03/19

Switching to monthly now, as weekly is a bit cumbersome. It should also help centralize things better and require less fishing around for certain links.

Some odds and ends from a film I watched recently called NAZIS IN THE CIA: if you haven't heard of Stefano Delle Chiaie (as I hadn't), take a look at his extensive involvement in global fascism. Chiaie is interviewed directly in the film, and he still speaks proudly of his many "revolutionary" achievements. Perhaps his most widely-known associate is Klaus Barbie, glanced over in the film but present in the Wikipedia summary. Cinephiles will know Barbie from HOTEL TERMINUS, which I haven't yet seen but would like to. I feel it's helpful to independently verify conspiratorial items like NAZIS IN THE CIA, by cross-referencing with credible documents. Maybe an hour-long TV-style documentary can't be trusted, but what about Marcel Ophuls' classic film, which examines Barbie at quadruple length?

Following up on that: we can see both Barbie and Chiaie at work in supporting Luis García Meza through the Cocaine Coup. I won't claim to be an expert on any of this, but as always, these are avenues for further research. Just dipping into all this makes me feel grateful for Evo Morales' leadership, which comes after decades of fascist and conservative interplay. May this vicious cycle be ended for good.

Less dramatic but still significant: the CIA was able to secure a small prison sentence for Junio Valerio Borghese, which freed him to re-enter the world as an unreconstructed fascist. Borghese and Chiaie were close collaborators, and Borghese's fairly short life thereafter was dedicated to the propagation of fascism.

(Chiaie, by the way, is still alive.)

Sarah Jones writing in 2017 about the stubbornness of eugenics.

Adam Kotsko on nostalgia's temptations makes me wish for a book-length treatment along the lines of Awkwardness and Why We Love Sociopaths.

An AI program is being signed to a record label so it can, I don't know, give you chill meditative music to boost your workflow or something.

Ethiopia's at the front of China's Belt and Road investments, but while some have called it a debt trap, the ambassador isn't too worried now that China has agreed to restructure the debt into smaller loads over a longer timeline.

"I'm innocent!" proclaims wealthy financier on the lam.

On the subject of Malaysia, we really want to go see this hotel when we're there. The article writer evidently hates it, but the comparison to North Korean architecture is a positive for me!

Really great conceptualization, by Girish Shambu, of older and newer ways of watching things...or "content," I guess, as audiovisual works are now called. I don't think I can ever adjust to certain parts of the changing world he describes, and I'm not even that old (27!). Some aspects of the uncompromising old cinephilia still feel noble, but increasingly I find so much of it reactionary and restrictive (despite all those legendary filmmakers and critics whose work has had enormous impact). For instance, I definitely recognize that defensiveness in critiquing filmmakers formerly given a pass, and I'm happy to say I had no trouble dropping Woody Allen, a long-time favorite of mine, once I truly faced up to what he'd done. So I'm definite support the new cinephilia's liberations. I don't think I can ever be at its vanguard, but then I don't think I even should be. If I can just contribute to the ferment a little, that would be more than enough for me. It's long past time for the marginalized to take things into their own hands.

As for the older way of watching movies...my big influence/arch-nemesis Nick Pinkerton is at it again, this time defending poor embattled David Lynch on Twitter from widespread hatred and condemnation of his art. Or so it seems anyway. Yet the real surprise for me was that the image Pinkerton uses to illustrate his "gunk of the id" thesis -- Patricia Arquette in LOST HIGHWAY being forced to strip at gunpoint -- is the exact same Lynch image that affirmed to me a lack of true criticality in this auteur's career, a coincidence that begs greater elaboration. That is to say, what Lynch does, and does very well, is channel his own impulses into wildly weird artworks so mesmerizing that to nitpick them would seem embarrassingly small-minded. Pinkerton is pushing back against the safety-rails TV-styled version of cinema, where sharply delineated but thinly imaged character outlines describe their struggles in non-descript locations. I feel some sympathy for his cause, but ultimately cannot bring myself to join it. That is because the problem's being misapprehended as a referendum of Lynch, and not of the artistry of those unknown to the US American critical consensus. The young left is not asking for a sanitized version of cinema, but, rather, asking: whose gunk? Whose id? That this roundabout should hinge on cinephile favorite David Lynch is tedious symptom, not cause. By the time an aging white man's vast portfolio gets evaluated, the fight's already been fought. And there have been many such fights, with many similar conclusions. Cinema, as it exists now, is more like a series of empty frames on a film strip, speckled only by the faintest traces of paint, untouched by the people whose ability to participate would fill in the negative space. What cinema can and should look like is uncontroversial: the deeply-considered styles of many artists -- mainly the oppressed, but with some proportion for white males -- dredging up plenty of psychic experiences, whether they be expressed in popular, alternative, or experimental forms. So the dichotomy articulated by Pinkerton is a false one. He wants a more open cinema, but in trying to broaden its parameters, he inadvertently cordons it off himself.