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	<title>FrontPage Magazine &#187; Kidist Paulos Asrat</title>
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		<title>Burqa Prejudice</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/kidist-paulos-asrat/burqa-prejudice/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=burqa-prejudice</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 15 Jun 2010 04:04:18 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Kidist Paulos Asrat]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[The conscience of the Sex and the City gals kicks in for one split moment. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/sexcity2.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-62995" title="sexcity2" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/sexcity2.jpg" alt="" width="400" height="344" /></a></p>
<p>The fabulous four, Charlotte, Miranda, Samantha and the unlikely leader of the pack, Carrie, are back for a second installment of the <em>Sex and the City</em> movie. Everyone but Samantha is married, and the women spend a good deal of time discussing their husbands and their children rather than the latest fashionable restaurant. But, the gals just cannot help themselves, and they try to recapture their early spontaneous selves. They go on a holiday paid off by the clever Samantha&#8217;s P.R. business deal, which includes a week&#8217;s stay in a gilded hotel in Abu Dhabi. Once there, they get to ride camels in the desert, relax under Bedouin tents, and sample foods the names of which they cannot pronounce. Culture shock padded with luxury is easy to take.</p>
<p>One cultural phenomenon that keeps the four tourists entertained is the black robe worn by Middle Eastern women, called the burqa. It is on full display for these girls to contemplate in all its variations: as a burqini (burqa+bikini &#8211; a misnomer if there ever was one); as a jewel-studded modern creation; with its veil, the niqab; and as the full body burqa that hides those seductive feminine curves from uncontrollable Muslim men.</p>
<p>But the conflict between exposed flesh and bundled body is irreconcilable. A &#8220;conservative&#8221; Middle Eastern hotel guest and his burqad wife witness Samantha&#8217;s inappropriate behavior toward her Danish architect friend (one of those many architects who is raising concrete and glass towers in the barren desert). There is a stark contrast between Samantha&#8217;s bare back with a sliver of a white dress and the heavy black robe the Arab&#8217;s wife is wearing, as Samantha leaves her table for a moment of debauchery on the beach. No culture clash could have been better illustrated. The Arab patron subsequently has Samantha and her four friends thrown out of the hotel.</p>
<p>Muslims have criticized <em>Sex and the City 2</em> as islamophobic and &#8220;orientalist,&#8221; although I see nothing wrong with the second charge other than its allusion to Edward Said&#8217;s petulant accusation of the West&#8217;s prejudice towards the Orient in his book <em>Orientalism</em>. But, <em>Sex and the City 2</em> is more convoluted and confused than that. It tries to be Islamocentric &#8211; all cultures are good, after all, and often non-Western cultures more so. But then, the feminist side of the <em>Sex and the City</em> gals and the writers kicks in, and they just don&#8217;t know what to do about all those insufferable Arab men who are holding their women down, especially through that ubiquitous burqa. Yet, yet, these Muslim women wear their burqas with pride, and insist that no one forces it on them. At least that&#8217;s what Naomi Wolf says.</p>
<p>But, in our own Western lands, the focus on the burqa and the niqab must not be what Muslim women allegedly like or want to wear (the covering is not an option for Muslim women), but what it means to our societies. Most Western societies have not welcomed this costume (and custom) with open arms:</p>
<p>- Pools in France and Italy have banned the burqini, citing mostly problems with hygiene.</p>
<p>- At least two Muslim women have been expelled from French language courses in Quebec for wearing niqabs, with teachers complaining that it is difficult to assess pronunciation skills without a full view of a student&#8217;s face.</p>
<p>- A Muslim rape victim in Ottawa refuses to remove her niqab during her court case. Although the court still has to decided whether to allow her to proceed covered up, representatives of the Canadian Criminal Lawyers Association are protesting her request.</p>
<p>- Belgium has passed a bill banning the burqa, in effect in July 2010.</p>
<p>- France has banned the head scarf known as the hijab in public schools since 2004, and now seeks a full ban in all public areas.</p>
<p>- The Netherlands are also planning on following suit, which means that many other European countries are not far behind.</p>
<p>- In the South Pacific, an Australian politician is calling for a ban of the burqa</p>
<p>- More and more hijab-wearing women in the United States are being asked to remove their head coverings in the work place, since it violates companies&#8217; &#8220;look&#8221; policies and disrupts a &#8220;diverse and inclusive work environment.&#8221;</p>
