Bradley Manning Tells His Story in Leaked Court Recording

Democracy Now! is reporting on a leaked court recording of Private Bradley Manning speaking at his pretrial hearing last month. It is the first time Manning has been heard publicly since he was arrested three years ago for leaking classified documents to WikiLeaks, including the "Collateral Murder" video of US soldiers in Baghdad firing on civillians from an apache helicopter (viewable below).

This is a fascinating opportunity to hear from the man whose actions sparked the controversy that put WikiLeaks on the map. It's also a reminder that Manning's legal battle is still ongoing and that his guilt is yet to be determined, despite President Obama's problematic assertion in 2011 that Manning "broke the law." In fact Manning only just recently pled guilty to the charges against him for leaking classified materials to WikiLeaks, and notably continues to deny charges including "aiding the enemy."

Manning's battle continues to be politically and ethically charged, inspired by horror at the US Military's "bloodlust" in Iraq and Afghanistan. Democracy Now!'s transcript demonstrates Manning's belief that greater public knowledge would lead to more informed political discourse and foreign policy:

I believe that if the general public, especially the American public, had access to the information contained within the CIDNE-I and CIDNE-A tables, this could spark a domestic debate on the role of the military and our foreign policy in general, as well as it related to Iraq and Afghanistan. 

I also believed the detailed analysis of the data over a long period of time by different sectors of society might cause society to reevaluate the need or even the desire to engage in counterterrorism and counterinsurgency operations that ignore the debate—that ignore the complex dynamics of the people living in the effected environment every day.

It's hard to believe this is the first time the public has heard directly from Manning since his arrest, but then it must be difficult to release statements when you're in custody. To this day Manning remains confined at Fort Leavenworth, KS, where he continues his three year wait for a trial.

Shameful

Media reporting on new Pope for 20 straight hours while helicopters & riot gear are deployed on the streets of New York. #BrooklynProtest
— Anonymous (@DBCOOPA) March 14, 2013

MovieBob on Tropes vs Women in Video Games

I've spent more hours than I care to admit over the last few days fighting with people on reddit about the Tropes vs Women in Video Games series. I know, I know, it's fighting on the Internet (and reddit specifically) but I just couldn't help myself after reading so many arguments that a) Anita Sarkeesian thinks video games are evil, b) Sarkeesian is a shitty journalist and that's what the backlash against her was about, c) it doesn't matter that the damsel in distress trope reduces women to objects because it's just a simple storytelling device, or d) in fact the trope also objectifies the male hero figure so lets talk about that.

Ugh!

Anyway, after putting so much energy into fighting about shitty responses to Tropes vs Women in Video Games, the prospect of a video on the subject by MovieBob filled me with palpable fear. I really, really like MovieBob. I think he's a great, witty commenter who puts out a prolific amount of amazing content. I do not agree with all of his opinions, both on culture and politics, but generally I enjoy his perspective and look forward to his videos. However, when I saw that he had put out a ten minute long video on Tropes vs Women I was nervous. A few days of fighting about it on reddit had more or les conditioned me to assume that any video on the subject would be frustrating and infuriating, and I wasn't sure if I could take that from someone I admire as much as MovieBob.

Thankfully, my gut reaction was completely misguided. It's like I forgot who MovieBob is, as he's repeatedly demonstrated that he has a solid understanding of gender politics. His video is a great addition to the debate going on right now, and more or less just calls out all the trolls who have been/still are freaking out over this. It's a solid video that does a better job at identifying exactly what Anita Sarkeesian is doing with her videos than anything else I've seen lately. Check it out, enjoy, and if you end up back on his The Game Overthinker website avoid checking out the comments, because man are they ever depressing.

 

Repost: The Good, Racist People

Last month Forest Whitaker was falsely accused of shoplifting and frisked in a New York deli down the street from Columbia University. Ta-Nehisi Coates from The Atlantic has weighed in on the event by identifying the larger problem behind it in his fantastic piece, "The Good, Racist People." I don't want to summarize it for you, it's a concise, powerful piece that you should go read now. That said, I do want to highlight this particular passage for elegantly identifying (one of) the issue(s) at play here:

In modern America we believe racism to be the property of the uniquely villainous and morally deformed, the ideology of trolls, gorgons and orcs. We believe this even when we are actually being racist ... The idea that racism lives in the heart of particularly evil individuals, as opposed to the heart of a democratic society, is reinforcing to anyone who might, from time to time, find their tongue sprinting ahead of their discretion.

As Coates points out, this distinction between being racist and being a good person makes racism forgivable. Good people can't be racist, and so when these people do racist things they are forgiven in some other way (they were just doing their job, they were just trying to protect their family, they were reacting poorly to a crowd, etc.) because, again, they're good people and so they can't be racist. The net outcome of this type of doublethink is that society refuses to examine how racism continues to exist today. Where "good people" are guilty of it they are forgiven/excused because their goodness negates the possibility of them being either evil or racist. When people can't be forgiven for it, well, anyone heard from Kramer lately?

I'm reminded of the fantastic ill doctrine video on "How to Tell People They Sound Racist" (below), which provided a handy guide for telling people how to examine when they sounded racist. That video drew the distinction between the "what they did" conversation and the "what they are" conversation. As an informational guide, the video gave advice for how to have a conversation with people about their statements and beliefs without making them feel accused of being racist (which tends to end a discussion on bad terms). The point was to provide a methodology for having productive discussions of race (and racism) while being mindful of the possibility that people involved in such discussions might say things inspired by underlying prejudices without them being aware of it.

