For this was the story of childhood, its innocence and its fascination with things larger than life. Spielberg was no stranger to this theme. However, the book is also about - and this is what Spielberg claims he intended to capture - what Spielberg called "the loss of innocence, the loss of childhood." Being a POW caused Mr. Ballard to grow up too fast; surviving horrors can make us wise - perhaps too wise for our own good - beyond our years.

While Warner Bros. had high hopes for this film, they were quickly dashed as the film took a nosedive at the box office, barely recouping half of its costs. Moreover, when it came Oscar time, the movie received six nominations, but only far what most folks call "the technical categories."

What happened, why is the movie forgotten, and is it any good?

If I had to speculate as to the answer to the first of the above three questions, I would posit that the film's two and one half hour running time, combined with the lack of recognizable stars and Spielbergian action set pieces, rendered the movie into something of a curio. The film had the air of being a "prestige" picture - a label no one had thought to apply to a Spielberg film until that time, and it suffered because of it.

Of course, a movie can have many lives, as the invention of video has shown us, and films that have performed poorly at the theater can receive a second wind - make that a first wind, really, in the VCR or DVD player. I'm thinking of a very well-known example right now, which happily escapes my recollection. Empire of the Sun was released on laserdisc (remember that? If you do, you are probably rich, which means you probably have too much time on your hands, but even so, can't you find something better to do than read this, or, more to the point, spend your money on buying a clue? Oh, I kid the rich!) in 1988, and on DVD in 2001. The DVD contains a 45-minute feature called "A China Odyssey: The Making of Empire of the Sun." Despite the issuance of the movie in both of these formats, and even with the addition of the documentary material, the film is still one of the last that comes to mind when one starts reciting the Spielberg canon. Why?

The answer to this question is in many aspects the same answer to the third question I posited; namely, "Is it any good?"

My goodness, I find it harder to answer that question in the case of this film than I do with almost any other film. Indeed, it is one of the first films I viewed where my initial reaction was, "I have no idea what to make of this!"

The film is goregously shot by Allen Daviau, and John Williams' score, when it does not insist on itself, is a soaring ride. And, in what must count for what now makes the movie "remembered" in a forgotten way (i.e. were it not for this fact, the movie might barely be remembered at all), the film was Christian Bale's first performance. And quite an impressive performance it was, as he played Jamie Graham (look at the initials and marvel at the lack of subtlety), the child taken prisoner, the surrogate for both the author and for Spielberg himself.

The first half hour or so - and I felt this before I read a single review of the film (I would very much like to say that I saw this film in 1992 or 1993, because when I saw Little Women in 1994, I swear to God remembering saying, "Wow, Christian Bale looks all grown up! I can't believe that was the same actor that was in......" You know) - is truly stunning and could function - indeed, essentially it plays out as - a silent film. We are introduced to Shanghai and the world of Jamie - later nicknamed Jim - with elegance and precision, as the camera first turns its glaze toward a series of coffins floating in the ocean, one of which is hit by an approaching tugboat. Next, we see, as it angrily unfurls against the breeze, the Japanese flag, and, as its visage reaches the limits of the camera's eye, we see the city of Shangai behind it. At this point, of course, "Suo Gan" (a Welsh lullably, as it turns out - I had meant to find out what the song was for years and finally got around to doing so - forgetting to do the obvious can lead to such pleasure of retarded discovery!) is being chanted by an English schoolboy choir in Shangai (of course, the irony is that, when the movie begins in the fall of 1941, most of the children - who have been living with their parents in safety courtesy of a diplomatic understanding that allowed for a Finzi-Contini-like existence of British diplomats and well-to-do amidst the squalor that was invaded China - have never even set foot on British soil). The camera next peers down the parapets of a cathedral and brings us inside - where we see the choir as the camera slowly turns it focus to Jamie, who comes forward from his classmates to sing a little solo. This opening sequence - the camerawork, the editing, the atmopshere, the song (which is sang by him to technical perfection but is sang as if memorized rather than felt - with a strange lack of fire), the mise en scene - it is all so beautiful, simultaneously invoking the dream world - the world of lullabies - and the world of reality the latter represented by the conductor, as he gently pounds his fists on his stand as Jamie's mind begins to drift when he emerges from his solo to join his classmates in the chorus. (Interestingly, when I first read that the song was a Welsh lullaby, I lazily thought that because Christian Bale was Welsh, the song was developed with him in mind and that he actually sang it. Neither of these things are true).

