Bad Girls Bad Girls, Whatcha Gonna Do?

Title: The Sisterhood

Rating: 4 Stars

The subtitle of this history pretty much sums it up. It’s the story of the role women played in our country’s intelligence service. Although it briefly discusses earlier intelligence agents like Harriet Tubman, it’s mostly focused on the CIA with a brief discussion of its predecessor, the OSS.

The OSS came into being in the starting days of World War II when it became obvious that the US was woefully unprepared, especially in comparison to other countries, to perform intelligence work.

Since the OSS and the opening days of the CIA were the 1940s and the early 1950s, you can probably imagine the roles that women were forced into. They were secretaries. They were keepers of 3×5 index cards. If they were in the field, their role was relegated to recording analysts, which basically involved writing up the field reports that the ‘real’ agents were generating. In many cases, they were just seen as sexual objects to be used by men that were higher in the hierarchy. Of course, nearly men were higher in said hierarchy.

This sexist attitude extended to even the wives of field agents. They were expected to essentially work for the CIA for free, in whatever capacity that was called for. In most cases, this was being charming and gracious hostesses as their husband tried to recruit some likely foreign candidate.

It was for the most part impossible for a woman to get into clandestine training. Even if she got in and passed training, once graduated she would be overlooked by the men that were selecting overseas field agents. Upon completion, she often ended up in a desk job with limited opportunities for promotion.

Eventually, some women pioneered through all of the difficulties and became field agents. To the shock of probably no one reading this in the year 2024, they turned out to be superb agents. Even though some people nowadays seem to treat the word diversity as some kind of woke culture disaster, having diverse points of view and approaches actually leads to more successful outcomes. Many of the women in the field exhibited empathy, companionship, and openness that disarmed foreign recruits. Regardless of the sex or religion of their targets, women proved to be extremely adept at managing them. Slowly, gradually, these women were promoted and eventually served as mentors to the next generation of women recruited to join the agency.

There was an upside to the fact that women were relegated to records and data collection. With the fall of USSR, the conventional tools of spy craft became increasingly obsolete. In the resulting power vacuum arose terrorist networks. Such networks don’t have national borders or embassies. They don’t attend cocktail receptions where drunken bro-dudes could slap each on the back and establish an intelligence gathering relationship.

Terrorist networks are high decentralized. They operate as cells. They sparingly use electronic communication. Suddenly, intelligence gathering became about assembling individual pieces of information out of an immense ocean of data and being able to draw conclusions.

Since women had been assigned to data collection for decades, it turned out that a number of them became valuable expert analysts and leaders in this new paradigm. Alec Station was the CIA station devoted to tracking down Osama bin Laden. This station was populated largely by women.

Unfortunately, in no small part because it was so dominated by women, it was not taken seriously. For years, CIA leaders did not take the briefs published by Alec Station seriously. There were several times when the station had fairly conclusively located bin Laden but no one gave the order to take him.

All of that changed after 9/11. Although the agents working on Alec Station were understandably traumatized and guilt ridden by the tragedy of that day, from that point forward they definitely had the ear of leadership. The counter terrorism center dramatically grew in size and the women that had worked in it for years were leaned on to lead.

However, there was no point in having the ear of leadership if the leadership was only interested in hearing about evidence that confirmed their biases. I’d written earlier about how obsessed the Bush Administration was about linking Iraq to 9/11 (click here to read). Here you get the viewpoint of the analysts. By the time of 9/11, some of them had been working the desk for a decade. They knew that there was no connection between Saddam and Osama. No matter how many times they beat questions down, the same questions would just arise again. Their expert opinions were shunted aside in favor of the Red Cell, a team that CIA Director Tenet formed that had no expertise in the Middle East but were given a free hand to dream up any terrifying nightmare terrorist scenario. It was these analyses that were taken up by the White House and used as part of the justification for the war in Iraq.

This was kind of a strange book to read. The book before the rise of Alec Station is a pretty grim recitation of white men behaving badly and those women, desperate to serve their country, working for years, sometimes decades, in relative obscurity just for the opportunity to prove their mettle. That section can be summed up as: Nevertheless, she persisted.

Once, Mundy starts discussing Alec Station, the book transitions to a true spy, spine tingling read of tracking down terrorists while an invisible clock is ticking. It also brings up the moral questions (as well of effectiveness) of rendering, enhanced interrogation, and torture. Some women were so horrified by these changes that they resigned or requested reassignment. Others were all for it and saw it as an opportunity to give a bad guy a bad day.

Reading the section about Alec Station in this book and comparing it to the leadership missteps that led us to the second Iraq War as told in the history To Start a War, by Robert Draper, gave me a great picture of those terrifying days in the aftermath of 9/11 and the troublesome years after when the US lost its way.

American Neo-Realism

Title: Killer of Sheep

Rating: 4 Stars

On the BFI best films list, neo-realism is a genre that makes multiple appearances. What exactly is neo-realism? Well, I’m glad you asked.

It started in Italy. At the end of World War II, with Mussolini dead, hung up hanging upside down like a side of beef, Italy was in bad shape. With no money, some 400,000 dead soldiers and civilians, and many bombed out towns, Italy would not seem to be a likely candidate to start a new form of cinema.

However, as is often the case, where there’s a crisis there is opportunity. Some Italian filmmakers took their seemingly desperate situation and created something new. While Hollywood was making glorious musicals on large soundstages, they went a different way.