Coates point is similar in how he wants to have a conversation about racism in contemporary society that doesn't end the moment someone gets called out for their prejudices. The tension underpinning both their arguments is precisely this linking of racism and evil that works to cease productive discussion and forgive transgressions. We freeze the moment someone drops a 'hard R' and immediately turn to the defensive, "Well I'm a good person and therefore not a racist and therefore right" mentality. At best this isn't helping and at worst it's ignoring the problem in such a way as to allow it to continue and proliferate in an act of, you guessed it, racism. Coates goes on to allude to how this attitude towards racism in society "haunts black people with a kind of invisible violence." There's a real and measurable cost of this notion that racism exists only in the worst people of the world or in times gone by, and until we can do away with that idea and confront the continued prejudices alive in society today we will continue to live in an unequal and hostile community.

(Coates piece via @JAWalker, ill doctrine video via a good friend a long time ago)
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'Reposts' are inspired by other articles or blog posts around the Internet. They are used here with accreditation as the basis for short bursts of Max's interests.

Zero Dark Thirty

My first thought coming out of Zero Dark Thirty was “Kathryn Bigelow is not a subtle filmmaker.” The film ends with a close-up of star Jessica Chastain, just moments after successfully completing her decade-long hunt for Osama bin Laden (spoilers?). In this final shot she breaks down in tears as a nameless military pilot asks her “Where do you want to go?”

The last line felt like a proverbial hammer, tactlessly beating the film’s message into me so that I didn’t miss the point. “Clearly this movie is undermining the hunt for bin Laden,” I thought, “and with this final bit of dialogue it literally begs the question ‘Was the victory worth it?’” In finding the dreaded terrorist the American characters lowered themselves to disturbing moral lows, and with this final line Bigelow was asking the audience, “What now? What does one do with the victory that cost them so much?”      

However, in talking to other viewers and reading reviews (like that of the infamously contrarian Armond White) I realized how politically motivated my reading was. Far from the biting critique I saw the film to be, I heard voices extolling the film’s detailed account of all the effort involved in the search for bin Laden. Intelligent people argued with me about whether the hunt was necessary, and explained all the good done in the world by the example made of bin Laden. Clearly I had missed something if people with eyes could get that kind of message out of Zero Dark Thirty, and so I struggled to find my stance on the film.

Zero Dark Thirty opens with a harrowing presentation of the September 11 attacks, as 9-1-1 call recordings are played over a black screen. The audience is not shown a single moment of the historic day, but we’re allowed to listen to it and remember the horror and confusion. It’s an effective, clever, and respectful way to convey the emotion and memory of 9/11, and it starts the movie off on a high note.

However, other depictions of attacks later in the film begin to problematize the opening’s artfulness. Although 9/11 was beyond portrayal, Zero Dark Thirty has no problem showing us a shooting in Saudi Arabia, or the bombing of a Marriot in Islamabad from 2008. There’s also a depiction of the London bus bombing from 2005, though the actual explosion is respectfully cheaply hidden behind a bush at the last moment.

The contrast between the depictions of 9/11 and every other instance of terrorism in Zero Dark Thirty is palpable and troubling. Further, the film’s journalistic approach to history makes the artful opening scene seem increasingly out of place as the movie proceeds. Why the special treatment for 9/11? What makes that attack stand out among the rest? Is it a difference of importance or scope? Do the victims of that attack feel pain more acutely than those of the others? Is the movie saying that 9/11 is more important because it happened to America(ns)?

While it might be easy to write off Zero Dark Thirty with a politicized answering of these kinds of questions (indeed, I almost did), to do so would sell it short. There’s no overtly pro-American agenda at work here, as any attempt to insert one would be undercut by elements like the depiction of American soldiers shooting down parents in front of their children. So why the difference in treatment between 9/11 and other attacks?

This question is (perhaps frustratingly but also brilliantly) best answered with another question: whose perspective is the film portraying? The answer is Americans, but not for the reasons you might think. Zero Dark Thirty is not a celebratory film, but nevertheless it tells its story from a distinctly American perspective.

This point is underscored by the film’s use of its protagonist and narrative focal point, Chastain’s enigmatic “Maya.” Although it remains unclear whether she represents an amalgam of real CIA agents or one specific person, by all accounts her character is given an intentionally vague background so as to protect the identities of the people who brought down bin Laden. However, the film takes advantage of this necessary lack of characterization by using Maya’s indistinctiveness as a narrative conceit. All protective purposes aside, Maya’s lack of definition is expertly used as a signal of both Zero Dark Thirty’s audience and its subject: Maya is specifically characterized to represent any — and thereby all — Americans as the hunters of Osama bin Laden and those who suffer its tolls upon them.

What do we know of Maya? That she's smart, relentless, and increasingly dedicated to the cause; that she has nothing in her life besides her job, no social life or family to speak of; that she lost something in 9/11 attacks; that she may or may not feel that she’s been spiritually chosen for her purpose. All of these qualities make her simultaneously anonymous and analogous to huge swathes of Americans. Perhaps most tellingly, we learn late in the movie that she was chosen for her job right out of high school and has, in her own words, never done anything else. Maya’s entire existence (barring her formative years) is contained within Zero Dark Thirty: we see everything she’s ever done, and so in a very real sense she is the hunt for Osama bin Laden, or at least America’s experience of it. Through her, the movie is both aimed at and about America and its hunt for bin Laden.

With this direction in mind, consider Zero Dark Thirty’s matter-of-fact portrayal of the decade-long manhunt. This approach is a far cry from “Mission Accomplished”-type political announcements and dancing-in-the-streets-in-font-of-the-White-House reverie that the history has inspired in the past. Rather this is a film that depicts the bare facts almost entirely without comment. It forces its audience to watch Americans waterboard, beat, confine, and kill in the course of that country's search a single old man.

Finally, in an incredible climactic sequence, Zero Dark Thirty presents a moment-by-moment account of the raid on bin Laden’s compound. The scene is one of the only times in the entire film when Maya is not the central focus, as the raid instead plays out from the perspective of the Navy Seals team that carried it out. Although the depiction remains journalistically faithful to the facts, it’s notable that at no point does the perspective shift to that of the residents of the compound, for whom the event must have seemed more horrific than action-oriented. This inflection is yet one more nod to the fact that Zero Dark Thirty presents history to the audience from an American perspective, and stays true to that sense of the facts at all times.

