After a great and inspiring last TV class and some encouraging words from two profs today, I am back to feeling ok about this whole LA thing.
Can't win!
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Monday, April 27, 2009
conflicted
I am missing New York City particularly acutely today. Perhaps it is the fact that it's spring there, or that the Tribeca Film Festival (in which some of my friends are involved) is in full swing, or that I will be returning there in a mere 11 days, if only for a grand total of five weeks when international travel is taken into account.
Things I miss about New York at the moment include subways, walking places, good theater, bagels, seasons, subways, Astoria, yoga places in walking distance of my house, a rational density of coffee shops, weekends in the East Village, Bluestockings book store, the Ziegfeld, the fact that everything doesn't look like one giant strip mall, and subways. In fact, after being away from New York for a little while, even thoughts of sixth-floor walk-ups, $100 Metrocards and the perpetual rat colony on Bond Street seem to evoke a bit of homesickness.
I am frequently conflicted about Los Angeles's place in my future, since I continue to think that Los Angeles is just not meant to be my home. I keep remembering the numerous East Coast transplants who've said that it took them two, even three years to appreciate LA, reminding myself that I can't pass final judgment on LA until I learn to drive and have access to its sprawling expanse by car (although that fact in itself fills me with chagrin), and worrying that I'll be shooting my career in the foot if I don't stay in LA after graduation. But then I think of Washington Square Park or the Organic Grill or the 48 hours in which I went to see Che, Man on Wire, Blasted AND Black Watch over winter break and those arguments go right out the window into the perpetual SoCal sunshine. And even that is starting to get a bit boring, because when the weather is the same every day time seems to pass at a snail's pace and everyone gets exasperatingly unhurried, instead of rushing by in the proper fashion, as they do when you have freezing winters and sweltering summers to keep you on track.
So then I start to think, well, there is some film industry in New York, as well as a literary and theater scene, and hopefully the economy will be a bit better by the time I graduate, and if I have to have a day job (assuming I'm not going to sign a six-figure option deal the day after graduation) it might as well be in a place I love instead of one I kind of hate. And then I think of the avalanche of debt I will be in and wonder if I'm completely crazy to even think of moving to one of the few cities more expensive than the one I live in now. Then I think about how maybe the solution is more school--which is a very dangerous thought indeed.
Then I think about how much I also really love San Francisco. But that is neither here nor there.
Things I miss about New York at the moment include subways, walking places, good theater, bagels, seasons, subways, Astoria, yoga places in walking distance of my house, a rational density of coffee shops, weekends in the East Village, Bluestockings book store, the Ziegfeld, the fact that everything doesn't look like one giant strip mall, and subways. In fact, after being away from New York for a little while, even thoughts of sixth-floor walk-ups, $100 Metrocards and the perpetual rat colony on Bond Street seem to evoke a bit of homesickness.
I am frequently conflicted about Los Angeles's place in my future, since I continue to think that Los Angeles is just not meant to be my home. I keep remembering the numerous East Coast transplants who've said that it took them two, even three years to appreciate LA, reminding myself that I can't pass final judgment on LA until I learn to drive and have access to its sprawling expanse by car (although that fact in itself fills me with chagrin), and worrying that I'll be shooting my career in the foot if I don't stay in LA after graduation. But then I think of Washington Square Park or the Organic Grill or the 48 hours in which I went to see Che, Man on Wire, Blasted AND Black Watch over winter break and those arguments go right out the window into the perpetual SoCal sunshine. And even that is starting to get a bit boring, because when the weather is the same every day time seems to pass at a snail's pace and everyone gets exasperatingly unhurried, instead of rushing by in the proper fashion, as they do when you have freezing winters and sweltering summers to keep you on track.
So then I start to think, well, there is some film industry in New York, as well as a literary and theater scene, and hopefully the economy will be a bit better by the time I graduate, and if I have to have a day job (assuming I'm not going to sign a six-figure option deal the day after graduation) it might as well be in a place I love instead of one I kind of hate. And then I think of the avalanche of debt I will be in and wonder if I'm completely crazy to even think of moving to one of the few cities more expensive than the one I live in now. Then I think about how maybe the solution is more school--which is a very dangerous thought indeed.
Then I think about how much I also really love San Francisco. But that is neither here nor there.
this is really hard
The end of the semester is rapidly approaching, which means the real world looks depressingly closer from this side of the first half of grad school. It also means that while I've already written what feels like a million pages this semester, I have about half a million more to write.
One thing that's proven to be a lot harder than I thought is writing my spec episode for Dexter. A spec, for the uninitiated, is basically a fake episode of an existing TV show that you use to show your abilities as a TV writer. While people do sometimes sell their spec episodes to TV series for production, more often it serves as a good writing sample that can help get you things like an agent or a TV staff writing job.
We're required to take either a comedy or drama spec class in order to graduate, and drama spec is a pre-requisite for the original dramatic pilot class, which I do very much want to take. Our teacher is wonderful, and is also the first female writing teacher I've had at USC, and she worked on Battlestar, which makes her cool. And I like Dexter a lot--in fact, watching almost every episode of the series has made me really appreciate it as an original and well-written show.
But goddam. Writing a spec is really friggin' hard and I do not like it.
Some people find working with a pre-existing world and set of characters to be easy and a lot of fun, which is I guess what makes them good TV writers. But I like creating that stuff myself, so for me trying to write someone else's world is roughly akin to some painful dental procedure.
I want to do a good job, because I like my teacher and have learned a lot from her, and because people who can get me jobs may actually read my spec. But I'm pretty sure it's the last one I will ever write.
One thing that's proven to be a lot harder than I thought is writing my spec episode for Dexter. A spec, for the uninitiated, is basically a fake episode of an existing TV show that you use to show your abilities as a TV writer. While people do sometimes sell their spec episodes to TV series for production, more often it serves as a good writing sample that can help get you things like an agent or a TV staff writing job.
We're required to take either a comedy or drama spec class in order to graduate, and drama spec is a pre-requisite for the original dramatic pilot class, which I do very much want to take. Our teacher is wonderful, and is also the first female writing teacher I've had at USC, and she worked on Battlestar, which makes her cool. And I like Dexter a lot--in fact, watching almost every episode of the series has made me really appreciate it as an original and well-written show.
But goddam. Writing a spec is really friggin' hard and I do not like it.
Some people find working with a pre-existing world and set of characters to be easy and a lot of fun, which is I guess what makes them good TV writers. But I like creating that stuff myself, so for me trying to write someone else's world is roughly akin to some painful dental procedure.
I want to do a good job, because I like my teacher and have learned a lot from her, and because people who can get me jobs may actually read my spec. But I'm pretty sure it's the last one I will ever write.
Sunday, April 19, 2009
more efforts to break the siege of gaza
The CODEPINK delegation, it seems, will be just one of several (possibly many!) international efforts to break the siege of Gaza in May and June.
The European Campaign to End the Siege on Gaza will be sending a large convoy of medical supplies and other aid overland through the Rafah crossing, accompanied by journalists, doctors, activists and some lefty European MPs.