First of all, for the most part, they didn’t use trained actors. They used amateurs and emphasized their naturalistic actions and emotions. They didn’t use soundstages. They filmed in streets, stores, and apartments. There were no grand plots. These were stories of ordinary events happening to ordinary people. The characters depicted were at best middle class, but in many cases the characters were poverty stricken and were in a desperate battle for survival.

The end result were films that felt almost like documentaries. They were black and white films with simple photography. The realistic approach taken gave the films an authenticity previously lacking in cinema.

I don’t know if this is true or not, but I personally believe that such film makers might have been inspired by the author Emile Zola. While other twentieth century writers were writing novels where the characters, even if they had financial problems, seemed to still be able to employ a maid, Zola was writing about working class families and the real problems, pains, and joys that they experience. For example, compare Zola’s Germinal to Austen’s Pride and Prejudice.

Be that as it may, probably the most famous example of Italian neo-realism is The Bicycle Thieves, directed by Victorio De Sica. It’s about a man, desperate to feed his wife and family, that gets a job that requires a bicycle. They sacrifice to get him a bicycle and then, on his first day on the job, his bicycle is stolen. The rest of the film is about his attempts to get his bicycle back.

Casablanca it is not.

In addition to Bicycle Thieves, another film on the BFI list that I’ve recently watched is Pather Panchala. It’s an Indian film that, in a similar manner, follows a poor Indian family as they struggle to get enough food to eat and to shelter from a violent rain storm.

The question becomes, what does neo-realism look like when applied to American cinema? After all, the US is the militarily strongest, wealthiest, and most culturally powerful country that has ever existed in world history. What would an American neo-realistic film look like?

It would look much like Killer of Sheep. The making of this film is a strange story.

Charles Burnett was pursuing his MFA at the UCLA School of Film. It was intended to be his master thesis. It was made for a whopping grand total of $10,000. The film took over a year to make because Burnett was also working a full time job at the same time. Started in 1972, filming wasn’t completed until 1975 and he didn’t submit the film to UCLA until 1977. The official release date of the film is 1978.

We talk about 1970s cinematic auteurs like Scorsese, but Burnett wrote, directed, produced, and edited the film while also serving as the cinematographer.

Burnett also wanted this film to be a statement about Black music. Accordingly, the soundtrack contains many songs from a variety of artists, everyone from Louis Armstrong to Earth, Wind, and Fire and even George Gershwin. The music, carefully curated, is integral to each scene.

The problem is that there was no way that he could ever get music rights to all of the music that he used. The music was so critical to setting the mood of the film that much would be lost if the music was removed.

Due to not having rights to the music, the film remained in limbo. It could not be shown in any public theater. The few public showings were 16mm grainy films. It was one of the great, lost classics.

Finally, in 2007, the music rights issue was cleared after paying $150,000. It could now go into general release. Interestingly, in 2024, it’s still a difficult film to find. It’s not available for rent or purchase on any streaming platform. It apparently was on Kanopy at one time, but no longer is. It is available for purchase on DVD, but it’s been years since I’ve had a DVD player. Finally, I found a copy of it on the Internet Archive with Spanish subtitles.

The story is of Stan, his wife (who doesn’t even have a name in the film), and their two children. The film is set in Watts, a Los Angeles working class Black neighborhood.

Stan works at a slaughterhouse. He seems to be always exhausted. His wife clearly loves him but Stan, except for a few moments, seems to be too tired to reciprocate much. Friends come by and try to entice him into schemes. Two men want him to help out with a murder. A female owner of a liquor store suggestively asks him to quit his job and work with her (“in the back room”). He turns down all offers, intent upon doing his honest work, even though it just barely pays the bills. Despite his relative poverty, he takes pride that he’s not as bad as others in the neighborhood who are even poorer.

The adults in the film have plans, but they usually fall apart. Stan gets an engine for his car, but the engine falls out of the back of the truck, damaging it. They just leave it in the middle of the road. They and some others try to go to a race track. On the way there, they get a flat tire. Having no spare, they have no choice but to drive back home, riding on the rim.

On the other hand, the children are all very active. You see them playing, fighting, bike riding, crying, and leaping from building to building. There’s a vitality to their play that is completely lacking in the lives of their parents. Watching them, you wonder at what point will the struggle of being poor and Black in America weigh down so much upon them that they’ll turn into their parents.

This is a great example of American neo-realism. Stan and his wife were both portrayed by actors, although both are now known primarily for their roles in this film (and keep in mind that this film was kept under wraps for thirty years). I believe that most of the rest of the cast were amateurs. The acting is naturalistic. There are clearly no sets or soundstage. This is filmed in the houses and streets of Watts. There is no grand plot. In fact, there really is no plot at all. It’s at best a series of vignettes. Like with other neo-realistic films, as you watch it, you almost feel as if you’re watching a documentary.

Placing Stan in a slaughterhouse is an interesting choice. You see the bleating sheep being led to slaughter. Sometimes they’re meek. Sometimes they’re fighting in panic. Is Burnett creating a metaphor between sheep at a charnel house and being a Black American living in 1970s poverty?

Although it took significant effort to track this film down, at the end I was glad that I did. It’s a pretty amazing piece of work from an outsider artist executing his own unique vision.

Real Life Duck Soup

Title: The Lumumba Plot

Rating: 4 Stars

For those of you not up on your Marx Brothers films, Duck Soup is the story of Rufus T Firefly (Groucho) taking over leadership of the country Freedonia and the merry mix ups that then follow (a peanut vendor (Chico) is appointed Secretary of War, a neighboring country threatens war, and it ends in a massive food fight). Although much more serious, I couldn’t help thinking about that film as I was reading about the first days of Congo’s independence.