We are next taken, as Jamie is driven by chaueffer to his parents' home (from this point forward, the movie, cinematographically and narratively, adopts his point of view) to the streets of Shangai, a world once majestic and teeming, banal and defiled (beggars line the streets as masses of people swirm in anonymity). We then are introduced, through expository dialogue, to Jamie and his parents. After the family attends a costume party, Jamie becomes separated from his parents, moments after we see the incongruous images of stiff upper-lip Brits dressed in decadent costumes tumble down flights of stairs upon hearing the call that they must be evacuated - the Japanese have bombed Pearl Harbor). Jamie, once separated, is able to return home, and as he sits in his home, alone, the house itself assumes the role of a character - first serving as a point of continuity and comfort and then representing the alien world of the unknown as Jim realizes he is stranded there, alone, as the water disappears from the pool. The imagery used to dramatize the isolation is so rich, so evocative, that it is able to further the story without a single line of dialogue being uttered. Eventually, Jamie ventures outside and is captured and taken to a POW camp, where he learns how to be a man, is eventually freed, and in the ambigiously memorable closing scene, is reunkited with his parents, looking at his mother with a gaze that seems to say to her, "I recognize that you are the person who is my mother, but I am not the same person and on some level I can never relate to you again."

Glad I snuck in that plot synopsis. The first half hour, and individual sequences in the camp, are so radiant, so SPECIFIC in their ability to evoke Jamie's plight, that the movie ultimately must qualify as being on the side of good, so to speak. However, the film contains numerous flaws - as Hal Hinson of the Washington Post said in his review, "Virtuosity has its limits" - which have, I think, resulted in its being both forgotten and perhaps, in some sense, warranting the moniker of "failed masterpiece".

Want to hear what the faults are? I'm so proud of myself for actually setting up an essay and actually being able to draw within the lines - and with using most of the crayons! - that I think I will reward myself by keeping..... someone.... in suspense, as I will discuss these faults later.

In the meantime, though, Suo Gan..... For over ten years I have passively let this song swirl around in my head, its haunting melody firmly entrenched, calling me to remember and revisit this unique motion picture.

THIS THEATER...

"This theater..... So replete with memories.... So full of ghosts.... Cordelia.... Ophelia....," Dianne Wiest declares as she waxes histrionic in Bullets over Broadway. Indeed, for her character, Helen Sinclair, a grande dame of the stage, being reunited with an old stage for a new play, as she is when she makes these remarks, must bring back a flood of memories.

For me, the eternal nostalgist for nostalgia, many things serve as triggers of timess past. Just yesterday, I was throwing out some documents that were up to seven years old in an effort to let some newer documents take their place. As I looked at these documents, my mind drifted into yesteryear when the names of faces long gone, of dates remembered for this or that odd thing, flashed before my eyes. I really do wish that I could live in the past. This is not to say that I do not want time to move forward. It is to say that as time does move forward, with a headstrong momentum that the movement of my life does not have, I invariably view events past as being part of something like a giant, unwieldy novel - the book of how things once were, how happiness once felt, how the smallest experience - even the mere hearing of a song on the radio - could put me in a mood that could last for hours, days, even longer, with the mood recaptured when I heard the song again.

Roger also once wrote that what happens in life is not nearly as important as how we remember it. What he really meant was that what happens in life, we do not remember with as much CLARITY, as how we remember it. This is partly because our memories of events past are enriched - sometimes warped and distorted - by the present, which demands that we produce certain emotional responses to certain triggers. My present now demands that I treat going out with a friend to, say, a bar, as a moment to cherish since I do this so infrequently. The dictates of my mind in this regard has caused me to remember past gatherings with friends at bars with probably more fondness than I felt as I experienced these events. Thus, I am in a sense getting off on the manufacture of false or exaggerated memories. Is this healthy? I suppose that on some level that it is not, but my knowledge of why this manufacturing occurs allows me to feel more comfortable when my mind engages in it: I create happy memories of the past because the human mind - my mind - instinctively is repulsed by the idea of dwelling on unpleasantry all of the time. If my mind does not have something happy on which to fixate, it will make something up.

Sad in a way, isn't it, that happiness, as experienced in this manner, is felt vividly only when the circumstances that surrounded it when it was experienced are no longer present. Their absence, I think, lends a certain security that ensures the happiness will persist; these elements are gone and no one can go back in time to steal them, thus to pervert a happy experience into a sad one.

