Murphy's Law

First off, full disclosure.

I don’t exactly have a love/hate relationship with the Coen Brothers, because there is too much gray area. Some of their movies I love without reservation (Raising Arizona, Fargo, The Big Lebowski) and some I really find inspid (Miller’s Crossing, O Brother Where Art Thou and especially The Hudsucker Proxy). But, I guess, to their credit, they also have plenty of films I am largely indifferent about, or find simply okay (this includes near misses like Barton Fink and Blood Simple). I was underwhelmed with No Country For Old Men the first time I saw it, but liked it better the next time –always a good sign. Burn After Reading was what it was: a lark; a lightweight effort with a heavyweight cast, mostly salvaged by the never unimpressive George Clooney. And then there are the rest of them, of which the less said the better.

Which brings us to A Serious Man. Their latest film garnered some, well, serious praise (including two perfect-10 ratings from colleagues from PopMatters whose taste and opinions I admire). If you have not seen it yet, be prepared for some spoilers: this is not a review; it’s a postmortem. The plot, presented as a pitch, sounds irresistible: college physics professor (and Jew) who seems a nice enough fellow is, without warning, suddenly made to suffer a series of unfortunate events; he is a present-day Job for our postmodern times. Add the Coen brethren’s patented black humor alongside their perverse sensibility, and hilarity shall ensue. Pretty good premise, right? (My first thought was, we’ve already seen this one, and it was called The Man Who Wasn’t There, which was less a movie and more a 90 minute exercise to see how many cigarettes Billy Bob Thornton could smoke.)

The leitmotif of the movie is provided (in a typical instance of when the Coen brothers’ goofy irreverance goes wrong) by the Jefferson Airplane chestnut “Somebody To Love”: When the truth is found to be lies/And all the joy within you dies. This is its first problem. Setting up the framework of this anti-morality play, however cheekily, with such a literal (and cornily shoehorned) statement of purpose begs two big questions which had better be answered in some fashion. One, what is the truth? Two, is there any evidence that there was ever any joy inside our hero?

Let’s look at the tale of the tape: decent man with annoyingly needy brother who has moved in. And a vulgar wife who asks for a divorce to facilitate the affair she is having. And two bratty kids. And a racist neighbor. And a health scare. In lesser artists’ hands, a protagonist with this sort of curriculum vitae is a guy we like and can relate to who has horrible things happen and just when it can’t get any worse, it gets better. You know, the types of movies usually starring Will Smith or Tom Hanks. The problem with A Serious Man is that Larry Gopnik, despite all the slings and arrows of outrageous misfortune, never seems to lose much that he’d be better off without. And I’m quite certain that is not what the Coen Brothers are after, which is not the fault of the actor, but of the writing and direction.

O Brothers, Where Art Thou?

The film’s internal engine stalls on this irreconcilable conflict: if we can’t help thinking Larry has never been happy, or might be in a better place away from all of these miserable creatures all around him, it sort of sucks the air out of the movie’s momentum. And because the viewer (or, this viewer) became distracted by this…distraction, it…distracted from what must be the primary objective of any film, which is providing unfettered engagement without distraction. All of which is to say the Coens violate the operating principle of the storytelling process, and it isn’t “give us a character we care about” (that is something only unimaginative critics and untalented English professors blather about); rather, it is: give us a character who does not strain credulity to an insulting degree. When minor characters, especially ones in Coen Brothers movies, are somewhat less than believable, it can be and often is in the service of delightful nuance. In other words, it does not grab attention or focus from the thrust of the proper narrative. On the other hand, if that character is the prime mover of the action (even in a movie where the prime mover is Fate with a capital Cliche and the protagonist is the dust this Mighty Wind blows about with biblical imperiousness).

At this point one can sense the more defensive fans sighing in exasperation and patiently explaining how the monstrous math equation in the classroom illustrates everything, or the (very Coens-esque, or is that Coensian?) Asian student personifies the enigmatic fulcrum upon which action (or, in this case, inaction) prompts reaction, or the even simpler fact that it’s black humor, dummy; Gopnik is the pawn of an uncaring universe and the better he tries to be, the harder the universe bends him over. Well, okay. But then we’re failing on simple human as well as artistic levels: one need only look to the slums of Bombay or the killing fields of any third world country to see innocent people suffering terribly for crimes they never committed. Maybe the Coens should have named this one Slumdog Hundredaire.

