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Dominique Strauss-Kahn and the New (French) Woman in Film and Reality

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

This may be the Year of les Femmes in France, though it started in a strange way, thanks to the randiness of Dominique Strauss-Khan, who—as no one disputes—couldn’t keep his pants zipped—or was it a towel that slipped?—in the presence of a hotel maid?  (Catherine Deneuve in Potiche)

Whether DSK raped the woman or not, his sexual incontinence has cost him his prestigious position as head of the International Monetary Fund and may make it impossible for him to mount a credible run for the French presidency.  What’s particularly delicious is that his replacement at the IMF is a woman and a Frenchwoman at that. 

The Police Had a Reason

There’s been much controversy over DSK’s front-paged perp walk, although it’s hard for a mere American to see why he should have been spared the treatment everyone else gets. When the mighty fall in this country, they don’t get to save face.  And don’t blame what’s been called precipitous action on grandstanding American officials.  Place the blame where it belongs. On Roman Polanski, the lecherous French film director, the convicted sex criminal who used freedom pending sentencing to flee to France, from whose territory he can’t be extradited.  To this day he’s the darling of the super-sophisticated intellectuals who have now jumped to the defense of another infamous womanizer. At the moment DSK is free pending further legal action, but his passport has been lifted.  He can’t leave the U.S. (Sandrine Bonnaire in Joyeuse)

Meanwhile, back in France, something interesting is happening.  While a certain segment of society ridicules American puritanism, women are beginning to speak publicly of the  sexual harassment and rape that are a normal part of female existence in France.  Is this perhaps a we-aren’t-going-to-take-it-anymore moment? 

The End of Silence

Remember the days when American women began to articulate, first to themselves, next to one another and then to the world, the interlocking elements of second class citizenship masquerading as life on a pedestal?  The term that was applied to that process was consciousness-raising.  Men loved to make fun of women who felt the allure of consciousness-raising, but the gratifying results can’t be denied. 

Could the make-it-public phase have begun now in France?  A female journalist who had been persuaded not to sue DSK some years ago has now stepped forward, quite vocally, to press her case.  Even if DSK manages to escape prison in the US, he might find his female vote bank a little less assured.

Predictive Films?

Meanwhile, there’s yet more evidence of a new feminist consciousness in France.  It comes in the shape of two movies (one a French-German collaboration, shot in French) that have recently arrived in the U.S., both utterly delightful, even as each chronicles a woman’s hard-won escape from male domination.  Also interesting: one is about a well-to-do bourgeoise, the other about a working class woman—a hotel chambermaid, no less. 

Are they wish fulfillment fantasies?  Maybe.  But then social change often begins on the fantasy level.  What starts as “what if?” evolves into “but naturally!”

In Potiche (2010) trophy wife Catherine Deneuve takes over the running of an umbrella factory when her union-busting, womanizing husband has a stress-induced heart-attack.  By the time hubby  decides he’s ready to take the reins again, she’s proven herself to be the superior manager.  The employees are happier and more productive; the umbrellas have more pizzaz; and she wants to stay in place.  Hubby’s manipulations put him back in control of the factory, but his wife can’t return to plumping pillows in the sitting room.  She runs for Parliament and, thanks to the support of the workers in this one-shop town, wins the election.   There’s more, of course, including a very amusing, revived romance between Deneuve and the city’s socialist mayor, played by  Gerard Despardieu (who also wants that seat in Parliament), but the gist of this semi-farcical must-see concoction is this: empowerment.

Most reviewers insist that the chess games in the 2009 film Joyeuse (translated as Queen to Play) are simple metaphors for sex in the afternoon and not much else, but they are wrong.  Like many women without much formal education, Hélène is too intelligent to be stuck in a menial job or to be happy in a classically patriarchal working-class marriage.  Her husband is employed.  He’s good looking and amorous, too. So it’s not a fuck that she needs. It’s intellectual challenge. Chess provides that and, yes, she gets obsessed. But I wasn’t bored by the process of immersion and mastery.  I was deeply fearful that,  like so many women with dreams, she’d give in to all the pressures.  From her husband.  From her employer.  From the snotty local chess establishment.  But she doesn’t.  She keeps improving until she regularly outplays her mentor, whose ego suffers badly. (How does this development comply with the sexual dalliance equivalence?)  Eventually she wins a local contest, which gives her a chance to compete in Paris.  And the icing on the gateau?  Hélène’s nasty sassy daughter comes to admire her mother. What carries this quiet film, it seems to me, is the delicious subtlety of Sandrine Bonnaire’s inhabiting of the role of Hélène, while Kevin Kline approaches dangerously close to the ham-line from time to time.