The FreeGaza ships are back as well! These gutsy small craft have been running the Israeli naval blockade since August 2008, successfully reaching Gaza six times. (A seventh voyage in the first few days of the recent "war" was forced to make an emergency landing in Lebanon after the ship was rammed and nearly sunk by Israeli gunboats.) This summer, the FreeGaza movement will be sending a "flotilla" of ships to break the siege at the end of May. Apparently both Cindy Sheehan and Green Party presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney (who was on the aborted voyage of the Dignity in December) have both signed on to travel with the fleet.
I don't know their exact timeline, but it would be truly amazing to get to stand on the shores of Gaza and watch these ships arrive!
As profoundly inspiring as these grassroots efforts are, I can't help feeling a twinge of annoyance at the fact that a bunch of poorly-funded activists have to resort to civil disobedience (potentially risking their lives, in the case of the ships) to bring a relatively meager amount of aid to Gaza, while all the aid that Gaza needs could easily be delivered if the borders were opened. And that is ignoring, of course, the fact that Gaza wouldn't need aid at all if it weren't occupied and people were allowed to fish and farm and trade unimpeded. But I guess if I were not angry about these things, I wouldn't be going at all.
between two worlds
Early in Gaza Sunrise, there's a scene in which the main character (an unmarried, independent woman who was raised by her militant father) is sitting in a room full of women in her grandparents' home. The women are all talking about marriage and babies and she feels totally uncomfortable. She leaves and walks down the hall to a room full of men, where she feels much more at home, even though the first thing that happens is that someone calls attention to the fact that she's female.
When I brought this scene to class someone asked what the point of it was, from a dramatic standpoint. My teacher, who can be quite insightful despite the fact that I've had many arguments about the script with him, hit the nail on the head. "It's to show that she's between two worlds," he said. "Not really this, but not really that either."
That is, of course, exactly the point of the scene, and I was pleased someone had noticed it, because I've spend large chunks of my life feeling exactly like that.
My home town of Baltimore is, like many post-industrial northern cities, sharply divided into white and Black neighborhoods. My childhood home is the last house in a fairly wealthy white neighborhood, which is divided from a much poorer Black neighborhood by a wall (politely called a "noise barrier") that abuts our property. I have often thought that this image is a surprisingly apt metaphor for my life.
I grew up perceiving the Black neighborhood as alien and a bit scary. The kids there walked home from school or took what seemed to be a completely unintelligible bus system. My sister and I were not to go to the 7 Eleven directly across the street without adult supervision. The Black neighborhood was the source (it was always implied) of the thieves who stole my sister's bike off the back porch on Christmas Day and stole our crappy car four or five times over the years (it was always recovered--the parts weren't even worth anything) and of the homeless man who my dad once paid a few dollars to help with yard work, who then harassed us like a stray cat at all hours of the night until threats to call the police were made.
Clearly, I wasn't part of that world. But the white neighborhood, whose center of gravity was the multi-million-dollar houses around the Sherwood Gardens tulip park, didn't really feel like my world either. Those people had moveable feast fundraisers for charity in their lavish homes, and their neighborhood association once sent us a nasty letter when our house had gone too long without a new paint job.
My mom was a teacher's assistant at a private school, and my dad was a civil servant with several advanced degrees. We owned our home (although, like most of America, it's now mortgaged to the hilt.) My sister and I both attended private schools and fairly expensive private colleges. We certainly weren't poor. We just weren't as rich as most of the people around us. There was a reason we lived in the last house in the white neighborhood.
This sense of estrangement from almost everyone who, on the surface, looked like me reached its apex in high school, when I attended one of a coterie of three very preppy prep schools not far from my home. Surely some of this alienation came from being queer (a fact of which I was not aware until college) but most of it came from class.
Don't get me wrong--I received a fantastic education, for which I am extremely grateful. I took film studies, Russian, a semester-long class on Middle East history, and college-level math, science and English classes. Our theater department put on productions that rivaled many colleges' in sophistication. But the upshot was I was surrounded by people whose families were much wealthier than mine (because clearly only wealthy children deserve such an excellent education), and spent a lot of time feeling intensely, deeply, profoundly alienated. It was not surprising, therefore, that I became friends with a rogue's gallery of five or six class outcasts, and that many of us, whether we were aware of it or not, were united by class.
As I've moved through different social circles, I've experienced various levels of fitting-in-ness, but the feeling of being just a little bit outside has persisted. The corollary is that I've always been drawn to outcasts, rebels, loners and weirdos, to people who have some experience of being a bit uncomfortable with their identity, be they present-day real people, historical figures or imaginary friends.
Even now, when I have many wonderful friends who are interested in many of the same things I am, the otherness is hard to shake. When I'm with my film school friends, I won't shut up about Gaza, to the point that some of them are probably quite sick of it--since, after all, being political is not a prerequisite for film school. But when I'm with the circle of activists I've started to associate with, I often find myself far more preoccupied with the politics of representation and audience identification than with the logistics of planning the next event.
I have another teacher who recently told our class: "Outside can be a good place for an artist." I suppose that's true, but it doesn't change the fact that outside feels pretty lonely an awful lot of the time.
three words
Writers tend to have a bad habit of always searching for the exact right word for something--especially screenwriters, who have to be rigorously concise. I've recently come across three right words in three different languages and thought I would share them with you.
I like this term a lot. I would be happy to be called an international instead of an American any day. I like that, in return for our solidarity with an oppressed group, we citizens of oppressor nations get the option to put aside our nationality a bit and be global citizens, if only in name.
2. I was searching for the correct parting salutation for a note I was leaving for the author of tales to tell (who, sadly, is leaving Gaza shortly to return to the UK) and the Spanish imperative cuidate popped into my head. Usually translated as "be careful," it more literally means "take care of yourself," which can have all kinds of different interpretations and seems a very apt benediction for situations in which phrases like "be careful" and "be safe" have little meaning.
3. I recently went home to Baltimore to attend the funeral of the father of a close friend. I kept trying to find the correct term to describe my relationship with this friend, who knows more about me than probably anyone in the world, including most of my own blood relatives. It wasn't until a few days ago that I thought of the Arabic word habibi (or habibti for a woman), which means "beloved," but doesn't necessarily carry any romantic or sexual connotations, as being appropriate.
Saturday, April 18, 2009
why i'm going to gaza
As some readers may know, after spending the past semester writing about Gaza, I will be traveling there in real life from May 28 to June 5, with a solidarity delegation organized by CODEPINK, a women's antiwar organization.
In March, CODEPINK led a 60-person delegation to Gaza to celebrate International Women's Day with the women of Gaza. This summer's delegations (there will be at least two) will focus on children. We will be delivering school supplies and other aid, helping to build a playground near a school damaged by Israeli attacks, meeting with activists, UN staff, teachers, students and health workers, and doing lots of listening, documenting and witnessing.