The closing shot of Maya crying against the hanging question, “Where do you want to go?” forces the audience to consider what they feel about everything they’ve just seen. The film presents its story as it was lived and perceived by America, and asks the audience as witness: was it worth it? Where does one go now/from here?

How you answer that question will be informed by your politics, and indeed my initial response to the film was dominated by mine. I still think that the notion that bin Laden’s assassination was a significant victory for America demonstrates an adolescent ignorance that verges on offensively arrogant, but then that statement is political rather than critical of Zero Dark Thirty. A contrary perspective could equally make the same assertion about my take on the film, and that is precisely its brilliance: Zero Dark Thirty uses a largely (but, again, notably not completely) journalistic approach to America's hunt for Osama bin Laden to craft a narrative that demands critical reflection on politics and history but doesn’t provide any answers. The way the question is posed might be a little clumsy, but the range of possible answers necessitates its asking. It’s quintessentially the opposite of the Spielberg-ian, beat-you-over-the-head-with-meaning approach to filmmaking that I initially perceived.

Kathryn Bigelow is not an overly subtle filmmaker, but perhaps she’s just subtle enough. Brave enough to have a voice (because make no mistake: an uncelebratory American take on the killing of bin Laden this soon after the fact is a distinct voice) but subtle enough to leave room for others. The film is a nuanced portrayal of history that accords to a distinct perception of it without asserting that perspective as the end of the conversation. It in fact specifically calls for debate as to whether that depiction is justified on its face, not to mention once other perspectives are considered. In that sense, Zero Dark Thirty is a true product of its time: a film that evidences contemporary political debate without purporting to the benefit of hindsight.

Anonymous Petition to get DDoS Reclassified as Lawful Protest

Recently, the hacker collective/activist group/thing known as Anonymous launched a petition on the White House's We The People website to have distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) reclassified as a lawful form of protest. The petition analogizes between DDoS and the occupy movement, arguing that

Instead of a group of people standing outside a building to occupy the area, they are having their computer occupy a website to slow (or deny) service of that particular website for a short time.

Moreover, the petition calls for anyone who has been jailed for a DDoS to be immediately released and have their "record" cleared.

While interesting and thought-provoking, my gut reaction is that the analogy the petition calls for is fundamentally untenable. There are simply too many differences between the contexts for the comparison to work, and it relies on an unsophisticated understanding of the Internet in order to succeed.

To say that one is "occupying" a website by visiting it and/or refreshing the page from a browser is to ignore the actual ways in which the Internet operates. There was a time when legal/political minds looked at the Internet like a space (as it's often conceived in fiction or theory), but such views have long since been replaced by more literal appreciations of the Internet as a series of connections between users and data. As a result, the notion that one is "occupying" a web page by visiting it is not really accurate since you don't go anywhere on the Internet so much as you request and are sent data from elsewhere.

However, even if such a spatial conception of the Internet succeeded, there are (good) reasons why the comparison is still unjustifiable. Forgive me if I reveal my lack of technological sophistication with this explanation, but as I understand it DDoS attacks/protests/whatever-you-want-to-call-them are regularly orchestrated using various technological multiplication methods whereby targeted servers are hit with more requests than there are participating individuals. This can happen if those involved use rented/owned servers, create botnets, use something called DC++, or whatever, the point is that the usual approach is to create more requests to a server than there are actual people making the requests. This is important because in order for DDoS to succeed it has to overwhelm the receiving server with requests such that it can't fulfill them all and ends up shutting down/failing. In order to overcome the kinds of servers typically employed by the types of sophisticated websites often targeted (i.e. those of VISA, Amazon, or PayPal), DDoS necessarily requires many more requests than there are people involved.

To use the physical occupation metaphor, in order to bring the targeted space (website) to a halt there need to be an unbelievably large number of people (server requests) involved, to the point where access/movement becomes impossible. Imagine Grand Central Terminal in New York: in order for an occupy movement to shut that place down you'd need a huge number of protesters to fill the entire hall so that no one could effectively use the space. In the context of the Internet, the kinds of halls being "occupied" are exponentially larger and so they require many more "people." So many people that it's -- practically speaking -- impossible to succeed without using technology to simulate the existence of many more people than are actually involved. Although you could theoretically go out and hire a huge number of people to occupy a space with you, limiting factors like money, timing, and peoples' availability would necessarily limit your ability to essentially buy an occupy movement.

You'd need a whole lot of people to bring this place to a halt

These differences/reasons why the metaphor isn't realistic aside, the comparison is interesting from an intellectual standpoint. For one thing I like the comparison between visiting a web page and visiting a physical space, as using the Internet does feel like travelling to different (notably privately-owned) places from the comfort of your computer screen. But I just don't see it flying in a legal or political sense since the idea of the Internet as a place is kind of antiquated, and again it ignores the reality of how the Internet works. In terms of redefining DDoS as a form of protest, while I like the notion in terms of how it re-situates power back into the hands of Internet users I can also see how the technological methods described above make it potentially dangerous: DDoS can/must be carried out by a small number of people in such a way that it mimics the existence of a large number of people. This necessarily limits our ability to look at it as a form of politicized speech, and so while I believe that DDoS probably is a form of protest in its most widely publicized instances I don't think we can effectively redefine it as such.

