I love looking at The Onion's "Weekender", their satirical take on the weekend magazine that comes with your major newspaper (a la The New York Times' Sunday magazine).
They're brilliant when, behind the jabs at fluff/news magazine inanity, there's a "meta" quality. Their satirization of the way fonts and type placement are abused, for example.
They've even gone so far as spoofing the NYT fashion magazine
My recent favourite:
When Ben Affleck's The Town came out, many praised it as a powerful crime drama/action film. And yet, the shine seems to have come off of that project, probably as a result of people chasing the hype and actually watching it.
First, let's discuss its poster. In recent years, I've become sensitive to bad marketing. A good example of this is the film Forgetting Sarah Marshall: the ad campaign (in Toronto at least) consisted of anonymous black and white bus and streetcar ads, with hand-scrawled "I HATE YOU SARAH MARSHALL!" (and the like) written on them*. In short, the campaign was cheap-looking, lame, and soured any potential expectation I had for the film - it wasn't until much later, at my wife's urging, that I caught it on DVD and found it to be one of the comedy highlights of the year.
Similarly, the poster for The Town (displayed here) is a marketing mystery to me: it looks like a horror movie. It's directed by and stars Ben Affleck, yet the poster is covered in evil nuns with automatic weapons. In short, I don't get it: sure, it's a "serious movie" but what were they thinking? Was it reverse psychology? Who knows. If it were me, it would be a close-up photo of John Hamm licking Ben Affleck's unshaven face, with the caption: "Holy shit! It's the guy from MadMen with Ben Affleck! (They also shoot weapons!)"
Then there's the film itself. From a technical point of view, it's very impressive. Affleck's direction is solid. The performances are gritty and engaging. It's free of stunt-casting. Camerawork, editing, sound: great. But when the credits rolled, I realized what was wrong. What's wrong is that the story's been done a hundred fucking times before - and at least once by Michael Mann. So, for me, there was nothing being risked as a viewer because, having watched more than one crime drama in my life, there were no surprises in the script. Believe me when I say that I wanted this film to be as good as it promised - and, in fact, it is good. Just not as good as it clearly could've been when you take into account all that it has going for it.
So what did I want The Town to be? I wasn't sure...until I saw the Australian crime drama, Animal Kingdom on DVD. It has all the grit, tension, and complexity of The Town, with less overt style, and no actors recognizable to North American audiences (outside of Memento's Guy Pearce). It's poster? Have a look:
It's like a Jeff Wall photograph. And in the middle of it all is the crafty look on the face of actor Jacki Weaver (nominated, it should be noted, for Best Supporting Actress at the upcoming Oscars).
Animal Kingdom is a film fluent in the crime drama language - it even shares some of the tropes of The Town (the nervous druggie robber, the dutiful police detective) yet never once feels as if you are watching a re-treaded story. It is unpredictable and the performances are naturalistic and nuanced. It is its lack of artifice which keeps us watching, whereas with The Town, each successive car chase weighed it down with Hollywood cliché. Where the latter certainly carries legitimate tension, the former is quietly disturbing and takes a more nihilistic view of the cops and robbers game.
The good news is that both are available for your perusal on DVD, and both are extremely watchable. Neither will ultimately disappoint: it just depends on where your expectations are set. I feel that Animal Kingdom is the film The Town wanted to be.
* I admit I'm particularly sensitive to ads which don't make it clear that they are ads, especially if they look like actual public messages of hatred.Here's the best of what I've seen this year. I haven't seen everything. You may disagree with what I have seen. This is life.
Go ahead. Try. Try disagreeing that this is one of the most technically (and perhaps conceptually) elaborate mainstream Hollywood productions released in years which also happens to work as a "movie" that a wide variety of audiences would enjoy watching.
There has been a backlash against Inception. I don't know how or why this is - perhaps it was over-sold as a deep "puzzle-solver" film, which it is not. And yes, the NYT's A.O. Scott has a point in his comment that the film's literal depiction of dreams are lacking psychological heft (outside of Marion Cotillard's performance as DiCaprio's wife). In any case, something has caused a revolt against this film and I say this revolt is missing the point.
Inception is, generally speaking, the most watchable, the most fascinating film of 2010. You are allowed to hate it.
