People Before Profit blog

"Red": Abstract art's odd couple makes great drama

Thu, 29 Aug 2013 14:51:00 +0000

John Logan's multiple Tony Award-winning Red is a theatrical time machine that transports audiences back to those heady days when abstract expressionism was the vogue. It's the best two-man show this critic has ever seen. In this bioplay, Tony Abatemarco incarnates the artist Mark Rothko, who emerged with Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning as the artistic exemplars of their generation. We find the painter of those celebrated "fuzzy rectangular clouds of color" at the peak of his prominence. Yet, despite attaining fame and fortune and a highly celebrated commission for a swanky New York restaurant, Rothko remains the archetypal irascible, temperamental artiste. Why?

To find out what makes Mark tick the playwright has conjured up a fictional foil, Ken (Patrick Stafford), an aspiring painter whom Rothko hires to work at his Lower Manhattan studio as his personal assistant. Ken is most certainly not hired to be the sorcerer's apprentice, student, friend or pseudo-son, Rothko pronounces. As such, Ken helps the maestro mix his paints, stretches and scores his canvases, goes out to pick up coffee or Chinese food from nearby takeout joints - and listens to Rothko ranting, raving, and musing on art and life.

For one so controlling, the painter enigmatically advocates "the active participation of the viewer" in his work. Among Rothko's ruminations are spoken meditations on the relationship and tensions between art and commerce that evince the painter's awareness of capitalism's commodification - and fetishism - of culture.

Scenic designer JR Bruce recreates Rothko's studio in New York's Bowery district, with its colossal canvases and paint-splattered floor that looks like one of those action paintings wrought by Jackson Pollock, Rothko's friend and contemporary. Much of Red's dialogue focuses on Rothko's insistence that Pollock killed himself (a prescient insight, considering Rothko's own fate).

Rothko reveals that he was born Jewish as Marcus Rothkowitz in 1903 in what he calls "Russia" (now in Latvia), where he witnessed (or was told in vivid detail about) Cossacks butchering Jews. The lad moved to America at age 10, and in response to anti-Semitism in the land of the free, later changed his name so it wouldn't sound too Jewish.

Despite his stature and wealth, in his troubled psyche Rothko arguably remained the ever-persecuted Jew: No amount of fame and fortune could ever erase or compensate for his traumatized childhood. His cry against the indifference of art critics and the public vis-à-vis his paintings echoes society's silence in the face of the massacring of Jews Rothko may have witnessed in his youth. He is also insecure about the late 1950s rise of Pop Art's acolytes, such as Andy Warhol, who threaten to upend Abstract Expressionism's hegemony in the ever-changing vagaries of collectors, galleries, and museums.

John Logan is a top-notch playwright and screenwriter whose screen credits include reflections on great artists, including Orson Welles in RKO 281 and Georges Méliès in Hugo. However, while this reviewer greatly enjoyed Red, it's not everybody's cup of turpentine. Those uninterested in Abstract Expressionism - and painting in general - may find it boring. As it plumbs the creative process, some will probably consider Red too talky, although there is one great fast-moving scene where Mark and Ken prime a blank canvas with their brushes dipped in buckets, tantalizingly transforming the white into the titular red right before our very eyes.

There is also a moving vignette wherein Ken discovers Mark covered in the color: Is it paint or blood? The scene foreshadows a later Rothko assistant finding the painter covered in his own blood, lying on the kitchen floor in 1970.

Abatemarco, authoritative and convincing, and Stafford acquit themselves well as the abstract odd couple in this anything-but-by-the-numbers 90-minute play. Stafford is also effective as the worm, afraid to show the maestro one of his own oils, who finally turns. Stafford has had a recurring role on TV's Glee and played Wolfgang in an L.A. staging of Amadeus.

Red is for discerning theatergoers who love painting and/or well-acted drama, and all those who believe art belongs in a temple - not restaurants.

Red is being performed through Sept. 15, Thursdays-Saturdays at 8 pm and Sundays at 2 pm, at the International City Theatre, Long Beach Performing Arts Center, 300 East Ocean Blvd., Long Beach, CA 90802 on: For more info: (562) 436-4610; www.InternationalCityTheatre.com.

Photo: Patrick Stafford and Tony Abatemarco in Red. International City Theatre Facebook page.

A feast of films from Traverse City Film Festival

Thu, 29 Aug 2013 13:44:00 +0000

TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. - Another film feast for discerning viewers of progressive cinema has come to an end. Michael Moore's 9th Annual Traverse City Film Festival broke records in attendance, renovated a new theater called Bijou by the Bay, and seemed to involve just about every resident of this scenic northern Michigan tourist town, either as a volunteer, filmgoer, or both. Centered around the State Theater, voted America's #1 film theater, the festival offers free bus shuttles to all screenings, children's films and activities, free panels and film classes, and audience participation with actors and directors at most all film showings.

It's been impossible to see every important great film here. But some of the ones I was able to see (and some that also appeared at earlier festivals) are listed below in order of my personal ratings. Some will be covered in more depth in later columns.

5 stars:

Propaganda (North Korea): By far the most daring and progressive film at this festival and winner of the Founders Prize for Best Film. Probably one of the most creative and challenging political documentaries in years. Supposedly a captured film from North Korea that you can see for free on YouTube. (Of course a big screen is much better)

No (Chile): Last year's Progie Award Winner for Best Progressive Film and Actor (Gabriel Garcia Bernal, who also directed). The story of the ad agent who successfully ran a TV campaign to vote "No" on re-electing Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet in 1989.

The Act of Killing (Denmark): One of the most disturbing films about anti-communism ever made. Select Indonesians gleefully re-enact methods that were used to wipe out millions of communists and progressives during their recent political battles. Reviewed at length here.

The Central Park Five (USA): Ken Burns and daughter Sarah's investigative documentary researching the truth about the innocence of five young men convicted of raping a jogger in New York back in 1989. Many wasted years in prison for these young men.

The Pervert's Guide to Ideology (UK): Slavov Zizek (Pervert's Guide to Cinema) returns! This Chomsky-on-steroids romp through ideology expressed in cinema is a treat to every intelligent mind. It'd be helpful if the film could be run at slow speed, to catch everything.

The Trials of Muhammad Ali (USA): An inspiring and uplifting tale of the great fighter, in and out of the ring, heavily researched and well put together. Family members relive Ali's tough choices in life, and we get to learn much more about this hero than we've learned in all his other documentaries of the past. See more about this film here.

4-½ stars:

56 Up Series (UK): A unique film series chronicling several British children every seven years as they grow to adults. Fascinating long-term human study unparalleled in any art form.

Fruitvale Station (USA): A dramatic re-enactment of the tragic incident in Oakland, Calif., when a young African American was shot dead by a transit cop at the Fruitvale BART Station. Well acted and a compelling human drama. Read more here.