Children and minors make up 56% of the population of Gaza. Most have never known a life without occupation and war, and many have spent their entire lives inside this tiny strip of land less than half the size of New York City. (In fact, the children of Gaza, in most cases the third or fourth generation of Palestinian refugees, have all grown up during the supposed "peace process"--meaning most of them cannot remember a time when they were not surrounded by a wall.) And yet, despite incredibly difficult circumstances, the Palestinian refugee population continues to have some of the highest rates of literacy, education of women and girls, and university and professional school graduation in the Arab world.
Although traveling halfway around the world to an area under military occupation is not a commitment to be taken lightly, in truth it was one of the easiest decisions I have ever made. I had been desperately wanting to go to Palestine after spending so much time writing about it. The rational empiricist in me tends to resist the idea that things happen for a reason, but when I received the email from Cindy Corrie (mother of murdered peace activist Rachel Corrie, who would have turned 30 this month) announcing this delegation, I very quickly became certain that I was supposed to go.
When I mentioned the trip to my friend B, she brought up the Goethe quote that goes something like "at the moment of commitment the entire universe conspires to assist you," and I thought, yes, that's exactly right. This is a universe-conspiracy of epic proportions. After spending an entire semester writing about characters breaking the siege of Gaza, the opportunity to spend a bit of my summer breaking the siege of Gaza just doesn't seem like something I'm supposed to pass up.
Plenty of my reasons for going, I'll admit, are self-motivated. To see for myself the places I have only been imagining for the past several months. To feel like I'm doing something concrete to support people who are living under extremely difficult conditions and who often feel like the whole world has turned its back on them. To spend time with people with whom I don't have to argue about who is the oppressor and who is the oppressed in this situation. To be able to come back to the US and speak with greater understanding and authority about the region and its people. To absorb and bring back with me just a tiny bit of that ineffable Palestinian spirit, the spark that allows people to survive and fight back after 60 years of oppression.
Mostly, I feel like Gaza has given me an incredible gift, really the best gift you can possibly give a writer, which is the opportunity to tell an amazing story. And I want to give something in return.
Quite a few people have asked me if this trip is dangerous, and it is hard to give an uncomplicated answer to this. Danger and safety are relative terms. I can say that this delegation is not designed to be nearly as high-risk as, say, the work done by activists in the International Solidarity Movement, and that it is being led by very experienced activists who have traveled to Palestine multiple times. I can say that as internationals, we are (theoretically) vastly more protected from the wrath of the Israeli military than any Palestinian is. I can say that absolutely no one should be discouraged from joining the delegation out of fear, because I'm sure it will be an amazing, powerful and inspiring experience.
That said, they are called the Occupied Territories for a reason. Even though the "war" is over, the Israeli military presence is still constant, as it was before Operation Cast Lead. This is an army, mind you, that has a record of shooting children, farmers, fishermen, documentary cameramen, civilians carrying white flags, paramedics, deaf people, and nonviolent, unarmed protesters. So the level of risk is certainly not zero. But it seems to me that an essential component of any westerner's trip to Palestine is the recognition that Palestinians live with this risk every day of their lives, and your life is not worth any more or less than theirs.
One of the questions asked on the application to go on the delegation is "What do you hope to gain from this experience?" At first glance this might seem an odd thing to ask. But, for me, it was an excellent reminder that this trip is not an act of charity, a benevolent bestowing of something upon a passive recipient, but an act of solidarity, a forging of connections between two equal partners. And I feel that any risk or danger involved in this trip is vastly, vastly outweighed by what I have to gain from the experience, as an activist, a writer and a human being.
I will continue to post updates on the trip here in the coming weeks and report from inside Gaza when I have internet access. In addition, I'm planning to film and photograph as much as possible. Watch this space for further updates. Free Palestine!
In March, CODEPINK led a 60-person delegation to Gaza to celebrate International Women's Day with the women of Gaza. This summer's delegations (there will be at least two) will focus on children. We will be delivering school supplies and other aid, helping to build a playground near a school damaged by Israeli attacks, meeting with activists, UN staff, teachers, students and health workers, and doing lots of listening, documenting and witnessing.
Children and minors make up 56% of the population of Gaza. Most have never known a life without occupation and war, and many have spent their entire lives inside this tiny strip of land less than half the size of New York City. (In fact, the children of Gaza, in most cases the third or fourth generation of Palestinian refugees, have all grown up during the supposed "peace process"--meaning most of them cannot remember a time when they were not surrounded by a wall.) And yet, despite incredibly difficult circumstances, the Palestinian refugee population continues to have some of the highest rates of literacy, education of women and girls, and university and professional school graduation in the Arab world.
Although traveling halfway around the world to an area under military occupation is not a commitment to be taken lightly, in truth it was one of the easiest decisions I have ever made. I had been desperately wanting to go to Palestine after spending so much time writing about it. The rational empiricist in me tends to resist the idea that things happen for a reason, but when I received the email from Cindy Corrie (mother of murdered peace activist Rachel Corrie, who would have turned 30 this month) announcing this delegation, I very quickly became certain that I was supposed to go.
When I mentioned the trip to my friend B, she brought up the Goethe quote that goes something like "at the moment of commitment the entire universe conspires to assist you," and I thought, yes, that's exactly right. This is a universe-conspiracy of epic proportions. After spending an entire semester writing about characters breaking the siege of Gaza, the opportunity to spend a bit of my summer breaking the siege of Gaza just doesn't seem like something I'm supposed to pass up.
Plenty of my reasons for going, I'll admit, are self-motivated. To see for myself the places I have only been imagining for the past several months. To feel like I'm doing something concrete to support people who are living under extremely difficult conditions and who often feel like the whole world has turned its back on them. To spend time with people with whom I don't have to argue about who is the oppressor and who is the oppressed in this situation. To be able to come back to the US and speak with greater understanding and authority about the region and its people. To absorb and bring back with me just a tiny bit of that ineffable Palestinian spirit, the spark that allows people to survive and fight back after 60 years of oppression.
Mostly, I feel like Gaza has given me an incredible gift, really the best gift you can possibly give a writer, which is the opportunity to tell an amazing story. And I want to give something in return.
Quite a few people have asked me if this trip is dangerous, and it is hard to give an uncomplicated answer to this. Danger and safety are relative terms. I can say that this delegation is not designed to be nearly as high-risk as, say, the work done by activists in the International Solidarity Movement, and that it is being led by very experienced activists who have traveled to Palestine multiple times. I can say that as internationals, we are (theoretically) vastly more protected from the wrath of the Israeli military than any Palestinian is. I can say that absolutely no one should be discouraged from joining the delegation out of fear, because I'm sure it will be an amazing, powerful and inspiring experience.
That said, they are called the Occupied Territories for a reason. Even though the "war" is over, the Israeli military presence is still constant, as it was before Operation Cast Lead. This is an army, mind you, that has a record of shooting children, farmers, fishermen, documentary cameramen, civilians carrying white flags, paramedics, deaf people, and nonviolent, unarmed protesters. So the level of risk is certainly not zero. But it seems to me that an essential component of any westerner's trip to Palestine is the recognition that Palestinians live with this risk every day of their lives, and your life is not worth any more or less than theirs.