I am a huge fan of Jacques Audiard, a French director who has always rewarded the viewer with films (Read My Lips, The Beat My Heart Skipped) that balance passion with style. With A Prophet, Audiard expands his canvas, creating a gritty, novelistic masterpiece on-par with The Godfather (yes). The story concerns a young incarcerated Muslim who slowly rebuilds himself from within the treachery of prison life, rising from under the thumb of a vicious mob leader to become his own person and create his own empire. Epic, patient, and in places extremely violent. People will be referring to this film for years to come even if it has not really made a mark in North America. Again, a masterpiece.
I realize this Irish film was released in 2009, but it didn't get here until now. A compelling ghost story which eschews the two-dimensionality of ghost story films. It was around the twenty-minute mark that I realized it was a film which was going to confound my expectations (expectations based upon years and hundreds of similar plot lines): it wasn't going to squander what it was and fall prey to hackneyed cliché. A gorgeous, touching, ultimately humanistic film with a stand-out performance by Ciarán Hinds as a grieving father of two children who must swallow his pride to escort a loud-mouthed Aidan Quinn through the motions of a book tour of the small coastal city of Cobh, in County Cork. A sublime achievement by director Conor McPherson.
Notable: Winter's Bone - see it. It's on DVD now. Like A Simple Plan, it's a self-contained "rural thriller" (ugh) with a chilling undertone of barren hopelessness. Unlike A Simple Plan, it's uncomplicated which is what gives it more of an honest strength. Exit Through The Gift Shop is the perhaps best film made about art and the art world that I have seen - like Inception, it's not trying to be deep, just smart. Scott Pilgrim vs. The World blew me away because I expected it to be weak (perhaps because all the publicity photos inexplicably used a static image of Michael Cera standing against a fucking wall...imagine if you will, trying to sell Star Wars with a picture of Mark Hamill sitting cross-legged in the desert - sounds awesome, eh?). Not only was it not weak, it was the strangest case of "I don't know why I love this movie but I really do". Painstakingly, sublimely Toronto-centric (which, unlike the inexplicable promo photos of Michael Cera, shouldn't be factored into explaining why it didn't fare well at the box office) and wildly imaginative - those two things have never met before...oh but wait, I forgot the perfect companion piece: Kick Ass - also shot in TO, and also exceedingly expectation-defying (although the climax is kinda drawn-out). As far as performances go, Jesse Eisenberg (The Social Network) and Colin Firth (The King's Speech) stand out, along with Winter's Bone's Jennifer Lawrence, and Hailee Steinfeld for True Grit (who, at 14-years, shows huge promise as an actor).
I would have said "BOOKS", but due to work and school I haven't read anything published this year (that I can remember), with the exception of John Vaillant's The Tiger. Lucky for me, since it is without doubt one of the best non-fiction titles I've read in years.
The Tiger is a meaty real-life tale of vengeance by the titular beast, in the winter hinterland of the Russian Far East (which the author calls, paradoxically, "the boreal forest"). Vaillant describes an environment historically, politically, and biologically unique, inhabited by hardened outcasts. The shadow of a predator male tiger, known never before to attack without cause, creates a wave of dread throughout the land, with only a small band of volunteers to figure out the mystery. Vaillant provides wave after wave of fascinating detail - examples of how man and beast have evolved throughout time, how human and animal behaviour have worked in similar paths - that by the end of the book you feel as if you should have a credit in Ethology. This is truly a page-turner and I cannot recommend it enough.
This is one of those moments where I find myself on the inside of a phenomena which (increasingly) arouses strong opinions from members of the public. In this case, stereoscopic filmmaking - or 3D, for short (even though it's not really 3D and tramples on a term which is used in animation for both stereoscopic and non-stereoscopic work).
I'm currently working on a 3D film in an age (or, more precisely, over the course of a year, starting with James Cameron's Avatar) where 3D technology is being pushed as the next in-thing. And yet there are many detractors, some of whom have some good ammunition for their opinions.
As someone who has been intimately involved with a 3D production, from beginning to end (well, almost - we'll be in theatres in October) I find myself more and more a spokesperson for the technology, if not for the studios who currently are trying to cram every release into a 3D format, whether or not they were meant to be that way.
Let me begin by saying that I enjoy the notoriety of being the resident expert on 3D technology at parties and barbecues whenever the subject arises. Now that I have that out of the way, allow me to bitch...
Everyone keeps asking me: is 3D here to stay? The answer is a conditional "yes". The condition being that film studios understand two things: First, that you can't take a 2D movie and make it 3D using brain-dead rotoscoping software and expect it to be a success; second, that you can't continue charging more for 3D films and not deliver a product that is both a good example of 3D and a relatively good film to boot.
