paradise now

i missed Paradise Now while it was playing in the movie theaters, so i couldn’t miss the special screening this evening. also the opportunity to check out the “outdoor movie theatre under the stars that springs up in the fields and industrial wastelands” that helps “reclaim public space and transform our urban environment into a joyful playground,” aka the guerilla drive in.

the setting: a bunch of semi-industrial buildings dropped in a piece of wasteland next to the railroad tracks. a wide white wall of one of the buildings serves as the screen. people on blankets, with wine and pizza, on the other side of the tracks. i kept thinking of how the images would be projected on a train, if one would pass by. but then, if a train would pass, the laptop, beamer and speakers on the tracks would be crushed. the thing is, trains don’t pass here. (at least not regularly.)

it was also my mood. i was folded into myself, longing to be anonymous in a movie theater. the guerilla drive-in included obligatory socializing. during the break between the shorts and Paradise Now we were called upon to meet our neighbor. i had no intentions to do so, but then of course other people considered me as their neighbor. “hi neighbor.” “hi.”

no doubt it was also my mood, but i didn’t really like the atmosphere. of course, there was lots of familiar punky d.i.y business (and i leave it up to you whether that’s part of the nice part or not…). and of course there were the stars. but there was something profoundly alienating.

it started with the shorts. two were non-american. a campaign video by Unicef Belgium in which peaceful Smurfland is all of a sudden bombed and destroyed, with baby-smurfs crying and dying. the message: “Laat de oorlog de wereld van de kinderen niet verwoesten” (Don’t let war destroy children’s worlds). the campaign was a tiny bit controversial when it came out last year (and the initial plan to have blow-away baby-smurf limbs in the picture was stopped). but not too much. but here the audience seemed impressed. someone whistled, “wow,” they said, “Unicef…” then there was the sky interview with George Galloway on Hezbollah, many of you must have come across it this summer, and if you haven’t, check it out here. (really, check it out.) i remember watching that video for the first time with nadia; we both were impressed and laughed in amazement. (and this time i saw that Galloway is a representative for Bethnal Green – emma, camille and giulia, what a neighborhood you girls moved to!) but the santa cruz crowed went almost silent, a silence that lingered on a bit after the video. bafflement or disbelief or… i’m not sure.

the other shorts were american. my turn to disconnect i guess. okay, there was some funny stuff. but what got the crowd really going was the Beavis and Butthead clip in which Beavis becomes president. (check it out here if it doesn’t put you off.) in between lots of snorty laughing on the screen, and a hilarious crowd (especially when Beavis asks who that bloke is, on television, standing next to Bush, and Butthead responds “Dick”), the extent of the emptiness of this “resistance” was striking. cause the clip was probably conceived, and for sure screened, as “resistance”. but there was no message other than showing that the discourse of bush & co is empty. the clip literary mirrored that emptiness. but 1) the fact that the regime covers up their actions with lies is nothing new, and 2) those cover-ups should not be mistaken for emptiness, it might actually be time for the left to understand a bit more of the strategies of the regime to come up with better forms of resistance, and 3) in any case effective resistance should be able formulate alternative visions, beyond denouncing. instead, i found the audience snuggling in empty sarcasm. we’ve talked before with susan about this kind of sarcasm supposedly directed against the regime (my first introduction to that was a talk by Juan Cole at UCSC some weeks after i arrived), but only preaching to the choir and failing to do any useful analytical and political work – and how infuriating it is.

and maybe i’m being too upset by a silly Beavis and Butthead clip while it really was about the audience’s respons to Paradise Now. but here i don’t know what to say – the film just didn’t go down well. at the end one of the organizers added that next week there would be more films of resistance, but “of different kind”, in a tone which gave away his low opinion about this film and made a good bunch of people laugh with complicity. and the stupid comments during the film – i’ll just give you the taste of one of them. commenting on the bad water in Nablus, a taxidriver says that Israeli settlers put something in the water that makes sperm infertile. a guy in the audience, also involved in the organization, cheers and shouts that this is the solution for overpopulation. (it kind of made me feel like shouting, what about starting to implement the solution here in santa cruz.) and then humour. there’s actually quite a bit of it in the movie, often a bit black. but i found myself laughing alone. and on other occasions the audience laughed, when i found laughter not appropriate and a bit embarassing. the aesthetics, the way of narrating and structuring the story (we’re not even talking about message, i felt)… it just did’t go down with this crowd. an alienating experience, i so much wanted “my” community afterwards.

but something made me leave the guerilla drive with half of a good feeling. this evening was co-organized with a new group that established itself this summer: the Santa Cruz anti-imperialist league. in their presentation they invoked the feeling that it was time to understand the extent of the harm done by U.S. foreign policy and react against it. if enough smart american kids start feeling that urge, if the urge is even felt in paradise santa cruz, there might be some hope…