<p>Many of these Western nations are not directly confronting Islam when addressing their discomfort with this Islamic wear, and are giving legal, multicultural, communication and even feminist reasons instead. But it is Islam itself that is creating cultural manifestations that are incongruous with our own culture, and the best remedy is to remove it and its influence from our lands. The Dutch politician Geert Wilders understands this. His underdog Freedom Party just won a resounding third place in the recent Dutch Parliamentary elections. Wilders is calling for a halt of Muslim immigration to the Netherlands, and aims to greatly reduce Islam&#8217;s influence in his country.</p>
<p>Samantha&#8217;s Abu Dhabi business associate effusively told her not to worry about the small cultural disagreement &#8211; bare-backed impropriety vs. burqad constraint. It was the understatement of the film. Consequently, though, her business meetings were canceled and her luxury hotel rooms no longer a gratuity. Abu Dhabi wanted nothing more to do with her and her friends. Muslims take conflict with their culture and religion, deliberate or ingenuous, very seriously. When will Westerners do the same?</p>
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		<title>Reclaiming Religion from the Left</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/kidist-paulos-asrat/reclaiming-religion-from-the-left/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=reclaiming-religion-from-the-left</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 19 Apr 2010 04:06:07 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Kidist Paulos Asrat]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[How political correctness is undermining the sacred.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/0.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-58373" title="0" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/0.jpg" alt="" width="384" height="288" /></a></p>
<p>Two television networks showcased Cecil B. DeMille’s epic 3 ½ hour <em>The Ten Commandments</em> this Easter: ABC and Canada’s CBC. The 1956 film had no need for our 21<sup>st</sup> century Computer Generated Imagery to convince us that the Red Sea was indeed parting, and that the “bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed” (Exodus 3:2). I wondered if the networks made this choice because there is really no superlative modern narrative of Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection? We have Mel Gibson’s <em>The Passion of Christ</em>, but its gore and blood is too hard to take at Easter. <em>The Last Temptation of Christ</em> by Martin Scorsese is too idiosyncratic, and would be something to watch and study at another time in the year. There are plenty of bland and insipid made-for-television versions of Christ’s story, many of which are programmed during Christmas, but for some reason they were not screened this Easter.</p>
<p>Perhaps these channels chose to commemorate Passover rather than Easter, which fell around similar dates this year. Or they’re simply following the ritual of politically correct inclusiveness. Even President Obama has made Passover Seder-at-the-White House a new tradition, hosting it for the second time as President. No other President before him has hosted the Seder at the White House. Obama’s Seder started on a whim, it seems. During his campaign trail, two young Jewish aides were celebrating their Seder in a basement of a Pittsburgh hotel, away from home and family, when Obama joined their festivities.</p>
<p>Obama’s interest in Jewish celebrations may indeed be a liberal’s outreach to cultural diversity &#8211; after all, the White House now hosts Ramadan dinners. But, it fits his narcissistic personality, conforming the Seder to any situation he may be experiencing at the time of the holiday. At the first, impromptu, Seder in Pennsylvania when his campaign was steeped in the Reverend Wright controversies and was “in the desert,” as another campaign aide put it, Obama proclaimed “Next year at the White House” as an addition to “Next Year in Jerusalem” commonly said at the end of the dinner. Perhaps, as suggests Judi Kantor from the <em>New York Times,</em> this year’s focus could have been one of the universalist themes that Obama is so fond of: to free Americans from the bondage of capitalist healthcare and to give them the abundance of Obamacare.</p>
<p>The Center for American Progress has another suggestion. In it’s <a href="http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2010/04/passover_immigration.html">article</a> on Obama’s Seder celebration this year, CAP cleverly used the Bible’s New Revised Standard Version to quote from Exodus 22:21: “You shall not wrong or oppress a resident alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt.” Almost all the other versions use “stranger”, “foreigner” or “sojourner” in lieu of “resident alien,” clearly portraying a temporary dweller and not the long-term inhabitant that “resident alien” implies. The CAP’s advice to President Obama is that he treat Mexican illegal aliens with the same compassion they interpret from the NRS, and pass comprehensive immigration reform. But when we parse the words, it is clear that illegal aliens are not the “resident aliens” implied by CAP, but emboldened Mexicans, foreigners and strangers, who wish to take advantage of the lax rules and borders that makes it possible for them to enter and reside in the country with impunity.</p>