Congo had had a rough time of it for some time. Nowadays, when people think of Belgium, they think of chocolate or waffles. If you’re a history major, you might think about the tiny, brave, doomed Belgium desperately fighting for its life against a German surprise invasion in the opening days of World War I.

This tiny, seemingly innocent country has a brutal history of colonialism. For the really gory details, check out King Leopold’s Ghost, by Adam Hochschild. The TL;DR is that the Belgian King Leopold II had a hankering for some colonial territory. Shut out of most places, in the 1880s he finally landed upon a giant chunk of territory in Africa. Not even claiming it for Belgium (at least at first), he took ownership of it as his own private property and named it the Congo Free State (hint, it wasn’t exactly free to the people currently living there),

Hungry for the riches to be found in ivory and, later, in rubber, his agents enslaved the Congolese population to meet nearly impossible quotas. Congolese were tortured and murdered. Hands and feet were amputated if quotas were not met. Over a million Congolese died as a result. These actions were the cause of one of the first uses of the phrase, “crimes against humanity”.

Eventually, that era ceased but the Congolese lives were still harsh. Discriminated against, they were barely educated. If a Congolese was lucky enough to get an office job, they were paid 1/5 of what a Belgian would make for the same work.

In the wake of World War II, there was a rise in decolonization movements. Even into the 1950s, the Belgians were sanguine. Convinced that the Congolese were essentially a passive people satisfied with the status quo, the Belgians were confident that independence, if it were to come, was some decades off.

Into this stepped Patrice Lumumba. Equipped with only a primary school education, even at a young age he was outgoing and precocious. He was fluent in some five languages, was well read, and wrote poetry.

He started off as an admirer of Belgium and European ways and sought to emulate them. He was a supporter of some kind of gradual emancipation, something along the lines of W.E.B. Du Bois’ idea of the talented tenth.

He worked at a post office for a number of years, that is, until he was arrested for embezzlement at the post office. Married with children, he found it impossible to live an assimilationist European lifestyle when he was only making twenty percent of an actual European living in the Congo.

Released after a short stint in prison, he started over by moving to the capital, Leopoldville, and becoming a beer distributor. He was successful and, while performing these duties, he met many new people. An inveterate schmoozer, he joined some half a dozen or so different clubs and often ended up serving as a club officer. His natural charismatic leadership marked him as having a political future.

All thoughts of assimilation ended in 1959 when a banned independence protest erupted in riots. The Belgians cracked down, arresting, convicting, and jailing Lumumba.

However, the fires of Congolese independence could not be quenched. The Belgians agreed to hold a conference to discuss independence. The other Congolese leaders refused to meet unless Lumumba was freed. Once freed, at the conference, much to everyone’s astonishment, Lumumba demanded immediate independence. After negotiation, Congo independence was agreed to take place in six months time.

There was no question that Lumumba was going to be the first prime minister of the independent Congo. The Belgians, embittered at being pushed aside, in denial, and still harboring designs of exerting major influence in Congo, did everything they could to hamstring the new government.

The government had enough problems even without Belgian interference. Since so few Congolese were formally educated, finding qualified government ministers was impossible. There were less than twenty Congolese college graduates in the entire world. Most of the original cabinet did not finish high school. The cabinet included seventeen local chieftains, most of whom were illiterate. Within two weeks of independence, sixty thousand out of eighty thousand Europeans had left the country. The national treasury was empty. The richest province, Katanga, was actively trying to secede. Pockets of the army were in open rebellion. Lumumba tried to placate the soldiers in the army by giving literally everyone in the army promotions (eg privates become corporals, corporals become sergeants).

Within two weeks of independence, Belgium was trying to figure out ways to get rid of Lumumba. They produced obvious forgeries that made him seem like a Soviet stooge. Belgian pilots (since there were no Congolese trained to be pilots) would intentionally fly Lumumba to the wrong city.

Despite the fact that Lumumba openly admired the United States, US officials saw him as another Castro. Lumumba did not help his case when, stymied by both the US and the UN, he did reach out to the Soviet Union for help, not much of which was forthcoming. He was essentially nonideological, willing to work with anyone that was willing to provide assistance.

Eisenhower, nearing the end of his presidency, just wanted it all to go away. At a cabinet meeting, he apparently turned to his CIA director and told him (in plausible deniability government speak) to assassinate Lumumba. At first, not taking him seriously, his orders were repeated by his National Security Advisor at the generically named committee The Special Group.

This caused a flurry of actions. Various French speaking foreign nationals not averse to doing wet work were brought into the Congo by the CIA. Even Sidney Gottlieb got into the act. In case you need a reminder, Gottlieb was the chief poisoner of the CIA (I’ve written about this lovely man here and here). Gottlieb provided the CIA station chief with poison and instructions on how to use it.

Belgium also was trying to kill Lumumba. They did not have much luck. They hired a Greek hitman for 200,000 francs and he promptly disappeared.

While all of this was going on, both UN officials and US officials were whispering in Joseph Mobutu’s ear. Chief of staff of the army, he was in position to stage a coup. Since Lumumba was a mentor and once a close friend, this was not an easy decision for Mobutu. His indecision led him to being called the Hamlet of the Congo. Eventually, he did overthrow Lumumba and put him under house arrest. Lumumba’s house were surrounded by an inner ring of UN forces to keep others out and an outer ring of Congolese soldiers to keep him in.