Sisterhood is Powerful

If French women can respond to movies like Potiche and Joyeuse—and why else were they made?—they certainly aren’t shedding tears over the self-immolation of the lecherous Dominique.  What’s more, it seems that the French women who play football at World Cup level are feeling no animosity toward the U.S. either.  This year the Americans beat the French 3-1. The play was fast and furious, but the intense competition didn’t interfere with a very high level of sports(wo)manship.  Here’s how NYT reporter Alessandra Stanley described it:

And both sides were gracious not just after the match but in the middle of it: at one point a French player bent down and helped up an American who had fallen; at another it was the American who extended her hand to the enemy.  If the arrest of Dominique Strauss-Kahn on charges of rape has strained Franco-American relations, there was no sign of it on the playing field.

Political Censorship in Santa Fe?

Lecture by John Pilger.  Cancelled!

Was it censorship? Do the words “ban” and “suppression” and “bowing to political pressure” apply?  We don’t know, but the suspicion lingers, as it always does in the absence of information.  Along with suspicion comes anger.  A public lured by full page ads wasn’t deemed worthy of a good reason for disappointed expectations.

Maybe someone is in the know.  That’s nice.  And maybe I could have found out.   But I am writing as a member of the disrespected public.  Explanation, please.  Up front.  Public.

The spurned speaker was at least mildly controversial.  But the Lannan Foundation regularly schedules lectures by anti-establishment figures like Amy Goodman, whose Democracy Now it also supports on the local listener-supported KSFR radio station  Thus, no one was surprised when the Lannan Foundation’s calendar included a presentation by British investigative journalist and documentary movie-maker John Pilger.  

So why did Patrick Lannan personally (that seems to be established) call off Pilger’s lecture at the last minute, simultaneously canceling the American premier of his latest film The War You Don’t See?  In the absence of a plausible reason—slow ticket sales simply doesn’t wash in this haven of liberals—conspiracy theories abound.  They boil down to this question: who silenced Patrick?

I wouldn’t be a good reporter, if I didn’t mention that the harsh criticism has provoked an indignantly strong defense of Patrick Lannan as well.  The gist of the defense is:  he’s done so much for Santa Fe, how can you ingrates dare to call his judgement into question?

Fortunately the managers of the Screen, which had been rented for the premier of The War You Don’t See, couldn't be silenced.  They decided to show the film on their own hook.  I went to the first showing.  It was packed.  At least three more sessions were planned.  There’s no doubt that the talk would have sold out if the plug hadn’t been pulled.

You can see the film for yourself, on line, here and here (with an extensive review).  You may have to send Paypal around $4.99.  Don’t whine.  It cost me $10 to see it in a theater.

What is The War You Don’t See about?  Basically two things: (1) how we get dragged into wars we might not support if we had all the facts to hand, which we don’t, because the media don’t bother to dig them up for us, since it’s not their job, some say;  (2) how the horrifying true cost of war in civilian lives is concealed from us, because we’d have a hard time supporting our guys if we saw with our own eyes the innocuous people they kill, routinely, as we do in this film.

One particularly horrifying bit of footage consists of the infamous helicopter attack on journalists.  Sorry.  No full description here.  However, I will note that the figures in the notorious gunsights are very obviously unarmed non-combatants.  And they weren’t just killed.  They were hamburgered.  Other visuals are equally chilling.  Gratuitous killing of just plain people.  Kids included.