To elaborate:
1) Since the release of Avatar, there seem to be just as many films released in theatres boasting 3D which were never shot in 3D, nor even envisioned in 3D prior to production. Some examples would be Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland and M. Night Shyamalan's The Last Airbender. These films were taken by the studios after completion and put through a 2D-to-3D conversion process, using software to rotoscope the 3D effect, frame-by-frame, a process unsupervised by the director.
This process, while handy for converting short bits from 2D to 3D for films which originate in 3D, ignores a very large consideration for those producers and filmmakers who shoot in 3D from the outset: you have to plan to shoot in 3D from the start. You cannot take a script or a shot list for a 2D film and superimpose it onto a 3D film: your set design, your camera lenses, your blocking, your picture editing...so many things change as a result of switching from 2D to 3D. When you simply take a 2D show and auto-render it in faked-out 3D you get something which most viewers - critics and plebes alike - will say isn't necessary. At worst, you get Clash Of The Titans - the current poster child for anyone with an axe to grind about 3D in general and post-converted 3D specifically. Not only was it a weak remake of the original (from what I hear), but the 3D post-conversion was done in two weeks. Two weeks. From what I hear, the subsequent "3D" is ridiculous to view.
2) Considering that theatres charge a premium for 3D films (about $3 more than usual depending upon where you go - sometimes more), when a poorly rendered post-converted 3D film is released it damages the viability of an already vulnerable new technology. It's one thing if a film is bad, but when it's bad in two dimensions, bad in a crappily-rendered pseudo-third dimension, followed by the sucker punch of having to pay MORE to see it...you get my point. I hope. Movie audiences can be forgiving, but there comes a point of revolt which I can see happening if there aren't enough 3D films released which originate on 3D. Furthermore, the studios do no service to themselves if they don't make a point of clarifying this to audiences: why can't they say when a film is originally shot in 3D? Isn't that a selling point? Likewise, why not be honest and say when a film has been post-converted? If it's a case that no one wants it to be known that their film was post-converted...then why post-convert to 3D in the first place? There's certainly no audience I know that is clamouring for blocky cut-out shapes which look like they were poorly separated from the background using Photoshop. To summarize this point, content is king: the quality of content, not the volume of illegitimate content.
Up until Avatar (and god knows how I long for the day when another film takes its place as the "gold standard"), the greatest accomplishment in 3D technology was the few seconds of the guy in House of Wax, standing outside a theatre with a ping-pong mallet, knocking the ball directly toward the camera. You could imagine people ducking for cover at the time. That was 1953. From that point onward, 3D technology didn't change, largely due to the format never winning over audiences: the films were oft-times gimmicky and there were never enough 3D films at any given time to make it feel as if the aesthetic was going anywhere. With the recent advent of digital cinematography, 3D is much easier (logistically and technically) to achieve. And while I would love someone to make "art" (are you reading this, Wong Kar Wai?), I'm happy if, for the time being, the format stakes its territory in the ghetto where its strengths have always been: action/sci-fi/fantasy - hey, if it works, why not? I don't hear anyone clamouring for a 3D Terms of Endearment...
Technicians and filmmakers are doing their part: they are taking a risk and trying to push forward innovatively with something daunting and new. Is 3D here to stay? Again, a conditional "yes". What we need are studios and theatre chains to be honest with the audience and not do irreparable damage to the very thing they are hoping to profit from.
In 2008/9, I worked on the indie feature, SUCK. It's a rock-and-roll vampire road-movie comedy directed by Toronto's Rob Stefaniuk and produced by Capri Films' Robin Crumley. For a low-budget feature (and I realize that's not the best way to preface a compliment) SUCK is well-written, well-cast, funny, and in places very funny.
However, despite being well received at both the Toronto International and South-By-Southwest Film Festivals, it was denied any interest in a theatrical release by Canadian distributors. The longer I waited for someone to pick it up, the more I wondered what the problem was. Sure, you could argue that vampire films have saturated the market lately, but that's seeing things from the late-summer of 2010 (SUCK was completed over a year ago). It was a no-brainer, even for a limited release: who wouldn't like a rock vampire comedy w/ cameos by Iggy Pop, Alice Cooper, and Alex Lifeson (among others)? It's the sort of smart-but-not-overly-self-conscious effort which seems perfectly balanced for a theatrical audience.