All that said, the idea is interesting in how it reflects back on the actual occupy movement on the theoretical level. When we "visit" a website we don't actually travel to it so much as make a request for it to give us its information, and so how does this exchange compare to physically occupying a privately-owned space? Does going to Grand Central Terminal constitute more than just a physical act but also a request for information from that place? Given the assumptions underlying most advertising and the related fact that we live in a capitalist society, I'm inclined to believe that there is some truth to the comparison: when we go somewhere like Grand Central Terminal we are inundated with information about the services offered there and by its advertisers, which is not unlike what happens when you the place's website. I say this all to draw out the fact that Anonymous' comparison, while perhaps not effective or practical for the aforementioned reasons, may in fact be illustrative in changing our perceptions about how we interact with physical spaces. While "visiting" a website might not be analogous to occupying a physical space, there's more going on when you go to privately owned locations than merely being in that place. DDoS might not be more appropriately conceived of as a form of protest, but maybe the physical occupation of space needs to be reconceptualized in order to realize the kinds of relationships thereby established.

What say you, Internet?

I am dumbstruck. Today's events have left me harrowed. I'm caught somewhere between the numb sense of inevitability I felt upon first hearing the tragic news and the tears that well up each time someone mentions the Christmas presents that will go unclaimed after today. On the one hand I want to fight back against all the multitude of factors that led to the day's events, but on the other I feel paralyzed by the sheer magnitude of what has happened in Connecticut.

It's simply too much for me to put into words that feel appropriate right now. Even these ones feel contrived and insensitive as it is. But it also feels wrong to let this pass without a word for the futre.

David Frum's excellent piece on The Daily Beast says what I think needs to be said about as succinctly as possible:

A permissive gun regime is not the only reason that the United States suffers so many atrocities like the one in Connecticut. An inadequate mental health system is surely at least as important a part of the answer, as are half a dozen other factors arising from some of the deepest wellsprings of American culture.

Nor can anybody promise that more rational gun laws would prevent each and every mass murder in this country. Gun killings do occur even in countries that restrict guns with maximum severity.

But we can say that if the United States worked harder to keep guns out of the hands of dangerous people, there would be many, many fewer atrocities like the one in Connecticut.

And I'll say: I'll accept no lectures about "sensitivity" on days of tragedy like today from people who work the other 364 days of the year against any attempt to prevent such tragedies.

Rob Ford Granted Stay of Decision

In a completely unsurprising turn of events, Rob Ford was granted a stay of last week's decision removing him from office. This doesn't mean much besides the fact that all the talk of "Goodbye Rob Ford!" was premature at the very least. It also means that the appeal, which sounds like it'll be heard in January, will be very interesting indeed. I still think Ford's best shot is to challenge Justice Hackland's assessment of his section 4(k) defence under the Municipal Conflict of Interest Act, but we'll see what happens. I would have bet on Ford winning at trial, but after how things went down at trial... It's hard to say how this will turn out.

Repost: Why are women scared to call themselves feminists?

Salon recently ran an article asking "Why are women scared to call themselves feminists?" If you'd asked me a few years ago whether I thought "Why are women afraid to identify as feminists?" was an important conversation to have, I would have called you crazy. Completely immersed in university culture, most of the people I associated with were openly (and actively) feminists. It got to the point where I mentally resituated feminism to the default politics I assumed in people. After all, who doesn't believe in female equality? If someone legitimately didn't then I would find that surprising and repugnant, and that became something I actively did not expect in people.

But things don't stay the way they are in undergrad. A few years out, I've had more conversations than I care to recall that pretty much go something like this:
Them: "No, I'm not a feminist."
Me: "Oh? Why not? Do you believe in gender equality?"
Them: "Yes, of cours, but feminism just... I don't know, it just seems like something for lesbians."
Me: ...

Yep. I shit you not, that's a conversation I've been a part of. More than once. I'm now at the point where, upon seeing Salon's headline pop up on my newsfeed, I immediately thought, "That is a damn good message that more people should be exposed to!" Hence this repost.

It's not that people don't believe in equality for women, generally I've found that most people still believe in that (or at least claim to). What I've found startling in recent years is the sheer number of people I've met, men and women alike, who claim not to be feminists as though that identifier is a dirty word. I've had numerous conversations with people who actively don't want to be associated with feminism because they see it as some sort of radical ideology. Sure, there are radical feminists, just like there are radical anythings. Radical liberals, radical atheists, radical [insert noun]. That doesn't mean that the underlying assumption of feminism is inherently associated with such radicalism. More than that, I still believe it should be shocking for someone in this day and age to say they are not a feminist given that doing so equates to not believing in gender equality. Is that really a message that is still mainstream acceptable in any way?

I think the major issue is that people don't understand the difference between feminism and the abstract notion of radical politics, and that's a very serious problem. I'm certain there are very good arguments that such misunderstandings are the result of misogynist attempts to undermine the goals of feminism, and while I don't think it's my place to make those arguments, I will say that if people (women or men) in positions of power continue to say that they are not feminists then that is straight up evidence of and a victory for the patriarchy. It literally means you don't believe in gender equality, and when people say it what I think they're actually trying to convey is that they want to be successful so they don't want to be associated with a political ideology that has been cast as radical and therefore repugnant. Is gender equality a radical notion? That's for you to decide, me I'm a feminist so I'll let you guess what I think.

I'll leave you with what I think is the best paragraph from the article, it really hits the nail on the head:

Let me just point out that if you believe in the strength of women, Ms. Perry, or their equality, Ms. Mayer, you’re soaking in feminism. If you’re like Ms. Bruni-Sarkozy and want to explain that “I imagine I am if feminism means claiming one’s freedom. But I am not if it means being committed in an active way to the fight that some women are still leading today I admire their bravery a lot, but I have chosen to commit myself elsewhere,” you should know that “the fight” is just being an autonomous person in the world. And if you’re like Ms. Fenton and think feminism means being treated like “anyone else,” remember that there aren’t a whole lot of “anyone else” options out there. You’re basically admitting that masculinity is the norm and that all we can do is aspire toward some kind of equitable footing in a man’s world. This sounds like a job for … feminism!

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'Reposts' are inspired by other articles or blog posts around the Internet. They are used here with accreditation as the basis for short bursts of Max's interests.