Or try this: even though Gopnik’s suffering is over the top, even by Job’s standards (Job, mercifully, never had to deal with the petty foibles of a professor sweating tenure), one doesn’t feel pity for him in regards to his contemptible progeny. At what point is he himself at least partly culpable for the churlish punks he has reared?

Put yet another way: if this is tragedy, it calls to mind why contemporary audiences aren’t particularly fond of or familiar with the ancient-school shtick of some recondite curse invoked to explain how and why everything goes wrong. There’s a very good reason the Deux et machina act doesn’t resonate with contemporary audiences. Or, the abiding genius of Shakespeare involves his ability to delineate the human element informing the big unraveling.

And if all this makes me sound like a prudish traditionalist, I would suggest that the film’s entire structure is slickly super-glued to resist critique: the person offering the criticism is simply not in on the joke; they don’t get it. And I’ll eagerly stand up and be counted as being all for any endeavor that mocks the platitudes and sadism masquerading as morality that organized religion so often makes a killing (often literally) from. Pointing out, as the film does, the obtusity of the clerics and their incompetence in dealing with virtually any sort of human dilemma is something to be celebrated. Ditto the Coen brothers’ obvious disdain for lawyers: don’t hope for comfort or expertise from these dissembling shmucks. I’m smelling what you’re stepping in.

Listen: I ain’t offended by misanthropy; I can handle the truth. And if The Truth is that the Coens loathe humanity, or the world, whatever. More power to them, but I felt the same way I do when I watch virtually every Woody Allen movie: please, for your sake, I hope you are in actuality a very happy person and merely a miserable artist. In the final analysis, it’s not the filmmakers’ view of the world I find offensive (or facile); it’s their hostility toward artistic engagement. What they successfully create in almost every film (except the great ones) is a bleak cinemascape that leaves a certain demographic (likely the same ones who worship Woody Allen movies) feeling smug and superior, and a clique of not-quite-as-intelligent-as-they-think-they-are critics rolling over and panting for more stale scraps.

The big punch line is more like a punch in the nuts. When the inscrutable rabbi finally speaks, his quote (bringing it all full circle!) of Jefferson Airplane is…can I get an Oy, man? And from an editorial standpoint, simply quoting the lyrics would have been tolerable, barely. But the too-cute-by-two-thirds naming of each individual band member is both unbelievable and profoundly unamusing. It is an archetypal bad Coen Brothers moment: one feels the intrustion of their arrogance, their self-love surpassing their other people-hate. At long last, one grows tired of the types of movies made by grown men who ultimately love nothing quite so much as the smell of their own farts.

Look at that guy.

They don’t make them like that anymore. The thing is, they didn’t make them like that then, either. Col. Percy Fawcett was sui generis, supersized. And if he was the first of his kind, he was the last of a kind: the great old-world explorers. By the time Fawcett died (disappearing in the jungles of the Amazon), the world had become a much smaller place.

New Yorker writer David Grann knew he had an ideal subject when he began researching the Fawcett story; he could not have known he was going to become part of the story. The Lost City of Z is the end product of inestimable research and in-the-field reportage, literally. 

Like (literally) hundreds before him, Grann inexorably cultivated a compulsion that could only be satisfied by experiencing the action himself. Unlike many other reporters, explorers and thrill-seekers who set off to find Fawcett’s trail (and, inevitably, subsequent fame and fortune for telling their tale), Grann actually made it out alive. And he also found things even he neither expected nor anticipated: no spoilers here, you’ll have to read it to get the scoop.