Gore Vidal: United States of Amnesia (USA): Not only reveals the life of one of America's greatest opinionated authors but exposes the deep contradictions of a country that is supposed to be "democratic." So good it should have been longer. More here.

A Hijacking (Denmark): Somali hijackers take over a Danish cargo ship and the drama escalates in a calculated manner to an unbelievable climax. What to sacrifice: corporate money or peoples lives?

Into the White (Norway): German and British airmen crash land in the deep white snowy mountains in Norway during World War II. These mortal enemies need each other to survive, but can they get past their differences? An extreme real life story.

Remote Area Medical (USA): A volunteer medical organization founded by Stan Brock travels to remote areas to provide free health care for hundreds of uninsured people, every weekend! No strings attached. A sad statement about health care in America.

TWA Flight 800 (USA): Clearly NOT a conspiracy film, but rather a collection of indisputable facts that prove a plane bound for France filled with 230 people was shot down just outside Long Island in 1996. Why and by whom is not addressed.

4 stars:

God Loves Uganda (USA): Young American Christian evangelists go to Africa to "save" lives, and wipe out homosexuality. This probing doc exposes the negative repercussions of this religious colonialism. Why did they allow themselves to be filmed?

Good Garbage (ISRAEL): The reality of Palestinians forced to scavenge in garbage dumps created by Jewish settlements is shown in this narrative, visually poetic depiction of people driven to the brink.

Teenage (GERMANY): An intriguing examination of the "teenage" years, a recent term and concept unknown before World War II.

3-½ stars:

The First Movie (UK): Scholar and historian Mark Cousin's first film (1989) predating his masterful Story of Cinema: An Odyssey. But the title actually refers to young Iraqi children making their first film with provided cameras.

Inequality for All (USA): Can't fool me. Ford, Carter and Clinton appointee, Robert Reich is charming and charismatic, but ultimately a defender of corporate America, despite all its failings that are clearly depicted in this film. More here.

Our Nixon (USA): Silent home movies taken of Nixon by his cabinet members add little to what is known about the disgraced president. An exercise in filmmaking with no stated political intent. But see a very different take on Our Nixon here.

This is What Winning Looks Like (USA): This is what being embedded in Iraq with Marines looks like. An endless attempt to show the corruption and ineptitude of Afghans entrusted to run their own country, thus logically implying we shouldn't leave.

War on Whistleblowers: Free Press and the National Security (USA): Reminding us that whistleblowers can also be Republicans. Not necessarily a progressive film.

3 stars:

Citizen Koch (USA)

A rehash of We Are Wisconsin, but exposing Citizens United and the suffocating tentacles of the Koch dynasty. Nothing new to most activists, and about an hour too long.

Fanie Fourie's Lobola (South Africa): White male South African falls for Black female South African. A fantasy? Close to it, in this unbelievable but sort of charming story that couldn't have happened just a short while ago.

Far From Afghanistan (USA): Five committed film activists searching for a new cinematic voice to depict the horrors of American foreign intervention, this time in Afghanistan. Well-intentioned but ultimately slow moving art film. Pales next to Far From Vietnam.

Photo: via Propagandafilm

"The Butler" brings civil rights era to life

Tue, 27 Aug 2013 14:53:00 +0000

My movie buddy picked "The Butler." I didn't think I'd like watching the recounting of the life of someone who waited subserviently on eight American presidents. I figured he must not have been much if he stood close to Ronald Reagan and didn't spit in Reagan's damnable face. Now, after crying most of the way through it, I think "Lee Daniels' The Butler" is the best movie we've seen this year!

I should have known that Forest Whitaker was incapable of anything that wasn't stellar. The rest of the cast, basically everybody in Hollywood, was completely stunning.

The movie starts in the South in 1926 and ends in Washington after President Obama is elected. Every gut-wrenching civil rights emotion is displayed and passed on to the audience through the eyes of the central character, his family, and his friends. Some of them range pretty far to the left of our hero. Many of them are critical of his station in life, some defend him, but he does neither because he never felt that he had any choice.

Those of us who lived through the period, including white viewers, are touched by these reminders of what happened. The film makes us recall what we did and what we didn't do, and we suffer along with everybody else. It's not just a recounting of the period, nor a documentary-style highlighting of the great historical significance of events. It's a direct, living communication of how people felt.

"The Butler" took the top box office numbers for its first two weekends, and may be on its way to the top 10 of all movies with African-American directors. It's likely that it will have a second round of popularity once the Academy Awards nominations are made. I'm ready now to nominate Lee Daniels for Best Director, Forest Whitaker for Best Actor, Oprah Winfrey for Best Actress, Somebody for Best Makeup, and the entire cast for Best Supporting Roles!

Movie information:
"Lee Daniels' The Butler"
Directed by Lee Daniels
Starring Forest Whitaker, Oprah Winfrey and many more
PG-13, 132 min.

From "Reel Bad Arabs" to "Valentino's Ghost"

Tue, 20 Aug 2013 13:18:00 +0000

We're all familiar with the stereotyping of African Americans, Native Americans and Jews in Hollywood films, but the group that has been consistently maligned since the days of silent star Rudolph Valentino's portrayal of The Sheik in 1921, are the Arabs. Rarely treated fairly in cinema or afforded roles with human dimension, they have now become the caricature of the "terrorist."

One of the most determined chroniclers of Arab abuse in cinema is Dr. Jack Shaheen, who claims to have watched over 1000 films with Arab subjects. He wrote a book and made a film entitled Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies A People. This 52-minute 2006 documentary shows one horrid clip after another of Arab and Muslim stereotypes, with a calm and sensitive narrative by Shaheen exposing the unjust and inhuman portrayals in American cinema.

Now there is a new film on the same subject, Valentino's Ghost by Michael Singh, which takes the research and filmmaking to a new level, examining the ways in which America's foreign policy agenda in the Middle East drives the mainstream media's portrayals of Arabs and Muslims. Utilizing some of the same clips as Dr. Shaheeb's film, this thoroughly engrossing documentary is infused with some of the best 'talking heads' in recent memory.

Famed experts on the Middle East share fascinating knowledge rarely expressed in cinema. Authors and PhD's, Robert Fisk, Melani McAlister and Niall Ferguson have all written best-selling books on the Middle East. John Mearsheimer, co-author of the controversial The Israel Lobby, reveals the intense Israeli lobby against his book; famed writer Gore Vidal, Hollywood director Alan Sharp, and Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss  are just a few of the colorful characters who bring richness to this penetrating study of anti-Arab, anti-Muslim bigotry. Even Dr. Shaheen, who apparently started work on this film before he made his own, graces the film with his presence.

