Werner Herzog – Bad Lieutenant

The German auteur Werner Herzog has devoted a good portion his most recent work to the American criminal justice system.

In 2009 Herzog directed Nicolas Cage in a remake of Bad Lieutenant.  Herzog famously moved the setting from New York to post Katrina New Orleans “after the collapse of civil order” (Herzog interview, jump to 13:50).  Bad Lieutenant confronts police brutality and corruption with typical bombast and a twisted sense humor.  He says “Let’s be as vile and debased as it gets right away… just… and never let the audience down from there.”  Also there’s an iguana.

I suppose a serious man would argue he’s being flippant about a system that destroys thousands of lives for the sake of political patronage and prison dollars (Read the amazing eight part series “Louisiana Incarcerated” in the embattled Times Picayune).  I don’t think that’s giving him enough credit.  Herzog keeps exploring and critiquing the criminal justice system.  Besides Bad Lieutenant he’s recently released “Into the Abyss” and “On Death Row” which take a unique look at the death penalty.

If anything, Herzog is just following themes isolation and violence where they take him.  Before focusing on the US South, Herzog was interested in how people deal with solitary confinement and isolation in Grizzly Man, Little Deiter Needs to Fly and Rescue Dawn.

This stuff is always kind of a pain in the ass to watch because it’s unconventional.  He never plays the right music and doesn’t bother much with straightforward storytelling.  The fact that he made the somewhat conventional On Death Row to complement Into the Abyss underscore his willingness to challenge and evolve the documentary.

I’d argue that he’s taking us closer to the subject, and making audiences feel or know their subjects in a way that’s better and more meaningful than traditional fact based documentary.  But what do I know? Maybe he’s just making the same old stories more fun for a chattering class…

Killer Mike

Well done fan submitted video for Killer Mike’s “Reagan”.  Rap music goes at the PI Complex more aggressively  than the rest of popular culture.

“Thanks to Reaganomics Prison turned to profit

cuz freelabors the cornerstone of US economics

Slavery was abolished unless you are in prison

You think I am bullshitting then read the 13th Amendment”

This song slips into simplistic paranoia toward the end. I’m happy to suspend disbelief though, it’s just so nice nice to hear some political hip hop.

Martin

I’ve been distracted by my own life. I’ve got a somewhat demanding job. There’s a bunch of Vertigo comics to attend to. Not to mention that TV is going through some kind of renaissance. Last year I just gawked at OWS and Wisconsin. I’ve lost touch with anything like civil society. I’m in the mountain-west. It was a huge deal when effin Tim Tebow spoke in my town. The only thing close was a Blake Shelton concert.

Not much reaches me here. This outpouring of solidarity for Treyvon Martin strikes me in an emotional way that OWS’s horizontal-process-centric orientation couldn’t.

@prisonculture suggested on twitter that the whole bonanza of online demonstration was somehow detracting from the base fact of racist violence:

I find myself torn between embracing the acts of solidarity for Trayvon through social media while wondering if they obscure what actually+ actually happened to him. That he was murdered and that a racist and oppressive system abetted the killing… OK I need to get off twitter.

In other similar situations I might also be a bit conflicted. I could see it as this Ace In the Hole type of thing. Where a man dying is an opportunity to bust out a ferris wheel and profit.

But this is unique. It raises my spirits. I actually feel good about the future when I go online and see Lebron in a Hoodie. A whole bunch of fbookers, a group that doesn’t get much in the way of civics at school, is spontaneously confronting injustice. No way would I have thought it possible a few weeks agon

What interests me about the case, from criminal justice reform perspective;

1. What do people want to happen to Zimmerman? What kind of justice do people want for him.
2. How did we get to the point where vigilante justice is basically legitimized by the legislatures and local police.
3. Will people see this as a reason to support gun control, or is that just so far over that I’m an idiot for even thinking it.
4. Do I support stand your ground if Trayvon was standing his ground? How will that all play out in court (assuming an indictment ever shows up)
5. If Zimmerman really is a racist, and simultaneously a respected member of his community, can we start to see the hypocrisy and fear in our own lives?   I think probably we can.

Rock the Lockup

As usual, I didn’t even know about the party.  A few weeks ago there was a Prison Reform Film Festival in Houston.  Despite some sketchy web design, they screened some great movies.