Reality Check: The Darker Sides of Skyfall

Spoiler Warning: This post contains significant spoilers for Skyfall. Please do yourself a favour and see the movie before you read any further to avoid being spoiled.

It's been a little while since my glowing review of Skyfall and I've had a bit more time to ruminate on the film. I stand by my claims that it's among the best Bond movies ever made as well as one of the best films of 2012. In fact I'd go so far as to say it's the most beautifully shot film of 2012 and worthy of praise on "Best Cinematography" lists for years to come. Roger Deakins truly outdid himself with Skyfall and movie lovers would do well to see it strictly for the camera work in the third act, with the rest of the legitimately awesome aspects of the film serving as mere silver-lining.

However, all that said, I do want to add to my review by recognizing some of Skyfall's flaws. None of these were issues that escaped me when I wrote my review, but in trying to avoid spoilers I necessarily had to eschew delving into many of them. Also I wanted that piece to convey my overall sense of satisfaction with the film, and nitpicking it to death wouldn't have helped me do so. Finally, the most damning critique I'm going to level against Skyfall was something that simply took some gestation time to really come together. It began with a sense of unease as the final scene of the film played out, and has evolved to a serious concern that exists at odds with my overall affection for the film.

I'm going to start with my more mundane criticisms of Skyfall, as I feel there are a lot of problems with the movie that don't really detract from what it's trying to do. For one thing the third act -- which I have repeatedly praised -- feels more than a little out of place. It completely disrupts the flow of the movie and more or less shelves a good proportion of the plot, never to be heard from again. What happened with the chaos Javier Bardem had unleashed on western covert operatives, and specifically the British government? Are we to believe that his plan included letting MI6 capture all of his actual computer records/servers such that he had no additional copies of the list of undercover agent identities? All of that is secondary to Skyfall's focus on thematic structure, but the fact that the film left those holes open speaks ill of its script. It feels like the movie expects us to forgive it for this, either because it's a James Bond movie or because the third act so effectively forefronts the themes as plot, and while all that's true it still feels like the whole thing could have been tightened up a bit.

Specifically focusing on the third act, it more than just disrupts the plot, rather it's a whole other freakin' movie. Where everything before they head to Scotland is distinctly Bond, the sequence at Skyfall feels like the bastard child of Home Alone and the last scene in Unforgiven played in reverse. It's just plain weird to try to watch James Bond make lightbulb-bombs and load shotgun shells into the floorboards, but that doesn't mean it isn't awesome all the while. I absolutely loved the whole sequence; one friend put it perfectly when they said "This is what happens when you let Sam Mendes make a Bond movie," and it's true that everything in Scotland feel like something straight out of Road to Perdition. It's awesome but it felt distinctly out of place in the context of everything that precedes it. Obviously I wasn't bothered, but I think it's a legitimate concern to wish they had tightened up the script to feel more cohesive and consistent. Again this is an issue with Skyfall's script as opposed to its execution, and I feel like the way the whole movie played out on screen more than made up for such deficiencies.

On the other side of that spectrum we have Albert Finney's character, who stands out like a sore thumb in terms of Skyfall's execution. If that old scotsman wasn't meant to be played by Sean Connery then I have no business writing film criticism. Even during my first viewing I could just feel that the character was a stand-in for Connery as the physical embodiment of the old Bond, and that idea is frankly awesome. If the casting had worked out it would have made the whole Skyfall sequence feel so perfect and thematically in tune, although I think they did a damn good job of it despite the obvious lack of the original James Bond. Part of me did wish they'd found a way to handle it better though, at the very least to make up for the casting failure. I never, never want to see Roger Moore again (on film or otherwise) but even he could have made the character work better. As it was Finney was totally competent but uncomfortably out of place in a role that he was clearly not meant to play.

Moving away from criticisms of the third act, I've heard a lot of comparisons between Skyfall and the Dark Knight. I can see why people would compare the two as the plot similarities are undeniable. Bardem's villain also has extremely similar objectives, and on a superficial level he even has a twisted Joker-smile of sorts. In fact I was almost taken out of the movie when I realized that the big twist in Bardem's plan was exactly the same as Joker's in The Dark Knight. It's a testament to Skyfall's overall quality that this aping of The Dark Knight's plot didn't completely derail the movie; between Bardem's cool creepiness, the third act standoff, all the Bond franchise flourishes, as well as Deakins' aforementioned superb cinematography, Skyfall manages to carve out its own identity and even surpasses The Dark Knight in certain ways. Both are great movies, but the similarities are hard to ignore and do take away from Skyfall a bit.

*Sigh* And now it's time to get to my real problem with Skyfall, the big misogynist elephant in the corner that has slowly been sapping my enthusiasm about the latest Bond movie. I felt it in the theatre as I watched Bond walk through the leather door and up to the desk of a male M, the first time I'd seen such a sight in a new Bond movie. At the time I just shrugged it off, but upon further reflection and after a number of discussions with friends I feel it's impossible to ignore the sense that Skyfall feels like a major step backwards in terms of its sexual politics, even for a Bond movie. But lets work through that statement by inspecting each of the three main female characters in the movie: Sévérine, Eve, and Judi Dench's M.

First off, lets address the seriously problematic character of Sévérine. You probably know her better as "that hot asian chick Bond bangs," since she's barely given anything resembling a character before being carelessly executed without even a moment of reflection. In fact, shy of her physical characteristics, the closest thing we get to a characterization of her is that she's afraid and a (possibly former) sex slave. I don't know if the filmmakers threw in that last reference to make us sympathize with her or to hint at their ultimate treatment of the character, but pretty much her only roles in the film are to movie the plot forward and get naked. It can't be stressed enough that Bond's ultra-creepy sneak-up-on-her-in-the-shower-for-surprise-sex move is not acceptable, and is hopefully among the traditional vestiges of the past that are thematically shrugged-off over the course of Skyfall. The problem is that there's nothing to justify such a reading within the film, and in fact it seems like the opposite is true. Bond's "return-to-form" moment comes after Bardem executes Sévérine, a move which poises her as an object.tool of his evolution/development at the script level. There is a potential argument that Bond couldn't express remorse while under fire, and that in fact his transformation back into a competent agent comes as a result of Sévérine's death impacting him severely and thereby telegraphing his need to "be Bond" again. However I don't think there's much justification for this in Skyfall, and on the contrary it does seem like the movie uses her as a traditional Bond girl/narrative device/sex slave. So that sucks, to start with.