The film starts off and is held together by occasional clips of Arab comedians offering comic relief about a subject that rarely gets treated fairly in film. It makes a point that rarely were Arabs played by Arabs. Valentino was Italian! However, one Arab comedian talks about how he was persuaded to play an Arab terrorist in a major Hollywood blockbuster, because the salary was just too much to turn down.

The documentary makes a strong argument that America's foreign policy drives mainstream media's portrayal of Arabs and Muslims. How did these stereotypes develop and get out of hand? Certain turning points are addressed -- the Munich Olympic killings, the 1979 Iran hostage crisis and of course 9/11 -- that changed the course of history. These events sealed the image of Arabs or Muslims as evil, violent and despicable.

Most Americans don't know why Iranians reacted so strongly and took Americans hostages in 1979. Most Americans don't recall the U.S. role in maintaining the Shah in power and then refusing to return the deposed leader to Iran for trial, a major factor in the masses revolt. Most Americans are unaware that 567,000 Iraqi children died in the first Iraq war. Was this revenge or sadism? Is this possibly another reason why we have to see Arabs and Muslims as "terrorists'?

But the reasons for these events are rarely examined or even reported in the mainstream media. Could it be that the U.S. defense of Israel and its policy of occupation caused terrorism, not the other way around? With little or no criticism of Israel in U.S. mainstream media, with hardly any Arab films shown on American TV, is it any wonder why Americans succumb to such awful and inaccurate portrayals of Muslims and Arabs?

The film contains rare footage of George Habash, a Palestinian Christian and founder of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. There are also positive references to several films that present a fairer view, Three Kings, Syriana, Avatar, Miral, to name a few. And then there's world media broadcast in America presenting alternative views, like Al Jazeera, RT, Press TV, and the U.S.'s Link TV and Free Speech TV. Director Michael Singh noted the film received a standing ovation at the Venice Film Festival and is getting far better reception in the rest of the world than here in the U.S. Could it be the effect of American foreign policy?

Cultural activists who make films like Valentino's Ghost are a tremendous asset. Highly informative, creative and entertaining, you might be able to catch a shortened version of this absorbing film on PBS, but the full version is much more rewarding. Check out the website for ways to see this important film.

Photo: Valentino's Ghost Facebook page.

“Nickel and Dimed” – rich drama of working poor

Mon, 19 Aug 2013 17:18:00 +0000

The crisis of capitalism has led to a glorious rebirth of left-leaning theatre: Nickel and Dimed is one of this dissident wave's finest, most compelling dramas.

There's a hallowed tradition of truth tellers going undercover in order to expose great evils to the world. As skilled mass communicators they can give a platform to the voiceless, or at least express a point of view coming from an authentic first-hand perspective on the wrongs they are revealing.

Examples include 1933's Down and Out in Paris and London, George Orwell's account of life in the lower depths of Britain during the Great Depression. Also the 1961 civil rights classic Black Like Me, where a Caucasian journalist, John Howard Griffin, darkened his skin in order to experience the segregated South from a Black perspective. And in the 2004 documentary Super Size Me, Morgan Spurlock subjected himself to a diet of McDonald's for a month, disclosing the dangers of fast food consumption.

Barbara Ehrenreich's 2001 Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America fits into this muckraking tradition. It's a 21^st-century counterpart to Frederick Engels' 1845 The Condition of the Working Class in England. Ehrenreich clandestinely worked for three months in a number of blue collar low-wage jobs to see if one could survive doing so. Former San Francisco Mime Troupe playwright Joan Holden's stage adaptation superbly dramatizes the then-50-something writer's undercover misadventures.

Zachary Barton is stellar as the protagonist who is alternately called "Barbara"-when she's in authorial mode-and "Barb" when she is waitressing at the "Kenny's" eatery chain, folding and sorting clothes at "Mallmart," and cleaning homes for "Magic Maids." Barton expertly expresses Barbara/Barb's smoldering outrage, who (as the writer) proudly proclaims early in the play: "I'm a radical." Later on a character ponders about Barb: "I wonder if she's a communist?"

(Ehrenreich is an honorary chair of Democratic Socialists of America, quoted as saying: "DSA carries on a fine old American tradition-the tradition carried on by Eugene Debs, Mother Jones, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and thousands more. I am proud to be a member.")

The ensemble is likewise first-class as (mostly) working-class stiffs Barb encounters when she goes through the plebian looking glass. Veronica Alicino, Kathleen Ingle, Jackie Joniec, Carmen Lezeth Suarez, Johnnie Torres, and Matthew Wrather all play multiple roles, with convincing pathos and humor. Cannily cast, they appear to be real people in various sizes, ethnicities, shapes, and ages.

A standout moment in the play is when Wrather as a Mallmart manager rationalizes the chain's hyper-exploitation business model, which allegedly includes forcing laborers to work extra hours for no additional payment. ("Mallton" family members are among the wealthiest individuals in America.)

Richard Kilroy adeptly directs, and also has the set design credit. Nickel and Dimed has many scenic transitions as we move from one of Barb's places of employment to another, from Florida to the Northeast, so the rapid set changes must keep pace with her odyssey.

The oppressive, humiliating conditions of underpaid, non-unionized, hyper-exploited workers who generally don't receive benefits come first and foremost here. But the rift between intellectuals and manual laborers is also explored: The highly educated Barbara has options her blue-collar comrades don't. Spunky Barb is puzzled by what seems to be their subservience, yet these people who have so little also have much to lose if they get fired. Without much of a safety net, if any, their wage slavery is all that stands between them and utter destitution.

Daughter of a copper miner, the Montana-born Ehrenreich remembers her own humble origins. (She was also married to a Teamster organizer for 10 years.) Barbara's crusade causes a fissure to grow between her and her white-collar boyfriend, but the script doesn't resolve this plot-wise, or to fully show how Barbara's time among the wretched of the Earth has changed her.

But this is a mere quibble. Nickel and Dimed powerfully, poignantly demonstrates why the millions of unrepresented workers need to be unionized, and how this is arguably the cause of our time. All those who argue against raising the minimum wage should be forced to live on it themselves! (Incidentally, this work has also recently played in Chicago.)

Bright Eyes Productions' Nickel and Dimed is performed on Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. and Sundays at 3 p.m. through Aug. 25 at the Hudson Mainstage Theatre, 6539 Santa Monica Blvd., Los Angeles, CA. For tickets: Call (323)960-5770 or see www.pays411.com/nickelanddimed.

Photo: Zachary Barton as Barbara, Carmen Lezeth Suarez as Maddy. Photo by Olivier Riquelme.