One of the questions asked on the application to go on the delegation is "What do you hope to gain from this experience?" At first glance this might seem an odd thing to ask. But, for me, it was an excellent reminder that this trip is not an act of charity, a benevolent bestowing of something upon a passive recipient, but an act of solidarity, a forging of connections between two equal partners. And I feel that any risk or danger involved in this trip is vastly, vastly outweighed by what I have to gain from the experience, as an activist, a writer and a human being.
I will continue to post updates on the trip here in the coming weeks and report from inside Gaza when I have internet access. In addition, I'm planning to film and photograph as much as possible. Watch this space for further updates. Free Palestine!
Thursday, April 16, 2009
did you know?
Last week I went to a reportback meeting from Gaza with Reem Salahi of the National Lawyers Guild, who went on a fact-finding delegation to look for evidence of Israeli war crimes. (Surprise! They found some.)
Here are some new tidbits to add to the atrocity file:
1. On the first day of the "war," Israel bombed the only forensic lab in Gaza. Along with most of the police stations, it was one of the first things hit. This, along with Israel's policy of making it as difficult as possible to recover the bodies of the dead in a timely manner, has made it hard to collect the kind of empirical evidence of specific war crimes that would stand up to a tribunal of any sort, were one actually to be convened.
2. The Israeli military has the GPS coordinates of every UN facility in Gaza--every school, warehouse, administrative building, etc. Every UN building is also required by law to have "UN" painted in huge letters on its roof. This is supposed to keep military forces from doing things like, oh, say, this or this.
Furthermore, John Ging, the director of UN operations in the area, was in direct communication with Israeli military commanders just minutes before the UN compound in Gaza City was hit. I'd imagine the conversation went something like this:
John: Um, your air strikes are getting really close. Could you please not bomb us?
IDF: Don't worry. We have your coordinates. We won't bomb you.
John: Okay, cool. Just checking in, since we have civilians taking shelter here because you destroyed their homes, and thousands of tons of food and medicine stored in our warehouses, and two fuel tankers in the compound that will explode and kill us all if you bomb them.
IDF: Don't worry, we won't bomb you.
Apparently, two brave volunteers decided not to take any chances and risked their lives to move the fuel trucks out of the compound. Minutes later, the warehouse was hit by an Israeli air strike, and thousands of tons of aid burned.
Speaking of which...
3. Okay, I had heard some about this one before the reportback, but full outrageousness of the situation is only becoming more apparent with time. The main problem facing Gazans now is an acute lack of even basic humanitarian aid. This is not a problem of lack of will or money on the part of aid organizations or the UN. Oh, no. There are TENS OF THOUSANDS OF TONS of food, medicine, blankets, tents, and construction materials waiting at the borders of Gaza. But Israel and Egypt control the borders, and they are not letting anything in.
Tons upon tons of food aid is literally rotting in El-Arish, the nearest Egyptian city to Gaza, as Israel allows in only the tiniest trickle of "essential" items, a ludicrously small sliver of what is needed. Among the items deemed "non-essential," and thus barred entirely: chocolate, jam, fruit juice, toilet paper, soap, pasta, lentils, honey, and cigarettes, along with glass, concrete, cement and steel--which are all, of course, needed to rebuild people's homes.
This is not a humanitarian crisis. It is a political crisis completely manufactured by Israel and its allies. The borders should be opened IMMEDIATELY and COMPLETELY.
If you would like to call the Egyptian embassy in DC and ask why they are withholding aid from Gaza by keeping the Rafah border crossing closed, their number is (202) 895-5400, fax (202) 244-5131/(202) 244-4319.
Here are some new tidbits to add to the atrocity file:
1. On the first day of the "war," Israel bombed the only forensic lab in Gaza. Along with most of the police stations, it was one of the first things hit. This, along with Israel's policy of making it as difficult as possible to recover the bodies of the dead in a timely manner, has made it hard to collect the kind of empirical evidence of specific war crimes that would stand up to a tribunal of any sort, were one actually to be convened.
2. The Israeli military has the GPS coordinates of every UN facility in Gaza--every school, warehouse, administrative building, etc. Every UN building is also required by law to have "UN" painted in huge letters on its roof. This is supposed to keep military forces from doing things like, oh, say, this or this.
Furthermore, John Ging, the director of UN operations in the area, was in direct communication with Israeli military commanders just minutes before the UN compound in Gaza City was hit. I'd imagine the conversation went something like this:
John: Um, your air strikes are getting really close. Could you please not bomb us?
IDF: Don't worry. We have your coordinates. We won't bomb you.
John: Okay, cool. Just checking in, since we have civilians taking shelter here because you destroyed their homes, and thousands of tons of food and medicine stored in our warehouses, and two fuel tankers in the compound that will explode and kill us all if you bomb them.
IDF: Don't worry, we won't bomb you.
Apparently, two brave volunteers decided not to take any chances and risked their lives to move the fuel trucks out of the compound. Minutes later, the warehouse was hit by an Israeli air strike, and thousands of tons of aid burned.
Speaking of which...
3. Okay, I had heard some about this one before the reportback, but full outrageousness of the situation is only becoming more apparent with time. The main problem facing Gazans now is an acute lack of even basic humanitarian aid. This is not a problem of lack of will or money on the part of aid organizations or the UN. Oh, no. There are TENS OF THOUSANDS OF TONS of food, medicine, blankets, tents, and construction materials waiting at the borders of Gaza. But Israel and Egypt control the borders, and they are not letting anything in.
Tons upon tons of food aid is literally rotting in El-Arish, the nearest Egyptian city to Gaza, as Israel allows in only the tiniest trickle of "essential" items, a ludicrously small sliver of what is needed. Among the items deemed "non-essential," and thus barred entirely: chocolate, jam, fruit juice, toilet paper, soap, pasta, lentils, honey, and cigarettes, along with glass, concrete, cement and steel--which are all, of course, needed to rebuild people's homes.
This is not a humanitarian crisis. It is a political crisis completely manufactured by Israel and its allies. The borders should be opened IMMEDIATELY and COMPLETELY.
If you would like to call the Egyptian embassy in DC and ask why they are withholding aid from Gaza by keeping the Rafah border crossing closed, their number is (202) 895-5400, fax (202) 244-5131/(202) 244-4319.
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
the end
I finished the first draft of Gaza Sunrise and sent it to my professor at 2:56 am this morning.
(I am still trying to decide if I think the title is cheesy or just right. It does sound a bit like a drink...but I really wanted "Gaza" on the title page, and if you read the script I think it kind of fits.)
I realized after I sent it that I hadn't typed "Fade Out" or "The End" after the last scene...and then I wasn't sure which one to type. I finally settled on "The End," although of course it's only a first draft, so it's really just the beginning.
