Adam Roberts has his head up his politically correct European ass on "Taken", but he approves of PJ, so I'm willing to let this error slide for the time being. He should watch himself in future. It's the worst possible black mark against a critic, in my view, if what's inside his head is more vivid to him than what's on the page or screen or iPod.
I especially like Robert's description of "the salmon-leap vocal line of ‘The Words That Make It Murder.’" Even though he's misquoting the lyric. And by so doing missing the Olde England note struck by "maketh." In the sense of "cause." The line is either a quotation from a hymn or Harvey wants us to think it is.
Sunday, March 20, 2011
"It's a flesh wound!"
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23 comments:
A mysterious response..
The use of the question-begging words "politically correct" to mean "has a different level than I at which offense is taken" seems lazy.
To take a crime -- sexual trafficing -- and attribute to it elements -- like different races for the criminal and victim, when no such differences exist in real life -- at least raises the question of racist fear-mongering.
Which, if present, raises questions about the taste of the filmmakers.
Calling that question "PC" doesn't really get you off the hook.
It could be argued as well that a taste for torture is a psychological flaw, but in this case probably not. It's an interesting question though, why so much male-directed entertainment is based on characters willing to break the law and hurt people to get revenge.
Kael called it fascism....
You, of all people, spouting this KPFK-style self-rightious bullshit. The end of days is upon us.
Armond White:
http://www.nypress.com/article-19329-we-need-new-heroes-taken.html
"Taken streamlines post–Iraq War anxiety. Not guiltily twisted like Eli Roth’s Hostel movies, Besson flips Hostel’s stolen-Americans concept. Personal angst redeems Bryan’s actions in what would otherwise be Gitmo torture-porn. This isn’t just excitation, the alarm it rouses has cultural roots:When Bryan finds his daughter’s jacket on a Parisian prostitute, the talisman evokes John Ford’s The Searchers, which was remade by Paul Schrader as the father/daughter porn-industry tragedy Hardcore.
Eventually Bryan’s revenge becomes a brothel slaughter that evokes Scorsese’s 1976 Taxi Driver, another remake of The Searchers.
Besson’s refinement of action-movie formula helps Taken reassess post-9/11 principles. While the grandstanding Syriana exploited torture for cheap liberal righteousness, Besson and Morel dramatize Bryan’s struggle as a conscientious resistance to human degradation."
The above makes no sense, although seems to be saying that making the Muslim-animals bad guys means that it's OK to torture them....
And dragging out the Searchers again... Just because it's like the Searchers doesn't mean it's any good. And Ford, of course, made Ethan's reaction at the culmination of his search a masterpiece of irony and complexity.
You seem to find argument by name-calling amusing. Isn't really.
Clearly you take this macho action film produced by Luc Besson and its shocking moral shortcomings a good deal more seriously than I do. Which is probably a failure on my part.
I found "Taken" to be a wonderful example of fatherly wish fulfillment and a depiction of the kind of father we all wish we could be at some level.
The race and culture of the kidnappers is of secondary import to the feelings of impotence that most fathers feel when they imagine any terrible thing happening to their daughters. Bryan is able to take revenge on those who would harm his daughter and to save her from harm. He does so with righteous indignation and methodical precision.
A person dear to me upon watching "Troy" lamented the depiction of Helen. This person asked, "what kind of woman in the Classical world would want a man who is both incapable and unwilling to protect her?" Yet that film's Helen wants just that from her Paris. Hector, on the other hand, presents the man who even when physically incapable of protecting those he holds dear is strategically capable of doing so. He is a virtuous man in ways Paris could never be. He is a hero.
It is a man's role to protect those he loves, as it is a woman's role to protect those she loves. A film that depicts the desperate pursuit of that protection is no mere fascist film.
White seems to agree with this. He argues that the purity of the Neeson character's motives redeems the movie. The ambiguous "Searcher" ending isn't needed because he's never presented as racist.
He's not racist... the movie is. And its more interesting to deal with the movie accepting the dubiousness of its premises than it is to deny that they're dubious.