Progressive U.S. singer banned from entering New Zealand

Thu, 15 Aug 2013 15:30:00 +0000

While waiting at Tokyo's Narita International Airport to board his flight to New Zealand on Aug. 13, U.S. progressive singer-songwriter David Rovics was informed that he was banned from entering New Zealand.

The Portland, Oregon-based Rovics is known for his extensive touring, doing concerts in support of progressive causes and workers' struggles in the U.S., Europe, and Australia. He has done benefit concerts for this website and the Communist Party in Oregon as well as the Communist Party of Denmark in Copenhagen. He is known for such songs as "The Commons," "The Last Lincoln Veteran," and "The Saint Patrick Battalion." His music celebrates the working class, trade unionism, and the national liberation struggles of the Palestinian and Irish peoples.

His current tour centers on his latest album, "Into a Prism," which he describes as "very topical songs about recent events such as the revelations about the NSA's global 'Prism' spying program."

He was due to perform in Wellington, New Zealand, next week, but as things stand now that is unlikely to happen.

He writes in his blog:

"When I got paged over the intercom to the All Nippon Airways desk, I was nervous, but figured it was something about a seat assignment on the flight from Narita to Auckland that I was about to board. The woman from ANA handed me a cell phone and said that someone from New Zealand Immigration in Auckland wanted to talk to me."

"Mr. Rovics, why are you coming to New Zealand?" the immigration officer asked.

"I'm playing six small gigs."

"Do you have a work permit?"

"No," I replied, "I was hoping I could get one when I arrived. I was under the impression it was a formality that could easily be taken care of when I got there."

"Which is true. Although I sure was wishing I had taken care of this formality a long time before. Which is what I had done before my three previous tours of Aotearoa, aka New Zealand. The problem is, unless you live near a city with a New Zealand consulate in it, which I don't, you have to mail your passport in to their embassy in Washington, D.C., and be without a passport for several weeks, which is a logistical challenge for someone who tours as much as me."

The immigration official then questioned Rovics about immigration problems he had encountered in Norway and Canada, asked how much money he would be bringing to New Zealand. She then informed him that he could not enter the country without a work permit.

Rovics writes, he then asked, "Can I cancel all my gigs and come in on a tourist visa?"

"The immigration official replied to that: 'You can't board that flight. You're not welcome in New Zealand.' With the ominous comment, 'I've read your blog,' she ended the conversation."

The tone of the immigration officer and the reference to Rovics' blog mark this refusal of entry as political.

On his last tour in 2012 Rovics performed at a trade union rally in Dunedin, New Zealand, protesting the right-wing National Party government of John Key and its adoption of the "90-day working bill," which permitted firms that have less than 20 workers to discharge them without cause in their first 90 days of employment.

Photo: David Rovics performs at a solidarity concert for the Palestinian people (via Tlaxcala).

Love, war, and hell in a prison cell

Wed, 14 Aug 2013 15:34:00 +0000

DALLAS - The Uptown Players, near the Dallas Arts District, are performing "The Kiss of the Spider Woman." Many of us saw the 1993 movie, which was extremely serious, but it was later made into a musical for the stage and won the Tony award when it was on Broadway. Our local production received financing from leaders and spokespersons for the LBGT community.

Children and squeamish adults may not like the language used, and the depiction of prison torture, mostly through screaming sound effects, is hard to withstand. For everybody else, there is a lot to think about.

"Molina" and "Valentin" are thrown into a Latin American jail cell together. Valentin is accused of revolutionary activities. Molina is accused of having solicited sex with a minor. The warden and guards hope to use the pathetic Molina to extract secret information from Valentin, but Molina finds himself falling in love with the stoic revolutionary.

Through their awful suffering, the two prisoners pass the time remembering movies that Molina saw as a child. In the book and movie, Molina remembers only one Spider Woman film and it was a Nazi propaganda vehicle, but in our production it is several movies all involving the same Hollywood vamp, "Aurora." While the prisoners rot in their horrible cell, Aurora leads musical reviews outside the cell but still on the same stage. The effect is pretty stirring, especially because they use a rotating stage that keeps all the action front and center.

Since Aurora represents fantasy, a lot of the songs are satirical, but one really stands out. Valentin leads his fellow tormented prisoners in a defiant assertion that all will be free, "Tomorrow, or the next day!" Was there a dry eye in the house? I couldn't see.

It would be difficult if not impossible to contrive a happy ending for this sad story, but a hopeful one is possible. One might be especially uplifted by the realization that the original story came from Brazil during its dictatorship, and that the first award-winning director came from Argentina. Both countries endured horrible regimes, but are working out the problems of democracy today.

The Dallas production of "The Kiss of the Spider Woman" is directed by Bruce R. Coleman, and runs til Aug. 18 at the Kalita Humphreys Theater. See more information at the Uptown Players website.

Photo: Uptown Players

A poem for Detroit

Wed, 14 Aug 2013 15:04:00 +0000

I'm going to tell to you a story
The details are a little gory
Detroiters are under attack
They're trying to stab us in the back
Our problems they want to correct
By ignoring those who we elect
And in so doing, I might note
Make meaningless our right to vote
They're saying that we are bankrupt
Yet their solutions are corrupt
They give the wealthy a sweet deal
And invent new ways to try to steal
From working people and the poor
This travesty we can't endure
Our seniors now all feel the tension
As Orr & friends attack their pension
While from contractors and the banks
Orr will receive their grateful thanks
Remember when these banks got bailed
Out when they should've really been jailed
From so many homes they do evict
Hard working people who are kicked
Out with no help, it's a damn disgrace
And further erodes our tax base
The wealth flows to them that's got
Squeezing even more those who do not
The only way to make this right
Is get together, stand and fight
And as for the E.M., Mr. Orr
It's time that we showed him the door!

Paul Felton is a retiree member of the American Postal Workers Union in the Detroit area. For more about the struggle around Detroit's bankruptcy, see here.

Photo: Diego Rivera's famous auto industry mural at the Detroit Institute of Arts is the backdrop for this logo for AFSCME's petition campaign fighting for fairness for Detroit's city workers and retirees. AFSCME Facebook page.

“Breaking Bad” belongs to pantheon of great, dark TV

Mon, 12 Aug 2013 15:01:00 +0000

Sunday's premiere of Breaking Bad season six dispelled any worries that its creator Vince Gilligan would start the last season with a slow burn toward an explosive finish. The first episode, "Blood Money," seems to promise that the central character, Walter White, will hurtle toward his fate at dangerous speeds.

Breaking Bad belongs to a pantheon of great television that has explored dark and gritty themes for more than a decade. Brett Martin's excellent new book Difficult Men: Behind the Scenes of a Creative Revolution argues that a small group of creators, themselves difficult men in certain respects, have shaped this "third golden age of television." The first such golden age, Martin claims, took place in the late '40s and early '50s before censorship closed off early TV's creative possibilities. The second came with the early 80s, the Hill Street Blues era and the birth of the TV drama.