<p>One has to marvel at the President’s Seder chutzpah after his dismal treatment of Prime Minister Netanyahu during his recent visit to the United States. It is one thing to celebrate an ethnic festival, but another to respect the significance that the celebrants give their rituals. The Israelites that Obama commemorates in these Seders were freed from bondage in Egypt, and their descendants later received their Promised Land. Yet, Obama seems intent on removing this sacred land from the Jews, and forcing on them new enemies who are probably far more ruthless than the Egyptians.</p>
<p>Modern Christians are in as much danger as modern Jews. Our liberal neighbors, with their feel-good, made-up Christianity are destroying our religion and our communities. Liberal church leaders support issues ranging from comprehensive immigration reform to same sex marriage. Atheists, who have nonetheless constructed their own religion, now have their prophets. In the April 2010 publication of <em>Vanity Fair, </em>atheist Christopher Hitchens performs an iconoclastic dismantling of the Biblical Ten Commandments and then gives us his own petty ten. Like the Old Testament’s Jews, we have to trust that God will free us from our current tribulations.</p>
<p>In fact, End Time preachers use the exodus as an allegory for our liberation. Our ultimate release is entry into God’s heavenly land. But the Passover and Easter stories are also our personal stories. The journey from bondage to freedom reflects our own mundane ordeals. And we experience death and resurrection with each sin and atonement. Celebrating these holidays each year gives us the hope that we too will inherit our particular Israel.</p>
<p>The liberal, politically correct television stations were right after all. The story of Moses, recounting a people’s freedom from slavery, and culminating with the abiding Ten Commandments, was an apt choice for these holidays. Would that our leaders understand and practice its significance. Not just as at religious celebrations, but throughout the year.</p>
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		<title>Truth and Fiction in Polanski’s The Ghost Writer</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/kidist-paulos-asrat/truth-and-fiction-in-polanski%e2%80%99s-the-ghost-writer/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=truth-and-fiction-in-polanski%25e2%2580%2599s-the-ghost-writer</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 01 Apr 2010 04:00:21 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Kidist Paulos Asrat]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[Forget the politics: the controversial filmmaker has made a beautifully rendered film.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/theghostwriter.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-56863" title="theghostwriter" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/theghostwriter.jpg" alt="" width="450" height="300" /></a></p>
<p>Roman Polanski’s new film <em>The Ghost Writer </em>permeates with America-as-a-danger-to-the-world cliché. This could be merely his knee-jerk reaction (or perhaps vendetta) towards a country that still has an arrest warrant hanging over his head. Perhaps Polanski wants us to follow Coleridge’s “a willing suspension of disbelief” when it comes to the villainous America of <em>The Ghost Writer</em>. But it’s preferable (and perfectly possible) to ignore the movie’s incriminations and take the story as some fictional international intrigue.</p>
<p><em>The Ghost Writer</em>’s British Prime Minister Adam Lang (with a stellar performance by Pierce Brosnan, who will nonetheless go down in history as a second-rate Bond) defends the “bad guys” and justifies racial profiling so ardently, one wonders if that is what Polanski himself believes. Therefore, it is not even certain if Polanski is bound to this anti-Americanism. And he coats <em>The Ghost Writer</em> with such crafty, dark humor, that he brings levity to the political plot. Still, this new film is a small gem of visual mastery, made by a director with a bad reputation, but with a very good eye.</p>
<p><em> </em></p>
<p>Prime Minister Lang oversees an American backed kidnapping of al Qaeda terrorists, whom he then orders to be waterboarded for information. The International Criminal Court deems this illegal, and he is to be brought to trial for war crimes. And only the Americans can save him. His connections with America lie deep and long, and especially with the CIA, which started his political career when a flamboyant Cambridge University student, making him, as the Prime Minister of Britain, one of the most powerful men in the world, supported by the most powerful country in the world.</p>