I almost have forgotten what it feels like to feel the happiness one feels as one contemplates a positive, possibility-filled futue. The future is something that I conceive as something that will just arrive one day; maybe happpiness will arrive with it, but I am not betting on it.

In a way, I am thankful that the mind can create retro-happiness and retro-continuity of happiness. Doing so may constitute a mental cheat, but it is the amusement provided from this cheat that allows me to go forward. And it has done so since I was a student in the 5th grade. At that time, I had to construct a pictoral history of "my life" (I had to select pictures from various prior points in my life that were meant to signify personal growth, oft-displayed feelings, ANYTHING that revealed what made me or my development"unique."). As I pored over the completed product, I experienced feelings of nostalgia -and of oldness - for the first time. I've been borrowing, re-shaping, basking in, cursing, and entraced by, these feelings, ever since.

So here is to memory - which so often can provide what real life cannot.

"How very poignant is the passage of time," Roger Ebert once wrote

POOR LITTLE RICH BOYS

You can often judge a man by the company he keeps, it is said.

This week, the Attorney General of North Carolina declared that the three Duke lacrosse players charged with the rape of a black stripper in March of 2006 to be "innocent" of all charges. Such a pronouncement, while it is without legal effect, certainly packs an emotional punch; it is the consummate condemnation of the Attorney General''s own subordinate, the DA of Durham County, Mike Nifong, who brought the charges.

"Our lives have been ruined," the three players have said, both before, during and after this whole affair. (One - get this - even lost s job that he had lined up at an investment banking firm. Woe to the beleaguered white man!)

One can lament the travesty of justice that was this case without feeling sorry for the accused. I have seen and heard all of them, and on the basis of admittedly superficial impressions (what else do I or anyone else making judgments on this Earth have to go on?), I find it hard to shed a tear for them.

They and people like them - rich white men - have denied justice to poor people, to people of color, to women, throughout history. This episode will not make any of these men more sensitive to that fact. Human history is replete with examples of those who see themselves as victims justify monstrous things by mere virtue of having been "victimized." "Don't tell ME what it's like to be a victim," they say.

I am tired of people who bleat on about how their lives have been ruined when the people in question have benefited from the customs and traditions of society. These three players presumably (I could be wrong, but I do not think that it matters) only attended Duke because they got in on an athletic scholarship (this is not to say that they are or are not dumb jocks; it is merely to say that society gets the "victims" it deserves). They (again, a presumption I am making that, if it is proven wrong, doesn't change the point) no doubt used whatever connections they had to bulldoze their way through life and to step over anyone who was seen as an obstacle. I've seen rich white men do this all of the time. The behavior is a manifestation of the acting out of a divine right - one which our society encourages the belief in.

It's a rich man's game, as Dolly Parton said, and rich white men take care of this own. My god, how I have found this out after searching for a job for four months with no success. Being Jewish and being from New York is a source of pride to me; it is something to be derided by the good old boy network here and everywhere that is the bedrock of the Republican Party and one of the last great obstacles to the tearing down of bigotry and to the making of lasting social progress in this country.

Ironic, is it not, that the Bar Counsel of North Carolina stated, "If these men had a mediocre lawyer, they might not have even known that exculpatory evidence was being excluded from them." Of course, they did not have mediocre attorneys - Daddy's money won't allow that to happen. Republicans and white people in this country do not want to talk about how class is stille everything in this country. If the three white boys were three poor white boys, do you think that Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh or Ann Coulter would have rushed to their defense with such vigor? If they were three white Jews? Funny how the greatest supporters of these men - the ones who were as quick to denounce the "injustice"as Al Sharpton was to denounce the players - are all charter members of the Bar of Bigotry, are inveterate racists, and all scoff at claims of "injustice" made by poor and black people sent to their execution because a retarded Texas governor couldn't (literally) read their petitions for clemency.

The powers that control the country (the rest of us are just visiting, as the Matt Damon character said in "The Good Shepherd") will make sure that these men are taken care of. Because not taking care of them would allow an "affront" to the "pillars of society" to remain.

I am sick of hearing how the criminal justice system mistreated these men. The system mistreated the law. These men happened to be in the way. The system mistreats those who are perceived as weak, as weird, as dangerous, as vulnerable. I know this from personal experience. The reason why this DA is in such trouble is because of the EXTRAORDINARY lengths he had to go to in committing his ethical sins. Would he have to have gone to such lengths if the accused were poor or black? Think about it.