Now lets consider Naomie Harris' "Eve," AKA Moneypenny. I love Harris in everything she does, and I both saw the Moneypenny reveal coming a mile away and loved the fact that they chose such a competent actor for the role. But that said, the mind reels at the sexual political implications of her turn from field agent to secretary. As Eve she initially seemed like a wonderful breath of a fresh air, a female agent at Bond's level who's totally fucking awesome to boot. But then her character is systematically undermined as an incompetent weakling over the course of the film, well-intentioned but better off as eye-candy behind a desk. The film went out of its way to make a callback to Casino Royale with the "don't touch your ear" show of incompetence, and the only purpose of this in Skyfall is to demonstrate how bad Eve is at being a field agent compared to Bond. On top of that there's the whole "she accidentally shoots England's best secret agent" thing. Clearly the filmmakers did not want us to have a lot of faith in her competence, for the exact purpose of making it seem rationale and acceptable that she doesn't want to be a field agent anymore. Of course that makes "common" sense, some people (i.e. women) just aren't suited for it, right James? I suppose all of this could be seen as conjecture, a feminist-oriented over reading of a Bond film to try to find a sexist undertone that isn't really there. Only they follow up that development with the reveal that she's taking a desk job as M's secretary. For fucking real? They literally chain her to a traditional gender role in a movie that's explicitly about updating the past to make it suited for and relevant in the present day. As I said, the mind reels at the implications, and it's a serious knock against the movie that it re-institutes the traditional gender dynamics that the Bond franchise has long been (rightly) critiqued for.

And that's without even beginning to touch upon the whole M thing.

I'll start by saying that Judi Dench is in characteristically badass form in Skyfall. There's nothing wrong with her or her character in any way that I've noticed/care to consider, and my only regret it that she's exited the franchise. Partly that's because I'm going to miss her as she's an absolute pleasure to watch onscreen, but it's also because I'm not totally comfortable with going back to a male M. As I mentioned in my initial review, Goldeneye was my introduction to the Bond franchise and so my knowledge of earlier Bond films/tropes has come via films that have always seemed (to me) like relics of the past. This includes the positively rampant misogyny of earlier Bond films, and part and parcel with that trend was the institutional structure of MI6 with Moneypenny as the sole female and secretary for Bernard Lee's male M [Aside: implicit in this entire argument is the fact that I don't believe for a second the contemporary Bond films have completely shed their misogynist roots. Also, I would love to see a Bond film that passed the Bechdel test, and if I've somehow missed that one already exists please let me know].

Skyfall presents the first time I've seen a male M in a new movie, and from that perspective the sight of Bond walking through the leather door into Ralph Fiennes' office felt like a step back into the literal and figurative past. I was (and continued to be) extremely conflicted about it: on the one hand I ate up the way the franchise's classic elements were re-instituted in Skyfall's final scene, bringing back the classic Bond in a viscerally satisfying way; on the other hand it felt like those elements brought back the old, unpleasant gender dynamic implications they always had. I'm not sure if this was more a result of how the movie brought back Moneypenny and a male M as much as it might be inherent in those concepts, but either way the end of Skyfall felt both like a return to form and a regression to problematic politics. I'll be curious to see how future Bond movies handle the reintroduced elements, as I could easily see Moneypenny being used less as a mere secretary and more as a sort of body guard, but that doesn't take away from the reduction of her role to one distinctively less than Bond and M as the more important men of MI6. As compared to Judi Dench's positively badass introduction in Goldeneye, which felt every bit like a defiant rejection of what had come before (particularly the "your predecessor kept some Cognac" exchange), Skyfall feels like reestablishment of the old guard. Finnes character and performance don't themselves do anything to add to this, but the cumulative impact of him replacing Dench after she's killed off, in addition to how Skyfall puts Moneypenny in the corner behind the desk, makes the film seem like a major step backwards in how the franchise treats women. It's even more surprising that Skyfall does this so potently given that it's a Bond movie, a designation that on its face seems synonymous with patriarchal gender hierarchies on film.

In updating the franchise for the modern day, Skyfall somehow manages to make it seem more out of place than ever in terms of its sexual politics. That's a notably unfortunate achievement that shouldn't be ignored in the face of how successful Skyfall nevertheless is as a film.

Anyway, that's my two cents on the problems with the film. I maintain that it's an incredible movie that stands among the best of 2012, and more than that one of the most beautiful movies I've ever seen. Period. I just wish it had done all that while maintaining a tighter script and (more fundamentally) without appearing to reinstitute the traditional gender dynamics that the Bond series seemed to have grown beyond (or at least partially ameliorated) during what we can unfortunately now refer to in the past tense as "the Dench years." Hopefully the next one will be able to at least match Skyfall and also gain back some ground on the progressive gender portrayal spectrum. All we know for sure is that "James Bond will return."

A Few Quick Thoughts on the Rob Ford Thing

Note: If you're not invested in the local politics of Toronto, Ontario (it's in Canada) then you can probably tune out now.

Those of you still reading will have no doubt heard by now that Mayor Robert Ford was removed from office this morning for contravening the Municipal Conflict of Interest Act [aside: today is probably the most traffic Ontario's e-laws website has ever gotten]. Justice Charles Hackland suspended the verdict for two weeks in recognition of the major administrative changes the decision necessitates for the City of Toronto. However, the plain truth of the matter is that "the seat of the respondent, Robert Ford, on the Toronto City Council, [is] vacant" (paragraph 61 of the decision, available here).