If I Want To Whistle, I’ll Whistle
Directed by Florin Serban   2010  Romania/Sweden

DEATH ROW
Directed by Bruce Jackson and Diane Christian    1979  USA  B/W

Don’t Kill My Father
2010  USA  Color

Sweethearts Of The Prison Rodeo
Directed by Bradley Beesley  2009  USA  Color

Meeting With A Killer
2001  USA  Color

Troop 1500
Directed by Ellen Spiro and Karen Bernstein   2005  USA  Color

Mi Vida Dentro or My Life Inside
Directed by Lucia Gaja  2007  Mexico  Color

TORTURE: America’s Brutal Prisons
Directed and Produced by Nick London   2005  Britain  Color

The Dhamma Brothers
Directed by Jenny Phillips, Anne Marie Stein and Andrew Kukura  2008  USA  Color

Hospice shorts:  Angola Prison Hospice   and  Prison Terminal (work in progress)
Directed by Edgar Barens  1999 and TBA  USA  Color

Was also interested to see that the festival was partly sponsored by “The Prison Show“, a radio program where callers can shout out to incarcerated friends and family.  I knew this kind of programming existed for hostages in Columbia.

Con Air Tonight!

Con Air, in 7th grade… man… that movie scared the shit out of me.

Tonight, Central Cinema is hosting a Con Air Quote Along at 8 pm. Choice lines will be displayed on the screen for the audience to read aloud, and they’re providing everyone in attendance with a cap gun to fire as they please during the performance. (Remember to save a couple caps for the climactic explosion!) Cinematic purists should stay home; this will be a loud, boozy, distracted and distracting night at the movies, for Cage/Bruckheimer fans only.

Cap guns and yelling should neutralize an otherwise toxic movie.

via Slog

Fresh

Rotten Tomatoes has a surprisingly good list of memorable prison break movies.

Cool Hand Luke, Brute Force, and Grand Illusion get to stand side by side with Con Air and Chicken Run.

Sweethearts of the Prison Rodeo

A while back this person called Mariame Kaba dissed prison movies.  I like to read her blog a few times a week.  Knowing that she does what she does gives me  a lot of solace.  Her dim view of all prison movies irks me.  Her main claim follows:

In the U.S., we learn about prison through books, music, movies, and television. These images greatly influence public perceptions. I think that they actually serve to reinforce unconscious racism which leads people to support more draconian measures to curtail what they perceive to be black and brown criminality.

Further:

Prison stories in popular culture are framed in terms of personal responsibility and this obscures the structural factors and oppression that play a major role in landing people in prison in the first place. As such when asked why people are in prison, the public’s default response always focuses on personal failing. Popular culture depictions of prisoners feed into this narrative and I believe that this ultimately impacts public policy.

Imagined fears contribute to actual incarceration…

Her critique is fair for a lot of the drivel NBC and CBS air during prime time.

A path breaking drama like Oz doesn’t exactly fit the bill.  Here’s what the NYT had to say back in Oz’s heyday:

So far ”Oz,” one of HBO’s highest-rated dramatic shows, has received mostly favorable reaction. The critic Stanley Crouch, writing in The New York Times Magazine, praised it for its ”consistently brilliant acting — some of the best in the history of television.” The show, Mr. Crouch wrote, ”is a landmark for the medium.”

Others, however, have condemned it for its violence. ”Ultimately,” a critic for USA Today wrote, ”the show is as dehumanizing as the prison system it attacks.” Mr. Fontana and Mr. Levinson are in effect glorifying the violence they depict, another critic wrote, in The Village Voice: ”Levinson and Fontana estheticize the material at the same time they’re hyping its raw realism.”

Like with most things, it’s important to evaluate prison movies one at a time.  As Ms. Kaba points out, “Most people in America don’t know anyone who is currently or has been in prison since incarceration disproportionately impacts only certain groups. Most people have never set foot inside a prison either. As a result, popular culture images of prison fill this breach.”  Oz probably did more to make people think critically about hyperincarceration than most of what’s on TV.

Rather than defend Oz, I’d like to direct people to  Sweethearts of the Prison Rodeo.  I guess you could call it a heartfelt documentary about a few women in an Oklahoma prison who rodeo once a year.  Here are four generally positive reviews: 1, 2, 3, 4.

What I like about Sweethearts is that the subjects have a lot of room to just talk about life.  Sure, some of what they say sounds cliche at first, but the movie busts through that kind of thing pretty quick.

The other reason I highlight Sweethearts is that it draws attention to the prison rodeo as rehabilitative program, as opposed to a gory spectacle.  As evidenced by the youtube video below, rodeo participants seem to be doing pretty well.

I have a few friends (in the women-over-60 set) who consider prisoners scum.  They’re all for death penalty and throwing away keys.  Sweethearts is the kind of movie that would totally mess up their world view.  It frustrates me that our media culture is so fragmented.  I can’t really force people to watch movies that would make them think like me.

At least they can’t force me to watch shit that makes me think like them either.