Monthly Archives: April 2021

It's a movie about existentialism, self-creation, obsession, camaraderie, nihilism and a thousand other things. There's barely any dialog and it stars two musicians who don't play a single note. It's likely the only movie ever made that includes a scene where the main characters shop for GM QuadraJet carburetor parts. The whole thing is paced like a long, lugubrious bong hit, includes sequences shot at long since closed drag strips and drive-in joints, and features Richard Ruth, the fabricator who actually screwed together the lead vehicle, as a gas station attendant wearing a Glendale Speed Center T-Shirt. And 50 years ago, in anticipation of its release, Esquire published the screenplay and pronounced it to be the best film of 1971. The movie is Two-Lane Blacktop. Its director, Monte Hellman, died on April 20 after falling in his Palm Springs home at the age of 91.

"In Monte Hellman's new film, Two-Lane Blacktop," wrote Vincent Canby of The New York Times in his review, "the godhead is the crankcase of a 454-cubic-inch, high-performance '55 Chevy with aluminum heads, the car through which two young men, identified only as The Driver (James Taylor) and The Mechanic (Dennis Wilson), realize their destinies in a series of drag races in Esso country, across blacktop space and through stop-watch time."

Hellman, born Monte Himmelman in Brooklyn on July 12, 1929 and raised in Albany, was in his early forties when he made Two-Lane and was barely hanging on in the movie business. He had directed a few films for the low-budget producer Roger Corman that went by almost unnoticed. He made four films starring a then-unknown Jack Nicholson. But up until then, he was best-knownwhich means barely knownfor the western The Shooting which he shot on an $80,000 budget in 1965. In America, it had a cursory release in New York City and showed up as a late-night movie once on a local TV station. But in 1968 it opened in France to critical acclaim. A western brought back to its essence ... You must see this little film which is a big success," wrote FranceSoir, a now long-defunct Paris newspaper. French enthusiasm wasn't enough to ensure his family was housed and fed, but it put his name into the consciences of obscure film buffs. And that eventually earned him the support of Universal Studios, which reportedly put up $850,000 to make Two-Lane Blacktop.

"Essentially, the experience of filmmaking for me is one of constant discovery," he explained to Nicholas Pasquariello of Jump Cut in 1976. "If I know too much in advance, I just tend to become disinterested sooner. The ideal situation for me is working on a film like The Shooting or even Two-Lane Blacktop where there are so many unconscious things happening in the creation of it that even after finishing the editing and mixing, and the making of the final print, I can go to see the film and still find new things in it. That to me is a stimulating experience."

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There's nothing slick about Two-Lane. It's filled with non-actors doing their best to non-act. They amble through scenes, stare off into the distance, and often seem completely disaffected. Hellman sought out a naturalism so natural that it seemed unnatural. The one exception being the fine actor Warren Oates, who played the constantly lying, seemingly sociopathic "GTO" with theatrical flamboyance and infinite quirks. And yes, GTO drove the second automotive star of the film, a 1970 Pontiac GTO.

Watching Two-Lane now is like trying to decipher cave paintings or hieroglyphics. What dialog there is feels as if it were ripped out of Car Craft Magazine, no character seems concerned with anything rational, and there never seems to be much of a point. There's some sort of race to Washington D.C. but no one seems too concerned about trying very hard to win it. It's all so painfully 1970s. And it ends with the film itself apparently burning away.

Michael Ochs ArchivesCar and Driver

But then there are the cars. Besides the '55 Chevy and '70 GTO, there are glimpses of street races involving a 1969 Dodge Charger Daytona and dozens of small-time drag racers. All in their native environmenton the dirt lots surrounding the quarter-mile strips of places like Tennessee's Lakeland International Raceway. It's some of the only film that survives of those long ago and obscure people, places, and machinery. There are film geeks who will always cherish Hellman's work for its fearless weirdness. And car people who will always love him for having captured a moment that no other filmmaker seemed to even know about.

