Over the weekend I saw the new film Miral by director Julian Schnabel (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly). I'll start off by saying that overall, it was well done. What was perhaps most noteworthy about the film is that it told a story about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from the point of view of a Palestinian girl coming of age, a voice we rarely hear. And to top it off, the film is based on a semi-autobiographical book by author-screenwriter Rula Jebreal, Schnabel's girlfriend.
In reality, Miral is the story of four women: Hind Husseini (Hiam Abbass), who opens an orphanage and girls' school for 55 displaced and wandering Palestinian children in Jerusalem in the midst of the Arab-Israeli War; Nadia (Yasmine Al Massri), a woman who faces alcoholism, abuse and imprisonment after punching a Jewish woman on a bus for insulting her; Fatima (Ruba Blal), a former nurse who received three life sentences after attempting but failing to explode a bomb in a movie theater, and Miral (Freida Pinto), Nadia's daughter. Miral is torn between her conservative and peaceful father Jamal (Alexander Siddig), and her love interest Hani (Omar Metwally), a PLO activist.
Unlike most media portrayals of Arab people in the U.S., this film presents Palestinians as everyday human beings, in all their complexities. For example, the children in the film demonstrated the full range of Palestinian diversity, from fair-haired blond to Mediterranean olive to black African. Palestinians and Israelis are known to fall in love with each other and become couples. And sometimes people and their actions are not so cut-and-dried. It is easy to label someone a terrorist, and terrorist acts were committed in Miral. At the same time, such labels become blurred, as they are subject to nuance within the context of a military occupation. For example, it was easy for the main character to teeter on the edge between schoolgirl and terrorist. Those who are oppressed and displaced under occupation view their struggle as one for liberation and self-determination. Some may seek peace and reconciliation -- and land -- in furtherance of their struggle. Others who view the occupier as a military adversary who stole their land may find their answer through the barrel of a gun and act accordingly. That is not to justify violence, it is simply to provide the context for understanding what human beings do when their back is against the wall.
Through its depiction of the Israeli occupation, Miral provided a public service to viewers who are unexposed to it, unaffected and unaware. The daily regimen of humiliating checkpoints, soldiers demanding to see identification, and hostile religious settlers backed by troops are a reality for Palestinians.
Critics have blasted the film as being one-sided, as if that is a bad thing. One heavy-handed critic even called Miral a "slanderous and shameful piece of propaganda." Everyone has a point of view. And people deserve the space to tell their own stories from their own point of view. Each day, media interpret the experiences of groups of people through distorted cultural lenses, without the input or consent of their subjects. Stereotypes result.
When they are not depicted as the hired help, African-Americans and Latinos, not unlike Arabs, are stereotyped as terrorists -- urban terrorists and gangbangers who are a danger to society. Additionally, blacks are depicted as welfare queens, and Latinos are cast in the role of "illegal aliens" who cross the border from Mexico to steal good paying jobs picking oranges and busing tables. Asians become the model minority, or human computers, with Asian women stereotyped as the submissive China doll or hyper-sexualized Dragon Lady.
And rightwing media in the U.S. reduce Arab-Americans and Muslim-Americans to shadowy figures, the "other" who would infiltrate society and defile Christian values with their mosques, not to mention blow up our cities. Did I mention that the President might be one of them?
"The press is so powerful in its image-making role, it can make a criminal look like he's the victim and make the victim look like he's the criminal. This is the press, an irresponsible press," as Malcolm X once said. "If you aren't careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed and loving the people who are doing the oppressing."
America needs exposure to more media images of Arabs and others that are self-depictions, and yes, one-sided representations of their reality. How do we start a dialogue and transform ourselves and our condition when we constantly hear only one side of the story?
I highly recommend Miral, but that is not to say the movie is perfect. For instance, casting Indian actress Freida Pinto of Slumdog Millionaire fame in the role of Miral was at times a mismatch. Moreover, surely an Arab actress was available. Further, the viewer is left wanting to know more, more about what happened to Miral. And although they are capable artists, Vanessa Redgrave and Willem Dafoe seem to serve no substantial role other than the perfunctory Westerners in a film about people of color.