Trapped, Lumumba decided to make a break to his home state that still strongly supported him. Sneaking past both rings of security, he almost made it to Stanleyville. At the last ferry crossing, he was captured by his sworn enemies. After brutally torturing him, he was murdered and his body soaked in acid to remove all traces of his corpse. Only one tooth was left, which somewhat macabrely was kept as a souvenir.

Mobutu, in the pay of the UN, Belgium, and the CIA, eventually ended up the Congo leader. In a tragedy for the Congolese, his thirty year reign was a kleptocracy that left the population deeply impoverished.

As I read this, it’s amazing to me how fast events unfolded and how young everyone is. In 1956, Lumumba was in prison for post office embezzlement and in 1960 he was prime minister. In the first part of 1959, Belgium thought they’d be in charge for fifty years. They lasted barely one. Within a week of independence, Congo was descending into chaos. Lumumba was deposed within three months. Lumumba became prime minister at 35. Mobutu deposed Lumumba when Mobutu was 30.

It’s hard to say if Lumumba’s leadership style of frenetic chaos would have led to a better result, but it’s hard to imagine a worse result.

Monsters Abound

Title: Eileen

Rating: 4 Stars

Eileen is a pretty small, low budget, independent film. Usually it would have probably never hit my radar, but I became interested in it because, some years ago, I’d read the novel. Many times I do a compare / contrast between the film and the novel but it’s been so many years that I don’t think that I could give the novel justice.

The novel was written by Ottessa Moshfegh. She and her husband also cowrote the screenplay. The thing that I find most interesting about Moshfegh’s work, especially her early work, is how unattractive her characters are. Be they protagonist or antagonist, her characters are many times physically ugly, but regardless, are often bitter, caustic, and pretty much always morally compromised.

So it is with the novel Eileen. Since she also wrote the screenplay, I expected that her novelistic sensibilities would be translated to the screen. My expectation was not disappointed.

Eileen (Thomasin McKenzie) is a young woman living in Massachusetts in the early 1960s. She works in some kind of general purpose secretarial role at a juvenile prison. After nursing her mother as she died of cancer, Eileen now lives with her father (Shea Whigham), an alcoholic ex-policeman who casually and cruelly insults her constantly. He open states his preference for his older daughter (never seen), although it’s implied that he sexually abused her.

Eileen is a bitter, tired, drab woman for whom life holds no joy. She wears her mother’s old clothes. She bears her father’s insults. The other secretaries at the prison hold her in contempt. When she’s not fantasizing about killing herself or her father, she masturbates as she fantasizes about sex with a prison guard that is never seen even acknowledging her. It appears that her life is destined to be solitary, nasty, brutish, and short.

That is, until the prison psychologist retires. His replacement is the vivacious Rebecca (Anne Hathaway). In a drab, colorless world, she arrives dressed like a fashion model in a red convertible. Her forceful, charismatic personality instantly puts the previously dominant men in their place.

Needless to say, Eileen is captivated. Rebecca, new in town, as well as seeing an adoring acolyte when she sees one, shines her personality spotlight on Eileen, dazzling her. They go out for drinks. Rebecca compliments her and asks her opinion. Suddenly, after a life of black and white, Eileen’s life is full of color. She finds herself falling for Rebecca.

In the midst of this, Rebecca learns about a new juvenile prisoner. He is in prison for brutally stabbing his father to death. Rebecca learns from the young man that his father had been abusing him. Determined to get to the truth, Rebecca goes over to the mother’s house and tries to get her to admit her knowledge of this. When things go wrong, Rebecca calls Eileen for help. Let’s just say that things go South from there.

So, how is the film? Well, it’s hard to say. Since I’m already a fan of Moshfegh’s writing and because I’d read Eileen, I knew what I was in for. It’d be interesting to know what someone would think that came into it fresh.

Make no doubt it, there are no positive characters here. The film centers around Eileen, who as I’ve said, is a bitter, repressed, and unappealing woman. She clearly wants her father dead. Once, when Rebecca talks about how the young prisoner seems to hate his father, Eileen, much to Rebecca’s shock, just says flatly, as if stating the most obvious fact, that everyone hates their father.

To be fair, her father is a monster. I’m not sure how he feels about this, but severely compromised moralized cops (or ex cops) is basically Whigham’s wheelhouse (just check out his work on Boardwalk Empire and Perry Mason). Here he inhabits the role as the bitter ex chief of police who now occasionally drunkenly waves his gun at random people on his street.

Rebecca, although charming on the surface, clearly sees Eileen as an easy mark and effortlessly manipulates her. Rebecca basks in Eileen’s adoration. Anne Hathaway does good work here. Most of the roles that I know from Hathaway are more like girl next door roles. Here, she very successfully portrays the sexually charismatic Rebecca.

Watching a 100 minute film featuring such unattractive characters could very well be a chore for someone looking for more traditional fare. On top of that, I do have to say that the ending is kind of nonsense. It’s similar to how the novel ends so I can’t even blame filmmaking choices.

However, if you can just kind of ignore the ending and if you’re in the mood for morally compromised people making morally compromised choices, then this film is for you. You’ll know that you’re officially in Ottessa Moshfegh territory.