Nothing happened. Well, actually, less-than-nothing happened: a lot of crap was released in Canadian theatres instead. Crap like the widely-released and quickly forgotten Gunless, which begged the question: if nobody is interested in seeing Westerns in theatres, what could possibly have been the selling point of a comedy-romance-Western with (as you might have guessed) no gunfighting? The answer is that it doesn't matter: this is Canada, and film distributors prefer to release crap like Gunless and GravyTrain than anything which could hold an audience's sustained interest. Evidently, the point of film distribution in Canada is to go through the motions.
Well, it's too late for Canada. While SUCK secured a limited theatrical distribution in the U.S., it's out on DVD here (the US DVD release is September 28th). This means it will only be screened here through niche film festivals. While that's not a bad thing, it pisses me off that a funny, well-produced film (rare creature that is) should be all but abandoned after a successful festival run. This situation is certainly not helped by SUCK's (pardon the pun) anemic website: it makes no mention of any upcoming film screenings, DVD release dates, or even contact information. Who the hell is the site for? This is what happens when you don't have a distributor to help with publicity. Not even the local indie journals can help: NOW Magazine completely omits any mention of it, as a film or DVD release. How's that for hometown support? Thankfully, The Toronto Star's Peter Howell is the only mainstream film critic to put the DVD release of SUCK on public record (in glowing terms no less...and slagging Gunless ).
I want people to see this film. Not because I worked on it, not because I want to punish producers who keep banking on dead-brained populist Paul Gross vehicles, but because this is a worthy film. It's not Sophie's Choice, it's not going to change your life. But you'll laugh. I just wish it had been allowed the opportunity of a theatrical run, which it so clearly deserved. It works better in a theatre than on DVD: with a pumped-up audience rather than in the controlled confines of your livingroom. That said, I will be pleased if, by my writing about it, one more person will see this movie than if I hadn't.
Since the beginning of 2010 (I still can't adjust to typing that without staring out the window to see if there are flying cars in the sky) I've felt change is imminent for me. Whereas last year seemed to be a boat load of life coming straight at me, the inverse seems to be conjuring its way into this year - I feel more connected to surroundings, and better able to manipulate (if I may use the word manipulate in the best possible way) the outside world, the not I (to quote Krishnamurti).
This is not to say that I've got all of the problems with life, the world, or myself sorted out (ha!), but rather I feel a greater impetus to direct energy outward to affect change; to raise my own hurdles rather than wait for life to throw me hers.
I just don't know the details of how this energy will manifest yet - I'm listening intently. Perhaps small steps: publishing my short fiction to this here blog, and/or showcasing others'? Alternately, putting a cap in this blog entirely and moving on to something different. Shifting to work more with my own media rather than with others'. Sparks. You see: the light of change. Inarticulate still, but pulsing with activity, from the inside out.
It's been one of those battle-cries of mine the last while. Everything in the world, culturally-speaking (and I don't necessarily mean high culture) seems to be evaporating into mindless bullshit.
The AV Club - a site I admittedly have a love/hate relationship with already - just posted an interview with actor Paul Giamatti. In the opening summary, the interviewer describes the plot of his latest film, which reads like a counterscript of 1999's Being John Malkovich and yet there is no mention of this parallel anywhere in the article, something even Entertainment Tonight would do. The interviewer talks about this upcoming film with Giamatti as if it and his role - the John Malkovich role, if it were Being John Malkovich - were just soulless objects to be discussed out of necessity. In other words, it's just like any other media-junket interview, like something you would read in InStyle or Chatelaine. Not that those examples are b-a-d, but when you pride yourself as better, especially savvy, tongue-in-cheek better, you shouldn't even be in the same postal code as InStyle or Chatelaine if you want to retain your reputation.
The Motley Fool - again, a site previously known for being savvy, even though they deal with the stock market - now reads like Ain't It Cool News, complete with arguments which, under rational analysis, seem completely idiotic and antithetical to what one would assume is their mission statement (ie. being different than the rest of those brain-dead-and-short-sighted Money sites).
Oh, and CNN. Not that they've ever been more relevant than a Reuters news ticker, but they've gone from mediocre to stupid by allowing one of their show hosts, Lou Dobbs, to continuously question the origin of Barack Obama's citizenship, a paranoid suspicion virulent in the libertarian/right-wing fringe of the U.S. that has been repeatedly disproved (read: he doesn't want Johnny Foreigner running and ruining the most-possibly-greatest-country-ever-in-the-world).