<p>Polanski exposes subtle personal dynamics within this grandiose political act. Lang is in the process of writing his memoirs. He has had to hire a new ghostwriter because his former one was found dead on the shores by Martha’s Vineyard, where Lang is staying during a lecture tour in America. Lang had a close, friendly relationship with this original ghostwriter. Yet, this friend’s death points towards Lang and his entourage as the suspects. And he later learns that this friend betrayed him by leaking political secrets. Lang is on Martha’s Vineyard in a secluded fort-like mansion with two women who, in their own ways, support and fortify him. There is his quick-witted but acerbic wife Ruth (played by English actress Olivia Williams), on whose advice he relies to make his political decisions. And his indispensible secretary Amelia Bly (<em>Sex and the City’s</em> Kim Cattrall convincingly transformed in business attire) is also his mistress. After Lang realizes that it is a political rival who exposed his illegal &#8211; as deemed by the ICC &#8211; activities, he views it more as the politician’s personal revenge for having been fired from Lang’s cabinet, rather than any principled political beliefs that he might hold.</p>
<p>Lang’s new ghostwriter (played by Ewan McGregor) meets Lang and his duo of wife/adviser and secretary/mistress for the first time on this island mansion. He introduces himself to Lang as, “I’m your ghost,” and is nameless for the rest of the film. This new ghostwriter remains an insipid character throughout, but his naïveté inadvertently helps him to unravel the mystery he’s been forced into. We, the audience, in the tradition of Polanski’s other mystery movie <em>Chinatown</em>, follow him along as he wanders through false signs and positive leads until he finally solves the puzzle.</p>
<p>The capricious ocean, whose shoreline Ruth often traverses in long solitary walks, and along which McGregor is caught during a potential storm, is reminiscent of Winslow Homer’s paintings of rough seas. It is appropriate that the original ghostwriter’s dead body turns up on these volatile shores, setting the stage for the mystery and turmoil that is to be part of McGregor’s stay on the island.</p>
<p><strong> </strong></p>
<p><strong> </strong></p>
<p><strong>Transparent Secrecy</strong></p>
<p><em> </em></p>
<p><em>The Ghost Writer</em> is a film about secrecy poised as transparency, about superficial facades and hidden truths. One of the earliest scenes of the film is a close-up of gray waves rolling over a dead body. The following scene is a long shot of sky, water and sandy beach for as far as the eye can see, with the dead body an amorphous mass. Did we really see what we just saw? Was the object a dead body? As we later connect the dots, we realize that this was the body of Lang’s ghostwriter. No one is willing to clarify whether the cause of death was suicide, drowning, or the unspeakable possibility, murder.</p>
<p><strong> </strong></p>
<p>Glass looms everywhere in <em>The Ghost Writer</em>. At the Rhinehart publishing house in London where McGregor has his contract finalized, walls have been demolished and replaced by floor-to-ceiling windows. Everything is visible from the outside. Even internally, sections are divided by unyielding transparency. There is no hiding from anything. But is there? Despite this open concept interior design, there are a few secured, sacred rooms. Naturally, one such is the CEO’s office. And that is where the contract negotiations take place, where McGregor expects frankness – after all, this is about a memoir – but secrecy and deceit seem to be the rule.</p>
<p>The modernist fort-like mansion on the island is the epitome of the architecture of glass. Whole walls have been transformed into windows, which are kept free from confining shutters or curtains. It’s as though the outside has been brought inside. But the freedom and transparency are illusionary, since the mansion is like a prison, with the ocean as its barricade. And throughout the building, elaborate measures of security guards, checkpoints, and hidden alarm systems are in place. Ruth describes it “like being exiled with Napoleon in St. Helena.”</p>
<p><strong> </strong></p>
<p><strong>False Frames</strong></p>
<p><strong> </strong></p>
<p>Polanski uses every possible opportunity for a frame: windows and doorways; television screens; computer monitors; paint canvasses; and the ultimate frame on which the movie is projected to us, the audience. These frames all enclose something supposedly concrete and truthful. Yet, all image-makers know how deceptive and unreliable the frame (and framing) can be.</p>
<p>The mansion’s giant windows are like huge movie screens projecting the expansive and exhilarating ocean. But this very ocean is what constrains the protagonists on the island. News stories and images on TV are carefully selected and edited for their meaning, such as the torture scenes that were “reenacted” to affect high drama. An old man framed behind a screen door, like a classic Paul Strand photograph of a rustic native, looks menacingly at McGregor sheltering on his porch from the rain. Yet, the old man is simply concerned about the dead body that was found on the shore. The many paintings that are scattered around the mansion are abstract expressionist, with elusive meanings and no decipherable images. Is Polanski also telling us to question what we see on the giant screen that projects his film to us?</p>
<p><strong> </strong></p>
<p><strong>Color Codes</strong></p>
<p>The film is infused with gray. Like the color-field artists who used color on whole canvases as an atmospheric device, Polanski covers his film canvas with an omnipresent gray. Gray is the ocean where death occurred. The giant gray concrete walls of the ghostwriter’s headquarters display gray abstract paintings. The cars that dangerously maneuver the island’s country roads under the gray sky are shiny gray. Bland gray clothes cover Ruth’s body. Gray swathes everything in a shroud.</p>