Odysseus Has Come To Chew Bubble Gum And Kick Ass

Title: The Odyssey

Rating: 5 Stars

One of my reading goals this year is to read four epic poems. Don’t ask me how I came up with the number four. It might have been one a quarter. Regardless, I chose The Odyssey first because there was a recent, highly respected translation of it by Emily Wilson.

I last read The Odyssey twenty-five years ago or so. I’m sure that I read the Alexander Pope version. It was written in the style of heroic couplets, which at least to my mind was better suited to the warlike Iliad, since reading it out loud sounds like the thundering hooves of horses.

Emily Wilson abandons that convention and translated it into iambic pentameter, which leads to a much more natural flow to the English. Not only that, but she’s writing in something very close to our current idiom. Much like Shakespeare, a reader will get much more value out of it by reading it out loud. The words flow beautifully.

It seems a bit absurd to talk about the plot for a story written some 2800 years ago (and, oh yeah, there’s probably spoilers ahead, so be ready for that), but it’s safe to say that Ithaca is in trouble.

Ithaca’s ruler, Odysseus, has been away from home for twenty years. He spent ten of it fighting the Trojan War and has been trying to get home for the last ten. Assuming that Odysseus must be dead by now, there’s a bunch of harrying suitors circling around Odysseus’ wife, Penelope, hungry for her fortune. Odysseus’ son, Telemachus, is trying to act like the head of the house but is being bossed around by the suitors. Although Penelope has successfully fended off the suitors for years, all of her delay tactics have come to an end and it looks like she’s going to have to concede and choose one from among the horde.

Meanwhile, Odysseus has been on, well, an odyssey. Poking out Cyclops’ eye wasn’t a brilliant idea because Odysseus, by doing so, ended up hacking off Poseidon, the god of water. Whenever he gets close to Ithaca, Poseidon makes sure to stir up the seas and blow him off course and / or wreck his ships. As he gets blown about, Odysseus has famous encounters with Scylla and Charybdis, almost gets waylaid by the Sirens, makes a detour into Hades to see some of his old homies like Agamemnon and Achilles, and ends up trapped on an island with Calypso, where he is ‘forced’ to share her bed for seven (yes, seven) years.

He finally gets free of all of that and manages to get back home to Ithaca. There he meets up with Telemachus and a couple of his loyal slaves. They plan and execute a bloodbath of the suitors. Nothing like a brutal mass murder to happily reunite a family. Finally home and at rest, Odysseus can now live out his remaining years in peace (well, except for one last mission that he must do to get Poseidon off of his back and for the marauding (ie thieving and piracy) that he admits that he has to do to replenish all of the stock that his suitors consumed in his absence).

As I read this, one thing that I forgot was how much of a whiner Odysseus is. Whenever he meets someone, one of the things that he always (and I do mean, always) talks about is what a miserable life he leads. Most places he visits he leaves laden with gifts, but this never stops his queen for the day complaining. He seemingly believes that he’s the single unluckiest man alive. Every now and then he meets another wanderer and it instantly becomes a battle of which of the two is most unfortunate. One of the quotes from the poem is: “After many years of agony and absence from one’s home, a person can begin enjoying grief.”

Not shocking, but the double standard between men and women is pretty hilarious. Odysseus literally shares the bed of a goddess for seven years. Sure, he weeps of missing Ithaca during the day, but it sure does seem that he’s getting pretty busy with Calypso every night. Meanwhile, Penelope has to be absolutely chaste during the entire twenty years when she doesn’t even know if Odysseus is dead or alive. Telemachus, assuming that he’s really Odysseus’ son, can’t be more than twenty-one, and he regularly peremptorily orders his mother to go to her room and weave with her slave girls. She meekly obeys.

In fact, the fake contest that Odysseus and Telemachus set up as a ruse to fool the suitors has an interesting prize. Whichever of the suitors can string Odysseus’ bow and send an arrow through twelve ax heads gets to marry Penelope. Penelope is reduced to a contest prize. Of course, none of the girly men suitors can even string the bow, let along accurately shoot an arrow with it.

The fight against the suitors is not fair. Yes, the suitors are gluttonous jerks and a couple of them even want Telemachus dead, but I’m not sure if those two facts warrant the death penalty for all of them. Telemachus secretly takes away the suitors’ weapons so that they can’t even fight back at first. During the fight, the goddess Athena is actively helping Odysseus while also throwing a few blows herself. No matter how many suitors there are, having a goddess of war on your side kind of tips the scale pretty severely in your favor.

Although the fight is over, the carnage is not. Apparently, several of Odysseus’ female slaves hooked up with the suitors. Now let’s put aside the issue of consent when it comes to slaves. In Odysseus’ world, the fact that these female slaves ‘defiled’ themselves with the suitors merits the death penalty. They are all hung. They specifically were not cut because he didn’t want their blood to defile his hall. It’s a bit harsh.

On Star Trek, the crew members that wear red shirts infamously always end up dying. Well, guess what? Everyone that sails with Odysseus is apparently wearing red shirts. No one other than Odysseus survives. He’s supposedly this great captain and beloved leader of men, but serving under him is a death sentence. If you’re not drowned in a storm, you’re doomed to be dinner for Cyclops or munched on by one of Scylla’s six heads.

One thing about The Odyssey that I’d forgotten is how most of Odysseus’ journey actually isn’t told as it happened. After spending years with Calypso, he and his crew are sailing home. However, they manage to offend one more god and in rage the ship is destroyed and everyone dies except for Odysseus, who washes ashore on an island. There he is brought before the king, who is so interested in Odysseus that the king insists that Odysseus recite his travails.