This is a pretty surprising decision. As numerous outlets discussed this morning, Justice Hackland didn't have a lot of options in terms of his decision. Add to that the fact that Ford painted himself into a corner at trial by "pleading incompetence" (in the words of Matt Gurney), and the inadvertence / good faith error in judgment option was pretty much (though admittedly not entirely) off the table. However, what we ultimately got still seemed like the least likely of the choices open to Hackland.

Reading through the decision, the finding that Ford's actions constituted a conflict seems pretty solid. It's boring and technical and dense, but that's the nature of the administrative law territory that we're in with a municipal conflict of interest question. So if he contravened the Act then the only outs for Ford are via inadvertence, a good faith error in judgement, or the amount involved being "remote or insignificant in nature." As the decision and Gurney's "pleads incompetence" piece above demonstrate, the inadvertence defence is definitely inapplicable here and the good faith error route seems unlikely too.

So that leaves the section 4(k) defence that the amount was insignificant, and at only $3150 that seems like a pretty reasonable assessment (when you consider the Mayor's salary). Dealt with in just four short paragraphs (41 - 44), Hackland's finding that the amount was significant to the Mayor seems like the one major blindsport in the decision. The finding is based on Fords comments to City Council, which immediately places it on shaky ground. From a statutory interpretation perspective, there's absolutely no analysis of what could "reasonably be regarded as likely to influence" Mayor Ford, which should be the driving force in any determination of whether the saving provision applies. Additionally, putting the focus on Ford's comments directs the focus away from the pecuniary nature of "the interest" and into the distinctly political territory of what Rob Ford actually values. Granted, what I've just cursorily written is an off-the-cuff and suspect legal-ish analysis, but at the end of the day Hackland's decision on Ford's section 4(k) defence is minimal at best. It presents the most obviously viable option for Ford's inevitable appeal, and that's really what I wanted to get to in all this...

Mayor Ford is going to appeal Hackland's decision, which will almost certainly be stayed pending the outcome of that appeal. I'd be shocked if anything different happened (even moreso than if the appellate court ultimately upheld Hackland's verdict). Torontoist.com has a pretty good run down on the possible paths this whole thing could take in the coming days, but I think they overestimate the likelihood of Ford not getting a stay of the decision pending appeal. As acknowledged in the decision at paragraphs 46 and 47, the Act has been criticized as "Byzantine" in how the only order available in the case of a conflict is the "sledgehammer" remedy of removal from office (the aforementioned saving exceptions notwithstanding). It would be exceedingly unusual if Ford's inevitable motion for a stay was rejected. Whether or not he can get it in the fourteen days available, that's a bit of a murky question. But if he can get it in front of a court fast enough then he's almost guaranteed a stay, and that means the whole "Ford's out!" reaction that's been sweeping social networks is likely getting ahead of itself.

Again I'd also be surprised if the decision wasn't ultimately overturned on appeal. The analysis of Ford's section 4(k) defence seems pretty suspect, and I wouldn't expect it to hold up to scrutiny. But then I was also betting that Hackland wouldn't oust Ford in the first place, so what do I know? This morning's verdict came as a surprise, time will tell if more are to follow.

In any case, let's also take a moment to reflect on the ramifications of this decision. Regardless of your feelings about Mayor Ford (I'm a cyclist so you should be able to guess mine), it doesn't exactly feel vindicative to have him removed from office on a technicality. That's not to take away anything from the finding of a conflict, on the contrary I think it's well founded. But the fact that it's sufficient to remove him from office may lean in favour of arguments against the structure of the Act, and the nature of the City of Toronto institution. The decision will most certainly be used in this manner (regardless of its validity), with Ford's next platform inevitably sounding something like "Detangle the mess of rules," or "Straighten out the sticklers to get things done," or "[Insert witty 'Gravy Train' reference here]." Even if Ford is ultimately removed, this method of doing so gives him or his successor that convenient pariah platform to run on, just as he did (successfully) last time. Claim all the rule of law moral high ground you want, at the end of the day this way of getting him out of office will only widen the divide between his supporters and his opposition in a way that a democratic ousting by voters never would.

So Ford has received a pretty severe slap on the wrist. Was it deserved? Yes and no, and we'll see what an appellate court does with that. Will it matter? Maybe, but hopefully only in a positive sense of making accountability and professionalism important qualities in City of Toronto politics. Hopefully not by giving Ford a new platform or exacerbating the political disenfranchisement he was able to ride in on in the first place. Time will tell.

The Big Picture: Skin Deeper & Race in Cloud Atlas

Ok so I know I shared MovieBob's The Big Picture pretty recently but his latest video is particularly good and deserves some more attention. This week MovieBob has tackled the critiques against Cloud Atlas for its use of white actors in non-white roles, specifically to depict Asian characters. Bob's defence of the film is elegant and, while slightly spoilerish, deserves to be seen regardless of whether or not you've seen the movie. This is a really tricky subject and I think Bob does a good job at showing why the "racebending" in Cloud Atlas is actually a good thing because of how it lets the movie effectively convey its anti-prejudicial message. It's a delicate balance and a tough sell, but Bob makes a compelling argument in Cloud Atlas' favour that I think everyone would benefit from hearing. Obviously it's a political message that is intended to have meaning beyond the film, and by proxy this video is a political statement in that it explicates and endorses that message. Give it a watch and sound off in the comments on your thoughts about the "yellowface" in Cloud Atlas.

The Escapist : The Big Picture : Skin Deeper

Censored Doonesbury Cartoon on Women's Rights

Doonesbury cartoonist Gary Trudeau has come under fire this week for his set of strips mocking recent legal developments surrounding abortion and contraception in the United States. Specifically, the strips detail the trials of a young woman attempting to get an abortion in Texas. As The Guardian reports, some papers have refused to run the strips while others have relegated them to the editorial page.