<p>This pervasive gray hides dangers and truths. It covers the expository sun; Ruth’s tempestuous personality; the dead body on the beach. A gray fog of rain and mist constantly envelops the island. The wailing foghorn of an ever-present lighthouse regularly warns of the dangers the impenetrable gray moisture may conceal.</p>
<p><strong> </strong></p>
<p><strong> </strong></p>
<p>Yet, Polanski taunts us with splashes (or slashes) of red throughout the film. Red flashes in and out of view on the steady, permanent gray.  In gray London, only the double-decker buses are bright and red. The somber gray fort is decorated with red canvases of abstract paintings. Amelia, who is always dressed in shades of gray (and black and white which blend into gray), holds a notebook with a daring red gash at the binder. All the news logos, including CNN’s and the BBC’s, are in red. Red curtains cover hotel windows, and a red glow from exterior neon lights frames McGregor’s face in the hotel room he escapes to from his pursuers. Ruth changes to red when her husband is away and she gets a chance to seduce her young guest, the ghostwriter. Even the lighthouse has red stripes. Red is danger; red is blood. We have been forewarned.</p>
<p><strong>Coded Language</strong></p>
<p><strong> </strong></p>
<p>Language is manipulated and unreliable everywhere in the film. When McGregor is first exposed to this project, his agent tells him, “Rumor has it that the manuscript is a crock of s***.” Throughout the mansion, Polanski hangs paintings and prints with either undecipherable words, or words with their meanings truncated from their context. What we do get to read in the art poster in Amelia’s office is negative, menacing words like “Scornful, Disdainful,” or “Love worth killing for.” Shady double entendres make up a good part of the jokes. A memoir intended to tell a straightforward written account of a life becomes rife with code. “All the words are there, but they’re in the wrong order,” says McGregor. When McGregor exposes the lies that Lang has told about his past, through documents that his dead ghostwriter left behind, Ruth retorts with, “Trust McAra (the original ghostwriter) to ruin a good story with too much research.” Truth is a liability, and should be evaded. Like McGregor, we have to selectively string together the words and language we are given to arrive at the truth. Lang, Ruth, Amelia, and ultimately Polanski are unwilling to help us.</p>
<p><strong>Authentic Sound</strong></p>
<p><strong> </strong></p>
<p>A score composed specifically for the film by Alexandre Desplat, a young but seasoned composer with more than a dozen film scores to his name, including <em>Julie and Julia</em> and <em>The Girl with a Pearl Earring</em>, holds this Rubik’s Cube of a movie together.<strong> </strong>Desplat’s composition for <em>The Ghost Writer</em> skillfully integrates sound with images by introducing themes, accentuating suspense, and exposing emotions as varied as romance and fear. He even uses humoristic sequences to support Polanski’s entry into black comedy. Desplat, who worked closely with the film footage, incorporates many ambient sounds like car horns and clanking iron into his score. One of the most important is the island lighthouse’s foghorn. Desplat uses this as his resounding motif, producing a melodic sequence that uses the rise and fall of the foghorn’s moans to accentuate the sense of danger.</p>
<p>It is hard not to compare Desplat with Alfred Hitchcock’s prized composer Bernard Herrmann. In <em>Vertigo</em>, Herrmann incorporates a foghorn’s call for danger in his score. Madeleine’s theme song in <em>Vertigo</em> is reciprocated in Desplat’s musical sketch of Lang’s unhappy wife in “The Truth about Ruth.” This composition, at times romantic, at times melancholic, shows us more of Ruth than she herself is willing. Lang also has his own theme song, “Lang’s Memoirs,” which is played at discrete moments when McGregor watches Lang expose his true nature. The soundtrack ironically seem more truthful and authentic than the images, as Hitchcock also frequently showed in his films.</p>
<p>Film time is often expanded with Desplat’s score. One strategy he uses is to overlay a full musical composition over the images, which are then edited to stretch time. Such is the case when McGregor goes to the island for the first time. Desplat’s piece “Travel to the Island” is played twice through, while intercutting shots of McGregor in various positions – looking at the sea, reading signs, sleeping, walking around on the ferry, riding in the taxi – are filmed in one long sequence. These lengthy musical and visual sequences force us to slow down to look for clues that might help us solve the puzzle. Music becomes our aide in deciphering the images.</p>
<p><strong>Final Exit</strong></p>
<p>Notwithstanding Hitchcock’s notorious murder scene in <em>Psycho</em>, most of his murders occurred off-screen. This is another undoubted Hitchcockian influence on Polanski’s <em>The Ghost Writer</em>. Polanski does show us the politically induced assassination of his main character, followed by the suicide of the assassin. But I’ve already argued that Polanski doesn’t take the anti-American politics that preceded this assassination seriously, thus he makes it a straightforward incident of gunshot then death. In addition, the blood that we see from the wounds is part of the symbolic red that Polanski has been weaving throughout his film. The deaths of the two ghostwriters are presented in a more mysterious and intriguing manner.</p>