Given the paucity of positive images of Arabs out there, no single film can be all things to all people. And no film by itself can articulate the full breadth of the occupation or the Mideast conflict. But this is a good start.
April 1, 2011
GOP Overreach: The Mess That Greed and Ignorance Made
Republican overreach is in the air. You can see it, smell it, taste it everywhere, as you have in years past. And the only surprise is that is that it happened so quickly this time around.
In this last election cycle, the Grand Overreaching Party seized control of the U.S. House of Representatives and state legislatures and governorships around the country on a platform of jobs, balanced budgets and fiscal responsibility. It took not so long before conservatives revealed their true intentions.
On the federal level there was the sideshow of Rep. Peter King's (R-NY) hearings on radical Islam. People are foreclosed upon, out of money, out of luck and suffering out there, but what do the Republicans decide to go after? NPR and Planned Parenthood, and rape victims who want an abortion. On the state level there is the ban on Sharia law and the war on the unemployed. There are birther bills, bills to eliminate birthright citizenship, and voter ID legislation to deal with the nonexistent issue of voter fraud. Michigan Governor Rick Snyder represents the epitome of overreaching, with new powers to dissolve municipal governments, throw out union contracts, and eliminate school districts.
And in states such as Wisconsin, Michigan, Indiana Pennsylvania and Ohio, talk of shared sacrifice really has meant one-way sacrifice, with cuts to programs for the poor and working people and no demands made on the wealthy. In a perverse fashion, devastating cuts in education and health are paired with equally generous tax breaks to corporations, as if no one is looking and this grave crime being committed has no witnesses. Let's not forget the attack on unions' collective bargaining rights under the guise of deficit reduction. Now, that was diabolically slick of them.
Even many Republican voters are having buyer's remorse, with recall efforts underway, and some newly elected governors losing if an election were held today. Voters, be careful what you ask for. And yet, this was predictable, with history providing examples such as the 104th and 105th Congress and the Republican Contract with America. At that time, overreach came in the form of an impeachment of President for marital infidelity, and hypocrisy--and subsequent resignations--of GOP lawmakers who were guilty of the same.
Why voters send in the same crowd time and again, knowing their track record and their tendency to perform a bait and switch, is anyone's guess. My theory is that voters were attracted to Republican candidates on the false hope that eliminating wasteful government spending would create jobs. In the past, conservatives have used the "welfare queen" as the perennial scapegoat, a "whipping girl," if you will, to attack a bloated bureaucracy and further the cause of a smaller, limited government. The racial overtones were not too subtle, as it was understood that it was a black woman living in the projects on the South Side of Chicago who, according to President Reagan, "has eighty names, thirty addresses, twelve Social Security cards and is collecting veteran's benefits on four non-existing deceased husbands. And she is collecting Social Security on her cards. She's got Medicaid, getting food stamps, and she is collecting welfare under each of her names. Her tax-free cash income is over $150,000."
That was the Southern Strategy that served the GOP for decades--getting poor and working class whites to vote against their economic interests by convincing them that government programs mean unfair benefits to black people. But what do you do when, as is the case today, the so-called welfare queens are all public sector workers, who are accused of draining the public coffers with their million-dollar salaries, the teachers, police officers and firefighters who are only trying to feed their families and send their children to school? And what do you do when you realize some conservative politician considers you the welfare queen and makes you the scapegoat?
In the overreaching world of the conservative Republicans in power, the poor and the working class as a whole are the welfare queens. And struggling working people will bear the burden of this new regime of austerity and lopsided shared sacrifice. GOP overreach is part of a greater problem, made possible thanks to the growing inequality in America, the concentration of wealth, the relative weakness of organized labor, and the ubiquity of corporate power. In the absence of a national industrial policy--and given the state of U.S. political system, which is sold to the highest bidder each day--everything revolves around the short-term needs of corporations. Corporations have purchased big chunks of influence in our government, so the regressive policies we are witnessing reflect these corporations' quest for short-term profits, not the long-term needs of the people. True democracy cannot sustain these conditions, but feudalism can.
