Rendition and the questions of Modernity
I recently went to see Rendition, the new Gavin Hood film. It’s an interesting example of liberal orientalizing. Without going into great detail regards the plot, the essential points to consider are those regarding the Arab/Muslim characters. The road to perdition is paved with good intentions, I believe this is the old chestnut. And here we have, I think, a shining example. First, Hollywood has again resorted to total historical amnesia — I guess colonial
Good Germans R Us
I agree, John, about the moral vacuousness of contemporary American culture. The Republicans have it all carefully calibrated. They have a clear sense of exactly how much depravity bourgeois culture will tolerate and they walk right up to that line, and then deal with the fallout when someone gets too enthusiastic (the guards at Abu Graib, for example). They keep the population in a state of low grade panic on several levels at
Cyrano’s Journal and its blogs are about clear thinking, the liberating power of truth and the cultivation of the good arts—which requires good artists to begin with. If you’re wondering who the gentleman in the pix is, well, it’s none other than one of the finest cinema and stage actors of the 1940s and 50s, Puerto Rico-born Jose Ferrer, onetime husband of Rosemary Clooney (and therefore uncle to famous George C.). His mug decorates this space because he gave us the definitive Cyrano in his Oscar-winning masterwork, Cyrano de Bergerac (1950). No one has ever topped that performance. He also gave us a terrific Barney Greenwald, defense attorney in The Caine Mutiny, but that’s another story.