Two-Lane wasn't a hit. "Nobody will ever know if the movie would have been successful, because its life was cut off even before it had a chance to breathe, really" Hellman told Roel Haanen of Flashback Files in 2011. "This was just the power of one studio executive who decided he was going to stop it." That executive was, Hellman claimed, Universal's head Lew Wasserman. "He killed it the same way Congress kills the president's agenda, by not spending any money on it. He provided money to make the movie, but no money to distribute it."

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Still, Two-Lane was added to the Library of Congress National Film Registry in 2012. Not bad for a movie that was barely acknowledged in its own time.

After Two-Lane, James Taylor would take a few small acting roles, but never star in another movie. Dennis Wilson was in plenty of Beach Boys videos, but never acted in anything beyond Two-Lane. As for Hellman, he directed several more films and none of them rose much above obscurity.

However, he was an executive producer of Quentin Tarantino's breakthrough film, Reservoir Dogs, in 1992. And Hellman was still pushing his (usually frustrated) projects forward in the 21st century.

The two automotive stars of the film would have extensive careers. The GTO made it back into Universal's motor pool and for several years would show up in TV series like Adam-12, Kojak, and Beretta wearing its distinctive Keystone mags. The '55 would get some black paint and go on to portray Bob Falfa's sinister beast in George Lucas's massive 1973 hit American Graffiti.

There's no evidence that Monte Hellman ever cared about cars or car culture, but that doesn't mean he didnt leave something special for all of us to remember.

"The only person that I ever met who really understood one of my moviesthe movie was Two-Lane Blacktopwas a man who worked in a brewery, he came to me and told me what he saw," Hellman told Film Talk last year. "Now that didn't matter to me, I mean if someone had a different interpretation, that was okay too, you know. But I thought it was interesting; here you had this one guy who saw what I saw."

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Appreciating Director Monte Hellman's Two-Lane Blacktop Car and Driver - Car and Driver

Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past. George Orwell, 1984

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was formed on July 23, 1921, so is gearing up for the hundredth anniversary of its founding with the theme Forever Following the Party.

In preparation, the Cyberspace Administration of China has launched a hotline for citizens to report online statements that contradict the Partys official version of its history. A translation of the announcement from the Central Network Information Office Reporting Center is available on former American diplomat David Cowhigs blog:

One part of the announcement reads:

In order to avoid misleading the public with false statements, maintain a clear cyberspace and create a good atmosphere of public opinion for the centennial of the Party, the Central Internet Information Office (State Internet Information Office) illegal and undesirable information reporting center recently opened a special area for reporting harmful information involving historical nihilism on the official website, APP and other channels to specifically accept public reports.

Chinese citizens are expected to report the following offenses:

Distortions of the history of the Chinese Communist Party, the history of New China, the history of reform and opening up, the history of socialist development. Attacking the Partys leadership, its guiding ideology, guidelines and policies. Defamation of heroes and martyrs Denying the excellence of Chinese traditional culture, revolutionary culture, and advanced socialist culture.

Distortions of history refers to anything that is not the CCP-approved history of China. For example, there is the official version of what happened at Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989, and then there is what really happened. The official version sanitizes the militarys response and downplays the event referring to it innocuously as the June Fourth Incident. Mention of the Tiananmen Square protests as ending in a massacre would be a distortion of history according to the Party.

The prohibition of defaming heroes and martyrs is from a 2018 law, Heroes and Martyrs Protection Law, which requires everyone to honor, study, and defend people deemed heroes and martyrs by the Chinese Communist Party. The CCP has a database of 2 million heroes and martyrs. As if it were a dystopian mirror world of the church, the CCP even has official requirements for martyrdom.

Some analysts point out that the new hotline is a familiar tactic from the totalitarian play book, now in high-tech trappings. This is hardly the first time the CCP has solicited and incentivized Chinese citizens to report each other. In 2004 the government instituted a grid system for citizens to surveil each other. The system, led by a volunteer who is usually a retired Party member, divides a region into 300 or so families. It is still quite active and is often used to weed out people who practice a prohibited religion.

In 2017, the CCP rolled out the Safe Zhejiang app that offered discount coupons and other prizes for people who reported on their neighbors. Users received points for every person they reported. However, the app was decidedly unpopular and garnered mostly negative online reviews.

