"I Don't Honestly Think I Can Keep the Peace While I'm Incarcerated in This Shit House" (Made In Britain)

Made in Britain (1982)  

Written By: David Leland

 Directed By: Alan Clarke  

Why I Saw It: My daughter received it for her birthday.

Many years ago, I was employed, by one of our local mental health centers, as a substance abuse and violence prevention specialist. "Prevention" was a bit of a misnomer, since the students referred to us by the local school system were already painfully damaged and had been in all sorts of trouble. I went into my meetings with violent kids proudly armed with strategies for alternative ways of handling potentially volatile situations. There was only one small problem with this approach. These kids had no interest in my dumb strategies. After all, in any conceivable situation, why wouldn't they want to kick someone's ass?

Pressure Point (1962)

   "Pressure Point" is a underrated mind-game thriller and precursor to "The Silence of the Lambs," whose Nazi antagonist brings back memories of "American History X"'s Derek Vinyard. Intelligent and well-read, but full of hate, "Pressure Point"'s unnamed 'patient' was particularly dangerous because of his keen insights into the hearts of others and his acute articulation of his racist beliefs.

    Sydney Poitier plays the African-American "Doctor," a similarly insightful prison psychiatrist who tries to help 'patient' with his recurring blackouts. "Patient," impressively played by Bobby Darin, works to tear apart "Doctor" while forcing his Nazi ideology on him.

   At first Patient's bigotry seems a little watered down -- the film refrains from letting him use the 'n' ward and he seems more smug than actually dangerous. But slowly, the character's back story unfolds, revealing him to be an extremely dangerous manipulator and violent criminal.

Repost of an Old Favorite: This is England

It's 1983, and unsupervised, beleaguered Shaun (Thomas Turgoose) is missing his soldier dad, who died in the Falklands war an unspecified amount of time ago. So when an older boy at school makes a crack about his father, Shaun takes it upon himself to fight the kid, getting both of them into trouble and inciting the events that make up This Is England, Shane Meadows' semi-autobiographical account of the nuances and temptations of skinhead culture.

   Shaun is twelve, high-spirited and foul-mouthed, traits that exasperate his single mother Cynthia (Jo Hartley). He is damaged and distrustful when he meets Woody (Joseph Gilgun), a tattooed teenager who runs his own little gang in their coastal town. Contrary to what you might infer, Woody is not the antagonist of the story.

    He is a member of a unique subculture of skinheads, who are neither violent nor inherently racist. Leave the violence and racism to Combo (virtual unknown Stephen Graham, giving a performance that rivals Edward Norton's in American History X), an old colleague of the weak-willed Woody who leaves prison as volatile as ever.

   Shaun sees a father figure in Combo, who manipulates Shaun's future allegiance. When the group breaks up, Shaun and Woody go their separate ways, and Shaun is drawn into a fanatical group of fascists who allegedly want to prevent England's rape at the hands of foreigners. But when Combo goes too far, Shaun his unsure where his best interests lie.

   Shane Meadows, who found cult success with the fantastic Brit revenge thriller Dead Man's Shoes, infuses elements of his own life into this drama, which avoids making the situation black and white or relying on sentimentality.

   Stephen Graham gives a standout performance as the skinhead Combo, whose very being seethes with rage and desperation. First-time actor Thomas Turgoose also turns in a good performance as the vulnerable and wayward Shaun. The movie has its violent and icky moments (Perry Benson  crouched with his bare a*s on the floor of an ethnic store trying to take a dump, anybody?) but the film never becomes as exploitative or sadistic as Geoffrey Wright's Australian skinhead drama Romper Stomper.

   Shane Meadows is one of Britain's most intriguing directorial names today, but I would say you need to watch Dead Man's Shoes first and foremost, for a chance to see the filmmaker at the height of his powers. Regardless, This is England is intelligent, unflinching, and savvy, and gives a fresh look into a well-known sub genre.