Now, one of the arguments I can imagine hearing is: well, Matt, in a 24-hour newsday (whether on TV or the Internet) when people expect constant information there inevitably has to be weaker material. To which I say: I understand, but I'd settle for less information over less hours (if need be), if it means the information will be consistent and better. After all, you are what you eat, and in this day and age we feed on media in an astonishingly unconscious and voracious manner.
I was scoping around the various newspaper sites, as I do every morning, and found myself staring at the following headline at the top of the Toronto Star: "Frost/Nixon Up For 5 Golden Globes".
Generally speaking, I have nothing against "entertainment news", conceptually anyway. Most will agree: we can't always be bombarded by the depressing day-to-day reality of just how potentially stupid we are as a species of animal. Sometimes we need our Robert Mugabe cut with a little Brad Pitt to make it go down easier.
I will accept that, as a species, we can't eat our broccoli without the promise of something else more appetizing, like dessert.
Perhaps it was the fact that the Golden Globe awards are a second-rate contest, occasionally with fixed odds; a calliope'd portent of what the Oscars will be in a year or so (at the rate they are going). Perhaps it's my bewilderment that a Canadian newspaper is putting it at the top of its site at a time when our Parliament has been prorogued by the government to protect its divisive reign, at a time when smart people have stopped investigating how and why the Vesuvian economic crisis in the U.S. happened, at a time when several African countries - not least of which Zimbabwe - are undergoing crises which the world will undoubtedly pay for down the road.
I admit, I am jaded by the media. I sometimes wonder what would happen if we were somehow able to harness the energy otherwise spent on detailing the brunch menus of Hollywood stars, to put it to use in better investigative reporting (or more investigative reporting, which would be nice...you know, fifth estate and all that).
There is a time for "lite" news. Some of what some people consider to be "lite" is actually - in small doses - tranquilizing in a nice way (cats that use toilets, public school spelling bee competitions, the ubiquitous athlete crossing the globe to raise money for x, etc...). I'm not, after all, nailing a manifesto to someone's door. I'm questioning the proportionate worth of "lite" in a capricious world which, for now, is not "lite" at all (unless you're a Buddhist, in which case everything is Nothing - please find another blog to read).
Rather than constantly anaesthetizing ourselves with the likes of the Golden Globe nominations ("The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" hasn't even been released yet!), I wish our media could put the likes of "lite" into a corner rather than, as if under hypnosis, regurgitating the same soulless AP and Reuters items without care or discernment of the type of world we wish to portray.
Happy Thursday.
About eight years ago, I read my first copy of Harper's. Up until then, I'd never been a magazine person (not counting the subscription I had, at the age of 16, to Psychology Today...and then later, Spy for a brief period, while they were struggling with bankruptcy). Okay. Let's just say that, from my twenties onward, I wasn't a magazine person. But one day I picked up Harper's and I fell in love. I discovered something densely intelligent, funny, and with such a variety of content that one could spend countless hours reading (nay appreciating, savouring) every morsel it served. Lastly, for someone who was much more interested at the time in non-fiction, it was a godsend.
Then, after 9/11/01 [sidenote: it took a tragedy for people to officially confuse the order of the month and day when writing the date], I fell out of love. Not immediately, mind you - if anything, out-of-the-gate, Harper's was one of the few mainstream voices of sanity in the aftermath. While everyone in the mass media seemed to conform to a dangerously singular mindset (i.e. being complacent), Harper's was honestly critical and asked the necessary questions. But, over time, I found then-editor Lewis Lapham's essays too predictably left-wing (and I think the fact that they were predictable was perhaps the greater sin). The magazine also began to suffer from the same Americentric cocooning as the rest - I believe the turning point for me was an essay on how pragmatism was a uniquely American concept. Oh, really.
I felt like I was reading something written by people who had never left their homes, or who didn't want their presumptions challenged. In other words, for reasons arguable or not in hindsight, it became a magazine like any other.
Flash-forward to 2008: with the hell-job in its trailing throes, I found myself in a bookstore itching for something different to peruse - something less weighty (literally) than a book. And sure enough, as if face-t0-face with an ex-girlfriend, I was staring at a copy of Harper's on a magazine rack. I picked it up, flipped through, and seeing a lack of blatant political indignation, sighed, and proceeded to the cash register.