Martin suggests that these are mere flashes in the pan in comparison to TV's true aegis of greatness, the present. This revolution in storytelling began with David Chase's Sopranos, arguably reached an early apotheosis in The Wire and has come to full fruition in brilliant shows like Mad Men, Dexter, and, of course, Breaking Bad.

Martin's book, Difficult Men, has rightly received lots of attention. This is not surprising, as it's not only stylistically entrancing but also contains a very interesting template for making sense of why American TV suddenly got so good. Interest in the book, of course, also has something to do with the fact that it dropped right around the time of the death of the actor who portrayed that primal difficult man, Tony Soprano.

Although it makes a compelling argument, Difficult Men contains plenty of holes. Jenji Kohan's Weeds barely gets a nod even with its female anti-hero Nancy Botwin, portrayed by Mary Louse Parker with all the narcissism and self-destruction Jon Hamm (Mad Men), James Gandolfini (Sopranos), and Bryan Cranston (Breaking Bad) packed into their characters. Moreover, ensemble genre TV from the last decade gets zero attention. Joss Whedon's Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Firefly, as well as Ronald Moore's reboot of Battlestar Galactica, employed story arcs, complex characters and a penchant for dark themes that comports exactly with the model Martin presents. But he doesn't bother with them.

Breaking Bad has also made a centerpiece out of the realities of class and economic vulnerability, another idea mostly ignored by Martin (except in his detailed description of the backstory behind The Wire). The central character, Walter White, originally a high school teacher who has to moonlight at a car wash in order to maintain his family's modest lifestyle, first "breaks bad" in order to pay the gargantuan medical bills that accompany his diagnosis with cancer.

Downtrodden Walt transforms over six seasons into a self-described empire builder. In this fashion, showrunner Vince Gilligan picks up a theme common to most "difficult men" stories on TV: the moral ambiguity of criminal activity in the culture of Wall Street malignancy. In other words, as Martin puts it, "the notion that the American dream, at its core, might be a criminal enterprise."

The Sopranos introduced this theme by frequently raising questions about who "the real gangsters" were in the boom economy of the '90s and early 2000s. The sub-prime mortgage meltdown made dealing drugs to hang onto your previously underpriced square footage seem sympathetic in Weeds. Don Draper's ability to harness his creative genius to the task of selling a false dream of abundance seems vintage in comparison to today's complete commodification of every human experience. Even Walter White's empire-building appears positively humane when set against Halliburton's behavior over the last decade - a corporation that has many of the characteristics of a rogue state.

Breaking Bad also comports with the television Golden Age's tendency to create what we could call narratives of middle class subversion. In them, the promise of the American dream, often defined by McMansion, collides with a deep and abiding sense of both economic insecurity and inward malaise. They are stories of going bad in the suburbs, both because the consumerist elysium proves impossible to maintain and ts promises of fulfillment prove ultimately empty.

Walt, after all, has more problems than cancer. He evokes our sympathies in the first episode during an utterly humiliating scene in which he has to wash the car of one of his problem students, a car he could in no way afford on his public school teacher's salary.

Crime, as Walter makes clear to his sidekick Jesse in season five, offers something much greater than money. Walter's transformation into his criminal kingpin persona Heisenberg offers power over the seemingly impersonal forces that have buffeted him from every side, from the economic dead-end of his profession to his unpayable health care costs.

Historian Eric Hobsbawm coined the term "social banditry" to describe criminal figures who become representatives of social vengeance. Jesse James is the primary American example, a bad man whose war on the railroads in Robber Baron America cast his misdeeds as a struggle for social justice.

Walter White and his fellow TV outlaws are our social bandits. Their struggles have taken place amidst some of the most wide-ranging crimes of postindustrial capitalism. Their prominence in the collective dream life of our TV screens embodies at least vestigial revolutionary hopes in a society where corporate gangsters, as Tony Soprano might say, have us by the balls.

Photo: Breaking Bad official AMC site

“Elysium” gives sci-fi twist to immigration, health care

Mon, 12 Aug 2013 12:13:00 +0000

Director Neill Blomkamp has been associated with South Africa, especially because his earlier sci-fi film, "District Nine," showed racist apartheid so magnificently. (Another take on that film is here.) In Blomkamp's new movie, "Elysium," he films partly in Canada and partly in Mexico. The choice of filming locations couldn't have been more appropriate, since the film is about downtrodden people with no health care and lousy worker safety protections who are desperate to go somewhere more affluent where they have good health care and workplace safety. It's not the road from Mexico to Canada that our hero Max traverses, but from Earth to an affluent satellite retreat named "Elysium."

Elysium is where the wealthy have gone to hide from their grungy workers, but it's not a completely harmonious political landscape. There are affluent "liberals" and affluent "conservatives" who are sharply divided over, you guessed it, how to handle the immigrant problem. Sci-fi is such a perfect microscope for examining contemporary problems!

In his determined assault on Elysium, actor Matt Damon gets whomped and gets up again over and over again. He's a fighter extraordinaire, just as he is when he plays the spy in the "Bourne" series. This time he has cyborg abilities with an exoskeleton of super strength and endurance. His opponents, also, are whomped and revived over and over again to the point that it gets repetitious. The shootouts, wrestling matches, and stabbings, unfortunately, overtake the serious sense of the film and become a major distraction.

Give the movie credit for making its hero a working man instead of the usual attorney, artist, or architect. Credit to Matt Damon for playing so many different roles so well. Give some credit to Jodie Foster for her icy portrayal as a cold-blooded jingoist murderer, and some credit to actor William Fichtner for his underplayed CEO corporate bossman, which establishes him as a character actor of wide range, since he was the over-emoting cutlipped marauder in the recent "Lone Ranger."

"Elysium" is not top-notch sci-fi because it blunts its own sharp message. But technically, it's an outstanding and well-made space shoot-em-up.

"Elysium"
Directed by Neil Blomkamp

Starring Matt Damon, Jodie Foster

109 min.

Photo: Elysium official site

"Conduct of Saints”: conscience, crime, and Catholics in post-Nazi Rome

Thu, 08 Aug 2013 15:08:00 +0000

When I was a graduate student (who knew everything, naturally), a professor in colonial Latin American historiography gently guided me toward the eternal mysteries of a place called Nuanceland. There, I discovered, the Roman Catholic Church was far more than just the maidservant to Spanish imperialism that quieted whatever troubled conscience the conquistadores might have suffered while subduing the native populations and claiming their lands for the Crown. The Church also employed thousands of people, operated the only hospitals in the New World, ran the schools, and built magnificent architectural wonders. It even ruled against actual enslavement of the natives (Africans were another story, alas). Suddenly it became not so easy to parse out the good from the evil.