This case, like the Imus case, should teach us all some lessons. Not the banal or obvious ones, of course - which are the only ones we will "learn." The case should teach us that the best way to avoid trouble is to keep your nose clean. That if you're the "right" kind of person, you can have a bunch of boogers and it still won't matter very much (I mean, let's face it: was there not a gleam on at least one bigot's eye when it was found out that Strom Thurmond raped - er - had sex with a black woman that produced an illegitimate animal - er - daughter?). That yes, if you're rich and powerful, and all you care about is the superficial, you really haven't lost all that much by being "victimized," have you? That society, as was made clear in the early stages of this game - still favors men over women, and believes that a little rape - er - nonsense now and then is relished by the wisest men, because it is.

So if you want to bemoan what has happened in this case, bemoan the hypocrisy of a District Attorney trying, "Bonfire of the Vanities" style to keep his job by pandering to a black constituency. Bemoan how the wheels of justice can grind to such a quick and startling halt when when one rogue cog starts to stick out. Bemoan our despicable national media, which creates our fears, feeds off of them, and then tells us why we should be thankful for its fearmongering.

But please. Don't call these three "victims." The law doesn't. And the society that matters - the real world - will treat them as anything but.

The battle - as Thurgood Marshall once said - is far from over.

SLIMUS

"They look like nappy-headed hos," Don Imus, host of Imus in the Morning, WFAN-660, snarked to Bernard, his sidekick. Imus was referring to the women of the Rutgers basketball team - the black ones.

Naturally, the Reverend Al Sharpton got wind of this comment - and once he did - and only once he did - did the demagoguery begin, the "crisis" begin, the pitting of "the black community" vs. the "racists" begin.

Make no mistake: Imus is a bigot. He is a racist. His remark was rude and insulting, not to mention quite foolish. Moreover, Imus has had a history of making anti-African American comments on the air - remarks over which he has received some heat - making the latest comment all the more inexplicable.

But in matters such as these - where calls for "therapy," "treatment" and apology are knee-jerkedly made withut regard to context, to irony, or to reality - it helps to observe that this is a case of more than a white man making racist comments; indeed, quite much more.

The Reverend Al Sharpton invited Imus onto his show several days ago, and during the program, solemnly declared Imus to be a racist. Sharpton further glumly detoned, "It would be awful if you suffered no consequences for this." (To which Imus replied, "No consequences? Being embarrassed in front of the world isn't a consequence?") Naturally, Sharpton called for Imus' resignation.

Does this pattern of banal bigotry met by faux outrage sound familiar? It should. We've seen the steps of the pattern play out with such other bigo-luminaries as Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, Neal Boortz, Tim Hardaway, Isaiah Washington, and General Peter Pace.

There is something particularly nagging, though, about this case because it involves Mr. Sharpton, who until now knew little to nothing about Mr. Imus' radio program. What does Mr. Sharpton now know? That Imus is a racist. Therefore he is evil and he must be exterminated. Period. To judge people based upon one remark - even a very cruel one - is an act that should be undertaken with care, since we are all imperfect and we are all bigots. If anyone is incapable of displaying the finely honed skills of judgment that allow one to come to an informed conclusion about what consequences should befall a bigot, it is Al Sharpton. Sharpton is every bit the bigot that Imus is. Every bit the racist. But Sharpton, save for the Tawana Brawley/Pagones incident (in which he was found to have defamed Mr. Pagones) has NEVER been successfully called on his bigotry. Why? Because, I suspect, the people who would call on him would believe the calling to be a futile gesture. Why futile? Because Sharpton, like other race demagogues (including white ones) will play the victim card in response to any such attack - he will unilaterally convert a legitimate attack about his bigotry into an attack on "African-Americans."

Which raises the question: Who elected Al Sharpton as a spokesman for black people, or for people of color (whom he ignores if they are not black) generally? The "black community" (which, like any other community, is a fictional construct that exists in the eye of the beholder)? White people? All of us? I do not know. Anyone who presents himself as the moral representative of a group of people whose main (and in some cases, only) commonality is an immutable characteristic such as race is someone to whom presumptuousness is no stranger. If one is to put that presumptuousness into action, as Sharpton has done, one should at least proceed with care, lest hypocrisy become joined at the hip with the presumptuousness.