Sure enough, I found myself addicted once again. The Readings section, with its immaculately edited selection of essays, fiction, poetry, and miscellaneous news items. The ubiquitous Harper's Index. A fascinating piece on the possibility of transmissible cancer, by David Quammen. A report on the raw-milk controversy (with a Canadian angle, no less). Last but not least, a series of 22 short fiction pieces by Paul Theroux - each of them excellent.
While I am delighted at what seems to be the return of a full-blooded Harper's, I'm equally despondent: it's almost too much of a good thing. I can't pick it up without devoting hours to reading every bit of it. As a result, I worry that everything else I'm reading (or promising to read - hello, Ulysses) will fall by the wayside.
Damn you, Harper's. Damn you.
For those who don't live in the GTA (Greater Toronto Area), there are two papers which demonstrate the zero-sum game of "providing an alternative voice" in mass-market traditional media.
The first, which I submit as The Intolerant Right, is The Toronto Sun, a daily newspaper distributed through most of Southern Ontario. In short, pro-conservative, pro-law-and-order, pro-military, anti-liberal, anti-big-government, anti-humanist. They regularly publish op-ed pieces which make numerous references to City Council as being infested with socialists. They once published an editorial "cartoon" which allowed you to paint-by-numbers a portrait of Toronto's mayor, David Miller, which ended up portraying him as Adolph Hitler.
The second, which I submit as The Intolerant Left, is NOW Magazine, a weekly
news/community paper with wide distribution including outside the GTA. As opposed to the Sun, NOW is pro-socialist, pro-community, pro-union, anti-police, anti-military, anti-corporate. NOW operates under the impression that the world's problems can be solved with townhall meetings. The recent clash between the Chilean U-20 soccer team and the police was, without bothering to investigate, blamed squarely on the police who were identified as racists.
Don't get me wrong, NOW has a good arts section. The Toronto Sun, for that matter, excels in sports coverage. However, as regards editorial thrust, both papers are heinously biased and often responsible for stoking the coals of hatred.
And thus we come to that auspicious moniker: the "outsider" or "alternative" media voice. People who devour the Sun feel that everyone else is too liberally biased and that their paper "tells it like it is". Those who fawn over NOW feel as if every page uncovers the organic truth, conspiratorially cloaked by the interests of Big Business. Yet, despite the obvious differences between the two, faithful readers of both feel as if they are getting the inside track on enlightenment.
This is one of the pernicious problems with being the "outsider" or the "alternative" in the traditional media market - it's bullshit. You know it. I know it. Yet - and kudos for consistency to both the Toronto Sun and NOW - one can predictably ascertain the editorial reaction of both papers without as much as a few seconds of applied imagination.
Me? Generally, I'm left-of-centre, I do think there is a clear history of corporate greed which has threatened to extinguish individual rights (let alone entrepreneurship), and I don't want our laws to be dictated by the tenets of any organized religion. However, pure socialism is a Romantic Dream - it assumes everyone is the same, which is the summit of naivety if we must include the criminally violent or the unfortunately stupid. Yet, I believe that culture needs federal funding and should not be treated like an elitist nice-to-have. Also, I would rather have another 4 years of David Miller's ineffectiveness than yet another malicious, vindictive clown like Mel (The Black Cauldron) Lastman or a ruinous corporate-minded manipulator like Mike Harris at the provincial helm.
The problem with any form of media claiming to the be an "alternative" is that "being alternative" (as opposed to say, trying to approach the complexity of the average person's viewpoint) becomes a ball-and-chain by which they have to editorially tow the line, whether or not it devolves into predictability (or self-parody).
If there are two things I've avoided mentioning since the inception of this blog, it is Iraq and Afghanistan. For anyone who has casually surfed a blind selection of blogs in their spare time, I think you can understand why I've chosen not to get involved in the often mephitic atmosphere of this debate. It's chaotic and reflects the lack of clarity in the wars themselves.
Six Canadian soldiers were killed yesterday by a roadside bomb. The media refers to these bombs as IED's (improvised explosive devices), following the vocabulary of military spokespersons. In response to these latest deaths, here is an excerpt to more effectively demonstrate this vocabulary, from the Globe and Mail:
The Taliban's increasing use of roadside bombs has also taken a toll on civilians, Brig.-Gen. Grant said. "They have managed to kill six great young Canadians today, which is an absolute tragedy," he said. "The other part of this is that they're killing lots of Afghans. They're attacking the weak, they're killing women, they're killing children, they're killing policemen. These are not the tactics of anything other than terrorists."
[...]