When this devastating footage is set against Pilger’s interviews with media managers smirking over unconvincing explanations of why they aren’t more skeptical about official versions of war, the vomit reflex becomes  strong.  By the end of the film I felt so ravaged I can only compare the effect, on me, to that of the Polish film Katyn, which recreated the Nazi slaughter of Polish officers during World War II.  That is not a reason for not seeing it.  It’s a reason for seeing it.

Thanks to nation wide reportage of Patrick Lannan’s bizarre cancellation and its aftermath, many more people will have an opportunity to view The War You Don't See in theaters.  According to Pilger, during a Skype interaction  after the showing I attended, booking requests are pouring in.  There’s nothing like censorship to increase demand.

Searching for Aristotle - Seeking Logic and Reason in a Confusing World

By Patricia H. Kushlis

Who is Aristotle? Why bother to search for him now?

It’s been ages since I even thought about the ancient Greek philosopher (384-322 BCE) and tutor to Alexander the Great who went on to conquer the known world from his redoubt in Macedonia. Sure, I remember reading Aristotle’s Politics my first year in college and seeing marble statues and busts of him in museums throughout Greece and elsewhere. Nevertheless, I never even thought about anybody going on a deliberate hunt for Aristotle, until I came across two separate references to the “quest for Aristotle.” These disparate searches made me rethink Aristotle’s relevance in what has become an increasingly complex, confused and chaotic world.

The first reference to the search for Aristotle was in the BBC mini-series entitled “Oliver’s Travels” starring Alan Bates, the quintessential “nonstar star” and Irish actress Sinéad Cusack that PBS aired in the US in 1996. The second was in the Mantle of the Prophet, Roy Mottahedeh’s book (1985) about the Iranian clerical establishment’s relationship to the country’s politics before, during and in the aftermath of the 1979 revolution.

Will the real Aristotle please stand up?

When I first watched “Oliver’s Travels” several years ago – the zany tale of a bumbling comparative religion professor made redundant because – well he taught something other than business – and his unlikely partner Diane Priest, the inquisitive, skeptical and attractive local police detective who he picked up early in his journey, I never thought about the possibility of a deeper meaning of the story.

Here was this idiosyncratic down-at-the-heels middle aged professor on a madcap search for an elusive puzzle creator who worked for Guardian under the pseudonym “Aristotle” and a smartly dressed forties-something detective trying to find the culprit behind a series of unexplained murders and other untoward “accidents” that ultimately reached not only into her own station house but also her family.

The unlikely pair ended up not only finding the crossword puzzle creator(s) but also unraveling the multiple murders at the same time. The result: not just intellectual satisfaction in solving the great mystery of the person behind the puzzles but also the corralling and outing of an incredibly large, complex and vicious British criminal ring.

During my first viewing of the five part series, I never considered the possibility of a deeper meaning – or multiple meanings. "Oliver’s Travels" was plain good English comedy fun.

What I missed then was the all important search for rationality in what was seemingly an irrational world. In this case, rationality and logic won out. Or was it a combination of the rational and the irrational that led to the crook’s denouement in the final act? Or could it have been that the search for Aristotle was conducted through an investigation that combined both deductive and inductive reasoning – a hallmark of Aristotelian logic?

Seeking Aristotle in Tehran

Robin Hood: A Cautionary Tale of Injustice and Insurgency

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

The critics are unanimous.  Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood is a bad bad bad film.  Converted into martini glasses, reviewers’ impressions show as empty or upside down.  And what do reviews actually say? The hero is stout. The battles have a stodgy obligatory feel.  The plot is contorted. The history is distorted. The cinematography is a sepia disaster—and no one is merry.  I went to see it anyway.  I’m a Robin Hood junkie.

The Right Context

Little by little, as I watched this Robin Hood, I found myself thinking of the stubborn insurgencies that wrack our own world and how they began, with injustice. Read about the Maoists in India, for example. Think about Afghanistan. Or Nepal. Or the pirates in the Niger delta.  Or about Aceh before the Indonesian government came to its senses.  And so on.  Which isn’t to say that justified rebellion can’t, in turn,  morph into even worse ugliness, but that’s another story, another film. 