Historical nihilism, the term the CCP uses for non-Party-approved accounts of history.

Heroes and martyrs feature prominently in Mr. Xis propaganda campaigns, which often hark back to the Partys revolutionary roots. Officials have said that strong legislation is needed to promote patriotism and squelch historical nihilisman official epithet for skepticism about the partys contributions to Chinas progress. (Wall Street Journal, 2018).

Xi believes that the Soviet Union collapsed largely because of this historical nihilism, saying that differing accounts of history confused peoples thoughts and led to the military revolt against the Communist Party in the 1990s. Thus he has promoted a Party history campaign since he entered office. The campaign includes a propaganda drive and the study of Xi Jinping Thought. It emphasizes the successes of the CCP and omits its failures, including the millions that died during the Great Leap Forward (19581960) and the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) under Mao Zedongs leadership. Naturally, Xis history campaign particularly focuses on the CCPs successes since 2012 when he took office.

Reuters reports that former Premier Wen Jiabaos tribute to his late mother in the Macau Herald was censored because he mentioned her experiences during the second Sino-Japanese War (19371945) and the Cultural Revolution. While Wens article was not scrubbed from the internet, it cannot be shared on Chinese social media outlets, Weibo and WeChat and the link turns up a 404 error. An account of the substance of the tribute in the South China Morning Post notes that Whereas personal memoirs are commonplace among Western politicians, it is unusual for a retired Chinese leader to publish such a personal account because the state maintains rigid controls over all narratives relating to state affairs.

China Digital Times recounts several instances of how the crackdown on historical nihilism has affected everyday communications in China:

Most recently, last week a teenager was arrested in Jiangsu for posting insulting comments online about the 1937 Nanjing Massacre. In February, seven people were arrestedand one was chased in online pursuitfor slandering martyrs, a genre of historical nihilism

In 2016, maverick journal Yanhuang Chunqiu was neutered by a hostile takeover triggered by its independent scholarship on modern Chinese history. In 2017, a bookseller was sentenced to five years in prison for distributing the book How The Red Sun Rose, an unflinching look at the CCPs first party-wide rectification campaign from 1942-1945.

Another example cited was an incident during the Qingming Festival (Tomb Sweeping Day) earlier this month. The grave of one-time high-ranking politician and political reformer Zhao Ziyang was blocked off so that people could not visit it and a security camera was installed above the grave. Zhao was removed from the Communist Party in 1989 for supporting the Tiananmen Square protests. Only people old enough to remember him as one of the highest-ranking officials even knew who he was when he died in 2005. Most people born after 1980 dont know who he was.

George Orwell (19031950) foretold this approach to history in his novel on totalitarianism, 1984:

Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.

As if in answer, the Chinese Communist Party is now enlisting the help of its millions of internet users to defend the history that they have been taught is true.

You may also wish to read: The age of the Wolf Warrior: Chinas post-pandemic strategy The younger diplomats take their cue from a Chinese Rambo-style movie and the rewritten history they learned at school. (Heather Zeiger)

and

Clothing retailer H&M Canceled for revealing Chinas forced labor About a fifth of the worlds cotton is grown in Xinjiang, for which Uyghur labor is conscripted, partly through the detention camps complex. The Chinese government tightly controls a huge consumer market and can simply make companies with ethical concerns disappear from it. Fast.

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China: Snitching on Those Who Recall Non-Approved History - Walter Bradley Center for Natural and Artificial Intelligence

Doom metal is perhaps the perfect genre through which music can express the conditions of the apocalypse. Impossibly-long tracks ebb and flow like a boiling shoreline, an encroaching tide of guitars trudge and crawl like toxic sludge, cyclonic drums pound, crash, and whip against the scorched Earth. Add some hallowed vocals atop this distressing combination and an adroit approximation of the worst effects of the anthropocene starts to form.

Body Void's newest album Bury Me Beneath This Rotting Earth brutally channels this apocalyptic suitability, giving audible shape to humanity's worst nightmares about where our future may be headed. The New England/Bay Area duo recorded the album last summer during the height of the nationwide protests and pandemic confusion. The broiling mood that gripped the country is emulated brilliantly through Bury Me Beneath This Rotting Earth's anguished, venomous tone. Its four tracks (each of which run at between twelve and thirteen minutes) are mini-symphonies of agony, provocative and bold doom metal visions that speak of an unrelenting horror and despair.