 

 

Mudbound by Hilary Jordan

Henry and I dug the hole seven feet deep . Any shallower and the corpse was liable to come rising up during the next big flood: Howdy boys! Remember me?

As this story opens, in 1946, Henry and Jamie McAllan are burying their father in the flat, muddy fertile land of Henry's farm. Henry's city-bred wife Laura, trapped in a grueling life she didn't choose, stands by with their two girls. As they dig, the brothers realize they've accidentally unearthed the grave of a runaway slave.

"We can't bury our father in a nigger's grave," Henry said. "There's nothing he'd have hated more."

No one seems to be grieving the death of "Pappy," an old man who was defined by his hatred and died under suspicious circumstances. Why did this happen? To answer that question, the story loops around, delving into the characters' history and how they came to this farm in the Mississippi Delta. It moves seamlessly among different points of view, each with a distinctive voice and personality.

The story revolves around two families: the McAllans and the Jacksons, a family of "colored" sharecroppers living and working on their land. Under the feudal system of sharecropping, the Jacksons and others like them farm the McAllans' land, barely earning a subsistence wage.
Their lives are shared by Henry's kind-hearted, charismatic brother Jamie, fighting a losing battle against the demons that followed him home from World War II.

The Jacksons' oldest son Ronsel also returns from the war. After serving his country in the 761st "Black Panther" Tank Battalion, and expanding the boundaries of his world through his tour of duty in Europe, Ronsel is no longer content to keep his eyes down and go through the back door. In Mississippi, where racial discrimination is enforced through vigilante violence, this is likely to lead to disaster. Ronsel's mother Florence, who loves him passionately and has prayed continually for his return home, knows he can't stay. It is only a question of whether he'll leave Mississippi before it's too late.

It's incredibly difficult to tell the truth about racism. Often stories written in a setting like this, exploring these themes, offer us characters who seem color blind and are willing to fight the injustices they see. This makes the topic palatable for us. But it also presents us with characters who seem out of their own time, and it often doesn't ring true.

In Mudbound,  racism controls the lives of people in the community, while in a hole in the muddy earth, the skeleton of a runaway slave takes us back to a time of even more vicious racial inequality. This powerful image reflects the themes in this novel, which explores the many strata of racism. Racial hatred rules "Pappy," who seems to thirst for the blood of black people. He is almost a caricature of a bigot, yet chillingly, he is wholly believable. But it also encompasses seemingly decent white folks who have a paternalistic sense of superiority over blacks, which they view as a simpler, almost feral race. And it includes those who are kind to "colored" folk, but never let them forget their place, and never consider their needs as equal to their own.

I admire this author for telling the truth, without hiding its complexity. Today, when racism seems invisible to many people, the picture she painted reflects what I've seen throughout my life. "Jim Crow" laws and lynchings are a thing of the past, thank God, buried like the bones of the old slave. Yet so many levels of racism do exist in my lifetime -- sometimes glaring and sometimes so subtle you just see glimmers of it, yet you feel its destructive energy.

I grew up in a university town in Eastern North Carolina. The street I lived on ran through my little neighborhood, which clustered around the university. It was populated with many faculty families like my own. We lived modestly, but quite comfortably. If I rode my bike up my street, and through downtown, it took me through what the locals shamelessly called "Nigger Town," a neighborhood made up of neglected roads and tiny, ramshackle houses. I met few middle class African American families in my town. People didn't talk about it, but my parents wisely made sure my eyes were open.

In my school, desegregation was probably only about a decade old. Black and white children rarely sat together in the cafeteria. it just wasn't done, and no one commented on it. Many students, like me, had what I'd consider privileged childhoods. My parents were always on a tight budget, but we never lacked for anything we really wanted or needed, and they always managed to scrape together money for ballet or music lessons. Other students -- many of them black -- wrapped up part of their lunches, because there might not be a meal at home later. It surprises me, and saddens me a little, that I never said anything or tried to help. But I certainly never forgot it or stopped being grateful for the tremendous changes I've seen in my lifetime.

