Israeli families of the victims of Hamas suicide bombers have gathered 30,000 signatures to petition the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to withdraw the nomination for the Palestinian film Paradise Now.  The Oscars awards ceremony is scheduled for Sunday, March 5 — three years to the day that the son of Yossi Zur, 16-year-old Asaf, was murdered in a bus attack.  This brings up the issue of what defines free expression and what would be considered threats to national security or defamation.   Should the Academy bow to the Israeli families and be forced to withdraw the nomination because it somehow legitimizes terrorism?

It is my contention that without artists and their ability to hold up a mirror to society and explore the actions, emotions, and philosophy of the human condition, our existence would certainly be worse off if not totally in chaos.  It is through understanding what we are, our history, and our ways of dealing with the world that we learn to become better patrons of this planet and happier, more engaged, and productive individuals.  Since we are made up of so many different cultures full of different ideas on how to live and interact with others, it is no wonder that we do not all agree on every issue.  The situation between Israel and Palestine is thousands of years old, and one film isn’t going to break the camel’s back.  By reaching out to understand the people who live on the other side of the tracks, the better the communication between two peoples becomes, and in time better relations and possibly friendships will develop.  Not all stories have happy endings, and nothing is black and white.  It is the daily struggle in the mire of the gray that makes life both difficult and interesting.

Instead of trying to prevent artists from expressing themselves, we should be encouraging more and more of them to show us ourselves so that we can take the images, feelings, and thoughts they provoke and promote and turn them into productive catalysts of change that will bring about a better world for our children and for the many people who will inherit this earth another thousand years from now.

Rich Burlingham

“This decision strikes at the heart of democracy… Elected politicians should only be able to be removed by the voters or for breaking the law.”

— London’s Mayor Ken Livingstone, condemning his upcoming four-week suspension from office for suggesting that a Jewish journalist was like a concentration camp guard. Mayor Livingstone will appeal his suspension, which is scheduled to begin on Wednesday.  

Nobody, it seems, is particularly pleased with the ruling.  Major Livingstone is livid about the suspension ruling made by the Adjudication Panel for England, and the Board of Deputies of British Jews — the body that lodged the complaint and never asked for the suspension — stated that it found the incident, the guilty result, and the major’s subsequent suspension regrettable. Additionally, Sir Iqbal Sacranie, secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain, decried the suspension as a “clear over-reaction and an affront to our democratic traditions.”

The whole fuss stemmed from the fact that Major Livingstone, who made the comments to Oliver Finegold of the Evening Standard newspaper outside a party organized with public funds, refused to apologize for his comments. The mayor, for his part, refused to apologize, stating that the Evening Standard had supported the Nazis in the decade leading up to Word War II.

The conversation, which was recorded, captures Mayor Livingston asking Oliver Finegold if he is a “German war criminal,” to which Finegold replies: “No, I’m Jewish, I wasn’t a German war criminal. I’m quite offended by that.”

The Mayor responds to Finegold by stating: “Ah right, well you might be, but actually you are just like a concentration camp guard, you are just doing it because you are paid to, aren’t you?”

Mimi Hanaoka

It seems that the most compelling and emotionally exciting films being produced the last few years are coming from countries least expected, such as Palestine’s Paradise Now, Columbia’s Maria Full of Grace, or the 2005 Oscar nominee for Best Foreign Language Film and winner of various international festival awards, South Africa’s Tsotsi.  

Tsotsi is written and directed by Gavin Hood and based on the popular and acclaimed novel by author and playwright Athol Fugard who originally wrote the story in the 1960s when apartheid was at its peak.   The story revolves around a street thug named Tsotsi, which is also the term used for the runaways or orphans who survive in the ghettos by engaging in crime.  Tsotsi, we discover, ran away from an abusive alcoholic father who was scared to let him have any contact with his mother, probably dying from AIDS.  He forms a gang of similarly disenfranchised youth and becomes a powerful leader amongst the bottom rungs of society.  After Tsotsi carjacks a wealthy woman’s vehicle, injuring her and driving off, he soon discovers her baby is in the back of the car.  Haunted by his own past, he cannot leave the baby on the remote road and proceeds to try to take care of him on his own.  This begins a burgeoning process of redemption for Tsotsi that allows the audience to find a little sympathy for a character graphically shown not to be very empathetic.  

Hood and his producers needed to update the story because of financial reasonsm and it’s a good thing they did because it makes the film far more realistic and relevant than if they stuck to the 1960s time period.  For American audiences, it will be difficult to sort through the ghetto language of Tsotsi-Tal or Isicamtho — a mixture of local vernacular, Afrikaans and English — even with the subtitles. But Hood’s simple but cinematic visualization makes it easy to emotionally connect to the characters and their plights.  In fact, the ghettos and business districts of Johannesburg are not that different than those in the U.S., and some scenes do remind you of the images beamed into our living rooms after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans.

