watch out

So, the last time I flew, I couldn't check in through the computer kiosk because, the person behind the counter told me, my name matched that of someone on the watch list. But if my name matched, then how did they decide so easily it wasn't me? (And I had no trouble on the return trip.) And if it was the same name, did the other user of it steal it from me? Because it's not a name you'd think was common. Or was it really my name on the list for some reason (my visiting of leftist websites, perhaps)? None of it makes me feel any safer.

spectacle

"To the degree that necessity is socially dreamed, the dream becomes necessary."

(1968: seems to include a lot of nekkid young women)

knocked up

Knocked Up was written and directed by Judd Apatow, best known for The 40 Year Old Virgin, and the director of photography was Portland native Eric Edwards. It’s a beautifully shot film, and it’s been getting enthusiastically positive reviews (especially at sites like Reviews for Guys and Movie for Guys).

All that press may have made the storyline familiar, but here it is in brief. Alison (played by Katherine Heigl), has just been promoted from behind the scenes to doing on-air interviews with celebrities. Out dancing with her sister to celebrate, she meets Ben (played by Seth Rogen), who’s out with his stoner slacker roommates. They spend the night together and she’s clearly alarmed in the morning (he asks, did we have sex?). But, as it turns out, she’s pregnant, and with little discussion of her options, she decides to continue the pregnancy and try to develop a real relationship with Ben.

A number of critics have suggested that the emotional center of the film lies with Alison’s sister Debbie and her husband Pete, played by Leslie Mann and Paul Rudd. The film is more interesting if we understand the Alison and Ben pairing as a kind of projection of the feelings of someone in Paul’s position (or Apatow’s).

At least one critic has suggested that the obvious thing for pretty, successful, upwardly-mobile Alison to do is the terminate the pregnancy and move on.

The problem is not that Knocked Up is “liberal” because it’s about casual sex and having a baby out of wedlock. The problem is that it is horribly conservative about embracing and enjoying an adult version of sexuality that has moved beyond dorm-room-esque groping. One night with some guy you don’t even know does not mean you must tie yourself to him for the rest of your life... unless you think that women must be punished for sex. Oh, but it’s not punishment: you get an adorable baby out of the deal! And you get to “train” a man!

Another observes that

It's just not believable that, in Alison and Ben's upper-middle-class, secular L.A. milieu, abortion would not be matter-of-factly discussed as a possibility in the case of a pregnancy this accidental. If she doesn't want one, great—obviously, there'd be no movie if she did—but let's hear about why not. Otherwise, her character becomes a cipher, a foil for Ben's epiphanies about growing up, without being allowed any epiphanies of her own.

The pro-natalist position is implicit; we never hear anything about Alison’s possible religious or moral scruples. But we know little about her character. Aside from her job and family, she seems to have no life, no friends, no interests, no psychology.

Clearly the movie is a Guy Fantasy that the gorgeous successful blonde will fall for the crass loser; that's pretty much the central joke. Comments on some blogs have been far more scathing:

first of all, the woman gives up her hope of love and compatibility. face it, it's a trade up for him, a trade down for her. second of all, when the woman's mother suggests she get an abortion, the woman digs her heels in for daughter rebellion. the guy writer obviously can't have a powerful older woman giving the gal advice. third, the woman has no women friends except bitches. Another guy fantasy. And the woman rejects her friends in favor of the guy. Another guy fantasy. Lastly, the guy gets to command the woman's sister to leave the birthing room because she doesn't belong there. Another guy fantasy - telling off the sister. . . . The message is - abandon all your friends and sisters and your mother for the chubby guy. Of course, he gets to keep his friends. Does anyone see how hateful that is?

The World Socialist Web Site notes that the film is very narrowly focused, entirely concerned with individual choices and relationships, and that despite the superficial lewdness, its values are conservative, signs of an "inward turning and lack of interest in broader currents of American life":

At a juncture when it’s difficult in everyday life to avoid complaints about (or curses aimed at) the Iraq war, George Bush, gas prices, multimillion-dollar salaries for corporate executives, falling house prices or other sources of public anger or anxiety; conspiracy theories, plausible or otherwise; rage of an increasingly social or anti-social character; and varying, often infuriating, manifestations of the generally dysfunctional character of American society, none of this appears or is hinted at in Apatow’s work. It is consciously oriented in another direction, a kind of comic, chaotic self-help book....

Apatow stacks the deck, in any event. He creates a situation in which there are only two possibilities for Ben—carrying on with his vaguely bohemian, hedonistic, idle lifestyle or “growing up” and becoming a respectable, money-making petty bourgeois. The possibility of maturing and accepting certain personal responsibilities as well as doing something substantial and challenging, not necessarily financially well-rewarded, with one’s life is excluded.