Mudbound is a beautiful novel but not a comfortable one. I found myself liking characters who had decidedly unenlightened views about racial equality. I saw the complexities of marriage in a time when a relationship was shaped by the man's need for dominance and control. I felt angry, hopeful, compassionate, horrified, and sad. The people and events in this book stuck in me like thorns, and they're still with me.

And damn -- this book was a page-turner! I kept finding excuses to pick it up, no matter what I needed to do, eager to find out what would happen next. It was heart-wrenching, but I loved it. It is one of those books I will never forget.

This novel won the Bellwether Prize for Fiction, which was founded by Barbara Kingsolver and recognizes outstanding literature of social change.

Read More Reviews:
Boston Bibliophile
Bookdwarf
MostlyFiction Book Review
Fyrefly's Book Blog
The Compulsive Reader


Rating: 5

5- Cherished Favorite	4 - Keep in My Library	3 - Good Read	2 - Meh	1 - Definitely Not For Me

The Help by Kathryn Stockett

Last Friday (9/11/09) was a day of mourning for our nation and also the anniversary of my mom's death. I still miss her every day, and my feeling of loss is triggered in myriad little ways -- like hearing something she would have thought was funny or pondering an idea and knowing she would have "gotten" it in a way no one else could. Often it's my wanting to share a book with her. The Help by Kathryn Stockett was a novel I desperately wanted to discuss with Mom.

The story takes place in the early 1960s and is told through the voices of three women, all natives of Jackson, Mississippi. Aibileen has been working for white families all her life and has lovingly reared 17 white children. Minny has also been "the help" for white folks all her life, though her incorrigibly sassy mouth has gotten her fired from several positions. 24-year-old Eugenia "Skeeter" Phelan is a white girl and a recent graduate of Ole Miss. She dreams of becoming a writer, and she needs to find something she's passionate enough to write about.

Unlike her white, middle-class parents and nearly everyone around her, Skeeter isn't overtly racist, though she is naiive and rather patronizing toward the "help." When a long-time friend rallies support for not allowing black maids to use the toilets in their employers' houses (they have different diseases, you know), Skeeter decides to write a book in which a dozen of Jackson's maids, with their names disguised, talk about their experiences. It is a tremendously risky project, but one that, for the first time ever, gives these twelve women a voice.

In The Help, the author explores several layers of racism in the Deep South in the early '60s. These black women spent their lives serving white families, and often loved the people for whom they worked and were loved by them in return. Yet they were considered too unclean to use the families' toilets, and they had to remain silent, acquiesce to all their employers demands, and avoid drawing attention to themselves.

At the end of a grueling day of cooking, cleaning, ironing, and childcare, these women went home to do all their own housework and cooking and care for their own children. At the same time, they were going home to men who were sometimes treated them much worse than their employers did.

I didn't find this exploration of the subject as powerful as that in Mudbound by Hilary Jordan. And since this was primarily Skeeter's story -- a tale of a young white woman beginning to open her eyes to some of the injustices around her -- it only skimmed the surface of the racial issues that existed in this time and place. However, I found The Help to be a compelling story.

I was moved by this book, and as I said, I longed to discuss it with Mom. It is hard to fathom the level of bigotry that was virtually unquestioned in that time and place, where a black person's life could be ruined simply to protect a white woman's pride. Yet my mother grew up there. She was born in a small town near Greenwood, Mississippi in 1940. She worked hard in her parents cafe, which opened before dawn to serve coffee and biscuits to white farmers before they went out to toil in the fields.

She once told me a story about a man named Exxo Bassey who had come into the cafe for breakfast. He left, pulled his truck away from the curb without looking behind him, and crashed into a car driven by a black man. Exxo was entirely at fault, but all the black man could do was stare at the street mumbling, "I am sorry sir, I'm sorry .... I'm very sorry ..." and pray there would be no retaliation. The good folks in the cafe were unequivocal in their opinion. Obviously, that "nigger" had no business being there in the first place. (Driving on a public street on his way to work? The audacity of it!)

