A Yemeni man has committed suicide after 7 years of imprisonment without trial at Guantanamo.
He is apparently the 5th prisoner to do so since the prison opened up shop.
The issue of Gitmo gets clouded by political posturing, but it's really easy to understand if you extrapolate a hypothetical from the basic facts.
This man was a Yemeni citizen, a citizen of a country other than the United States, arrested in Afghanistan, after the US invaded that country, and imprisoned in Cuba without being charged, without being tried, without legal counsel. Now he is dead.
OK, so, imagine this: An American citizen is arrested in Yemen and transported to Afghanistan, where they are imprisoned for 7 years. They hang themself.
Can you imagine the moral outrage US politicians would be expressing at this travesty of justice? Do you remember what happened when that jackass got caught littering in Singapore and had to be caned? People were apoplectic that a foreign country would dare violate the pasty white American ass of someone who had broken local laws.
Meanwhile, two US journalists are on trial in North Korea. It might be a show trial, but hey, at least they're even getting a trial.
Friday, June 5, 2009
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
Deep Throat
It's hard to approach Deep Throat with anything resembling objectivity. The movie is so well known as a cultural benchmark, with all the requisite, ready-made interpretations - porno chic, nostalgic kitsch, misogynist sleaze - that come with such status. Of course, for a piece of pornography to elicit so many viewpoints is something of a triumph in itself. In any case, there seems to be something about the movie (to call it a film would just be too much) that begs attention. So, naturally, I watched it.
First of all Deep Throat makes it very clear how accurately Boogie Nights depicted the shabby production values of 1970s porn flicks. It was practically like watching Boogie Nights but with actual penetration. Also, you've never seen so many proud mustaches. Looking for the origin of the term "porno 'stache?" Look no further.
As pornography, I guess the movie succeeds, but only in the sense that it's playing the easiest stimulus-response game in the world. To quote the decidedly less than excellent television program The Mentalist, "men are like toasters." Images of people having sex are arousing, to a point. But no one's going to call Deep Throat the hottest movie ever made any time soon.
If anything, its slightly repulsive. There's a funny dynamic at work here, and I think it illustrates an important element in the popularity of pornography and human attitudes towards sex.
I'm no porn expert, but today's salacious videos go out of their way to portray the smoothest, most hairless semi-humans performing feats of gargantuan stamina in the most unnatural positions. By contrast, the "stars" of Deep Throat are decidedly ordinary. They're hairy, not very attractive, not particularly well-hung or flexible. There was clearly a massive shift in the aesthetics (if you can call them that) of pornography over the last 30 years, a shift that demanded increasingly buffed, polished and fetishized performers, even as the consumer base of porn grew more and more democratized. Pornography of the modern era is purely functional. The participants are mere ciphers, reduced to pricks and holes, the basest elements required to stimulate a response. The people of Deep Throat are almost charmingly human. To watch the movie now, oddly, is to be reminded that sex is a very intimate affair. So intimate, in fact, that watching it is kind of gross. The purveyors of porn must have figured this out somewhere along the line as well, and adjusted accordingly.
Cinematically, Deep Throat is inane, and it knows it and plays it up. Which is rather nice, actually. No one is pulling off a masterpiece here, and no one is trying. It's the kind of good humor that's missing from a lot of movie-making, not just in pornography.
It is, of course, impossible to ignore the seedier elements surrounding the movie, i.e. it's financing by the Mafia and the appalling claims of abuse levelled by star Linda Lovelace at her ex-husband and manager years after the film was made. It is true that their are bruises noticeable on her thigh in one scene. At other times she looks like she's on Qualuudes or something. It's another element of the movie that makes it less than arousing.
The politics surrounding the movie at the time of it's release were fierce, but as with most objects of controversy, in retrospect it's hard to see what the fuss was all about. The initial item of contention has been rendered tame by the much more explicit/obscene/degrading material that came afterwards. It's the kind of progression that's gone on forever, and to me it seems far removed from the realm of right or wrong and good or bad. All that's left is the movie itself, and taken on it's own terms its a silly, inconsequential snapshot of a bygone era.
First of all Deep Throat makes it very clear how accurately Boogie Nights depicted the shabby production values of 1970s porn flicks. It was practically like watching Boogie Nights but with actual penetration. Also, you've never seen so many proud mustaches. Looking for the origin of the term "porno 'stache?" Look no further.
As pornography, I guess the movie succeeds, but only in the sense that it's playing the easiest stimulus-response game in the world. To quote the decidedly less than excellent television program The Mentalist, "men are like toasters." Images of people having sex are arousing, to a point. But no one's going to call Deep Throat the hottest movie ever made any time soon.
If anything, its slightly repulsive. There's a funny dynamic at work here, and I think it illustrates an important element in the popularity of pornography and human attitudes towards sex.
I'm no porn expert, but today's salacious videos go out of their way to portray the smoothest, most hairless semi-humans performing feats of gargantuan stamina in the most unnatural positions. By contrast, the "stars" of Deep Throat are decidedly ordinary. They're hairy, not very attractive, not particularly well-hung or flexible. There was clearly a massive shift in the aesthetics (if you can call them that) of pornography over the last 30 years, a shift that demanded increasingly buffed, polished and fetishized performers, even as the consumer base of porn grew more and more democratized. Pornography of the modern era is purely functional. The participants are mere ciphers, reduced to pricks and holes, the basest elements required to stimulate a response. The people of Deep Throat are almost charmingly human. To watch the movie now, oddly, is to be reminded that sex is a very intimate affair. So intimate, in fact, that watching it is kind of gross. The purveyors of porn must have figured this out somewhere along the line as well, and adjusted accordingly.
Cinematically, Deep Throat is inane, and it knows it and plays it up. Which is rather nice, actually. No one is pulling off a masterpiece here, and no one is trying. It's the kind of good humor that's missing from a lot of movie-making, not just in pornography.
It is, of course, impossible to ignore the seedier elements surrounding the movie, i.e. it's financing by the Mafia and the appalling claims of abuse levelled by star Linda Lovelace at her ex-husband and manager years after the film was made. It is true that their are bruises noticeable on her thigh in one scene. At other times she looks like she's on Qualuudes or something. It's another element of the movie that makes it less than arousing.
The politics surrounding the movie at the time of it's release were fierce, but as with most objects of controversy, in retrospect it's hard to see what the fuss was all about. The initial item of contention has been rendered tame by the much more explicit/obscene/degrading material that came afterwards. It's the kind of progression that's gone on forever, and to me it seems far removed from the realm of right or wrong and good or bad. All that's left is the movie itself, and taken on it's own terms its a silly, inconsequential snapshot of a bygone era.
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