What Grann came to understand, before ever setting foot in the jungle, was something that no number of books, movies or documentaries could successfully convey. That is, Percy Fawcett was, in every sense of the cliche, very much a man apart. The mere triumph of entering and exiting the Amazon alive was, as many hearty fellows found out by paying the ultimate price, not an inconsiderable achievement. At a time when the North and South Poles were all the rage, one could be forgiven for assuming that the warmer weather, bustling foliage and diverse plant and animal life all afforded a preferable venue for discovery. On the contrary, the ostensibly bountiful tropical haven was in actuality a death trap. Grann quotes Candice Millard from The River Of Doubt, her study of Theodore Roosevelt’s harrowing Amazonian adventure:

The rain forest was not a garden of easy abundance, but precisely the opposite. Its quiet, shaded halls of leafy opulence were not a sanctuary, but rather the greatest natural battlefield anywhere on the planet, hosting an unremitting and remorseless fight for survival that occupied every single one of its inhabitants, every minute of every day.

A few words about those inhabitants. Nevermind the jaguars, anacondas, electric eels, and piranhas. Those things can kill you quickly, if that is how it goes down. The insects, on the other hand, epitomize death by a billion bites. To be certain, they are quite capable of killing you as well, but it’s never quick and it’s always painful. Ever heard of a bug that bites you on the lip, unleashing a parasite that eventually assails your brain two decades later, causing an agonizing breakdown of the body? Neither had I. How about maggots that get hatched inside the skin and crawl around in your arm? (If you kill them they rot and cause infection; you actually have to let them live even as you see–and feel–them coursing through your limbs.) And then there are just the plain old pests that cover your face all hours of the day and night: biting, scratching, burrowing. And all of these agents of pain pale in comparison to the candiru (click on that link, or if you are a male, let’s just put it this way: these things are enough to make you believe there is a God and that He has a sick, unacceptable sense of humor). Oh, and then there are the natives who may kill you with a poisoned arrow, or maybe they will bury you in a hole and cover you with honey so that the bees or ants will turn you into a living lollipop. Or maybe they’ll keep you alive long enough to eat you. In short, these conditions all, to some degree, exist today; to think what it was like to endure any of these obstacles one hundred years ago is…unsettling.

These were the conditions Percy Fawcett not only embraced, but yearned for. This was a man who, at the top of his game, was called away to fight in what they called The Great War. He hunkered down in the muddy trenches and watched the privation and despair and the staggering death count, and still, having survived, longed to return to the jungle. Granted, after World War I it would be understandable to seek distraction or escape virtually anywhere, but for Fawcett, he was miserable after a while if he could not continue his mission. His mission became an obsession, and the difference between Fawcett and almost everyone else is that he had the wherewithal to persevere. Most monomaniacs flame out sooner or later (usually sooner) and even if they don’t get themselves killed, the mental toll from being so singularly focused slows them down.  Fawcett courted death, but he lived for that adventure: this was his essential nature and he did not shun it. Indeed, he understood that being unable to live life on his terms would have killed him in ways more cruel than anything the Amazon was capable of inflicting.

Fawcett was, around the turn of the 20th Century, as close to a rock star as it came in those days. Had he cared about money or the shallow spiritual payoff of established notoriety, he likely would have lived a long life (he may, in fact, have lived forever). But where people all around the world were fascinated with him, he was fascinated by the unknown and unconquered. And by unconquered, it is crucial to point out that he was not interested in human conquest (and even the pirates who would have claimed they were only after treasure could not deny obtaining that bounty necessarily involved eradicating the Indians who possessed it). Fawcett was uninterested in subjugating the “savage” natives, and the practices of complicated Christian conversion or simple slaughter so common at that time repulsed him. Indeed, one of the many secrets of his almost inexplicable success over the years was an instinctive awareness that respect and humility were more powerful weapons than the ones favored (and utilized) by almost every other white man that stepped foot in the jungle.

Certainly, Fawcett knew that if he was able to successfully confirm the existence of “the city of Z”, it would make his fortune and his career. On the other hand, Grann’s reportage makes it abundantly clear that the only magnet pulling him into the dark heart of the Amazon was his insatiable desire to see what others could not find, to know that his intuition was on target. By his own account, he was miserable if unable to continue his work. And if the work was exhilarating and dangerous in equal measure, it was also solitary: Fawcett was blessed withan inhuman constitution, and cursed by having to hire mere mortals to assist him. These unfortunate souls, no matter how ambitious and game, quickly found themselves out of their depth, and the target of Fawcett’s ire when he realized that they could not keep up. In this sense, Fawcett is a truly tragic figure: he was better equipped than anyone else to stalk the improbable; what kept him alive ended up killing him.