Odysseus does so, and it is here that we learn about Calypso, Scylla, his trip to Hades, and so on.

Here’s the thing. Odysseus is a trickster. He is a known liar. In fact, in conversations with others, he has knowingly lied about who he is and what he has done. Therefore, Odysseus is a textbook unreliable narrator. Could it be that all of the adventures that we attribute to Odysseus, everything from his trip to Hades to talking to the ghost of Achilles to even his many year sojourn with Calypso is all bullshit?

Does this shaky relationship to truth and storytelling mean that The Odyssey can be thought of as proto post modern?

Probably not, but it’s an interesting thought. I’d highly recommend Emily Wilson’s translation. It’s accessible, entertaining, and beautiful to read.

The Sad Trite Dance Of Asymmetric Warfare

Title: Battle of Algiers

Rating: 5 Stars

Continuing my way through the BFI list of best films, this one I admittedly might be overrating. However, I do have a reason. The last several films from the list that I’ve watched have been kind of a struggle. I appreciate the artistry of the films and the context in which they were made, but they’ve been kind of a slog to actually, you know, watch. Whether it’s a tale of Indian poverty (Pather Panchali) or a weird sci-fi Soviet film (Stalker) or a Soviet non-linear semi-autobiography (Mirror), watching these films has seemed much more like work than play.

So, watching Battle of Algiers was a breath of fresh air. Don’t get me wrong. The subject matter is grim with scenes of torture and terrorism. However, the plot is linear and clear, the motives of the characters are well understood, and clocking in at around two hours (at least the version that I watched) all make it a somewhat conventionally enjoyable cinematic experience.

I do say somewhat conventional. It is an innovative film. It’s about Algeria’s struggle for independence. This struggle unfolds over multiple years. You see the struggle from multiple viewpoints. There are the leaders of the revolution. There are foot soldiers like the three women that separately must maneuver through military checkpoints to plant bombs in locations like cafes. There is the French military that has been called in to restore order, at virtually any cost, to what the French see as their colony.

It’s an Italian film made in the style known as neo-realism. Even though it’s a drama, it really feels that you’re watching a documentary. Much of the photography takes place in the streets. Watching it, I see no evidence of sound stages being used or anything like that. The cinematographer filmed in a style that made it seem like a news reel. Apparently when first screened in the US, the film was prefaced with a short message stating that no news reel footage was used.

Even more than that, the director relied almost exclusively upon non-actors. The only non-actor played the head of the French military assigned the task of putting down the rebellion. Other than that, apparently the director just kind of wandered around and picked people who had the look or affect that he was looking for. Not only were some of these non-actors in Algeria during the rebellion but some of them were actual participants.

The story told is an archetype of how revolutions like this unfold. It starts with a small rebel organization (known as the FLN) that is not getting traction. To gain attention, the FLN plan some splashy actions. In this case, they assassinate some policemen and steal their weapons for further acts. This sparks an immediately counterreaction from the police. Several police officials sneak into the rebel stronghold, the Casbah, and plant a bomb, resulting in the deaths of many civilians. Instead of teaching the FLN a painful lesson, this only inspires them to further acts of violence as well as nonviolent protests like general strikes to demonstrate both the size of the resistance and how much the French need the local Algerians for their society to function.

Eventually, it escalates to where the Casbah is essentially walled off from the rest of Algiers. Since the French need local Algerians, Algerians are still allowed to work outside of the Casbah. Knowing French prejudices, local Algerian women assume the looks and dress of sophisticated women to successfully pass through check points and to plant bombs. The filmmakers not only show the bravery of the women as they cross a security checkpoint with a ticking timebomb, but also show the consequences of their actions. One of the bombs is at a milk bar, populated by young people drinking non-alcoholic beverages and joyfully dancing to music. The people at the bar have nothing to do with the oppressive military or police but are collateral damage to a war that they probably don’t even understand.

Eventually, the French get tough and bring in their military to install law and order. The military understands that the FLN is organized in a typical highly independent set of cells. Putting aside legal niceties, the military is allowed to employ a strong hand in breaking up the cells. Beatings, water torture, and being handcuffed and hung are all explicitly shown here. Eventually, the efforts bear fruit. They begin to work their way, cell by cell, slowly working their way up the hierarchy. Eventually, they reach the top cell and capture / kill the leaders. At that point, the military consider the FLN conquered and their job completed.

Of course, it’s not that easy. Exercising such a violent crackdown on revolutionaries inevitably has the result of creating a new generation of revolutionaries. Eventually, Algeria does gain its independence.

History tells us that this is the path of revolution. Whether it’s the US fighting the Viet Cong or the Israelis fighting Palestinians during the Intifada, the script is the same. A relatively small number of committed revolutionaries can tie up a large, seemingly unconquerable military through the use of asymmetric warfare.

Considering the later US experience in Afghanistan or what Israel is currently inflicting upon Gaza, these lessons seem very difficult for state power to learn.

Trump Didn’t Hijack The Republican Party; He Understood It

Title: Tyranny of the Minority

Rating: 5 Stars

I’m not sure if there was a whole lot of information that was new to me in this book, but for whatever reason, it succinctly summed up what’s going on with the Republican Party. There’s been a lot of ink spilled over the rise of Donald Trump and the seemingly inexorable hold that he has on the party, despite his many flaws and, quite frankly, his cartoonishly inane behavior. At least for me, this book added context that I found illuminating.