Gradually I realized that we shouldn’t be judging this film by the ho hum genre criteria of standard summer entertainment.  Battles there may be, but it isn’t an action film.  It’s not about salvation through robotic or human superheroes.  It’s not a sexploitative, skin-rich love story or a male-bonding buddy film–too bad for the guys who play Little John, et. al.  Nor is it a hilarious send up like Men in Tights, as if there’s no way to play the story straight (a contention of some critics). 

The Past as Present

Conclusion: medieval trappings notwithstanding, this Robin Hood is a full blown critique of the world we live in today—and this Robin Hood gets it right. It’s hard for an ordinary honest man and/or woman to get ahead, or even to tread water, in a world of pitiless crooks masquerading as economic and political leaders.

One of Robin Hood’s critics complains about the dirt-smeared, rag-wearing urchins who scuttle through the twilight in shadowy packs to burn and pillage, then melt uncatchably  back into the forest.  Not enough is done with these urchins, he carps.  Wrong.  They perfectly symbolize the vague fears and chafing discontents, the unsatisfied hungers, the corrosive subliminal malaise, of a sick society gnawing upon itself. 

Things  are also out of balance at the top of the social pyramid, among the barons, whose  powers are being usurped by the ruthless centralization of a dimwit king with an empty treasury. Speak about kleptocracy!  Drought or not, even the church is on the take; if peasants starve and the minor gentry lose their land, so what?  Let them eat communion wafers. Ultimately, a bankrupt, divided England itself is up for grabs.  The slimy oyster-eating  French are on the prowl. 

Split Estate Equals Splitting Headache: See the Documentary

 By Patricia Lee Sharpe

Take a look at this picture.  If you live in any of 32 out of 50 American states, this could be in your back yard—or your front yard, whether you like it or not.  Your ground water could be polluted, and the air you breathe could now be making you sick.  Really!  And this assault on your life and property would be perfectly legal.

We’re talking about the severance of surface rights from the right to gain access to the minerals below the surface.  Please, when you are about to buy a home or a ranch or a farm, ask if you will own both surface and mineral rights.

The theory behind the split estate regime is that “splitting the mineral estate from the surface estate allows those with the financial wherewithal and expertise to develop the land’s mineral wealth while allowing the surface owner to continue using his estate.” 

In practice, it works like this:

Exempt from federal protections like the Clean Water Act, the oil and gas industry has left this idyllic landscape and its rural communities pockmarked with abandoned homes and polluted waters. One resident demonstrates the degree of benzene contamination in a mountain stream by setting it alight with a match. Many others, gravely ill, fight for their health and for the health of their children.

The best quick introduction to the consequences of “split estate” laws is a harrowing documentary film entitled—you guessed it, Split Estate.  I discovered it at the Santa Fe Film Festival last year, and you probably won’t find it at your local multiplex.  But go to the website, where you can learn how your local environmental or other grassroots organizations can sponsor the film for your community.  Forewarned is forearmed.

In short, Split Estate shows how natural gas exploration and production turned a beautiful  healthful area in Colorado into an uninhabitable wasteland.  Yes, this is Colorado, and laws do differ from state to state.  But only in detail, not in essence. Local environmental lawyers know specifics.     

A little foreknowledge of what had been happening in Colorado gave the people of the Galisteo Basin just south of Santa Fe a head start when Texas-based Tecton Energy applied for a permit to begin drilling for oil on land for which it had acquired the mineral rights.  In fact, all hell broke loose:

Representatives from Tecton Energy took a pounding from angry residents Thursday night [1/11/07] at a meeting the company hosted to discuss its plans for oil and gas drilling in the Galisteo Basin.   

About 300 people armed with questions and comments filled the parking lot of Genoveva Chavez Community Center to overflowing. Late arrivals had to sit on chairs outside the meeting room. Some crowded doorways and pressed up against the windows, jostling for position so aggressively that one Tecton representative said he wished the police had been present.

Bill Dirks, managing partner of the Houston-based company that has leased 65,000 acres of mineral rights in the Galisteo Basin area, did most of the talking for the company as the crowd sometimes shouted him down, booed, hissed and yelled expletives.
   