And still, one wonders who had a tougher time (it seems a safe bet the unflappable Fawcett would have recoiled at the reading list and research materials Grann required to tell his tale). Fawcett only had to do it; describing his various escapades from the myriad sources must have been its own brand of torture. The bibliography alone has enough texts to overcrowd an empty warehouse. The painstaking process of getting the story straight obliged Grann to employ many more assistants than Fawcett ever used. And Fawcett was the one who lived the tale being told. Conclusion: Fawcett explored so people unlike him didn’t have to. Grann puts all the pieces together so people like us don’t have to. Paying a few bucks for this book seems an almost offensively safe and unencumbered option, albeit one that is enthusiastically recommended.

Finally, the reader might think: someone could make a hell of a movie about this. In fact, someone already has. Twice.

To be continued…

When you think about the distinctive ingredients of Americana, the elements that comprise what we think about when we think of what makes America so…American, it’s easy to recite the cliched short-list: mom, apple pie, convertibles, rock and roll, McDonalds, sexual repression, colonialism, enhanced interrogations, et cetera.

But really, when you get down to it, we are all about violence. And, to a large degree, violence sort of encompasses all of the things listed above (the violence we do to others, the violence we do to the environment, the violence we do to ourselves–inherent in the desires we succumb to as well as deny, which are epitomized by most religions). But our religion is violence, and our cathedral has long been the silver screen. And we celebrate our addiction to violence in ways less brutal but more calculated than the barbaric Gladiator spectacles of yesteryear (we weren’t Americans yet): by perfecting what has become a universal aesthetic, the movie fight scene. Kind of like porn movie plots are a delivery device for the fucking, action movie plots are often a disposable fulcrum for the fighting.

The actual art of choreographed violence is serious business, literally and figuratively (i.e., in terms of time and money spent, and revenue generated) and really should not be blithely dismissed. There are books written, there are even movies made about the making of movies. So let the academics and darkened room disciples ruminate and pontificate; it’s much more enjoyable to make fun of the ritual that constitutes an entire industry. And it’s certainly a hell of a lot more satisfying to consider the sinister art of the bad fight scene, the dark cousin of the painstakingly crafted celluloid ballet. The bad fight scene, a semi-retarded pas de deux, has evolved into its own special status: it is an indispensable aspect of our culture. Thank God.

To appreciate the curious magic of the laughably bad, it’s helpful to first consider the unassailably good. I don’t know many serious film critics (or fans) who would deny that our nimble brethren from Asia have come closest to elevating the serious fight scene to unprecedented levels of artistry. Two recent examples, each featuring the obligatory one-man vs. the crowd sequence appear in Chan Wook Park’s Old Boy and Prachya Pinkaew’s Tom-Yum-Goong.

Exhibit A: Dae Su (the great Choi Min-Sik) drops the hammer (pun intended) on a bunch of hoods. Improbable, over-the-top, outstanding!

Exhibit B: the jaw-dropping Tony Jaa’s instant classic (already immortal) one-take (!!) fight scene, which took over a month to prepare and rehearse. The result is unedited (!!!) perfection, using the fifth take. Respect!

As kind of an antidote, it’s instructive to appreciate Martin Scorsese’s integrity. His dedication to authenticity depicts an epic fight scene that actually plays out the way fights usually look in real life: sloppy, uneven, embarrassing. This is a clinic, made indelible by De Niro and Joey “The Mook”:

And as an intermission, or delicious palette cleanser, let’s appreciate the sine qua non of campy superhero fight scenes (which obliges us to turn to the ultimate in camp, the caped crusader played by the marvelous Adam West): this is the all-in battle royale, a brawl that involves all the assorted players. Three words: “Bon voyage pussy!” Holy blissful extravagance, Batman!

Speaking of camp: does it get any better (worse) than Patrick Swayze? This scene has so much homoerotic energy it almost sucks its own dick. You can fear the mullets while simultaneously contemplating who’s gayer: Swayze, (the great) Ben Gazzara (“Can somebody geta drink around here?”) or the dude with pool cue? Are you kidding me?