This moment, and many others like it, made a deep, painful impression on my mom. She once told me she had no one to teach her racism was wrong -- as far as she knew, that idea didn't even exist in that time and place. But she always knew. She couldn't wait to finish college and get the heck out of the butt crack of Mississippi.

She once explained to me that it was nearly impossible to really get just how deep this racial hatred ran. Two of our relatives had been complaining that the newspaper published pictures of African-American brides in the wedding section. This was in the 1990's. "They don't comprehend that black people think, feel, and breathe as we do," Mom said. It's deeply, bone-jarringly chilling.


Again, while this novel lacked the depth and power of some other accounts of this time period, it was a rich, engaging novel that told an important story. I also enjoyed the history reflected in this book. We see the murders of civil rights leaders Medgar Evers and Martin Luther King Jr. We see glimmers of changes coming. Dr. King has drawn thousands of white and black activists to march from Selma, Alabama. There is an unknown new singer named Bob Dylan, a few girls are wearing their hair long and straight, and one even dresses in tie dyed t-shirts. They've even gone and invented a pill that keeps women from getting pregnant. In the words of the aforementioned musician, The Times They are a' Changin'!

Another thing I loved about the book was the colorful and richly developed characters, including Aibileen, Minny, Skeeter, and Celia, a good-hearted, insecure white hillbilly who married a wealthy Jackson man. I felt as if I was sitting in these women's kitchens, talking to them about their lives.

On several different levels, The Help touches lightly on the brutality of racial injustice in 1960s Mississippi and explores the assumptions people make about each other. It also reflects the courage of people -- like Skeeter and my mom -- who can begin to see through the smoke and think independently, and -- above all -- the human traits and experiences that bind us all together.

Read more reviews of this book at The Book Lady's Blog, A Novel Menagerie, and at Chaotic Compendiums


Rating: 4

5- Cherished Favorite	4 - Keep in My Library	3 - Good Read	2 - Meh	1 - Definitely Not For Me

American History X

Can people change? The general consensus, if that person is Derek Vinyard, is no. Derek (Edward Norton) was a crazy-mean white supremacist who committed a brutal crime and wound up in prison.

   After a traumatic term, he comes out a changed man. This change is derived from his experiences in prison, including an eye-opening relationship between him and a black prisoner. He comes back to see that although his home has changed, his old gang remains very much the same.

    The middle-aged leader and writer of neo-nazi literature (about as artistic as Mein Kamf), Cameron Alexander (Stacy Keach) is still rounding up unhappy young men and refusing to do any of the dirty work himself. Derek's girlfriend Stacy (Fairuza Balk), who was there when the crime was committed, is still a shrill, screeching harpy.

But worst of all, Derek's younger brother Danny (Edward Furlong) is getting into "the life," heavily influenced by Cameron and his goons. Unsure of the ideals he once held in high esteem, Derek attempts to divert Danny, only to rouse the attention of Cameron's gang. American History X, director Tony Kaye's first film, is violent and depressing, yet at times strangely optimistic in its message of progression and change.

     Derek behaves so brutally that his only hope for the future seems to be as a Nazi poster child. An interesting (if not original) method is used in that the past scenes are filmed in black and white. This eliminates the need for the overused "___ ago" technique. Edward Furlong (the guy from The Terminator 2- Judgement Day who isn't former governor of California) and Edward Norton (the guy from Fight Club who isn't Brad Pitt) give good performances. This is the movie that made me like Edward Norton (no thanks to The Incredible Hulk,) and further evidence he's willing to take on daring roles and not rom-com type blockbusters.

   One of the problems with the film is the overblown portions of the soundtrack, which leave no emotions to the imagination. On the up side, the characters have an interesting ambiguity and are pretty well-developed. Despite the fact the movie is about race, the black characters are not sentimentalized or made into "cute" objects of pity as a plea for tolerance (To Kill A Mockingbird, anyone?)