<p>At the end, during his book launch at Rhinehart’s, McGregor foolishly informs Ruth that he’s figured out everything. McGregor then walks out of the party and into the street carrying the manuscript with him. He wanders into the middle of the street looking for a taxi, and eventually walks off-screen. A car travels at high speed towards McGregor as the music, in ¾ waltz tempo (dancing with death?), progresses in a crescendo. When the car is barely out of the frame, the music stops abruptly. The next scene is silent, with scattering papers blowing back into the frame. Polanski leaves this crucial last frame empty of its context and lets our imagination finish the story,</p>
<p>We follow Polanski’s imaginative processes with the clues he places throughout the film, from the canvases on walls, to the surrounding color schemes. One such clue is the coffee table art book he places in Lang’s office. The book is on visual artist Olafur Eliasson. “If [my] artworks make you think about what you see and how you see it, I think I&#8217;ve achieved something,” says Eliasson. This is surely Polanski’s wish for <em>The Ghost Writer</em>.</p>
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// ]]&gt;</script></p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/kidist-paulos-asrat/truth-and-fiction-in-polanski%e2%80%99s-the-ghost-writer/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>13</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>A Return to Country</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/kidist-paulos-asrat/a-return-to-country/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=a-return-to-country</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/kidist-paulos-asrat/a-return-to-country/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 16 Feb 2010 05:27:14 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Kidist Paulos Asrat]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[actor]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[aerial suspension]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[air]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[America]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[artist award]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Award]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Beautiful]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[chicken]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[country]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[country group]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[country legend]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[The showstopper country rendition of “America the Beautiful” by The Zac Brown Band sends a message across the U.S.A.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/zac-brown-band1.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-50412" title="zac-brown-band1" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/zac-brown-band1.jpg" alt="" width="450" height="327" /></a></p>
<p>The 2010 Grammy Awards had many country numbers, both in the performances and the awards. Country/pop singer Taylor Swift accepted the most important award for the night, Album of the Year, with youthful enthusiasm by exclaiming “We get to take this back to Nashville!” But the highlight of the evening was a perfect rendition of “America the Beautiful” by the country group The Zac Brown Band, followed by Zac Brown’s virtuoso guitar playing during the band’s country hit “Chicken Fried.” This same group unexpectedly received the Best New Artist award, another big win for country music.</p>
<p>Commentary on this country presence was minimal from the seasoned (and sour) music critics, who spent a good deal of time replaying Swift’s off-key performance with the folksy Stevie Nicks. This criticism was later retracted, since the problem was a technical glitch. In the eyes and ears of such critics, this year’s Grammy performances were the best ever, thanks to the nihilistic Lady Gaga and her dancing corpses, Beyonce marching on the stage with an aggressive army of soldier dancers, and Pink’s aerial suspension in a fetal position. But ignoring country just won’t make it go away.</p>
<p>Crossing over from the stage to the screen, country music is the uncontested star in <em>Crazy Heart</em>. In fact, Jeff Bridges, the lead actor in the film, refused to participate unless the music played a prominent role. Bridges is simply the musician conduit who plays aging country legend Bad (Otis) Blake, whose alcoholism catches up with him. Bad overcomes this addiction after a frightening incident, and the dignity with which he does so is unusual. Many characters in redemptive roles still hold on to residues of bitterness; Bad comes truly clean and good.</p>