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It's tempting to say that Body Void's approach is one that allows very little light in, turning away from the bright glow of goodness and scurrying off into the dark. Yet, as a close listen to Bury Me Beneath This Rotted Earth reveals, Body Void are lamenting the death of the Earth, rather than welcoming its demise. Their shrieks and howls cry out for justice and compassion, yet find little to hush their screams. Opener "Wound" makes this sense of despair literal: "we live here/by a hole/the earth has opened wide/to scream its curse". Rather than consciously turning away from the light, Body Void are eulogizing its absence, grasping around for whatever remains, their panicked cries echoing around the ever-growing chasm in the Earth.

"Forest Fire" utilises a more accusatory tone, taking aim at those standing by as the planet ignites and burns. Lines like "the problem's not yours/you're here to win/burn/the house" sardonically attack the capitalistic short-term mentality that matters little "until the flames/lick at your skin". The track is especially murky and viscous, even when compared to the rest of Bury Me Beneath This Rotting Earth. When it finally does kick up a gear, it erupts into a sort of half-blast beat, a ferocious caveman beat that comes from a place of pure, seething anger. It manages to speed up to a 'full' blast for about twenty seconds, but can only collapse in on itself, worn out and depleted.

While Body Void's lyrical approach intelligently channels the duo's impassioned rage at the state of the planet, the reason it works so well is because it's married up alongside some truly disturbing and macabre imagery. The hole-in-the-Earth metaphor of "Wound" and the scorched images of "Forest Fire" are both palpable and expertly-realized, however it's the horrific visions of the final two tracks "Fawn" and "Pale Man" that really succeed in burning themselves into the mind. "Fawn" imagines an elemental creature/spirit that takes control of its host, forcing them to see the world through its eyes ("you are the fawn/it grows inside you"), while "Pale Man" uses the titular creation as a metaphor for critiquing colonialism and general western self-appointed superiority. It contains a ton of piercingly smart lines, the best of which being "he kills to feel the power of his place/shits in fear if you look him in the face".

The album's greatest achievement is that its perspective manages to go beyond nihilism, despair or any such anthropocentric worries. Instead, it becomes the sound of the Earth itself, howling back at us, utilizing a mode of metal that is perfectly primed for dealing with such a spatially enormous and existentially weighty topic as the end of mankind. Body Void have given voice to the Earth, even though it cannot speak our language. Bury Me Beneath This Rotting Earth is not just a punishing, hallowed work of physical doom metal, but one that is also inherently moral and eerily soulful.

Tom Morgan

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Bury Me Beneath This Rotting Earth releases today via Prosthetic Records (with a limited-edition cassette from Tridroid Records).

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Body Void's Dismal Plea Reflects The Doomed Truth: Bury Me Beneath This Rotting Earth (Review) - Invisible Oranges

On Tuesday, hours after a former Minneapolis police officer was convicted of murdering George Floyd, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) made a poor choice of words at a news conference with members of the Congressional Black Caucus.

Thank you, George Floyd, for sacrificing your life for justice, she said. Because of you and because of thousands, millions of people around the world who came out for justice, your name will always be synonymous with justice.

The online backlash was swift; Pelosi followed up with a tweet emphasizing that George Floyd should be alive today, and adding, He did not die in vain. She called for enactment of the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, a much-needed police accountability measure.

It is easy to take cheap shots at leaders who make gaffes, and this mini-furor will subside.

Her phrasing sat somewhere between awkward and offensive, but its clear that Pelosi did not mean to thank George Floyd for being murdered. Still inadvertently she underscored the fact that Black martyrdom has been an all-too-real phenomenon throughout Americas troubled history.