    American History X is an important movie. It is important as a morality tale about race for grown-ups, and as a showcase for superior acting. In a world full of nihilistic revenge movies and one-dimensional melodramas, there is a lot of strength in showing that people can change, even if it's hard to believe.

Arab in America by Toufic El Rassi

 

Arab in America blends an autobiographical story with thought provoking social and political commentary. Toufic El Rassi was born in Beirut, Lebanon but has lived in the United States since he was a small child. The book opens right after the September 11 attacks, which sparked frightening ripples of anti-Arab sentiment. Then it steps back in time, going through the 1980s and 1990s.

El Rassi's family immigrated to America, fleeing violence in the Middle East, and settled in a suburb of Chicago. He remembers the first time he realized he wasn't white, and recalls, uncomfortably, that he later had difficulty accepting his cultural heritage. As an Arab American teen, he never felt accepted by his neighbors and peers. He vividly remembers the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. Until Timothy McVeigh was caught, many Americans assumed Arabic Muslims were responsible for the attack, and the resulting backlash against Arabs terrified young Toufic.

As a teen he struggled between being outraged, and feeling he should take a strong stand, and believing activism is not in his nature. Eventually he did find a political philosophy he could be passionate about, and he embraced some radical opinions, which would be moderated in time. I found this search for identity, and his struggle between passivity and finding a political voice, to be one of the most compelling parts of the story.

As a young man, six years later, he was frightened and horrified by the events of 9-11 and its aftermath, including the way Americans of Arab descent were questioned, arrested, and often deprived of their civil rights.

El Rassi describes these events and explores some facets of U.S. involvement in the Middle East, including our support of Israel and the two Iraqi wars. At the heart of this book are El Rassi's feelings about American prejudice toward Arabs and how pervasive destructive stereotypes are in our popular culture, particularly in movies. He gives a wealth of examples, from music, talk show commentary, action movies, even Star Wars.

I think this is an important point for discussion. As El Rassi points out, these stereotypes are quite pervasive. Americans may not realize we're seeing anti-Arab propaganda in popular media. When people are unaware of these messages, there is a danger they will unconsciously absorb them, eventually mistaking them for truth.

When viewed as a story, Arab in America is a bit disjointed. We see glimpses of El Rassi's character, and of his story, in scattered bits, mixed with passages of cultural and historical information and an occasional outright diatribe. As a result, the book doesn't flow as smoothly as it might, and I never felt I got to know him well. The experiences and events he describes are heart wrenching, but I never felt a real connection with him.

I agree with Jason Sacks in his review in Comics Bulletin ... "When we are shown how characters feel, we feel empathy. When we are told how characters feel, we feel a distance from events--and that’s the problem here: too much telling and not enough showing."

On the other hand, it is a complex, informative ,and persuasive work. While it is not the best of the graphic novel medium, from what I've seen so far, El Rassi is a talented artist and writer. Parts of his story are definitely compelling, and I recommend the book. I think it would be a great tool for teachers and homeschoolers wanting to explore certain aspects of contemporary history, propaganda, and different forms of racism -- from the more subtle to the overt.

Read More Reviews: Booklust; Comics Bulletin



Rating: 3

5- Cherished Favorite	4 - Keep in My Library	3 - Good Read	2 - Meh	1 - Definitely Not For Me

A Northern Light by Jennifer Donnelly

  

Sixteen-year-old Mattie Gokey is passionate about words. Along with her friend Weaver Smith, son of the only black woman in the area, she studies the meanings of words and wants to earn a high school diploma and attend college in New York City. Mattie hopes to become a writer. But living on a struggling farm in 1906, it is difficult to nurture her dream.

Mattie's French-American father, a former logger forced into a farmer's life, has been broken by her mother's recent death and his estrangement from his only son. As the oldest child, Mattie has to help him run the farm and raise her three younger sisters. Although she is encouraged by Weaver and her teacher, Miss Wilcox, Mattie knows her father won't allow her to leave the farm and attend college. And how can she break the promise she made to her cancer-ridden mother on her deathbed?