Christopher Davis's new novel, his twelfth, The Conduct of Saints, takes place precisely on this shifting, shaking moral ground. His playing field is Rome 1945, during the Allied Military Government occupation in the months following the retreat of the Nazis. Streets, cafés, prisons, palazzos, and churches in and around the Vatican, are occupied by a smarmy mix of religious types, all with their own (and conflicting) agendas; soldiers of present and recent régimes who continue to lurk about; opportunists, thieves, and special pleaders of every stripe; and at least a couple of actual killers around whose fate the novel revolves. The story has the pacing and the atmosphere of a particularly hardened film noir.

Davis was a National Book Award nominee for his novel A Peep into the 20th Century, which took a troubling look at the first execution by electric chair in 1890. In that book, and in numerous essays, Davis has witnessed powerfully against the death penalty, even for murder. It's a subject Davis well knows: His uncle, the radical composer Marc Blitzstein, was beaten to death in 1964. Unrecognizable to most readers, no doubt, is a fictional recapitulation of that incident in Conduct of Saints, which must have been wrenchingly difficult to write.

Davis's inventive set-up concerns an Irish-American priest and lawyer, Brendan Doherty, whom Pope Pius XII has charged with a high responsibility. He will be the "Devil's Advocate," i.e., the one who raises doubts and objections concerning the upcoming plan to make someone a saint. In this case, he must determine if one Alessandro Serenelli, who 40 years earlier savagely murdered 12-year-old Maria Goretti, is sincere in his repentance if Maria is to be canonized. The Pope, you see, needs this new saint as an inspiration to all the war-torn youth who might otherwise gravitate toward communism. Doherty's Devil need not advocate too persuasively.

And Doherty, likewise on Papal assignment, is also interested in the matter of Pietro Koch, a German-Italian Nazi mass murderer who has also repented: But again, really? Without excusing the crimes, Doherty is nevertheless a staunch opponent of the death penalty. An example is given of a Nazi collaborator dragged through the streets and killed by an angry mob, but it turns out the guy was a mistaken identity. Oh, well. Not easy questions, capisce?

Populating this scenario we find other historical figures such as the Pope and filmmaker Luchino Visconti. But the focus is on Doherty, his many personal imperfections and likewise his almost Quixotic attempt to reconcile justice with compassion. It is no plot spoiler to reveal that Doherty is dogged by inner conflict over his sexuality, adding yet another level of depth to the novel. The Conduct of Saints sounds like a potboiler, but one lucidly conceived and stunningly written, chock full of ideas and philosophies (and their intricate nuances), the very stuff people of conscience struggle with on a daily basis.

Emanating from a small publishing house, this novel likely has no five- or six-figure advertising budget, and may escape notice. Make sure your local library gets it.

"The Conduct of Saints"
2013, The Permanent Press
Hardcover, 264 pages, $28

Photo: Goodreads.com

“The Gatekeepers”: brutally frank and powerful

Thu, 08 Aug 2013 11:44:00 +0000

If you have any interest at all in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, "The Gatekeepers" is essential viewing. This gripping, disturbing film, an Israeli-European production, features brutally frank interviews with six retired heads of Israel's security agency, Shin Bet. These are intertwined with raw scenes of agency operations in the West Bank and Gaza, including civilian roundups, home invasions, and remote assassinations of accused Palestinian terrorists - combining real footage and realistic computer simulations.

The six spymasters, who served from 1980 to 2011, were responsible for some of the most shocking repression of Palestinians in the occupied territories in the name of fighting terrorism. Avraham Shalom, who headed the Shin Bet from 1980 to 1986, ordered the summary execution of two terrorists who had already been captured and handcuffed after hijacking a passenger bus in Israel. It became a public scandal in Israel, eventually forcing Shalom's resignation, although he said the action was approved at the top levels of government. In the film Shalom says cynically, by way of explanation, "I didn't want any more live terrorists in court." Later Carmi Gillon, who was Shin Bet head from 1994-96, says, with a smile, "I like operations that are nice and tidy."

These are not men who would have much appeal for progressive-minded people.

But the power of the film lies in this very fact. In that respect it reminds the viewer of "The Fog of War," the powerful 2003 film by Errol Morris about Robert McNamara's agonized reflections about the Vietnam War. And in fact, "Gatekeepers" director Dror Moreh says he drew his inspiration from that movie.

In "The Gatekeepers" it is Shalom who says that Israel's refusal to work toward establishment of a Palestinian state led to an increase in terrorism. Disputing the claim by some Israeli politicians that there is "no one to talk to" on the Palestinian side, Shalom says Israel should talk to anyone, including Hamas, to reach a peace pact.

Yuval Diskin, who headed the agency from 2005 to 2011, notes, "One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter." He adds, "To the enemy, by the way, I was also a terrorist."

Avi Dichter, who as Shin Bet head from 2000 to 2005 was responsible for the increasing use of targeted assassinations, says, "You can't make peace by military means."

Yaacov Peri, Shin Bet chief from 1988 to 1995, says since retiring he thinks he's become "a bit of a leftist."

For these men, the ongoing occupation has plunged Israel into an existential crisis that must be dealt with. In an op-ed in the Jerusalem Post last month, Diskin said that ending the occupation and establishing a Palestinian state alongside Israel "is a matter that requires national responsibility of the highest order. It requires taking advantage of what may be the last opportunity to extricate ourselves from the deadly clutches of our conflict with the Palestinians, clutches which we have tethered to ourselves."

Israeli columnist Bradley Burston wrote in Israel's Ha'aretz newspaper earlier this year, "These six men know more about the occupation of the territories captured in 1967 than any Israeli prime minister, settlement advocate, diplomat, professor, leftist or rightist. They know more than anyone. Because they built it. They made it possible. They kept it going. They know exactly what it took. They saw what the rest of us did not. They directed and carried out and stomached what the rest of us were too pleased - and are still too pleased - not to know about. Not to ask about. Not to think about."

Addressing himself to Israelis, Burston concluded, "These six men were at the crux of it all. And they are telling us that we need to stop it."

The six Shin Bet heads, who worked closely with Israel's top political leaders, are highly critical of those leaders for lack of courage and failing to recognize these truths. So is the film's director, Dror Moreh. These officials "understand that nothing good can come from this conflict, and the sooner we would solve this conflict the better it would be," Moreh said in an interview last year. "Regrettably, I don't see anybody willing to do that, in the current administration. It worries them [the intelligence chiefs] a lot, it worries me a lot."

With their preoccupation with violence and terrorism, none of the "Gatekeepers" address the nonviolent side of Palestinian resistance to the occupation, but the film shows the impact of the agency's actions on ordinary Palestinians, in their homes and in the streets.