<p>Current movies don’t even bother with redemption, and a life free from the disappointments that vice brings. George Clooney’s Ryan Bingham in <em>Up in the Air</em>, the competitor to <em>Crazy Heart</em>, is a lonely and disconnected man. Music is a muzak backdrop in <em>Up in the Air</em>, but the film’s soundtrack features “Going Home,” a surprisingly solid, country-like number. The titular song “Up in the Air”, which appears in the closing credits of the film, ultimately overrides any notion of home and place with its adolescent melody and lyrics, and Bingham remains floating where he started off.</p>
<p>When back on land, <em>Up in the Air</em> is full of bleak landscapes with overcast days and gray cities. Bingham travels back and forth to airports in drab rented cars for which he has as much attachment as the concrete highways he drives them on. The rootless life he has chosen puts him in contact with similarly displaced personalities, and even the woman he falls in love with has a false identity.</p>
<p>Bad, on the other hand, has a beloved pick-up truck that never fails him. It runs as good as new even after a serious accident, when he refurbishes its dulled rusty color with a vibrant red. His life may be filled with lonely roads and motel rooms, but they’re part of a landscape that rewards him with saturated sunsets and rugged mountains, and ultimately songs. This invigorating country surely gives him some of the energy to finally fight for his runaway life. It is no surprise that Bridges beat Clooney as Best Actor during the recent Golden Globe awards, and is the favorite to win at the more prestigious Oscars. Redemption still wins over nihilism.</p>
<p>But, it isn’t only in music and films that the essence of country is felt. People grounded in the earth are appearing everywhere. The Minute Men resort to civilian vigilance of their land, refusing to give it up without a fight. The grassroots Tea Party movements, mocked as fake Astroturfs by their detractors, insist on keeping their country authentic. Massachusetts residents voted for a senator belittled for his own down-to-earth pick-up truck, who promised to preserve some of the real America. Even Sarah Palin is on the ticket to restore love for country and land.</p>
<p>Country’s entry into more mainstream slots shows that ordinary Americans are rejecting the impersonal and uninspiring. They are searching for concrete and elevating examples of the world around them. Words, images and ideas reflecting this are taking precedence. It is not clear if this will last, but the showstopper country rendition of “America the Beautiful” by The Zac Brown Band at the Grammys gives room for optimism. Zac Brown sings of a real place in his other Grammy performance “Chicken Fried”: “And my house it’s not much to talk about/ But it’s filled with love that’s grown in southern ground.” And Bad (now Otis) finally returns to his hometown bar in the final scenes of <em>Crazy Herat</em>, where he performs in sober serenity on a simple stage with his guitar. He greets his scattered audience with, ”So glad to be home.”</p>
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		<title>A Welfare Tale &#8211; by Kidist Paulos Asrat</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/kidist-paulos-asrat/a-welfare-tale-by-kidist-paulos-asrat/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=a-welfare-tale-by-kidist-paulos-asrat</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/kidist-paulos-asrat/a-welfare-tale-by-kidist-paulos-asrat/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 13 Jan 2010 05:06:09 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Kidist Paulos Asrat]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[A new film offers a disappointing portrayal of black single mothers caught in welfare’s grip. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-45869" title="425_precious_sidibe_gabourey_lc_102609" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/425_precious_sidibe_gabourey_lc_102609.jpg" alt="425_precious_sidibe_gabourey_lc_102609" width="425" height="315" /></p>
<p>Precious, the namesake of the movie <em><a href="http://mail.google.com/mail/goog_1263310929632">Precious:</a></em><a href="http://mail.google.com/mail/goog_1263310929632"> </a><em><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0929632/">Based on the Novel by Sapphire</a> </em>and acted by first-time actress <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabourey_Sidibe">Gabourey Sidibe</a>, is a morbidly obese black teenager who attends school so she can keep receiving welfare checks. Precious leads a hard life. She endures her mother’s daily physical and mental torments. Raped by her father, she has two children, one born with Down syndrome, and another to which she gives birth near the end of the film. Despite her bleak back-story, however, Precious is not a very sympathetic character, as hard to like as the movie itself.</p>
<p>The director of “Precious,” Lee Daniels (whose production company, Lee Daniels Entertainment, has Monster’s Ball and Halle Berry’s Oscar win to its credit), adapted his film from black writer <a href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=120176695">Sapphire’s novel <em>Push</em></a>. Sapphire culled her story from the girls she used to teach literacy in Harlem and the Bronx in the 1980s. Daniels’s direction wields flickers of sullen, angry expressions out of Gabourey’s ballooning face, but he cannot get us to entirely sympathize with her. This is partly due to Gabourey’s unimpressive acting, which shows little emotion or variation. Daniels’s sophomoric camera techniques also detract from his character by unsuccessfully vacillating between the jumpy cameras of the French New Wave, oblique (Dutch) angles, and super-saturated fantasy sequences. The only one that works is the cinema verité documentary style, where the unforgiving camera gives the obese Precious a looming, lethargic presence.</p>