Dirks spoke for about an hour about the company's plans to drill for the 50 million to 100 million barrels of oil it believes lies under southern Santa Fe County and outlined the steps it would take to ensure a minimal environmental impact.
   
Water quality and availability, negative effects on property values and environmental contamination were paramount concerns for the speakers.
   
Asked what the company would do if the aquifer under the Galisteo Basin became contaminated, Dirks said, "It's not going to be contaminated. It's absolutely not going to be contaminated."
   
Asked where the water used in the drilling process would come from, Dirks said he doesn't know because the company is still trying to find water it can purchase for the project.
   
Tecton purchased 67,000 gallon of water for $861 from Santa Fe County last spring for use in some of its preliminary explorations.
   
The company has announced plans to enter eight wells to determine the feasibility of extracting the oil, but Dirks said Thursday that if oil is found in the quantities the company suspects, "there will be lots of wells drilled," and companies like Exxon, Shell and Chevron could start drilling here.   

Betsy Siwula-Brandt, 50, who said she spent 18 years working in the oil and gas exploration business, said the type of drilling Tecton intends to do — which involves injecting pressurized fluids into the ground to fracture surrounding rock so it will relinquish oil — is the riskiest type of drilling in the business, and protective casings designed to guard water sources aren't fool proof.

"There is no way he can guarantee there won't be seeping behind the surface casings," Siwula-Brandt said. "Once it gets into the ground water, there is no remediation. There is no way to stop it."

On February 26, 2008, after numerous similar public meetings, Santa Fe County decided to suspend all business having to do with the application and the granting of oil and gas drilling permits for one year, with an option to extend the suspension for another six months.  Why?  “The Emergency Interim Development Ordinance....will allow additional studies to be conducted before granting permits for drilling activity.”

The pause time demanded by Santa Fe County was used to recruit knowledgeable consultants to help the Commissioners write ordinances to better protect the rights of surface holders, to require that surrounding communities be reimbursed for collateral costs, to ensure the potability and sufficiency of the water supply and to prevent degradation of the environment in general. All in all, the Galisteo Basin wasn’t available for cheap quick exploitation.  In the end, having discovered that the people of Northern New Mexico were ready to defend their environment and their way of life, Tecton Energy decided to look elsewhere for oil.

During this process, the state of New Mexico also looked into the feasibility of drilling for oil and gas in the Galisteo Basin.  Take a look at the very readable Report on the Galisteo Basin.  You’ll find contributions from the from the New Mexico State departments of minerals and natural resources, game and fish, cultural affairs, environment, Indian affairs, tourism and health in addition to a fascinating report on hydrology from the state engineer’s office.  Result: the state also determined that too much of value to the people of New Mexico was at stake.   Drilling didn't make sense.

If the people of Santa Fe county can stand up to get-rich-quick drilling proposals, others can, too.  All it takes is knowledge and passion.  Well, money helps, but people are generous when their homes are threatened.

Saving Fadi

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

Being a kid isn’t easy, nor is parenting, and that’s much of what the film Amreeka is all about.  Some kids have it worse than others , however.  Being a kid in Ramallah, in occupied Palestine, involves more than the relatively trivial irritants of adolescence in America: zits, cliques, bullies, clueless adults and raging hormones.  It’s life-threatening.  As a result, mothering a boy on the West Bank is terrifying. 

Muna has a fifteen year old son.  Fadi’s big mouth is going to get him into serious trouble.  Muna understands this when he sasses a slow-witted but arrogant Israeli sentry at a roadblock and very nearly gets dragged out of the car.  There’s nothing Muna can do but clench the wheel, watch silently—and pray, even though she’s not much into praying. Finally the Israeli decides that this kid isn’t a threat to Israel, not for now anyway, although Muna senses that such experiences repeated could turn him into a stone thrower.    

So Fadi’s basically a good kid with a strong sense of justice, but his approaching manhood, along with all the other indignities of life under occupation, is a fearsome prospect for Muna.   Once upon a time her commute to her job as a bank officer was a matter of a half hour.  Now it takes an hour and half, what with roadblocks—or long detours to avoid them.  The route to Fadi’s school is equally problematic, and each checkpoint presents an opportunity for his adolescent mouthiness to get him into terminal trouble. 