Asked whether this represents an "Iraqization" of the conflict, Lieutenant-Colonel Jean Trudel, who serves as chief of staff for the Canadian headquarters in Kandahar, shook his head.
"Not particularly," he said. "It indicates a loss of control by the insurgents."
Canadian troops faced insurgents in the farmland southwest of Kandahar city last year in the largest battles Afghanistan has witnessed since the collapse of the Taliban regime. Those fights have taught the Taliban that it's fruitless to openly confront the Canadians, Lt.-Col. Trudel said.
"The fact that we've lost a lot of soldiers from IED attacks indicates a success, in the sense that our conventional operations have succeeded against the Taliban," the chief of staff said.
Where to start...
1) These roadside bombs - sorry, IED's - are not, historically speaking, the "tactics of terrorists". They are the tactics of guerrillas. Crashing planes into buildings and floating boats laden with explosives into aircraft carriers are tactics of terrorists. There is more than a semantic difference between the two classifications; when you paint civilian-based militias as terrorism you are admitting a loss of control and belying a critical problem with the military operation at-hand. See: Corsica.
2) If by "Iraqization", the journalists mean "people who were under a tyrant who barely kept a fractious mix of misplaced ethnicities (largely due to Western colonial folly) under control and who now are now occupied by Western forces (yet again) whose motives increasingly speak more about global economics than humanitarianism" then there are some similarities. However, the way in which the term is implied in the article suggests that the "tactics of terrorism" are being imported from Iraq, which itself is an interesting bit of circular logic given that Afghanistan is the only one of the two countries that had anything to do with the destruction of the World Trade towers.
3) To suggest that the killing of six of our soldiers (along with civilians and police) represents a "loss of control" by the insurgents is perhaps one of the more grotesque distortions of military logic I've read (recently). Sounds to me as if the insurgents are in control if by their actions they are disrupting the lives of its citizenry and the work of the soldiers who have been put there to resurrect what is becoming the Romantic dream of a post-Taliban Afghanistan.
All things considered, no matter how passionate or well-reasoned your opinion, it simply isn't enough to oppose either of these wars, at least not anymore. Three or four years ago, perhaps. However, there is a marked difference between the two conflicts. With Afghanistan there was, at the very least, a reason for NATO troops to get involved; it was, after all, the training ground for Al-Qaeda and, considering the devastation of 9/11/01, arguing for a military response was not an irrational (ie. purely emotional) action. Iraq, however, was and is a debacle of historic proportions. It would depress me to recount just how ill-conceived (and corrupted) the decision to invade Iraq was. There are many other sites out there which can do a better job of summing up the horrible negligence of the latter invasion.
One thing I will mention, and I do so on behalf of my countrymen who are stationed in Afghanistan, is that, failing "success" - itself a contentious ideal in any war - the blame for the lack thereof can be directly attributed to two factors:
1) Iraq. If the United States and Britain had not diverted (and thus fragmented) their troops so that they were intervening [or invading, whichever way you wish to see it - I'll leave the Semantics of Conflict essay for another day] in not only one but two countries, NATO would've had the maximum available response in order to accomplish whatever goals there were in the Afghanistan mission. Instead, by pulling troops out of the latter and into the former, they hobbled the efforts of the only justifiable military action of the two and endangered both.
2) Although there are 37 countries involved in the NATO/ISAF deployment in Afghanistan, there is a disproportionate amount of Canadian troops on the frontline in the most tumultuous areas (read: Kandahar), despite repeated calls for other participating countries to commit troops for support. Say what you will about the Afghanistan mission (and again, a lot of contentious arguments are to be had), it angers me to see such reluctance on behalf of other participating countries: either you're there and fight or you should rightfully leave. You simply can't have it both ways on the battlefield.
Canada has a tragic history of its soldiers being used as gun-fodder in armed struggle, most notably in the trenches of WWI. This perhaps explains why we did not involve ourselves in Vietnam or Iraq; though we have our share of military controversies to deal with (much of it due to financial stagnation and federal meddling), we have generally learnt not to follow into armed conflict when the goals of the coordinating military power (usually the US and/or England) are suspicious. The difference this time is that our public is looking very critically at the war in Afghanistan, asking the right questions, and putting pressure on our politicians to ensure that this latest involvement does not devolve into the sort of pandemonium currently underway in Iraq.
