Rachel Corrie and Echtes Amerika
New Yorker New Yorkers can't handle the truth
The nominations for the German Film Awards has brought me to this.
Crash (L.A. Crash to its German viewers) won Best Picture this year at the Oscars. Crash was a steaming pile of horse shit. Anne Proulx, the author of Brokeback Mountain, went out of her gourd after the ceremony and wrote a piece about how out of touch the Academy is to even consider this film. She was the wrong pie-hole for the job, but she was dead right -- no one who's ever lived in a non-gentrified area of a major American city could tolerate this overblown farce of racism and Bounce-esque coincidences.
But enough about people who distort reality for the pleasure of rich WASPs. Let's get to the true America, which is not celebrated with statuettes and $5K gift bags, but rather silenced by an invisible media barrier. My Name Is Rachel Corrie, a play about an activist who was killed by a Israeli bulldozer, has been postponed indefinitely because of the supposed "sensitivities of (unnamed) Jewish groups." (The "Jew-run media" is such a bulky myth in American culture that, well, David Cross named his production company after it.) Internet critics seem to think it's a right-wing agenda, which sounds more plausible.
Of course, it's most important to note that Rachel Corrie was, above all, a misguided, flag-burning radical, and definitely not significant enough to warrant a play. Incisive pieces from The Spectator and the National Review threw some weight behind how "damaging" the "cult of Corrie" can be. I suppose you shouldn't allow yourself be taken in by the winsome story of a young girl who actually witnessed the situation in Palestine, and wrote beautifully about it; you should instead choose a side, Israelis or Palestinians, and notch up the footrest on your easychair, job well done. Who the fuck did Anne Frank think she was, anyway?
In any case, it's a good play, and it boggles the imagination that any group, minority or otherwise, would be voice enough to stop it from premiering in New York. Luckily, the mighty blogosphere stepped in and made a huge stink about it. Though it didn't hasten an American run, the censure makes us bloggers feel better. Vilifying your opposition is enough, right?
Comments
I don't know if the blogosphere has any efficacy, but that doesn't matter.
I saw Crash and it suuuuuuuuucked. Would it have been a good movie for the 1960s? Maybe. If it inspires people of my gradparents' generation to be thoughtful and tolerant, great. But we are truly doomed if Crash's cliches about racism, in/tolerance, and how to treat others represent the level of complexity with which most Americans think about social issues.
V-Largo; March 25, 2006 6:13 AM