Of course, the only cat who could challenge Swayze for the crown is Rob Lowe. First up, an epic romp with Andrew McCarthy (doing his finest work, which isn’t saying much) from the so-bad-it’s-great Class (two words: Jacqueline Bisset). Skip ahead to the 5.23 mark for the fight, but you can watch the whole thing to appreciate John Cusak in his first movie role. Recognize!

But this is child’s play compared to Youngblood(which gets you a young(er) Swayze and Keanu Reeves, demonstrating that at no time in his career could he act), a cheesefest that reaches almost offensive levels of connect-the-dots corniness. The bromance battling the testosterone here is officially off the charts; the movie itself is one long fight scene between gay yearning and feel-good Hollywood onanism.

Of course, for both fight scenes and hockey, it’s all about the Hanson brothers and Slap Shot (six words: “I’m listening to the fucking song!):

Now we’re approaching that elevated plane also known as the truth. Male gymnist? Check. Pommel horse? Check. Gayness off the charts? Big check (special shout out to my beloved Meatbull for bringing this one to my attention). The only remaining question being: can you handle the truth? Let’s see:

But let’s stop screwing around and get to the glory. The scene, and I mean the scene, where all the elements (camp, over-the-top pyrotechnics, implausibility, bad (and good) acting, and wrestling) come together, are made manifest in John Carpenter’s They Live. A six minute fight scene. S.I.X. M.I.N.U.T.E.S. And this isn’t just a gratuitous scrap; the end of the world as we know it as at stake (“Put on the glasses!”), with hero Roddy Piper (formerly “Rowdy” Roddy Piper of World Wrestling Federation fame) and not-yet-convinced good guy Keith David sorting things out in an alley. The sequence allegedly took over three weeks to rehearse, and it’s one for the ages.

So what do you get, where else is there to go, when you have a scene like the one above, that parodies virtually every aspect of the entire history of fight scenes? You have a scene that parodies that scene. Enter Ernie the Giant Chicken, the recurring character from Seth MacFarlane’s Family Guy.

What else is there left to say? Why not tie it all together with the only genius who actually is capable of intermingling all of these elements into his own work. Martial arts inspired reggae? Lee Scratch Perry has it covered. So what did I miss? Let me know what fight scene (good, bad, ugly or hopefully, all of these) you would put into the pantheon. Peace!

The Captain: Women Want Him and Men Want to Be Him

A few thoughts before we roll the tape…

Jim Croce: Thank you for that song, and the inspiration.

Carly Simon: I wish the song was about me.

Who knew “Like a Rhinestone Cowboy” was actually an early primer for the GOP?

The world needed Soul Train, even when white people pretended to be black people, with lamentable results.

Two words and one ampersand:  Peaches & Herb.

A guy who looked like this could have a number one hit. And that was a good thing.

M-m-m-m-m…Mice Aroma?

Still not convinced? Do you want to tangle with this cat?

To be continued. Obviously…

Great art knows no seasons. Nevertheless, some music is made for—or at least can be fully appreciated during—specific times of the year. Reggae music, which many people still believe means Bob Marley’s music, tends to get broken out only once the flip flops and hibachi grills come out of hibernation. And so, since summer can be considered in full swing with the holiday weekend coming up, the time is right to talk about reggae. Where to begin? How about with the best.

Released in 1977, Heart of the Congos is generally regarded as the greatest reggae album ever (certainly the best roots reggae album). It isn’t. It’s better. While it would be neither accurate nor fair to call this a one and done masterwork, it’s beyond dispute that the Congos never again came close to the heights they reached here. It’s okay, no one else has either.