Rare is a film that has a lead character with few redeeming features, especially one that is in constant turmoil with himself and lashes out at others in violent rages.  It is the struggle of discovery of evil within oneself that fascinates us and the glimmer of hope that even the most despicable people can change themselves around.  It is why the recent attempt to keep ex-gang leader and death-row inmate Stanley “Tookie” Williams from being executed stayed in the news for so long.  

Tsotsi, in all its rawness and frankness about a segment of society most people would rather not see, is able to move you on both an intellectual and emotional level and makes you think about our own country’s attempt at curbing poverty and helping those sitting on the murky bottoms.  Some critics dismiss Tsotsi for pulling the heartstrings, but if you can put the obvious manipulation aside, you have a film that shows a world not seen by many, compelling characters who we can ride on an emotional journey with, and a story that is both entertaining and thought-provoking — all qualities you want in a great film.  Given this year’s politically charged Best Picture nominees, if not for the language, I believe Tsotsi would have been among them.  It is a film that gives a down and dirty view of our world but with a hope that, within every person, there is a gentle soul who pines for a world where love conquers all.

Tsotsi is now showing at select theaters.  Released through Miramax Films.  Running time is 94 minutes.  Rated R.

Rich Burlingham

For a bit of fun, Mark Fiore’s new comic is worth a gruesome laugh.

Pete DeWan

It’s been a grim week.  What’s to say about Iraq?  To Rush Limbaugh’s glee, Tom Friedman says:

If we defeat them in the heart of their world, in collaboration with other Arabs and Muslims, by putting together some kind of decent democracy in Iraq, that will have an enormous impact, an enormous resonance in the region and be a terrible defeat. So what you’re seeing now is in many ways acts of unspeakable violence. I mean, going into a mosque, blowing it up, one of the most prominent Shi’ites shrines, the reason they’re doing that is actually because in some ways they’ve been losing. The process of Iraq coming together has been happening. And I believe that the most dangerous point for America, as with Iraq, is the closer we actually get to producing a decent outcome there, the crazier our opponents are going to get, because they know if they lose, it’s strategic.

If we turn just one more corner in Iraq, the project will be done.   Who knew we were building a big, exploding, origami swan with torture chambers, death squads, and ethnic cleansing?  

Pete DeWan

She has not yet been born,
she is both the music and the words,
and thereby the unbreakable bond
between all the living.

The ocean’s chest serenely respires,
but like mad brightened the day
and the foam’s lilac pale
in the dark lazurite vase.

May my mouth attain
primordial muteness,
as the crystal-clear note,
that from birth is pure!

In foam remain, Aphrodite!
Words, into music return!
And, hearts, from each other shy away,
merging with the source of life!

Она еще не родилась,
Она и музыка и слово,
И потому всего живого
Ненарушаемая связь.

Спокойно дышат моря груди,
Но, как безумный, светел день,
И пены бледная сирень
В черно-лазоревом сосуде.

Да обретут мои уста
Первоначальную немоту,
Как кристаллическую ноту,
Что от рождения чиста!

Останься пеной, Афродита,
И, слово, в музыку вернись,
И, сердце, сердца устыдись,
С первоосновой жизни слито!

~1910, 1935 by Osip Mandelshtam~

About the poem: The name of the Greek goddess of passion, Aphrodite, literally means “arisen from foam.” She is the origin of both life and madness, and thereby the ceaseless inspiration of poets.

Jan Vihan Jan Vihan is a contributing writer for In The Fray.

As Mimi says, the protests over the cartoons have gone way over the top.  They have traveled far from the worries of the Muslim minority in Europe and seem to now represent a much broader anger and fear in the Muslim world.  

However, the other free speech news from western Europe is worth noting.  David Irving was convicted in Austria for Holocaust denial.  Despite my being somewhat of a free speech absolutist, I can see why some European countries might think about criminalizing anti-Jewish statements.  I don’t agree, but I can understand it.

However, consider how you would feel if you were a member of Europe’s most beleagured minority, the immigrant Muslim.  Malicious anti-Muslim cartoons can be described as an assertion of “western values” while Holocaust denial is a crime.  (Although it’s not every country that imposes a three-year prison sentence.)

As an American, I tend to think the solution is more free speech, not less.  Tony Blair is apparently not so certain.

Pete DeWan

The escalating — and, by this point, utterly ludicrous — row sparked by the provocative cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammad first published by best-selling Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten on September 30th of last year have recently created a furore in the Muslim world, despite the fact that they were published in October of last year by the Egyptian newspaper al-Fagr, which went largely unnoticed. The cartoons were published by Jyllands-Posten alongside an editorial critical of self-censorship in the Danish media.  

Here are a few statistics:

One million dollars: the bounty offered by Maulana Yousaf Qureshi, a Muslim cleric in Peshawar, Pakistan, to anybody who murders one of the cartoonists.

44 people (at least): the number of people of who have died in cartoon-related protests.

12 gold coins: the prize offered by Hamshahri, Iran’s best-selling newspaper, in a contest being launched for the 12 “best” cartoons about the Holocaust. Farid Mortazavi, an editor at the paper, asserted that the intentionally provocative competition would serve to test Europeans’ dedication to the notion of freedom of expression.

Mimi Hanaoka