Lots of movies and books use a father's struggle to save his daughter as the basis for melodrama. And lots of movies and books contain the sentiment "They've fucked with the wrong guy!" Those situations and sentiments can,of course, be used for political manipulation-- either in the praise of vigilantism or of the power of the state. Besson luckily doesn't have an idea in his head....
Because if he did, it would be a bad one.
As I hinted above, that OK by me, but denying the self-evident premise that Besson likes to use the Muslim other as a source of fear doesn't lead very far.
With that "self-evident" you're zooming in on the Nabokovian "of course."
Besson doesn't like to use the Muslim other as a source of fear? What was it? A coincidence? A mistake? Certainly wasn't accuracy.....
In Paris these days, the young kid with the hoodie and the sneakers who makes middle class people nervous is Muslim. Besson takes advantage of that... Not pretty, but undeniable.
And, I think we'll agree, completely unacceptable for US melodrama....
Let's see...
In "District B13," Besson plays with his audience's assumption that the Muslims are the badguys, when they turn out to be the victims of a government conspiracy designed to blame them for using a neutron bomb.
In "Taken," organized crime -- comprised of Muslim immigrants -- are given a pass by corrupt government officials as they practice human trafficking.
Both films contain Muslims living in ghettos. Both have organized/gang leader villains. Both also have ordinary Muslims being persecuted by gangs/mafia/the government.
I think you are reading the film far too narrowly in an effort to make Besson fit an argument he isn't making, not even subconsciously. Having Albanians as the villains in "Taken" is no more shocking than the "kidnapped heroin prostitutes" episodes of "The Untouchables" TV series where it was the Italian mob.
I agree that in Besson's case it's probably subconscious.... Still grates.
In any event, your assignment, if you choose to accept it, is to watch an absolutely wonderful French crime movie called "Un Prophete", which is the Muslim crime boss Grandfather II...
Should watch "La Prophete," of course. The star of that is in "Mesrine" as a co-star and is excellent.
One last word. On the crude asumption that Algeria > France roughly as Vietnam > USA (setting theawkward French Indochina factor aside for the moment) wouldn't a truer equivilent be an American film in which a Vietnamese gang in Orange County takes a teenage girl during a home invasion? And in that case, wouldn't the implication be so clear as to barely need spelling out that the US has to some degree brought this upon itself?
Interesting. I have no idea.
Edelstein:
http://nymag.com/listings/movie/taken/
Even a dullard like Edelstein realizes that
"In a just universe, the idea that rich white American virgins are the prime targets of sex-slavers would make tens of thousands of captive underage Asian girls rise up shouting, “That is the last straw!”
But that's OK, he says, because the movie ROCKS!
As someone whose middle class German cousin was almost abducted by sex-slavers in England, I think that you and Edelstein are naive to think the sex trade is limited to East Asia. It is pandemic in East Asia, but not limited to it. Child sex slavery is also an epidemic in Europe as the recent pedophile ring bust proves.
I understand that you and Edelstein are concerned about the white male hegemony and its transparent oppression of the other, but really get over it. All kinds of people are subjected to the sex trade and unaccompanied young women -- of all stripes -- are ripe picking.
I posted the Edelstein as a peace gesture because he agrees with you.
But Tulk, TAKEN *does* ROCK... ;)
You guys.... Can't have a discussion about serious social issues around here for a minute.
When the fascist heel finally grinds America into the dirt, you'll all be sitting around saying: "Cool logo.."
Who are you and what have you done with Tulkinghorn?
I am with Joe. TAKEN rocks hard. I've watched it no fewer than 5 times.
Next you'll be slagging on DRIVE ANGRY.
When did Tulk get replaced by a Cultural Studies professor?
I, for one, welcome our new social justice overlords.
And you other guys, better watch it.
There's also an aesthertic quandry. The movie wants to be just authentic-looking enough to not seem silly, while avoiding any complexities, social of otherwise, that could impede the forward momentum even slightly. A gang of Swiss anarchists in lederhosen would get bad laughs and require too much exposition.
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