The film shows the growing problem of Jewish terrorism, starting with the 1995 assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin by a Jewish religious extremist opposed to the recently signed Oslo Accords. Gillon discusses a Jewish extremist plot to blow up the Dome of the Rock, one of Islam's holiest sites, in East Jerusalem. Such an attack would have triggered all-out war well beyond the Middle East, Gillon says.

"The Gatekeepers was nominated for an Academy Award for documentaries this year, ironically along with "5 Broken Cameras," a film about a Palestinian farmer's nonviolent resistance to actions of the occupying Israeli army. (Both lost to "Searching for Sugar Man.")

"The Gatekeepers" was released in the U.S. earlier this year. It is available now on Netflix and Amazon instant video.

"The Gatekeepers"

Directed by Dror Moreh

2012, PG-13

Hebrew with English subtitles

Photo: Official film site

“World War Z” as World War Proletariat

Wed, 07 Aug 2013 09:45:00 +0000

If you're tired of hearing about zombies...that's probably too bad. America's most popular monster shows no sign of shambling away quietly. World War Z made almost half a billion dollars worldwide this summer and will make even more after the September DVD release; the undead have a serious profit margin.

Maybe this mainstream film success and the inevitable imitators will mean that the zombie hordes have crested. But don't count on it. The fall premiere of the much-awaited fourth season of The Walking Dead, combined with the popularity of the graphic novels on which the series is based, ensures that the zombie will continue as our monster du jour for some time to come.

The popularity of the zombie in film, television, and print has made the undead horde the subject of plenty cultural wonkery. There's basically a mountain of literature asking, "what do zombies really mean?" Last Halloween, a conference I took part in at the Emory University Center for Ethics pondered the zombie as a philosophical and even a theological problem.

World War Z deserves some special attention. Popular as they are, zombies have still been the preserve of genre writers and genre directors for a long time. But World War Z is a true mainstream movie, feeling often more like an action-adventure/disaster film than a horror flick.

Perhaps more importantly, its ideology barely stays beneath the surface where subtexts are supposed to live. This is true of most big, loud summer films that are trying to push as many of its audience's buttons as they possibly can. It's perhaps especially true of a film of this type that uses the zombie, a monster already packed with symbolism.

Some criticism has already appeared concerning Brad Pitt's role in the film. He is portrayed as yet another male savior who protects the world by protecting his family and vice versa. But there's another element to the film, an ideological element that American viewers are liable to miss. Pitt's also protecting the one percent, almost literally. He and his family, because of his bizarre secret agent UN job, are largely safe, as the global proletariat becomes a spiraling mob of undead.

Much about the film taps into this idea. As Patricia Vieria has pointed out in an excellent critique of World War Z, the zombie storming of Jerusalem shows some similarities to images from various incarnations of the Palestinian Intifada. More to the point, much of the film's creation of zombie uprising mis-en-scene looks a lot like street protests of all kinds, from Europe's 1848 uprisings to 1917 to the contemporary Occupy movement.

There are other elements of the film that suggest that the great zombie war owes something to fears of a great global class war. Zombie films have, especially over the last decade and since Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later, focused on the walking dead as representative of pandemics. World War Z does much the same, though makes the interesting move of locating the origins of the disease vector in Asia. In this, it follows the Max Brooks novel (one of the few places where the film proved faithful to its source material).

This origin story for the zombie menace taps into jingoistic western notions of the "clash of civilization." Perhaps more significantly, it embodies more generalized fears of the developing world as representing billions of the poor waiting to move against the industrialized and modernized zones of safety in the west.

This uneasiness on the part of the western middle classes reflects some of the realities of the world we live in. The United Nations Millennium Declaration suggests that one billion human beings live in slum conditions the world over. The growth of urban populations and catastrophic concentrations of wealth are projected to lead to a slum population of six billion people by 2050.

Brad Pitt as the privileged male archetype struggling to save the world, and save his family's lifestyle, reflects all the fears of the western middle class in the face of what will increasingly become untenable, and thus revolutionary, conditions. The summer's zombie blockbuster suggests that the west may be fascinated with World War Z because what they really fear is World War Proletariat.

Photo: Official site

"Wolverine" sequel is much sharper than the first

Tue, 06 Aug 2013 15:42:00 +0000

For the second time this year, I was pleasantly surprised by a film that I expected to be mediocre. This was the most poignant, engaging superhero movie that I have seen in a long time. The follow-up to the abysmal 2009 X-Men Origins: Wolverine, which royally ticked off fans and critics alike, The Wolverine fixed everything that was wrong with the eponymous character's story, as mutant Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) found himself in the middle of twisted science and corporate corruption in the ganglands of Japan. There were no skyscrapers blown up, no alien invasions; this was a grounded crime drama - the answer to a desperately-needed change of pace for this genre.

For those who, understandably, don't have the time or interest in exploring decades of comic book backstory, here is, in a nutshell, what we're looking at in terms of character background: Wolverine, a.k.a. Logan, a.k.a. James Howlett, is a mutant who can heal from wounds and takes a very long time to age, effectively making him immortal and meaning that he has participated in everything from the Civil War to World War II. Due to government experimentation, he was also given a metal skeleton and retractable claws in his hands (trust me, it all sounds less kooky when you read the stories).

The film begins with a flashback to Japan in 1945, where he saves an officer in a POW camp from the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, revealing himself as a mutant when he heals from radiation. In the present day, he lives as a hermit in the Yukon after leaving superhero team the X-Men following the death of a woman he loved. He is soon called to Tokyo by the officer, Yashida, who is now head of a corporation. Dying, he wants Logan's healing ability so that he may live on, knowing that Logan, in his grief, has lost his own desire to live. Logan, fearing the consequences, declines.

Soon after, Yashida's doctor reveals herself to be a mutant and introduces a toxin into Logan's body that takes away his ability to heal. This proves deadly when he is called into action to save Yashida's granddaughter, Mariko, from the Yakuza. Logan and Mariko are forced to flee through the urban sprawl of Tokyo and into rural Japan as they are pursued by corporate thugs and gangsters, and Logan must learn why the woman's own family would want her dead. He also begins to fall in love with her, ironically finally finding something to live for.

The film was an adaptation of the 1982 story arc by Chris Claremont and Frank Miller - widely regarded as one of the greatest comic book sagas of all time. It lived up to those standards quite well, choosing narrative over mindless action, and highlighting the romantic - at times comedic - interaction between gruff Canadian Logan, struggling to adapt to Japan's customs and the sordid affairs of corporate goons, and Mariko, a quiet girl tossed into the fray against her will.