The roster of Black martyrdom to the cause of civil rights and racial equality just since the 1950s is staggering: Emmett Till. Medgar Evers. The four little girls in Birmingham. James Chaney. The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

These are the famous ones. Among the Black Lives Matter movements many accomplishments has been the insistence, as with Breonna Taylor, on saying the names of victims of police violence, to ensure they are not forgotten. To acknowledge Black humanity and dignity is only a tiny first step but a necessary one if America is ever to move forward from the tragedies of genocide and enslavement that accompanied this nations birth and emergence and have tarnished its noble ideals.

The dead cannot be thanked; they are indifferent to the gratitude (or any other emotions) expressed by the living. In a nation with strong Christian traditions, it is understandable to seek meaning in the nihilism of death, especially violent deaths. Yes, we must remember our martyrs, but the only true path forward is to achieve justice the justice that our martyrs were denied.

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Opinion: Nancy Pelosi's gratitude, and the problem with Black martyrdom - Los Angeles Times

Those of us who had hoped America would calm down when we no longer had Donald Trump spewing poison from the Oval Office have been sadly disabused. There are increasing signs that the Trumpian base is radicalizing. My Republican friends report vicious divisions in their churches and families. Republican politicians who dont toe the Trump line are speaking of death threats and menacing verbal attacks.

Its as if the Trump base felt some security when their man was at the top, and thats now gone. Maybe Trump was the restraining force.

Whats happening can only be called a venomous panic attack. Since the election, large swathes of the Trumpian right have decided America is facing a crisis like never before and they are the small army of warriors fighting with Alamo-level desperation to ensure the survival of the country as they conceive it.

The first important survey data to understand this moment is the one pollster Kristen Soltis Anderson discussed with my colleague Ezra Klein. When asked in late January if politics is more about enacting good public policy or ensuring the survival of the country as we know it, 51 percent of Trump Republicans said survival; only 19 percent said policy.

The level of Republican pessimism is off the charts. A February Economist-YouGov poll asked Americans which statement is closest to their view: Its a big, beautiful world, mostly full of good people, and we must find a way to embrace each other and not allow ourselves to become isolated or Our lives are threatened by terrorists, criminals and illegal immigrants, and our priority should be to protect ourselves.

Over 75 percent of Biden voters chose a big, beautiful world. Two-thirds of Trump voters chose our lives are threatened.

This level of catastrophism, nearly despair, has fed into an amped-up warrior mentality.

The decent know that they must become ruthless. They must become the stuff of nightmares, Jack Kerwick writes in the Trumpian magazine American Greatness. The good man must spare not a moment to train, in both body and mind, to become the monster that he may need to become in order to slay the monsters that prey upon the vulnerable.

With this view, the Jan. 6 insurrection was not a shocking descent into lawlessness but practice for the war ahead. A week after the siege, nearly a quarter of Republicans polled said violence can be acceptable to achieve political goals. William Saletan of Slate recently rounded up the evidence showing how many Republican politicians are now cheering the Jan. 6 crowd, voting against resolutions condemning them.

Liberal democracy is based on a level of optimism, faith and a sense of security. Its based on confidence in the humanistic project: that through conversation and encounter, we can deeply know each other across differences; that most people are seeking the good with different opinions about how to get there; that society is not a zero-sum war, but a conversation and a negotiation.

As Leon Wieseltier writes in the magazine Liberties, James Madison was an optimist and a pessimist at the same time, a realist and an idealist. Philosophic liberals whether on the right side of the political spectrum or the left understand people have selfish interests, but believe in democracy and open conversation because they have confidence in the capacities of people to define their own lives, to care for people unlike themselves, to keep society progressing.

With their deep pessimism, the hyperpopulist wing of the G.O.P. seems to be crashing through the floor of philosophic liberalism into an abyss of authoritarian impulsiveness. Many of these folks are no longer even operating in the political realm. The G.O.P. response to the Biden agenda has been anemic because the base doesnt care about mere legislation, just their own cultural standing.

Over the last decade or so, as illiberalism, cancel culture and all the rest have arisen within the universities and elite institutions on the left, dozens of publications and organizations have sprung up. They have drawn a sharp line between progressives who believe in liberal free speech norms, and those who dont.