The root of the problem is, ultimately, like a lot of things in the US, race. According to the authors, there has never been a successful transition to a multiracial democracy. This is exactly what is going on in our country now.

First of all, we don’t actually have a long history of democracy. Sure, there was a Declaration of Independence, a fought war, and a Constitution, but even then, relatively few white men were able to vote. By the time of Andrew Jackson or so, even propertyless white men could vote. It took a Civil War to even have Black people to not be considered property. Although granted citizenship and granted the theoretical right to vote, the reaction to the Reformation was rapid. Quickly, in major parts of the country, Black men lost their right to vote. It took until 1919 and the 19th Amendment for white women to get the vote. Finally, it was the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act in the 1960s that truly enfranchised the entire country. We’ve only been a fully participatory democracy for some sixty years.

On top of that is the change in our population demographics. Put simply, the birthrate for US citizens is below replacement. We’re not as bad as countries like China, Japan, South Korea, or Italy. The primary reason why it’s not more concerning is that we make up the difference with immigration. A good percentage of that immigration comes from Hispanic countries. That, and the fact that the birthrate for white women is lower than the overall US birthrate means that the percentage of white people is decreasing rapidly. Forty years ago or so, white people made up 80% of the population. Now the number is closer to 60%. Considering the fact that white people no longer make up a majority of the younger generation, that number will continue to inexorably head down.

All of this means that the US is heading to a multi-racial democracy. It’s fair to say that there’s a bunch of white people that aren’t happy with that. For them, losing centuries old advantages in the name of equality feels like an injustice.

How big was this advantage? Well, check out these figures. From our nation’s founding to the late 1980s, every single US president, vice president, House Speaker, Senate majority leader, Supreme Court chief justice, Federal Reserve chairman, and Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman was a white man. Every single state governor was white until 1989. Every Fortune 500 CEO was white until 1987. For two hundred years, the racial hierarchy was unchallenged.

So yes, change is coming. How did the two parties respond? You’d think that the Republican party, being, after all, the party that was formed to end slavery, would have the inside track to this new world. However, first with Franklin Roosevelt, then continued on with Harry Truman, and then most dramatically with Lyndon Johnson, the Democratic party made the moves to become more racially inclusive.

Seeing an opportunity, the Republicans went the other way. There were a bunch of previously loyal Democrats that were horrified at their party’s new positions. Starting in the 1960s with Barry Goldwater and then with a vengeance with Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, the Republicans made a big play to be the party to preserve white advantages.

Since, as I said above, white people were some 80% of the population, this was, at that moment, a smart play. In fact, from 1968 through 1988, the Republicans only lost one presidential election, and that was due to fallout from the Watergate scandal.

In 2024, with this approach, the Republicans have painted themselves into a corner. They are closely aligned with a constituency that, relative to others, is decreasing in size. From 1992 to 2020, the Republican candidate have only won the presidential popular vote once.

In normal times, if a party loses seven of its last eight elections, this would force the party to adjust to reality. In the aftermath of 2012, the Republican party actually put out a paper (the ‘post mortem’) challenging itself to figure out ways to reach out beyond their base.

It did not take. Why not? Well, Republican party leaders think that they’ve discovered a cheat code. When creating the Constitution, the convention had to make several compromises. Primarily to mitigate the concerns of small states, in addition to the proportional representation of the House, we ended up with a non-proportional representation of the Senate (ie two senators per state). Instead of a popular vote (which pretty much every other democracy in the world does by now) for president, we ended up with the electoral college, which since it is based upon the state numbers in the House / Senate, it is itself non-proportional.

Add to that the filibuster. Not even called out in the Constitution, it was a rarely used device until the twentieth century. Filibusters used to at least be hard work (someone had to stand and talk for hours on end), but by the 1970s any senator can basically stop the Senate by raising their hand, at which point either the proposed law is stopped or until sixty votes can be found to stop the filibuster. With the current strict party discipline, it’s become virtually impossible to stop a filibuster. One senator can indefinitely prevent a bill from coming to a vote. This is definitely not what the founding fathers had in mind.

What does all of this mean? With the great geographical sorting that has taken place in our country whereby Republicans and Democrats tend to cluster in individual enclaves and with the Democrats clustering in the large cities, the smaller, rural states are now decisively Republican.

Because of that, there is a very narrow path for Republicans to win the electoral college even without winning the popular vote. This was previously a rare event. It’s now happened twice in twenty years. With the electoral college, Republicans have actually won three out of the last eight elections. Not a great result, but apparently one that does not require a dramatic reassessment.

In the non-proportional Senate, there can be a majority of senators that make up only 20% of our nation’s population. Because of the filibuster, senators from only 11% of our nation’s population can stop any law. Although the Republican party has been the Senate majority many times in the period, it has never represented a majority of the voters in the twenty-first century.

This spills over to the Supreme Court. Three of the Supreme Court justices serving today were appointed by a President that lost the popular vote and were confirmed by a Senate representing a minority of our country’s population.

There you have it. That is the tyranny of the minority, or as the authors call it, counter-majoritarian.

Republicans are very much intent upon maintaining this state of affairs. This is at the heart of all of their voting ‘security’ measures that end up doing things like requiring voter ID or closing voting locations. People of color are significantly less likely to have identification than white people. The voting locations being closed are those that are primarily frequented by people of color. Narrowing the window of early voting penalizes Southern Black churches that have Sunday get out the vote drives. This is all by design.