It’s perhaps worth acknowledging that the hedonistic idle life of Ben’s friends and roommates could be understood as a resistance to capitalism and the protestant work ethic, and that may be part of the appeal of those sections of the film, but surely there are better means of resistance.

kitteh sez

from I can has cheezburger

the pain of our inner troops

Earlier this year, the mainstream press discovered that there are problems with veteran’s health care. The scandal of dilapidated buildings and untreated soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center led to a series of firings and resignations. But, as even the commercial press is aware, being a veteran is still no guarantee of access to health care.

Stories reflecting on this fact imply that veterans have an extra claim to medical attention. Perhaps they do, but we should be wary of suggesting that there is anyone who doesn’t have a right to health care.

Let’s review. According to Cesar Chelala, writing in the San Francisco Chronicle, “The most recent data available from the U.S. Census Bureau indicate that 46.6 million Americans (about 15.9 percent of the population) had no health insurance coverage during 2005, an increase of 1.3 million over the previous year. It is no wonder, then, that medical bills are overwhelmingly the most common reason for personal bankruptcy in the United States. According to the Children’s Health Fund, 9 million children are completely uninsured in the United States, while another 23.7 million - nearly 30 percent of the nation’s children — lack regular access to health care.”

Last month the Commonwealth Fund released an update of their report comparing the health care systems of the U.S., Australia, Canada, Germany, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. They found that “the U.S. health care system ranks last or next-to-last on five dimensions of a high performance health system: quality, access, efficiency, equity, and healthy lives. The U.S. is the only country in the study without universal health insurance coverage.”

Susie Day, who writes for Monthly Review zine, is one of the lucky ones. Last week, she reported on a recent call to her Doctor in a piece titled "U.S. Troops Out of . . . ME":

Hello, Doctor? Thanks for taking my call -- it's an emergency. I've been infected. Well, medically speaking, I guess you'd say I'm not so much infected as occupied. My symptoms? They're hard to describe. A cough, maybe.

Like today, I'm walking down the street. Big, shady trees, leaves bright green . . . twittering birds, everything oxygenated and sparkling. And I see an old gentleman in a baseball cap and suspenders, struggling to heave his grocery-filled shopping cart up the stoop to his apartment. My first thought is to go over and help him lift the cart. Simple enough.

Then I get a scratching in my throat and this weird, fearful sensation. "WHOA," I say to myself. "Instead of being grateful, this guy could take out a .357 Magnum and blow my head off." I notice a blockage; I cough. I think, "[Forget] you, old man, you ingrate, I was only trying to help." I'm now shaking and feverish. I think, "To make sure you don't kill me, you bum, I'm going to run a steak knife into your guts and drive a tank over your pitiful geezer body."

By now, I'm coughing hard. The birds continue to twitter and the leaves are shimmering in the breeze -- while I am picturing myself annihilating this old guy. But that's the price you pay, right -- kill them before they kill you? Just then, I retch; I double over and cough up . . . a tiny American soldier.

I'd call that a symptom, wouldn't you, Doctor? Anyhow, it lands in my hand, all tricked out in little fatigues and a bayonet. I can tell right away it's dead. So I panic . . . and run home and phone you.

I think it's obvious, Doctor: I've become contaminated by U.S. foreign policy. I calculate, according to the last Democratic sellout vote, that I have at least 147,000 U.S. troops stationed in my Persian Gulf, er, body. Plus all their equipment.

How was I infected, you ask? This is embarrassing, Doctor -- I, uh, didn't take precautions. I must have exchanged bodily fluids with a peace activist or something. Some commie pervert who believed that all humans are "created equal." I admit I've jumped to this conclusion once or twice, watching the news -- that the beings who have died by the hundreds of thousands in Iraq are, in fact, human -- that their lives matter as much as yours or mine. Naturally, in America, I couldn't live, knowing this. So in came the troops. That's right, Doctor: the government sent them. To protect me.

Even now, I can feel my inner troops. Drilling, playing cards, writing letters home, making sure I am terrorist-free. They won't tell me if they had anything to do with the siege on Fallujah, or if they hooded detainees for interrogation. They say a lot happens that doesn't make the news. They say they're just doing their job.

Kids, mostly. Came to see the world, feed their families, get a college degree, defend democracy. But they're stuck now and scared. They hate it and, knowing they are hated, they kill. They belong to me. . . .

But here's the thing, Doctor. With all due respect to my troops, I don't want them. Although they do allow me to cope with post-9/11 reality, they won't let me dream of happiness. For example, I'll be thinking of a quiet, sun-filled room, tulips in a vase on the piano, a puppy playing with a fallen petal and -- blam!, a combat boot kicks in the door and stomps everything to death. This is unacceptable, Doctor: I cannot live on a planet where innocence is a constant deterrent to survival.

So I need fast relief. What would you prescribe -- a stomach pump, chemotherapy, exorcism? This isn't some little ailment where you say, "Click on two MoveOn.org petitions and call me in the morning," this is serious. In fact, I suggest a radical troop-ectomy to actually remove our military from Iraq.

Lots of people could assist you in this operation, Doctor; me included. Then, of course, we'd have to get the troops out of the troops. They're occupied, too, you know.