The action in which the story culminated was much more focused on neat-looking ninjutsu and hand-to-hand combat, rather than CGI or a "let's blow up a building for the hell of it" mentality. In fact, it seemed like there was an effort to specifically stay away from those clichés. And the few special effects-bolstered parts there hearkened back to 80's action movies, like a breathtaking sequence in which Logan fights a group of assassins atop a speeding bullet train.

For hardcore fans, there were subtle ties to the prior X-Men films here, and a not-so-subtle mid-credits scene that sets the stage for the upcoming X-Men: Days of Future Past in 2014. Such is the way of modern comic book movies. And yet, The Wolverine was also a brilliant self-contained story that added much depth to its main character, and showed off the talent of Hugh Jackman, whose abilities, in the past, were only ever hindered by a shoddy script.

How Jackman interacted with this country, in which he was so confused and out of his element, was priceless. And the unrelenting way in which the character upheld his "everyman" values in the face of endless danger was interesting. The Wolverine stubbornly stuck to his morals, but was also anything but a boy scout; it reminded me of Stallone in Rocky, or Clint Eastwood in any number of films.

Things got worrying toward the end when a giant mechanical samurai reared its ugly head (or helmet?), but the focus was maintained on what counted, and the story ended on an emotionally rewarding note.

Part comic book film, part existential drama, and part homage to Asian martial arts films, if you have been mentally preparing some sort of list of escapist summer movies, put this one at the very top.

"The Wolverine"

2013, 126 mins.

Hugh Jackman, Tao Okamoto, Hiroyuki Sanada, Rila Fukushima

Photo: The Wolverine official site

Reza Aslan's “Zealot” exposes Christianity's revolutionary roots

Mon, 05 Aug 2013 12:17:00 +0000

Reza Aslan's recent book Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth has touched off a storm of Islamophobic reaction, starting with Laura Green's interview with the author on Fox News. Green showed off not merely her Islamophobia but her complete ignorance not only of Islam but also of Christianity and of historical research into its orgins.

Here's one measure of the reaction: as of August 2, 581 reviews of the book -which was released only three weeks ago-had been posted on Amazon, of which 184 were one star, mostly vitriolic and often Islamophobic denunciations, generally revealing the same depth of ignorance as the Fox interviewer. For comparison, the book Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time by a leading Christian scholar, Marcus Borg, giving a similar perspective on Jesus, by Marcus Borg, released in 1995, has garnered 120 Amazon reviews, with only 13 being one star denunciations.

But what should non-Islamophobes, and particularly progressives, think of Aslan's book? I can speak to this, because I, like Aslan, have scholarly training in Judaism and early Christianity (a Ph.D. from the Unversity of California Berkeley and the Graduate Theological Union)-and I'm a believing Christian.

First, I have to say that Zealot is no anti-Christian diatribe. Aslan does raise questions about some traditional Christian beliefs, but his portrayal of Jesus and early Christianity is no more radical, indeed in some ways a good deal less radical, than that of some respected Christian scholars.

Second, contrary to Green and to the more benighted commentators on the Amazon website, the book is certainly not a Muslim attack on Christianity. In fact, Aslan's picture of Jesus differs in key respect from Muslim tradition, which holds Jesus to be a revered prophet (but not a social revolutionary-see below). Aslan, for instance, questions the Virgin Birth, which the Qur'an affirms, and insists that Jesus was really crucified, which the Qur'an denies, holding that Jesus was taken up to heaven before the crucifixion and his place taken by a man who merely looked like him. There is nothing particularly Islamic about Zealot; if Aslan did not identify himself as a Muslim on page 2, there would be no way of knowing his faith committment.

Third, and most important, Zealot is a great read and something that progressives should not only read themslves but also recommend to all the Christians they know (at least those who don't have their minds tight shut as a clam). For Aslan does an excellent job of showing that Jesus was unquestionably a revolutionary, directly challenging the dominant powers of his day-not only the Roman Empire, but the local elite collaborating with it. He starts by pointing out (as do many other scholars, including the quite orthodox Catholic scholar John Meier) that Jesus was crucified-a punishment the Romans reserved for political criminals. Any portrayal of Jesus has, therefore, to show how he wound up on a Roman cross.

And, as Aslan expertly reveals, there's no lack of evidence both from the Gospels and from other sources to explain that fact. Presenting the socio-economic situation of the Palestinian peasantry at the time and the massive repressive apparatus that Rome wielded, he shows that Jesus was quite correctly perceived as a danger to the established order, a leader building a movement threatening both Rome and the Judean elite.

Aslan does not encumber his text with footnotes, but he provides a hundred pages of end-notes that cite not only the authorities that support his views but also those that contest them. From my knowledge of the field, I can affirm that he has certainly done his homework; he has read and intelligently evaluated most of the key scholarship that bears on the subject.

That is not to say that I agree with all of his views; like any effort in reconstructing ancient history, there is variety of views held by responsible scholars. Aslan's book is an well-written and engaging presentation of one possible perspective.

I find his final chapters, dealing with Paul and the decades (and centuries) after Jesus, to be the weaker part of the book. The root of the problem there, in my opinion, is that Aslan fails to appreciate the relationship between Christianity (including Pauline Christianity) and at least some forms of pre-Jesus Judaism (as documented by my teacher Daniel Boyarin in his recent book The Jewish Gospels). This leads him to argue that Paul, whose writings had a decisive influence on all later Christianity, broke radically with Jesus the Jew and instituted a new religion having little to do with the historical Jesus. While I disagree with him here, his position is shared by some responsible and respected scholars, and in his end-notes Aslan cites all sides of the debate.

Of greatest value in his book is unquestionably his portrait of the revolutionary Jesus. And he leaves readers with a question which, curiously, he does not even attempt to answer. He holds, correctly in my view, that Jesus organized and inspired a revolutionary movement; but he also holds-contrary to most New Testament scholars-that the statements attributed to Jesus predicting his (and his followers') death by crucifixion were not inserted after the fact but stem from Jesus himself. This raises the question: how could Jesus recruit and lead a band of rebels, urging them to fight for Israel's freedom, when he openly expected that their struggle would lead them all to Roman crosses? The answer, as I see it, can only be that he saw his own earthly career and that of his immediate followers as only the opening salvo in a much longer and much bigger struggle for human freedom-as indeed the Christian church has (often only very dimly) understood. This struggle, however, is not, as the ecclesiastical establishment has often maintained, a purely "spiritual" struggle divorced from the material social existence of humanity. Jesus was too much a Jew, too rooted in the earthy spirituality of his people, to imagine or advocate anything of the sort. Zealot is a call to Christians to remember their Jewish and revolutionary roots. I thank my Muslim brother Reza for reminding us Christians of this simple reality of our faith and its founder.

"Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth"

2013, Reza Aslan, Hardcover, 336 pages