This isn't the first time I've completed a feature script, but it is the first time I've completed one that I think is any good. Of course, many things will probably change in subsequent drafts, and there are still a few places where I knew scenes were running way too long, but it was pretty cool to scroll through 112 pages and realize that things were generally in the places they were supposed to be and think, hey, this is starting to be a movie.
During our break in TV class last week, one of my classmates, a second-year, was talking about how she was reluctant to send out material she'd written as a first year, because she felt she had gotten so much stronger as a writer during her thesis year. I feel like I've already learned enough in this semester alone to make my brain explode. Who knows what I'll learn next year?
I'm going to write a longer blog post at some point with more details about all the things I learned through writing this script, particularly my thoughts about writing political and true-life stories. (I feel like I have enough opinions on this now to teach a class on it...a class which would probably be fascinating only to me.) Some of these things I learned in feature class, others I learned in Script Analysis, and many I taught myself along the way. (But I guess that's part of grad school too--knowing enough to know what you need to teach yourself.)
But by far the most important thing I learned from this process was to not let anyone talk you out of writing something you want to write. I came very close to giving up on this story at the beginning of the semester, since so many people were telling me it was a bad idea and couldn't be done. But luckily, I have a character flaw by which, as soon as people start telling me I can't do something, I have to prove them wrong. (Not surprisingly, my protagonist also possesses this quality.)
Early in the semester, this idea was used as an example (in TWO classes other than my own) of something not to write. Well, I wrote it. I was the first in my class to finish, and, while it's certainly far from done, I am proud of how it turned out.
I think Moira Shaheed would approve.
(I am still trying to decide if I think the title is cheesy or just right. It does sound a bit like a drink...but I really wanted "Gaza" on the title page, and if you read the script I think it kind of fits.)
I realized after I sent it that I hadn't typed "Fade Out" or "The End" after the last scene...and then I wasn't sure which one to type. I finally settled on "The End," although of course it's only a first draft, so it's really just the beginning.
This isn't the first time I've completed a feature script, but it is the first time I've completed one that I think is any good. Of course, many things will probably change in subsequent drafts, and there are still a few places where I knew scenes were running way too long, but it was pretty cool to scroll through 112 pages and realize that things were generally in the places they were supposed to be and think, hey, this is starting to be a movie.
During our break in TV class last week, one of my classmates, a second-year, was talking about how she was reluctant to send out material she'd written as a first year, because she felt she had gotten so much stronger as a writer during her thesis year. I feel like I've already learned enough in this semester alone to make my brain explode. Who knows what I'll learn next year?
I'm going to write a longer blog post at some point with more details about all the things I learned through writing this script, particularly my thoughts about writing political and true-life stories. (I feel like I have enough opinions on this now to teach a class on it...a class which would probably be fascinating only to me.) Some of these things I learned in feature class, others I learned in Script Analysis, and many I taught myself along the way. (But I guess that's part of grad school too--knowing enough to know what you need to teach yourself.)
But by far the most important thing I learned from this process was to not let anyone talk you out of writing something you want to write. I came very close to giving up on this story at the beginning of the semester, since so many people were telling me it was a bad idea and couldn't be done. But luckily, I have a character flaw by which, as soon as people start telling me I can't do something, I have to prove them wrong. (Not surprisingly, my protagonist also possesses this quality.)
Early in the semester, this idea was used as an example (in TWO classes other than my own) of something not to write. Well, I wrote it. I was the first in my class to finish, and, while it's certainly far from done, I am proud of how it turned out.
I think Moira Shaheed would approve.
Sunday, April 12, 2009
problems of humanity
Once again, the argument came up in my feature class that my Gaza script is not "balanced" because it has no sympathetic Israeli characters. This argument has come up before, and I am often tempted to shout "that's not the point!" and be done with it, but I realize that that is not a very persuasive way to win anyone over to my point of view.
However, the persistence of this argument highlights some of the unique storytelling problems I've faced when writing this script. The core issue is this: when the way you see and understand a particular world is very different from--in fact, almost diametrically opposed to--the way it is perceived by the majority of Americans, how do you bridge the gap?
With Israel/Palestine, the first hurdle is a basic problem of misinformation. The US media constantly tells us that the Israelis are the victims in this situation, that they are under attack, that they have "a right to defend themselves." Their army is called a "defense force"--what could be wrong with that? We are constantly encouraged to sympathize with Israeli suffering, with victims of suicide attacks, with kids growing up under Hamas rocket fire in Sderot.
The Palestinians, for their part, are terrorists at worst, and passive victims caught between warring extremists at best. They are "othered" at every turn. We are told that they live in a culture of martyrdom, that they teach their children hate, that they would drive the Jews into the sea if they could.
So, on the first, most basic level, this script is an act of affirmative action of humanity--giving Palestinian characters not just humanity, diversity and individuality, but agency. I didn't just want to make the point that, contrary to what the media would have us believe, the Israelis are the oppressors and the Palestinians are the oppressed. That is only half the battle. Just showing that the Palestinians are oppressed, occupied, and suffering is not, in itself, a radical artistic statement. But to show them as people who are actively fighting for their liberation, in many different ways, and to invite the audience to sympathize with that struggle, is indeed radical.
In screenplays, characters don't fully come alive until they face conflict. That means they must be trying to do something and encounter an obstacle. The way they deal with that obstacle is what makes us identify with them.
If your protagonists are Palestinians trying to break the siege of Gaza, it is pretty clear that your antagonists are going to be the IDF and Shabak (the Israeli secret police--there isn't really an equivalent organization to compare them to in the US.)
As a screenwriter, one faces the problem that these two organizations are not exactly the greatest representatives of Israeli humanity. It is, honestly, a bit hard for me to care that much about humanizing the IDF when my imagination is stuffed to the brim with tale after tale of savagery, humiliation and deliberate cruelty from Operation Cast Lead.
I realize that as a writer, I am facing the exact same problem that Palestinians face--how do you teach your children that not all Israelis are violent occupiers when every Israeli they've ever seen is holding an M-16? This is a reality of life in the Occupied Territories--and one of the goals of my script is to help people understand that world.
Of course I know that not every Israeli soldier is an inhuman beast. (Although the fact that I feel I have to actively state this shows how far the discourse has been tilted in Israel's favor.) Yes, of course, they are people, individuals with feelings, and I'm sure many of them have doubts about their actions in the Territories from time to time. But they are also cogs in the machinery of one of the most vicious and prolonged occupations in modern history--and that has a concrete effect on their humanity, on how they act as individuals. The IDF, like any army, puts a lot of effort into driving out any scrap of empathy in its soldiers, since their mission is to kill and oppress another group of people. And it largely succeeds. If you need further proof of the depths of dehumanization of Palestinians that the IDF allows (and, I would argue, encourages), just read this article from Ha'aretz--if you can stomach the whole thing.