<p>Despite her colossal size, Precious has little to say and less to give. Even her role as mother has been taken over by her grandmother, who takes care of her Down syndrome daughter. In her placid way, Precious is not a very pleasant character. She steals food from a restaurant. She knocks around a young neighbor who only wants her friendship. We realize by the end of the film that she has an unforgiving spirit.</p>
<p>Still, we are supposed to excuse these discrepancies since we’re privy to Precious’s terrible home life. Instead, the viewer wonders why the relatively clever Precious – who can trick shopkeepers and social workers, and who can lash out strongly and violently when a classmate insults her – can’t withstand her smaller, albeit much meaner, mother Mary (played with a seething angry gusto by the one-name comedian Mo’Nique)? A strange dependency must lurk behind that terrible relationship.</p>
<p>And so it does. Their lives revolve around maintaining their welfare checks. Precious does this by remaining in school, while Mary stays home and makes sure that Precious doesn’t falter. The checks remain unaffected when Precious gets expelled from her school because of her pregnancy, since she soon enters an “alternative” school, Each One Teach One (EOTO). But Precious’s social worker, Miss Weiss, played by an exaggeratedly plain Mariah Carey (Daniels apparently feels that Carey has to efface her normal glamorous persona in order to act), starts pestering Precious for information about her home life and her children’s father, which Precious finally discloses. When Precious returns home after a hiatus in the hospital to give birth to her new infant, Mary throws baby and mother out in a wild rage, claiming that their welfare checks were cut down because Precious revealed their family secrets.</p>
<p>Precious’s teacher at EOTO, Miss Rain (this time, Daniels’s inconsistent approach to make-up glamorizes relative newcomer Paula Patton), quickly finds a halfway house for her and her infant. Eventually, Mary wants to reconcile with her daughter, and Miss Weiss sets up a meeting. At the encounter, Mary performs one of the most horrific and self-pitying confessionals ever seen on film to justify her monstrous treatment of Precious and her grandchildren. Rather than empathize with her, Precious simply picks up her children and leaves the office, as though Mary’s brutal confession finally gives her license to start her life afresh.</p>
<p>Precious leaves her traumatic past behind with no demonstrable skills. She has a knack for numbers, but in EOTO, the incredulously illiterate Precious learns to write by inputting her daily thoughts in her journal as a form of “self-expression.” But what happens once this self-expression fails to materialize reliable paychecks? The bottomless coffers of subsidies will have to bear the cost of her housing, her medical bills (she is HIV positive), her counselling, her food, and endless training by organizations like EOTO to make her employable.</p>
<p>The soul-destroying welfare world of black single mothers has now become worthy of black artists. Yet, Daniels is ambivalent about its treatment. He gives Precious enough freedom to make her own decisions, but he never lets her out of the system. He wants Precious both as victor and as victim. Like him, countless staff in government-subsidised and welfare agencies constantly push and pull at the likes of Precious. Ultimately, they cater to their own fulfillment – whether financial, ideological, or political – rather than give their wards an honest helping hand.</p>
<p>At one time, black Americans had the edifying art of Negro spirituals, infused with religion, with which to escape the trappings of undignified lives. Now they have mediocre films and stories that moralize, but fail to inspire. If Daniels had let Mary sing “Motherless Child,” instead of performing her grotesque confessional, the magnificent spiritual would have transcended her grievance.</p>
<p>The spiritual’s prescription is to “Git down on [your] knees and pray” to prevent this existential loneliness from hardening into self-destructive cruelty. Beseeching to a higher being allows the possibility for redemption by forsaking the inequities and traps laid out by the likes of Misses Weiss and Rain, and their endless stream of affiliated agencies. In Daniels’s film, all we get is the false liberation of a trapped young girl, who will very likely repeat some of the same transgressions as her mother.<span style="color: fuchsia;" lang="EN-CA"><span style="font-size: small; font-family: Times New Roman;"> </span></span></p>
<p><em>Kidist Paulos Asrat has written on film, art and culture for</em> <a href="http://www.americanthinker.com/kidist_paulos_asrat/">American Thinker</a> <em>and </em><a href="http://www.chronwatch-america.com/authors/358/Kidist-Paulos-Asrat">ChronWatch</a><em>. She has a background in film and photography.</em></p>
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