What can be done? Well, the good news is that there is a process to fix this, and it has been used in the past. The bad news is that the process is to amend the US Constitution.

The US Constitution is the world’s hardest constitution to change. It requires supermajorities in both legislative chambers and 3/4 approval of all state governments. There’s a reason that the Constitution hasn’t been changed in thirty years. In contrast, Norway has modified its constitution over three hundred times over the last two hundred years. For the US, there have been over seven hundred unsuccessful attempts just to abolish the electoral college.

We need a bunch of constitutional amendments. I actually proposed my own list of amendments some time ago (here if you’re interested). It won’t be easy. The first attempts at Black equality started around the 1820s and didn’t culminate until the 1960s. It took about eighty years for women to get the right to vote.

What were the recommendations that the authors proposed? Abolish the electoral college. Make the Senate’s representation more proportional. Eliminate gerrymandering. Increase the House of Representatives beyond its current count of 435 to put it more in line with population growth (ie make it more truly proportional again). Abolish the Senate filibuster. Establish term limits for Supreme Court justices. Most importantly, and probably to be done first, amend the Constitution to make it easier to be amended (ie remove the 3/4 state approval requirement).

It’s a tall order, but it’s the only way that we can truly migrate to a multi-racial democracy by removing the counter-majoritarian elements that are currently present in our system.

We need to get started today.

The Talented Mr Oliver

Title: Saltburn

Rating: 5 Stars

Oliver Quick (Barry Keoghan) is a new student at Oxford. A scholarship student, he is almost immediately ostracized by his better dressed, better groomed, and much richer classmates. It appears that he’s going to be stuck hanging out with his fellow outcasts until he does a favor one day for Felix Catton (Jacob Elordi). Impossibly tall, handsome, charismatic, and rich, Felix moves through the Oxford world like royalty.

From this small favor, Felix takes pity upon Oliver and takes him under his wing. His sympathies increase once he hears about Oliver’s dismal home life of abuse and addiction. On break, when Felix discovers that Oliver is not going home and, in fact, never plans to ever return to his home, Felix invites Oliver to his home, a massive estate named Saltburn.

When he arrives, Oliver is overwhelmed by the grandeur of Saltburn. Still horribly awkward, he does everything in his power to ingratiate himself with Felix’s parents and sister. Things go well until Felix inadvertently discovers that Oliver has not been honest with him.

Shocked at his deceit, Felix seeks to end Oliver’s friendship. Oliver, devastated, having once tasted such luxury, is determined not to go back to his previous life. It’s fair to say that, from that point on, the Catton family, previously immune to pain and suffering due to their wealth, power, and prestige, begin to suffer calamitous losses.

What will be Oliver’s fate?

Since it’s a fairly new film, I’m trying very hard not to include too many spoilers, although from the description above and some of the comments below, I’m guessing that the basic plot points of the film can be deduced.

Keoghan does great work as Oliver. He seems to have cornered the market on messed up young men. He played the troubled Dominic in The Banshees of Inisherin and the young man that apparently places a curse on the doctor’s family in The Killing of a Sacred Deer. In the beginning of the film, he’s awkward and lost. As the film unfolds, you see the real Oliver behind the mask.

Although the director has apparently denied a connection, to me the most obvious inspiration is The Talented Mr Ripley. Like Tom Ripley, Oliver is an at best middle class striver who has his nose figuratively pressed against the window peeping in on the extremely wealthy. Also like Ripley, once he manages to sneak his way into the life of privilege, he will take any measure to keep his place.

Also like the Ripley story, the wealthy elite are clueless. Both Oliver and Ripley are so far below them in social station that the wealthy can’t even imagine being threatened by him. Felix’s sister directly says to Oliver that he is nothing more than a moth circling the light of their wealth and prestige. Their arrogant ignorance will lead them to their doom.

One difference is that, in the Ripley story, the wealthy parents at least have a glimmer of intelligence to them. This could be because they are nouveau riche (the father built a shipbuilding company, IIRC), so they haven’t lost all of their street smarts. In Saltburn, it’s clear that the Catton family goes back generations. The parents (both very well played by Rosamund Pike and Richard E Grant) are irremediably feckless. They live in a house full of priceless works of art like paintings by Rubens and they spend their nights watching horror movies, singing Karaoke, and throwing huge parties. They never see Oliver coming and they never stand a chance.

Interestingly, one of the wealthy elite does see through Oliver. That is Felix’s cousin Farleigh (once again, well acted by Archie Madekwe). He’s the son of Felix’s father’s sister. She has apparently fallen on hard times and Farleigh has to rely upon the generosity of Felix’s father. Not only that, but he is half Black. Although he is unquestionably a member of the elite, those two facts put his status always in question. When Felix, the first born son of a first born son, condescends to explain to Farleigh that he needs to pull himself up by his bootstraps and make his own way in life, you see Farleigh’s barely suppressed rage.

Given his shaky status, it is only natural that he should see Oliver’s naked striving that the firmly ensconced in wealth are blind to. Oliver, seeing a fellow striver in Farleigh, recognizes him as an enemy.

One final comparison to The Talented Mr Ripley is the homoerotic charge between the two young men at the heart of both. Understated in Ripley, it is much more overt in Saltburn. Oliver wishes to possess everything of Felix.

This is a well acted, darkly comedic film about wealth and class. The shallow, sterile, obliviousness of the generationally wealthy moneyed elite will leave you rooting for the anti-hero.