There is another difference between the IDF and almost any other modern army, which has to do with the nature of Israel as a colonial settler state. The IDF's mission is not the same as, say, the mission of US soldiers in Iraq. The mission of the US army in Iraq--in a broad sense--is to enforce the United States's imperial control over the Middle East and its oil. This benefits US corporations, who make a profit, and the US state, which gets leverage over anyone else who needs foreign oil (almost every country in the world, but most importantly Europe and the rising economic powers of Asia.) This is a mission which, I would argue, is not in interest of the US soldiers themselves. In fact, it is directly against their interests--since their government is sending them to kill and die to secure profits and power that they (the US soldiers) will never see. In fact, I would argue that the ordinary Americans who serve in the US army have more in common with the ordinary Iraqis they're being sent to fight than with the people who control the government that's sending them to do the fighting.
But in Israel, the situation is a bit different. Because the mission of the IDF is to defend Israel as it currently exists--as a colonial state for Jews only. Israel was formed by driving out 750,000 non-Jewish indigenous inhabitants, to create a Jewish majority in a land where there hadn't been one before. As long as Israel exists as a state for Jews only (which, more often than not, has really meant white European Jews), the Palestinians will be a threat by their very existence. The Israeli army's mission will only be complete when every Palestinian is either ghettoized and completely subservient (impossible, in my opinion), driven out of historic Palestine (a very possible, but incomplete solution), or exterminated (the final solution, one might say.) Of course, only the most right-wing fringe elements of Israeli society will come out and actually say this--but those fringe elements are gaining increasing traction.
There is really only one historic parallel to this situation I can think of, which is the formation of the United States. The IDF acts, not so much like the US Army of today, but quite a bit like the US cavalry of the 1800s, which spent the better part of a century slaughtering the native inhabitants of the middle part of the North American continent, forcing them onto reservations, and stealing their land for use by European settlers.
This is an important point, because the citizens of a colonial settler state are somewhat different than the citizens of any other state. Israel is a very peculiar entity, because, unlike almost any other state in the world, its citizens are bound together by a common interest as colonizers in someone else's land. The citizens of Israel benefit from direct aid by the United States, which subsidizes modern roads (on which Palestinians cannot drive) affordable housing and modern infrastructure side by side with places like Gaza, in which many neighborhoods still lack sewage systems. The Israeli state secures the most fertile land and the majority of the water in a desert climate for its Jewish citizens, and, by and large, keeps Israeli workers' wages high by preventing competition from Palestinian workers who could almost certainly be forced to work for less. (Although this has been undercut somewhat in recent years by Israel importing cheap labor from Asia and Eastern Europe, so afraid are they to let Palestinians have even the crappiest jobs in Israel.)
This is the secret that keeps Israeli politics sliding further and further to the right, that makes Israel's poor the most right-wing section of the population instead of the most radical, and that allows Israel to conduct genocidal operations like Cast Lead with hardly a peep of protest from its own population, many of whom are themselves the descendants of the survivors of another genocide.
Of course, this does not mean that individual Israelis cannot work for peace with justice and feel compassion and solidarity with the Palestinians--many of them do, but they are a brave minority. And any Israeli who wants to fundamentally change the situation has to reckon with the fact that their state is based on the racist exclusion of the majority of the historic population of the region, and that no lasting peace will come without addressing that fundamental problem.
What is the point of going into all this, since I'm certainly not going to take time out from the action of my script to discuss the class nature of Israel as a colonial settler state? The point is that how you understand the world affects how you make art about it. I am just not going to write about the two sides as if they are equal, because I do not believe them to be. On one side, you have colonial occupiers, armed with the most modern military technology in the world and subsidized by billions of dollars of aid from the most powerful nation in the world, the United States. On the other side you have people who have been expelled from their homes and made refugees (sometimes several times over), forced into camps, walled in, thrown in prison for things as minor as displaying their nation's flag, besieged by air, land, and sea, denied the most basic degree of political sovereignty, and had every aspect of their lives and livelihoods relentlessly attacked, but who have continued to fight back for 60 years, despite being vastly militarily outmatched.
Fittingly enough for this discussion, this week in Script Analysis, we watched what is perhaps the most brilliant political film of all time, The Battle of Algiers. I wrote in an earlier post how, despite the fact that many people laud the film for its even-handedness, The Battle of Algiers very carefully and consciously aligns the audience's emotions with the Algerians from the beginning. The sneaky genius of The Battle of Algiers is that it's constructed in a way that allows some people to think it is even-handed, when it was actually conceived as a consciously anti-imperalist project and a calculated defense of the right of oppressed people to resist by any means necessary.
Algeria (like its parallel at the other end of the continent, South Africa) was also a modern settler colony, and it is quite interesting to see how the French settlers are presented in the film. One of the unique features of The Battle of Algiers is that crowds can be analyzed as characters in the film. In class, we discussed how the Algerian crowd, which can also be identified as "the Algerian people" (in a somewhat abstract, Maoist-inspired formulation entirely appropriate to the era) has a character arc. It grows and changes every time we see it. Specifically, it goes from being passive to being revolutionary--a really brilliant way to externalize on film the radicalization of a society. The French crowd, however, is a one-string character, which is defined in our class as "a character who does the same thing each time we see them." The thing that the French crowd does is react with misplaced, racist rage. It does not change, grow, or learn anything.
There is one notable time that we see the French crowd as something other than a racist mob--in the scenes where large numbers of civilians are about to be killed by three female bombers. Right before the bombs go off, we start to see close-ups of individual faces--men, women, dancing teenagers, a kid eating an ice cream cone. The effect of these shots is quite deliberate and unambiguous--to make us question the morality of the violent actions we know are about to happen. But I would argue that the effect is not just to humanize the French, but also to humanize the Algerians. We see what these three women see, and we feel the moral quandary at the exact same moment they do. We are seeing the humanity of the French through the eyes of the Algerians--and this helps us understand the bombers not as psychotic, unthinking terrorists, but as people with humanity who have decided that this is the only way to win their freedom.
Of course, the parallels between my film and The Battle of Algiers only go so far. My film does not take place in, say, Jerusalem, in an environment where Israeli and Palestinian civilians live side by side. It takes places in the Occupied Territories, where Palestinian civilians live side by side with Israeli soldiers. The characters are not engaged in attacks on Israelis at all--it could be argued that their act of resistance, although it involves high explosives, is completely nonviolent. (Which is, of course, one of the things that attracted me to the story in the first place.) If any of these elements were changed, it would certainly effect how I presented both Israeli and Palestinian characters. (Paradise Now, by the way, is a film that has almost no Israeli characters in it at all and still does a brilliant job of problematizing the actions of its Palestinian protagonists.)
There is another difference between my film and The Battle of Algiers, which is that mine is not an ensemble piece. That is a conscious choice on my part. Also in Script Analysis, we discussed how the primary effect of creating a script with one central character with a drive is to heighten emotional identification with that character--which is, of course, exactly what I want. I want my audience to identify with a Palestinian militant. And I don't think that is too much to ask.
In connection with our discussion of The Battle of Algiers, our teacher touched on something which I have long believed to be true, which is that the great power of film is its ability "to extend the reach of human imagination"--to allow us to share and understand the emotional journey of, say, someone who might otherwise be dismissed as a terrorist.