I would be lying if I thought the current plan in Afghanistan was particularly clear or that our politicians (and some of the bureaucratic upper ranks of our Armed Forces) had the best interests of our soldiers, Afghanis, or the reputation of Canada in mind. The former Soviet Union went bankrupt as a result of their involvement in the 80's, with the U.S. funding, arming, and training the civilian insurgency. The shoe is on the other foot, with Russia and China supplying the insurgency via Iran. Whether we call them terrorists or not, vocabulary alone is not enough to soften the blow of rising casualties in a conflict sorely in need of clarity.
I don't like to mention American news channels, for the very basic reason that I'm not American and that I don't live in the U.S.. As a Canadian, however, I have an advantage in that I have easy access to American news programming. It's easy to get swept up in what happens down there and you forget that it doesn't even concern you (or if it does, it's by example, not by fact).
Tony Burman, of the CBC, posted an interesting comment on a current controversy over something CNN personality (anchor? those days are gone, sorry) Lou Dobbs said. Something about attributing a studied increase in leprosy to a less-than studied association with increased immigration from Mexico. Oh my. You understand why it's important not to get swept up in another country's news now?
I like Tony. He's not a bullshitter, and as a result, doesn't have the sheen or explicit eye-grabbing "savvy" of more recent newsmen. He makes some interesting observations (which, as a Canadian, we are experts at providing to a world which doesn't listen):
News anchors — at least in the U.S. — are increasingly revealing their own personal opinions in an effort to ‘connect’ with audiences in this very competitive media environment.[...]
As I wrote in a column last September, the line between ‘news’ and ‘opinion’ is gradually becoming blurred, and in many newsrooms this is challenging conventional journalistic views about ‘objectivity,' ‘bias’ and ‘opinion.’
If the patterns in the U.S. take hold, there seems to be a greater desire on the part of audiences to ‘relate’ to news and current affairs anchors whose views and perspective are known to them. The mask of journalistic ‘objectivity’ can seem forced and false to growing numbers of people who revel in the wide-open environment of the Internet.
However, what really struck me were some of the comments to Tony's article. In particular are two:
Joe Chip from Saskatoon [responding to *yet another* accusation from a previous poster that the CBC is some sort of liberal star chamber, and should be ashamed of casting aspersions on the likes of Mr. Dobbs]and...
[...]As someone who actually follows media sources from around the world, I can assure you that they are an (relatively) objective news source. As living beings, we cannot avoid bias - we need to interpret the world around us in a meaningful way. The CBC reports in almost as professional a manner as the BBC, which is, despite what you and others may think, the gold standard for broadcast news. Have you noticed how their "At Issue" panel has one person on almost every week from the National Post and one from the Toronto Star? That's not an accident, it's about balance, and Andrew and Chantel accomplish that nicely.Finally, I suggest that you do a comparison of how the three national leaders (Martin, Harper and Layton) were covered in the past election. You will find that Harper got the most positive coverage, while Martin was largely panned, and Layton often ignored. This was consistent throughout most major Canadian media, with more positive portrayals of the Conservatives in right wing papers and media (i.e. the National Post, etc.), and more flattering coverage of left wingers in media such as the Toronto Star. The CBC remained fairly balanced, though I thought they were a bit hard on poor Martin.
Charles Barrett in Florida
Both of these comments are very insightful. I didn't want to waste your time regurgitating what they said into some sort of personalized polemic, but rather show that there *are* thinking people out there who show just how complex our seemingly left vs. right society truly is. And I absolutely LOVE the line that "media sources are just production houses" - zing!
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As a Canadian citizen living in the US, I have perspective from both sides.
The question being dealt with here isn't so much about Lou Dobbs [whom I do like and agree with on a lot of the points he discusses on his program].
Traditional media sources have long ago lost their way. In paying attention to a broadcast or the written story most times I'm struck by either the wrong question being asked or the answer given is either inadequate or no answer at all. The reporter/interviewer doesn't follow-up to hold the respondant [sic] to task about their evasive answer.
It's seems that the truth/answers are just commodities and any response to a posed question will do. Media sources, particularly television media, are just production houses.
We, the public, need start thinking of what is not asked and also hear what is not said, in a response to a question/interview.
I thought it was the media/journalists job to obtain the truth whereever [sic] it was rooted. Not just report answers.
As for Lou Dobbs and his cohorts, opinion is just that, opinion. You don't have agree with what anybody/everybody says/believes. It's his opinion not yours.
That is what makes it GREAT to live in the part of the world that we do, we have the FREEDOM to disagree and NOT pay with our lives.
I think my previous posters would all AGREE with this.