The series is presented in its entirety below thanks to Media Watch, a blog run by SACOMSS.

I'm not going to write much about this, mostly because it's late and I'm tired right now, but also because Media Watch has already said everything I could possibly say on the issue. Briefly, this is not only a pretty depressing example of censorship, it's also (unusually) clearly indicative of the larger social and political problems behind the disputed abortion/contraception laws themselves. This isn't the first time Doonesbury has taken a controversial political stance, and likewise it's not the first time the strip has been censored. However, to my knowledge it is the first time that so many strips have been censored at the same time so as to completely stamp-out an issue. And it doesn't strike me as entirely coincidental that the political tipping point was a law about abortion/contraception, and more accurately about women's rights. Just don't take my lack of surprise as a sign of acceptance or apathy, it's more accurately a deeply rooted cynicism about how minorities are treated south of the border.

Anyway, it's late and I'm tired. The comic is above so give it a read.

(Via Media Watch via my friend Sam)

Eurocentrism and the Reveal of Assassin's Creed 3

I don't think I've ever posted about it but I am a huge fan of the Assassin's Creed series of video games. The second game in particular stands as one of my favourite games in this generation of consoles. I'm a major proponent of story-driven games, and the Assassin's Creed series stands as one of the most engrossing and unique narratives in gaming today. Additionally I really enjoy how the developers of the series make a conscious effort to set each game in places and times that are unusual in the gaming community. In what other game could you explore a historically accurate rendition of Renaissance Florence, Third Crusade-era Jerusalem, or Ottoman-era Constantinople? These are only a few of the more superficial and spoiler-free reasons why I love the series, but they make one thing clear: there's simply nothing else like Assassin's Creed out there, in gaming or otherwise.

This week a lot of details were revealed about the next entry in the series, Assassin's Creed 3. Set to be released on October 30, 2012, this new game will take place in Revolutionary War-era America. What's exciting about the setting is that it gives the developers the opportunity to engage with the atrocities committed by both Colonial and Revolutionary forces upon the Native Americans in this time period. The series has never been shy about politics, and indeed one of the most interesting aspects of Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood was the radical political thread that writer Jeffrey Yohalem wove into the narrative. It's honestly my fondest memory of that game, and so I'm eager to see the series get political again. In Assassin's Creed 3 the historical mistreatment of the Native Americans will take the centre stage as the protagonist is said to be a half-English, half-Native American boy who's raised by Mohawks.

As much as possible for a blockbuster (and annualized) video game franchise, the Assassin's Creed games have made a habit of breaking new ground for the medium. Making a new main character in a major entry in the series half-Mohawk continues this tradition. Ubisoft also hasn't given up their dedication to authenticity, as "they've hired Native American actors and recorded whole scenes of dialogue in the actual Mohawk language." Moreover, early reports indicate that the beginning of the game will depict Ratohnhaké:ton/Connor's childhood in a Mohawk village that's later burned down by white colonists, inspiring him to dedicate his life to fighting tyranny and injustice. So not only is the protagonist a sort of Mohawk Batman (!), it also seems that the game will at least touch upon the atrocities inflicted by the Americans/Europeans on the Native Americans. It certainly doesn't seem like Ubisoft is letting up on the franchise's tendency to push gaming to new and unexpected frontiers.

What I want to address in this blog post is the new protagonist's name. At this point the details are a little sketchy, but it seems as though the character actually has two names, Ratohnhaké:ton and Connor. 
The character's relationships with each of these names is still a little unclear, but it seems as though he calls himself Connor. In any case, the Internet has made a pretty clear decision to simply call him Connor. Here's an example from Rabidgames, a site that "calls him Connor because the other name is too long and copy & paste [sic] doesn’t really count as remembering a name."


On the one hand the name Connor is shorter and easier to remember and spell, both for the developers and for most of the people talking about the game online. Additionally, at this point fans seem to be most interested in the gameplay possibilities unlocked by the game's new engine. Any discussion of the narrative potential seems to be restricted to which historical events might be portrayed as opposed to what political stance(s) the game might take with regards to Native Americans. However, all that aside I find it more than a little troubling that the character who was just revealed to be half-Mohawk is already being called exclusively by his English name. I think that's a Eurocentric reaction that implicitly glosses over the most unique (and, in my opinion, interesting) aspect of the new character.

As reddit user AnEagle so aptly put it...

At this point it's not possible to do much more than speculate about Assassin's Creed 3 and its approach to the historical treatment of Native Americans. Without getting into spoilers I will say that the series' lore pretty much requires that the protagonist have at least some European ancestry so it makes sense that he's half-English. Time will tell if the emphasis on that side of his heritage is something the developers have written into the game (though based on everything I mentioned above it sure sounds like they're fully embracing his Mohawk roots). But what is clear is that fans of the series have decided it is at least easier to regard Ratohnhaké:ton/Connor in a more traditional (read: western) fashion. And I think that's unfortunate.


I don't mean to condemn anyone's legitimate excitement about the game but I wish that more of the buzz I'm seeing online was about the unique narrative and political potential in the protagonist's origins. It's disappointing to find that the Assassin's Creed community seems disinterested in this new character's most unique trait and are instead gravitating towards the most familiar aspect of what we know about him so far. One would hope that fans of such a daring series would be eager for it to present new perspectives and ideas, but evidently that's not as exciting as what new multiplayer options will be available. Granted I may be making too much of something as trivial as the use (or lack thereof) of a name, but to me it does seem indicative of an apprehension for an unfamiliar concept (or in this case culture). Ironically the gaming community seems disinterested in the originality it so often pines for, but then that's a subject for another blog post. 


Here's hoping that as October 30 approaches there begins to be more excitement for this promising new evolution in the Assassin's Creed narrative.