But it seems the people are waking up, finally. As President George W. Bush once said, "There's an old saying in Tennessee - I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee - that says, fool me once, shame on - shame on you. Fool me - you can't get fooled again."
In this last election cycle, the Grand Overreaching Party seized control of the U.S. House of Representatives and state legislatures and governorships around the country on a platform of jobs, balanced budgets and fiscal responsibility. It took not so long before conservatives revealed their true intentions.
On the federal level there was the sideshow of Rep. Peter King's (R-NY) hearings on radical Islam. People are foreclosed upon, out of money, out of luck and suffering out there, but what do the Republicans decide to go after? NPR and Planned Parenthood, and rape victims who want an abortion. On the state level there is the ban on Sharia law and the war on the unemployed. There are birther bills, bills to eliminate birthright citizenship, and voter ID legislation to deal with the nonexistent issue of voter fraud. Michigan Governor Rick Snyder represents the epitome of overreaching, with new powers to dissolve municipal governments, throw out union contracts, and eliminate school districts.
And in states such as Wisconsin, Michigan, Indiana Pennsylvania and Ohio, talk of shared sacrifice really has meant one-way sacrifice, with cuts to programs for the poor and working people and no demands made on the wealthy. In a perverse fashion, devastating cuts in education and health are paired with equally generous tax breaks to corporations, as if no one is looking and this grave crime being committed has no witnesses. Let's not forget the attack on unions' collective bargaining rights under the guise of deficit reduction. Now, that was diabolically slick of them.
Even many Republican voters are having buyer's remorse, with recall efforts underway, and some newly elected governors losing if an election were held today. Voters, be careful what you ask for. And yet, this was predictable, with history providing examples such as the 104th and 105th Congress and the Republican Contract with America. At that time, overreach came in the form of an impeachment of President for marital infidelity, and hypocrisy--and subsequent resignations--of GOP lawmakers who were guilty of the same.
Why voters send in the same crowd time and again, knowing their track record and their tendency to perform a bait and switch, is anyone's guess. My theory is that voters were attracted to Republican candidates on the false hope that eliminating wasteful government spending would create jobs. In the past, conservatives have used the "welfare queen" as the perennial scapegoat, a "whipping girl," if you will, to attack a bloated bureaucracy and further the cause of a smaller, limited government. The racial overtones were not too subtle, as it was understood that it was a black woman living in the projects on the South Side of Chicago who, according to President Reagan, "has eighty names, thirty addresses, twelve Social Security cards and is collecting veteran's benefits on four non-existing deceased husbands. And she is collecting Social Security on her cards. She's got Medicaid, getting food stamps, and she is collecting welfare under each of her names. Her tax-free cash income is over $150,000."
That was the Southern Strategy that served the GOP for decades--getting poor and working class whites to vote against their economic interests by convincing them that government programs mean unfair benefits to black people. But what do you do when, as is the case today, the so-called welfare queens are all public sector workers, who are accused of draining the public coffers with their million-dollar salaries, the teachers, police officers and firefighters who are only trying to feed their families and send their children to school? And what do you do when you realize some conservative politician considers you the welfare queen and makes you the scapegoat?
In the overreaching world of the conservative Republicans in power, the poor and the working class as a whole are the welfare queens. And struggling working people will bear the burden of this new regime of austerity and lopsided shared sacrifice. GOP overreach is part of a greater problem, made possible thanks to the growing inequality in America, the concentration of wealth, the relative weakness of organized labor, and the ubiquity of corporate power. In the absence of a national industrial policy--and given the state of U.S. political system, which is sold to the highest bidder each day--everything revolves around the short-term needs of corporations. Corporations have purchased big chunks of influence in our government, so the regressive policies we are witnessing reflect these corporations' quest for short-term profits, not the long-term needs of the people. True democracy cannot sustain these conditions, but feudalism can.
But it seems the people are waking up, finally. As President George W. Bush once said, "There's an old saying in Tennessee - I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee - that says, fool me once, shame on - shame on you. Fool me - you can't get fooled again."
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