There are new and transformed magazines and movements like American Purpose, Persuasion, Counterweight, Arc Digital, Tablet and Liberties that point out the excesses of the social justice movement and distinguish between those who think speech is a mutual exploration to seek truth and those who think speech is a structure of domination to perpetuate systems of privilege.

This is exactly the line-drawing that now confronts the right, which faces a more radical threat. Republicans and conservatives who believe in the liberal project need to organize and draw a bright line between themselves and the illiberals on their own side. This is no longer just about Trump the man, its about how you are going to look at reality as the muddle its always been, or as an apocalyptic hellscape. Its about how you pursue change through the conversation and compromise of politics, or through intimidations of macho display.

I can tell a story in which the Trumpians self-marginalize or exhaust themselves. Permanent catastrophism is hard. But apocalyptic pessimism has a tendency to deteriorate into nihilism, and people eventually turn to the strong man to salve the darkness and chaos inside themselves.

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Opinion | The G.O.P. Is Getting Even Worse - The New York Times

For all of the ground-breaking accomplishments the Marvel Cinematic Universe has achieved in terms of modern Hollywood franchise building, the products themselves are hardly ever as revolutionary. Films and TV series dont necessarily need to shatter the form and function of the genre to be well-received. The MCUs consistent high floor of quality is proof of that. But at this point, as The Falcon and the Winter Soldiershifts into its series finale, its become clear that every single MCU project is going to climax with a more-or-less traditional punch-em-up between good guys and bad guys. So whatever comes before that CGI-fueled action resolution damn well better be good.

Every MCU features third act boils down to a standoff between protagonist and antagonist that includes a fair bit of monologuing and a fair pit of punching. The same can be said for Marvels first Disney+ seriesWandaVision. Thats okayits how the blockbuster formula works. But the relatively generic culmination format needs to be built on the back of sound character development, thematic messaging and logical plot progression. Thats where The Falcon and the Winter Soldierwas never quite consistent.

The series failed to properly address the MCUs single most glaring flaw when it comes to true consequences for the choices of our heroes. They are awarded character development without ever actually being forced to change. But we knew that back in Episode 3. What the season finale, which does pack plenty of good at times, really fails to do is reconcile the two halves ofThe Falcon and the Winter Soldier.

Spoilers for The Falcon and the Winter Soldier finale, One World, One People below.

This series was at its best with Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie) and Isaiah Bradley (Carly Lumbly) exploring the ugly nature of systemic and cyclical racism that extends through this countrys history like a rotting root. This is where were given a fresh perspective on contemporary Americawhere we finally learn how the Captain America shield can represent different things to different people. For the entirety of the MCU, symbols have been treated at face value. For the first time in the franchises history, were starting to finally realize that even the noblest of intentions can be commandeered for other purposes.

Unfortunately, the show wasnt always as focused on this central element as it could have been. The mechanics of howwe fight the battles that matter seemed to supersede this theme in the middle episodes before the show returned to racial politics to close out its run. This gave the series a stop-and-start feel with a jumbled message.

The finale feels like it was constructed to optimize the easiest way out of almost every interesting question the show asked.

The realism ofThe Falcon and the Winter Soldiersemphasis on institutional and perception-based racism never blended with the idealism of putting Karlis (Erin Kellyman) politics and eventual death on a pedestal. Sam should be commended for being more interested in why oppressed peoples feel the way they do and how the world can better serve them. Hes right when he says that the helplessness that grips the world finally unites the powerful and the poverty-stricken alike.

But its also a fabrication. Call it nihilism and cynicism if you like, butThe Falcon and the Winter Soldiers strongest element was its uncompromising showcase of how nothing changes or improves in this country. Rather than live in that, the finale feels like it was constructed to optimize the easiest way out of almost every interesting question the show asked. People just get better at hiding their ugly truths. Reverting back to the common MCU formula in One World, One People after an uneven focus across the five episodes before it feels too comfortable and easy to be a satisfying conclusion.

The action-packed finale that was always inevitable didnt always earn its respite from the tough conversations. Instead, it slapped together the brutal honesty the series was always going for with the unrealistic hopeful optimism only found in Hollywood.

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The Falcon and the Winter Soldier Finale Just Feels Like a Fabrication - Observer