I decided early on in the script that one of the main ways I was going to help people understand the world of the Occupied Territories was simply to show it--to show daily life there by following our characters through this world. I wanted the audience to see this world the way my characters see it, which is also the way I see it. It's a world of checkpoints, closure, siege, walls, air strikes, raids, prison and collective punishment--but also a world of family, solidarity, courage, resistance, love, and hope. In short, a world worth fighting for. When you see and understand this world the way they do, I don't think it is very hard to identify with the drive to blow up a wall and open a border. In fact, I think it feels like something fundamentally, deeply human--the instinctive desire to resist oppression that resides in all of us.
However, the persistence of this argument highlights some of the unique storytelling problems I've faced when writing this script. The core issue is this: when the way you see and understand a particular world is very different from--in fact, almost diametrically opposed to--the way it is perceived by the majority of Americans, how do you bridge the gap?
With Israel/Palestine, the first hurdle is a basic problem of misinformation. The US media constantly tells us that the Israelis are the victims in this situation, that they are under attack, that they have "a right to defend themselves." Their army is called a "defense force"--what could be wrong with that? We are constantly encouraged to sympathize with Israeli suffering, with victims of suicide attacks, with kids growing up under Hamas rocket fire in Sderot.
The Palestinians, for their part, are terrorists at worst, and passive victims caught between warring extremists at best. They are "othered" at every turn. We are told that they live in a culture of martyrdom, that they teach their children hate, that they would drive the Jews into the sea if they could.
So, on the first, most basic level, this script is an act of affirmative action of humanity--giving Palestinian characters not just humanity, diversity and individuality, but agency. I didn't just want to make the point that, contrary to what the media would have us believe, the Israelis are the oppressors and the Palestinians are the oppressed. That is only half the battle. Just showing that the Palestinians are oppressed, occupied, and suffering is not, in itself, a radical artistic statement. But to show them as people who are actively fighting for their liberation, in many different ways, and to invite the audience to sympathize with that struggle, is indeed radical.
In screenplays, characters don't fully come alive until they face conflict. That means they must be trying to do something and encounter an obstacle. The way they deal with that obstacle is what makes us identify with them.
If your protagonists are Palestinians trying to break the siege of Gaza, it is pretty clear that your antagonists are going to be the IDF and Shabak (the Israeli secret police--there isn't really an equivalent organization to compare them to in the US.)
As a screenwriter, one faces the problem that these two organizations are not exactly the greatest representatives of Israeli humanity. It is, honestly, a bit hard for me to care that much about humanizing the IDF when my imagination is stuffed to the brim with tale after tale of savagery, humiliation and deliberate cruelty from Operation Cast Lead.
I realize that as a writer, I am facing the exact same problem that Palestinians face--how do you teach your children that not all Israelis are violent occupiers when every Israeli they've ever seen is holding an M-16? This is a reality of life in the Occupied Territories--and one of the goals of my script is to help people understand that world.
Of course I know that not every Israeli soldier is an inhuman beast. (Although the fact that I feel I have to actively state this shows how far the discourse has been tilted in Israel's favor.) Yes, of course, they are people, individuals with feelings, and I'm sure many of them have doubts about their actions in the Territories from time to time. But they are also cogs in the machinery of one of the most vicious and prolonged occupations in modern history--and that has a concrete effect on their humanity, on how they act as individuals. The IDF, like any army, puts a lot of effort into driving out any scrap of empathy in its soldiers, since their mission is to kill and oppress another group of people. And it largely succeeds. If you need further proof of the depths of dehumanization of Palestinians that the IDF allows (and, I would argue, encourages), just read this article from Ha'aretz--if you can stomach the whole thing.
There is another difference between the IDF and almost any other modern army, which has to do with the nature of Israel as a colonial settler state. The IDF's mission is not the same as, say, the mission of US soldiers in Iraq. The mission of the US army in Iraq--in a broad sense--is to enforce the United States's imperial control over the Middle East and its oil. This benefits US corporations, who make a profit, and the US state, which gets leverage over anyone else who needs foreign oil (almost every country in the world, but most importantly Europe and the rising economic powers of Asia.) This is a mission which, I would argue, is not in interest of the US soldiers themselves. In fact, it is directly against their interests--since their government is sending them to kill and die to secure profits and power that they (the US soldiers) will never see. In fact, I would argue that the ordinary Americans who serve in the US army have more in common with the ordinary Iraqis they're being sent to fight than with the people who control the government that's sending them to do the fighting.
But in Israel, the situation is a bit different. Because the mission of the IDF is to defend Israel as it currently exists--as a colonial state for Jews only. Israel was formed by driving out 750,000 non-Jewish indigenous inhabitants, to create a Jewish majority in a land where there hadn't been one before. As long as Israel exists as a state for Jews only (which, more often than not, has really meant white European Jews), the Palestinians will be a threat by their very existence. The Israeli army's mission will only be complete when every Palestinian is either ghettoized and completely subservient (impossible, in my opinion), driven out of historic Palestine (a very possible, but incomplete solution), or exterminated (the final solution, one might say.) Of course, only the most right-wing fringe elements of Israeli society will come out and actually say this--but those fringe elements are gaining increasing traction.
There is really only one historic parallel to this situation I can think of, which is the formation of the United States. The IDF acts, not so much like the US Army of today, but quite a bit like the US cavalry of the 1800s, which spent the better part of a century slaughtering the native inhabitants of the middle part of the North American continent, forcing them onto reservations, and stealing their land for use by European settlers.
This is an important point, because the citizens of a colonial settler state are somewhat different than the citizens of any other state. Israel is a very peculiar entity, because, unlike almost any other state in the world, its citizens are bound together by a common interest as colonizers in someone else's land. The citizens of Israel benefit from direct aid by the United States, which subsidizes modern roads (on which Palestinians cannot drive) affordable housing and modern infrastructure side by side with places like Gaza, in which many neighborhoods still lack sewage systems. The Israeli state secures the most fertile land and the majority of the water in a desert climate for its Jewish citizens, and, by and large, keeps Israeli workers' wages high by preventing competition from Palestinian workers who could almost certainly be forced to work for less. (Although this has been undercut somewhat in recent years by Israel importing cheap labor from Asia and Eastern Europe, so afraid are they to let Palestinians have even the crappiest jobs in Israel.)
This is the secret that keeps Israeli politics sliding further and further to the right, that makes Israel's poor the most right-wing section of the population instead of the most radical, and that allows Israel to conduct genocidal operations like Cast Lead with hardly a peep of protest from its own population, many of whom are themselves the descendants of the survivors of another genocide.
Of course, this does not mean that individual Israelis cannot work for peace with justice and feel compassion and solidarity with the Palestinians--many of them do, but they are a brave minority. And any Israeli who wants to fundamentally change the situation has to reckon with the fact that their state is based on the racist exclusion of the majority of the historic population of the region, and that no lasting peace will come without addressing that fundamental problem.
