I have to write really fast, which is difficult for me to do, but I viewed part of Slumdog yesterday while I was posting un galantuomo, an interesting disjunction perhaps. Should I have been horrified at the deliberate blinding of children beggars? I have seen so many films about the third world, about the horror of how cheap human life is on a daily basis. The petty vindictiveness of the Chinese, Japanese, and Cambodia, and Rio de Janeiro, and the US Mexican border, that no, I was not thrilled at the implications, but numb? Yes, which makes Jamesian modalities tenuous, which James seemed to know himself.
This dark side of crippling is not anything new in terms of a western conceit. There is Shakespeare's blinding of Glouchester in Lear, and the false cripples that swarm Pierre Gringoire in Hugo's Hunchback. This is the dirty laundry of disability, whether the condition is real or manufactured, pity is exploitive, and does not always work. Slumdog has a certain jazziness, nice jump shots, and tenacity, and yes, I will see it again, but at a visceral level, I am not coasting on enthusiasm for our tough little hero. Inarritu's Babel was the last film of this type to actually challenge my bitter and quite wilted conscience, but to what end, I cannot tell you. I am a powerless woman who hates homosexual advocacy, and yet is able to recognize the genius of homosexual subversion, who looks at African American culture, shrugs, and picks apart their quite tortured, sometimes great aesthetic capacity, remaining a failed product of diversity and progressive promise. Dana, the moderator of Poets & Writers Speakeasy who facillitated my ouster, indicated that I had a great deal of power.
Really.
No comments:
Post a Comment