Sharpton is not one to proceed with care. He is rude, crude and dismissive of others. He, like so many other race-baiters, thrives on the notion of "anti-blackness" - it is like oxygen to him; take it out of the room and he will suffocate. Anti African-American bigotry does not exist to Mr. Sharpton as an evil to be vanquished so as to improve the socioeconomic status of black people; it exists as an opportunity for Mr. Sharpton to make money, to profess his sanctimony, and to speak for people who may not wish he invokes their name.

Example: recently, Mr. Sharpton stated that the word "nigger" should not be used by white people (he did not elaborate as to what consequences would befall white people if they continued to use the word). But, he noted, black people could call each other "niggers," as they have done. Perhaps the word does indeed mean something different when used among black people (this assumption presupposes that the term has a fixed definition that is commonly understood by black people). But Mr. Sharpton will not tell is WHAT that different meaning is, of course, because if he did, he would be, in his mind, revealing something about "black culture" that the rest of us do not deserve to hear. He might even be opening himself up to criticism. So, by not revealing the meaning, he gets to lecture white people, speak for black people, while all the while getting to hide the ball as to his true motivation behind why he is carving out the "nigger exception." Sharpton, this way, gets to claim that he is simultaneously interested in racial harmony and racial categorization at the same time. After all, if he cannot label, categorize and demonize, he is out of a job.

Should Imus resign? I don't know. I think that suspending him will teach him nothing, in the sense that a 70 year-old bigot will not change his spots - even if he is "suspended" for two weeks, or even if he "apologizes" to the basketball players - a meaningless gesture since he doesn't really mean it and they really don't want to hear it and won't take it to heart, thus rendering such an exercise pointless.

If I were Imus, here is how I would handle it. I would start my next show by stating, "I am a bigot and a racist. I always have been. So is everyone else, including Al Sharpton. My comments were a reflection of that bigotry. To apologize for them is to apologize for my existence. Maybe I should do that. I don't know. I have no idea whether I should resign, because I do not presume to purport to know what "message" that would send - my guess is that it would send no "message" - at least no productive one - at all. I apologize for offending anyone by my remarks. I shall henceforth try to keep my racist attitudes to myself, but please understand that they will always exist, just as Mr. Sharpton's will. It is not for him to decide whether I should resign. Perhaps only God can make that judgment. But since he does not speak to me, I will have to leave that decision in the capable hands of my employer, MSNBC. The folks at MSNBC are bigots too, but they are bigots who have power over my career. If they fire me, rest assured that they will do so as a pointless gesture - a concession to "tolerance," and not because they believe that firing me will change anything about anything. Of course, if you don't like me, don't listen to my show. But then, especially those of you who think that I am a racist and are offended by it - you weren't watching it already, right? Right? I mean, why would you do that, unless you get off on racism, like I do? So that's the end of my sermon. Whatever happens is fine by me."


If Imus gave such a speech, the reaction that would ensue would be akin to the reaction that greeted Orson Welles' radio version of "The War of the Worlds" - one marked by confusion, puzzlement, astonishment, fright, amusement, terror, and most of all, sheer awkwardness.

Maybe that's what we need in this country - a little more Real awkwardness that we should be forced to deal with, not artificial awkwardness paraded about for our supposed entertainment. We cannot, after all, "deal" with our country's most pressing problems while we are engaged in nothing but the much less difficult task of manufacturing them.

FUX REALITY

The following remarks of Bill O'Reilly describe how angry, middle-aged, balding, fat, loudmouthed, wife-beating, butt-fucking, bigoted conservatives "argue":

Bill O'Reilly abuses and cuts the mic of retired Colonel Ann Wright, 29-year veteran of the US Army, after she refuses to fall victim to his leading, dishonest questions and smear tactics. Apparently in Bill's demented world, criticizing the actions of President Bush in explicitly violating international law — something Col. Wright spent years teaching — constitutes "blaming" America.

WRIGHT: "I want to make sure the United States treats people properly.."
O'REILLY: "Sure you do. Sure you do."
WRIGHT: "I surely do. That's what I spent 29 years of my life trying to do."
O'REILLY: "Sorry. No you didn't. You know what happened to you…somewhere along the line you started to dislike your own country…."
WRIGHT: "I served 29 years. How many did you serve? Where did you teach the Geneva Conventions?"
O'REILLY: "Cut her mic."
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"Cut her mic" - a conservative's way of revealing he can't think. Only someone so weak, hypocritical and cowardly would dare feel the need to silence someone else for mere disagreement. But then again, such silencing is what "conservatives" do for a living, and thank God the country is at long last cutting THEIR mic.