Off to Amreeka

As for Fadi himself, he's sick of the restricted life he has to lead.  He wants to go to America, where Muna’s married sister lives and, by all reports, thrives.  Of course, after he gets here, he discovers that being an immigrant kid, especially an Arab, in an American classroom is not a piece of halwah.  He blames his mother for dragging him away from home.  That’s what kids do.  Meanwhile, the Israelis have lucked out: the male population in Palestine has been reduced by one smart kid.

Captain Abu Raed: The Storyteller of Amman

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

Captain Abu Raed is a movie that confronts the great puzzle behind all imaginative literature: fiction by definition is not fact.  It isn’t true because it doesn’t depict actual happenings. And yet it’s not deceptive, deceitful or destructive of the good.  In fact— so to speak, it’s life-enhancing, as we learn once again, falling under the power of the accidental storyteller of a poor hillside enclave in Amman, Jordan.

That’s Captain Abu Raed, who doesn’t fly jets.  He’s only an aging janitor at the airport who, one day,  finds a captain’s hat in a trash can and pops it jauntily on his white head as he trudges home from the bus stop.  He isn’t quite an “abu” any more either.  His son Raed died years ago.  So Abu Raed is a gentle widower who spins yarns about his non-existent travels to neighborhood kids  desperate to dream and enlarge their horizons. Are dreams lies?  Are dreamers liars?  Gather round to hear more about this delightful film.

 We’ll meet a fairy princess.  Her name is Nour, meaning “light,” and she flies in the guise of a beautiful (but not tarted up) airline pilot, so she is an honest-to-goodness Captain.  Her upper middle class father wants her to come down to earth and marry and fill his house with grandchildren.  Most anyone (with money) will do,  it seems.  We viewers cringe as we meet a parade of possible suitors.  But Nour loves flying.  She doesn’t want to be grounded. 

Eventually she confides in Abu Raed, with whom she became acquainted when her expensive car broke down and she was forced to use the airline’s employee bus service.  He tells her to follow her heart, her dreams, as he was never able to do. It’s a lovely scene that takes place on the terrace that goes with Abu Raed’s tidy little flat, a terrace with an unobstructed view of Amman sprawling over its hills—and of the open sky through which Abu Raed soars in his imagination. 

Next there’s an ogre who beats women and tortures kids and must, eventually, be dealt with.  The ogre appears in the guise of a frustrated father and husband who can’t make a go of his pathetic little dress shop in the city’s old bazaar.  To bolster his bruised male ego, the ogre lords it over his ever fearful wife and two sons, one of whom is determined to make the younger kids in the neighborhood as miserable and despairing as he is. 

Made (and Unmade) in Pakistan—and Elsewhere

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

I’ve just seen a very engaging documentary about energetic, enterprising young professionals in Lahore, Pakistan, and for over an hour I felt I was happily back in a milieu it’s been my pleasure and  privilege to be part of.  The film is called Made in Pakistan.  It’s a wonderful reminder that most people in most countries, Pakistan included, are focused on living dynamic, responsible, constructive, even creative lives.   So here they are, two women, two men: Waleed, a young lawyer passionately devoted to the rule of law; Rabia, a young writer and mother struggling to put a savvy  new magazine into the black; Tara, a fashionista and event planner whose go-go-go business is expanding into an all-Pakistan operation; Mohsin, a young politician running the family-business which  happens to center on elections.

Law, politics, journalism, fashion—these are four essential professions that, believe it or not, thrive in urban Pakistan, and Made in Pakistan shows us how four very appealing practitioners manage lives as fascinating and complex as those of their counterparts in New York or London.  Producer Ayesha Khan wants us to understand this, not from grim statistics but by sharing moments with people whose unscripted authenticity is insidiously appealing.  She wanted us to see that there is more to Pakistan than narrow religiosity and violence.  And she has succeeded.

So check it out, when you can.  Made in Pakistan was one of the favorites at the just closed Santa Fe Film Festival.  You’ll see why.