The ‘70s were, without question, the golden age of reggae, and aside from the ubiquitous (and, let’s face it, omnipotent) Bob Marley, no single figure loomed larger during this decade than Lee “Scratch” Perry. His own albums (as the Upsetter, with the Upsetters) are more than enough to secure his legacy, but it’s his work as the Dub Shepherd—producing everyone from a baby-faced Bob Marley to the mature Max Romeo—that seals the deal for his enshrinement. Although he had more immediate commercial and critical success with Party Time (The Heptones), War Ina Babylon (Max Romeo) and especially Police & Thieves (Junior Murvin), Heart of the Congos has come to be fully appreciated as his masterpiece—and the Rosetta Stone of roots reggae. While Perry’s patented production skills are in overdrive on everything he touched circa ‘76/’77, this is the one where everything went right.

(Sidenote: these 24-odd months are a veritable embarrassment of reggae riches, considering that the albums mentioned above, as well as Culture’s Two Sevens Clash and Right Time by the Mighty Diamonds, also dropped during this time. Not only was this a high-water mark for reggae, it’s always interesting—and instructive—to consider that this unsurpassed creativity was churning out of Jamaica while, stateside, prog rock sat, constipated on the sidelines as punk and disco duked it out on the dance floor.)

Heart of the Congos is a sufficiently suitable title, but this album could very plausibly have been called Back to the Future. It is an uncanny document that in every facet—lyrically, vocally, sonically—seems to be stretching into the past even as it strains toward the future. Where virtually any reggae album of this (or really, any) time has the expected—even obligatory—shout-outs to Jah and the invocations of Rastafarianism, Heart of the Congos dives even deeper into biblical texts and—crucially—the civilization that preceded Jamaica, and everything else in the west: Africa.

Send my sons from afar and my daughters from the end of the world…

This line, from “Open up the Gate” crystallizes the powerful consciousness the Congos are tapping into here: in one line they capture the essence of both the Old Testament and Repatriation—from slaves to immigrants to artists. It is spoken (quoted) as the voice of God (literally), but more, the voice of memory, summarizing the story of our time on this planet.

Virtually any song could be singled out for analysis, but the second track, “Congoman” best represents the culmination of Perry’s—and the Congos’s—vision. This song, a timeline of history invoking “songs and psalms and voices”, is an effective, almost unsettling tapestry of deep cultural roots. This might be, if one were forced to choose, Perry’s ultimate achievement: listening to what he constructed in his (by today’s standards) primitive studio is breathtaking. This track (and the entire album) remains a living testament to the more natural, (if old-fashioned, and/or out of fashion) instinctive abilities of fingers, ears, brain and especially heart. Just as the most incredible effects can be manufactured with the click of a mouse in today’s movies, the technology certainly exists to embolden a million paint-by-number producers. In other words, what Perry did does not merely epitomize ingenuity from the oldest of schools, it stands apart as an honest, utterly human artifact.

“Congoman” brings all of Perry’s innovations into play: after an undulating beat unfolds with percussion, piano and bass setting a trance-like tone, all of a sudden an overdubbed refrain (heard repeatedly throughout the song) jars the moment: all sound ceases and it’s only the voices: “Out of Africa comes the Congoman”. It is at once eerie (or, Irie) and astonishing. With one masterstroke, Perry makes the composition future-proof: it is already deconstructed on the first go round: no mash-ups or remixes (then, now) are necessary, or even possible, since the first version is already reworked as a work in progress (and make no mistake: everyone with an MC or DJ before their name sprung forth from the tradition the mighty Upsetter originated). Perry takes what would have been a stirring, melodic and beautiful song and makes it richer, messier, more complicated, and inscrutably tantalizing: he transforms a masterpiece into a miracle. As the song unfolds it establishes the deepest of grooves (naturally, most of Perry’s regular posse is on hand here, including “Sly” Dunbar on drums, Ernest Ranglin on guitar and Boris Gardiner on bass), while Cedric Myton’s falsetto blends with Roy “Ashanti” Johnson’s tenor to cast their spell of longing and redemption. Perry’s production sounds like a remix already, providing a slightly disorienting tension between the push of straight ahead riddim and the pull of the echoing voices: Gregorian chants funneled through the heart of darkness into the light—a higher place, deeply spiritual yet entirely human. It is unlike anything you’ve ever heard, yet it’s somehow, impossibly, familiar.

We come with our culture to enlighten the world…

Any questions?

http://www.popmatters.com/pm/post/60484/five-reggae-albums-you-cannot-live-without/