 In the midst of this, Mattie struggles to find time for her own writing. Despite her passion for literature, she doesn't identify with the gentrified characters in the works of Jane Austen or Edith Wharton.

"It's just that there are no Captain Wentworths, are there? But there are plenty of Pap Finns. And things go well for Anne Elliott in the end, but they don't go well for most people ..." "...People in books are good and noble and unselfish, and people aren't that way ... and I feel, well ... hornswoggled sometimes. By Jane Austen and Charles Dickens and Louisa May Alcott. Why do writers make things sugary when life isn't that way?" I asked too loudly. "Why don't they tell the truth? Why don't they tell how a pigpen looks after the sow's eaten her children? Or how it is for a girl when her baby won't come out? Or that cancer has a smell to it? All those books ... and I bet not one of them will tell you what cancer smells like. I can, though. It stinks. Like meat gone bad and dirty clothes and bog water all mixed together. Why doesn't anyone tell you that?"

When she catches the eye of handsome Royal Loomis, Mattie's thoughts turn to love. Although Royal's attention revolves around crops and livestock rather than words and literature, she feels stirrings of passion. And she doesn't want to turn away from the possibilities of marriage and motherhood. Is it possible to be a writer and a wife? It seems that it's never been done.

The summer she turns seventeen, Mattie works at a hotel. A young woman named Grace Brown drowns under mysterious circumstances. The only clue to what really happened to her lies in a cache of letters Grace gave Mattie. Still aching from the loss of her mother, Mattie grieves for the young woman who can no longer speak for herself. This mystery, based on the real-life case that inspired Theodore Dreiser's novel, An American Tragedy, helps Mattie find the courage to make some difficult decisions.

Two parallel threads comprise this story. One begins with Mattie's life on the farm, and the other starts when Grace's body is discovered, unleashing an investigation. This is an incredibly rich novel. It's a compelling coming of age story about a gifted young woman struggling to choose between her dream of becoming a writer, her duty to her family, and her desire for love in an era of one-dimensional gender roles. It also explores a spectrum of other issues. It probes into the fate of married women who step outside the bounds of marital expectations. It also explores racism, the Comstock Act, which triggered a flurry of censorship in the early 20th century, and many other issues. And bibliophiles and logophiles will relish Mattie's love of words and the wealth of literary allusions in this book.

This novel explores a fascinating period of time, an era on the cusp of tremendous change. We see a rural, pioneer-type lifestyle, with horse-drawn wagons and simple lifestyles, converge with the urban world described by Edith Wharton and Theodore Dreiser, a society that is tipping toward the roaring twenties. Mattie's family life is deeply rooted in the traditions of the past, and her teacher, Emily Wilcox, gives her a glimpse into the possibilities of the future. I really enjoyed the period detail, despite a few anachronisms. For example, we see the well-loved "Serenity Prayer", which probably wasn't written until the 1930s.

The book is a little edgier than some of the literature from which it draws inspiration. The sensibilities of the narrator struck me as somewhat modern. However, this didn't diminish the novel's historical accuracy; it fit the theme of living in a world which isn't always as it's portrayed in novels and is quickly moving into a future which will bring radical social changes. In addition to celebrating words and literature and offering rich fodder for discussion about social and historical issues, this novel is a captivating read. I fell in love with many of the characters, especially Mattie and Weaver, and I was sad to say goodbye to them after I closed the book for the last time.

The complexity of the plot, the twists in the story and the vivid dialogue and character development all made this novel, which I think will appeal equally to adult and young adult readers, difficult to put down.  

Read More Reviews: Bloggin' bout Books; Reviewer X; Reading Rants!; Fyrefly's Book Reviews; The Written World; MariReads; Leafing Through Life; Liv's Book Reviews; What KT Reads

Rating: 5

5- Cherished Favorite	4 - Keep in My Library	3 - Good Read	2 - Meh	1 - Definitely Not For Me