What is the point of going into all this, since I'm certainly not going to take time out from the action of my script to discuss the class nature of Israel as a colonial settler state? The point is that how you understand the world affects how you make art about it. I am just not going to write about the two sides as if they are equal, because I do not believe them to be. On one side, you have colonial occupiers, armed with the most modern military technology in the world and subsidized by billions of dollars of aid from the most powerful nation in the world, the United States. On the other side you have people who have been expelled from their homes and made refugees (sometimes several times over), forced into camps, walled in, thrown in prison for things as minor as displaying their nation's flag, besieged by air, land, and sea, denied the most basic degree of political sovereignty, and had every aspect of their lives and livelihoods relentlessly attacked, but who have continued to fight back for 60 years, despite being vastly militarily outmatched.
Fittingly enough for this discussion, this week in Script Analysis, we watched what is perhaps the most brilliant political film of all time, The Battle of Algiers. I wrote in an earlier post how, despite the fact that many people laud the film for its even-handedness, The Battle of Algiers very carefully and consciously aligns the audience's emotions with the Algerians from the beginning. The sneaky genius of The Battle of Algiers is that it's constructed in a way that allows some people to think it is even-handed, when it was actually conceived as a consciously anti-imperalist project and a calculated defense of the right of oppressed people to resist by any means necessary.
Algeria (like its parallel at the other end of the continent, South Africa) was also a modern settler colony, and it is quite interesting to see how the French settlers are presented in the film. One of the unique features of The Battle of Algiers is that crowds can be analyzed as characters in the film. In class, we discussed how the Algerian crowd, which can also be identified as "the Algerian people" (in a somewhat abstract, Maoist-inspired formulation entirely appropriate to the era) has a character arc. It grows and changes every time we see it. Specifically, it goes from being passive to being revolutionary--a really brilliant way to externalize on film the radicalization of a society. The French crowd, however, is a one-string character, which is defined in our class as "a character who does the same thing each time we see them." The thing that the French crowd does is react with misplaced, racist rage. It does not change, grow, or learn anything.
There is one notable time that we see the French crowd as something other than a racist mob--in the scenes where large numbers of civilians are about to be killed by three female bombers. Right before the bombs go off, we start to see close-ups of individual faces--men, women, dancing teenagers, a kid eating an ice cream cone. The effect of these shots is quite deliberate and unambiguous--to make us question the morality of the violent actions we know are about to happen. But I would argue that the effect is not just to humanize the French, but also to humanize the Algerians. We see what these three women see, and we feel the moral quandary at the exact same moment they do. We are seeing the humanity of the French through the eyes of the Algerians--and this helps us understand the bombers not as psychotic, unthinking terrorists, but as people with humanity who have decided that this is the only way to win their freedom.
Of course, the parallels between my film and The Battle of Algiers only go so far. My film does not take place in, say, Jerusalem, in an environment where Israeli and Palestinian civilians live side by side. It takes places in the Occupied Territories, where Palestinian civilians live side by side with Israeli soldiers. The characters are not engaged in attacks on Israelis at all--it could be argued that their act of resistance, although it involves high explosives, is completely nonviolent. (Which is, of course, one of the things that attracted me to the story in the first place.) If any of these elements were changed, it would certainly effect how I presented both Israeli and Palestinian characters. (Paradise Now, by the way, is a film that has almost no Israeli characters in it at all and still does a brilliant job of problematizing the actions of its Palestinian protagonists.)
There is another difference between my film and The Battle of Algiers, which is that mine is not an ensemble piece. That is a conscious choice on my part. Also in Script Analysis, we discussed how the primary effect of creating a script with one central character with a drive is to heighten emotional identification with that character--which is, of course, exactly what I want. I want my audience to identify with a Palestinian militant. And I don't think that is too much to ask.
In connection with our discussion of The Battle of Algiers, our teacher touched on something which I have long believed to be true, which is that the great power of film is its ability "to extend the reach of human imagination"--to allow us to share and understand the emotional journey of, say, someone who might otherwise be dismissed as a terrorist.
I decided early on in the script that one of the main ways I was going to help people understand the world of the Occupied Territories was simply to show it--to show daily life there by following our characters through this world. I wanted the audience to see this world the way my characters see it, which is also the way I see it. It's a world of checkpoints, closure, siege, walls, air strikes, raids, prison and collective punishment--but also a world of family, solidarity, courage, resistance, love, and hope. In short, a world worth fighting for. When you see and understand this world the way they do, I don't think it is very hard to identify with the drive to blow up a wall and open a border. In fact, I think it feels like something fundamentally, deeply human--the instinctive desire to resist oppression that resides in all of us.
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
three cheers for equality!
The past few days have seen three incredibly important victories in the struggle around gay marriage.On April 3, the Iowa Supreme Court unanimously struck down a ten-year-old ban on gay marriage in that state. Just days later, the Vermont legislature overturned a gubernatorial veto on a bill legalizing gay marriage in that state. And in the District of Columbia, legislators voted unanimously to recognize gay marriages performed in other states.
Each of these victories would be significant enough on their own, but together they show the breadth and diversity of the growing gay marriage movement. A victory in crunchy Vermont, a northeastern state that was the first to recognize civil unions in 2000, might not seem that surprising. But who would have thought that cornfed, middle-America Iowa, of all places, would be the state currently putting California to shame when it comes to civil rights? And while the residents of the District of Columbia tend to vote overwhelmingly Democratic, they are (unlike the politicians, who live in Alexandria, Georgetown or other white-flight enclaves) predominantly poor and African-American. Remember--the kind of people who supposedly gave Prop 8 the margin of victory in California, right?
There is something special worth noting about each of these victories. Ironically, the toughest battle was fought in liberal Vermont, where governor Jim Douglas vetoed the bill, before his decision was overridden (just barely) by a two-thirds majority of the state legislature. But the Vermont victory is crucial because it marks the first time that marriage equality has been mandated by a state legislature, not by the courts.
The Iowa decision is of potentially monumental importance for California--a fact of which the Iowa Supreme Court was most decidedly aware. By grounding their unanimous 69-page decision so firmly in the rhetoric of equal protection and civil rights, the Iowa court set a bold and important precedent. The Iowa decision cited the pending California case eight times and argued strongly that LGBT people are a historically oppressed minority worthy of judicial protection. And while the Iowa decision was made by a court, Iowa state House and Senate leaders released a pretty amazing statement in support of the decision. (Although, in an ironic postscript, the start of the gay marriage season in Iowa will be delayed several days due to state budget cuts.)
The DC decision is still in limbo, since residents of DC (remember, majority poor and Black?) do not have full suffrage rights like everyone else in the country. Their municipal legislation must be approved by Congress before it can become law. But whether the DC decision will be approved or struck down will be an important gauge of things to come.
As some commentators are pointing out, the challenge for gay rights activists in states with constitutional bans is still significant. But with these victories, and important decisions potentially on the horizon in at least nine other states, including New York, Maine, New Jersey and New Hampshire, it's impossible not to feel that momentum is building on our side.
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