Half Nel­son, star­ring Ryan Gosling and Sha­ree­ka Epps. Direct­ed by Ryan Fleck.

Ryan Gosling plays D.C. Berman as Robin Williams [who was real­ly Leo Strauss] in Dead Poet­’s Soci­ety: The Urban Years! Think: Crash meets Akee­lah & The Bee [and there are actu­al­ly cast mem­bers from sea­son four of The Wire, too. Don’t get excit­ed. They get two lines between them. Inci­den­tal­ly, it’s Donut and Michael Lee.]

Haven’t there been enough mes­sian­ic teacher dra­mas about sav­ing the chil­dren already? [Espe­cial­ly in a class­room so unde­mo­c­ra­t­ic that the kids can only spit out the “right” answers? There’s a whole lot of epis­te­mo­log­i­cal non­sense going on, and like Williams’ O Cap­tain my Cap­tain, the teacher remains the unques­tion­able know­er. Except this time, dude’s got a major crack habit, Williams’ own sub­stance abuse notwithstanding.]

[Let’s not talk about the nau­se­at­ing hand­held shots meant to impart “real­ness” to the telling.]

Did all the best mes­sage movies come out last year? Can’t Amer­i­can inde­pen­dent cin­e­ma be bet­ter than this? Half Nel­son has the pol­i­tics of Air Amer­i­ca radio! [And was twice as iner­tial with it’s “what should I do’s”. For starters, try some­thing oth­er than pathet­ic lib­er­al navel-gaz­ing. And attempt­ed rape, which to me sig­ni­fied what this car­pet­bag­ger as sav­iour was real­ly accom­plish­ing, which was lit­tle more than occu­pa­tion (no pun.)]

Like so many movies about the inner city and pro­gres­sive pol­i­tics, the effort to be even-hand­ed results in a lose-lose out­come where it’s not pos­si­ble for things to change. The vocab­u­lary of the “cul­ture of pover­ty” is so pow­er­ful that no one can resist its ide­o­log­i­cal pull, nor its tau­to­log­i­cal basis, the sort of “May the cycle remain unbro­ken” sort of cyn­i­cism and burnout that plagues both soci­ol­o­gy and social work.

The result is a neutered Hull House men­tal­i­ty of do-good­erism that is both total­ly impo­tent and moral­ly rel­a­tivis­tic, e.g. there’s no use in “sav­ing” these kids — they live by stan­dards and codes whol­ly dif­fer­ent from mine — and through this per­verse iden­ti­ty pol­i­tics there can be no such thing as sol­i­dar­i­ty, just dif­fer­ence as fetish.

[Inci­den­tal­ly, “cul­ture of pover­ty” and “under­class” are more fla­vors of bull­shit than I care to taste.]

As a belat­ed post­script, Bro­ken Social Scene still total­ly suck.

The more edu­cat­ed a feller is the more use he is to his class.

John Dos Pas­sos’ Man­hat­tan Trans­fer mas­ter­ful­ly illus­trates an epoch of Amer­i­can his­to­ry preg­nant with big ideas, yet held in a choke­hold by cap­i­tal­ist expan­sion and inter­na­tion­al con­flict. As Amer­i­ca strug­gled to accept urban­iza­tion and mass immi­gra­tion, forces such as nation­al­is­tic ten­sion, anti-com­mu­nist hys­te­ria and cos­mopoli­tanism rent holes in the nar­ra­tive of sto­ic Amer­i­can iso­la­tion­ism. With Man­hat­tan Trans­fer Dos Pas­sos syn­the­sized these con­flicts through the expe­ri­ences of those affect­ed by them at all social strata.

With­in Dos Pas­sos’ hyper­me­di­at­ed, dizzy­ing por­trait of New York, we find these peo­ple acute­ly aware of the con­tentious times in which they live, as if all of his­to­ry were up for grabs. The pres­sures of glob­al con­flict, epi­dem­ic and finan­cial insta­bil­i­ty were the lin­gua fran­ca of the day. For an era of such unqual­i­fied con­ser­vatism and faith in the free mar­ket, it’s fas­ci­nat­ing to real­ize that nowa­days one would be hard pressed to find the same flu­en­cy of ideas, how­ev­er basic, being dis­cussed among work­ers and socialites alike!

In a time of polit­i­cal para­noia, extra­or­di­nary ren­di­tions, secret pris­ons, with tor­ture an open ques­tion cod­i­fied into law, it’s refresh­ing to see that there were times in Amer­i­can his­to­ry when so many peo­ple risked every­thing to say no, when so few would say any­thing at all! Unlike fel­low trav­el­er Edward Bel­lamy, Dos Pas­sos trades in nei­ther nos­tal­gia nor nihilism allow­ing his frank eval­u­a­tion of pos­si­bil­i­ties that make Man­hat­tan Trans­fer a con­flict­ed take on the promise of the Amer­i­can Dream.

With Octo­ber near­ly upon us, it’s about time for Black­mail Is My Life to final­ly roll out its own fall guide of sorts. Expect some short fea­tures on artists and albums, as well as DVDs, movies, tele­vi­sion and books I’ve been dig­ging into late­ly, includ­ing: Yo La Ten­go’s endur­ing psy­che­delia; LSD March and the mys­ter­ies of the Japan­ese under­ground; the resur­gence of black met­al, specif­i­cal­ly USBM; The Wire and urban polit­i­cal mythol­o­gy; Michel Gondry, his­to­ry and mem­o­ry; any­thing by John Dos Pas­sos and the Ash­can school; Jim Miller’s Democ­ra­cy Is In The Streets; Darc Mind and ear­ly Nineties HipHop and more!

Also, since I’m inter­est­ed in devot­ing more time to web devel­op­ment here at Black­mail Is My Life [take that as a euphemism for over­haul­ing the site, updat­ing it and mak­ing it more user friend­ly], please leave any sug­gest­ed read­ing regard­ing that sub­ject in the comments!

Men­tal health remains as taboo a sub­ject as it ever was. The absur­di­ty of the top sports sto­ry is noth­ing less than mind­blow­ing, whether it’s true that Owens attempt­ed to kill him­self or not. The mes­sage was clear: it’s impos­si­ble to sus­pect a man as pow­er­ful, tal­ent­ed and wealthy as T.O. would so much as con­sid­er sui­cide. Nev­er­mind then, right? There’s a prod­uct to be mar­ket­ed people!

T.O. attempts sui­cide? What­ev­er hap­pened, get help and get well soon.