Blowin' in the Wind

In 2011 I watched 130 films and read 102 books. I’ve been recording what I read since January 1^st, 2011, but I didn’t start recording books on this blog until last April. You can click on the tab in the upper right hand corner if you're curious. Right now I’m watching A Fistful of Dollars because I can’t remember if I’ve seen it or not. Watching Clint Eastwood chew a cigar in his poncho, I’m starting to think I haven’t. When I was a kid I loved Westerns, though I don’t know how many Clint Eastwood films I saw. My favorite movies were The Cowboys and The Sons of Katie Elder (John Wayne), or movies about Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone and The Alamo, and later the Young Guns movies with Emilio Estevez and Kiefer Sutherland. I remember staying with a friend for a couple weeks and walking around collecting pop bottles until we had enough to turn them in for dimes at the grocery store and rent Young Guns II. At the time, I thought the classic rock soundtrack was awsome.

Here’s a poem I have up at Arsenic Lobster. It’s kind of a specialist’s poem until the last section. Shout-outs to Basil Bunting and Jack Spicer. I'm going to add another section for Marianne Moore and her imaginary gardens with real toads.

Last night I was watching Tiny Furniture on instant watch, and the main character said something like “Poems are like dreams—everyone likes telling their own, but doesn’t like hearing anyone else’s.” I had to laugh, because there’s some truth to that. Later, the same character confesses to a date that she hates foreign films, and I don't know if it was supposed to be endearing but I felt a little annoyed because a subtle pattern of anti-intellectualism was starting to develop. I should say the main character is pretty unlikable, so maybe it was supposed to strike me exactly like it did. Still, I wonder if the so-called pattern was conscious or not, and I think the truth is probably a mixture. I bet the director doesn’t go around saying she hates foreign films, but probably believes the words the character says. If that makes sense. By the way, Tiny Furniture is good, it reminded me of The Future except it was funnier and, in my opinion, more accessible. But not better.

Here’s a list of the books I read in December.

The last book on the December list, Manufacturing Consent, was helpful in thinking about how the mainstream media operates. I've always been curious, but never had more than a nebulous idea of why news corporations have more on their agenda than informing the American public. The authors, Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky, begin the book by talking about filters that every story has to go through before it reaches the public. For instance, the media doesn’t exist simply for the public good—it’s a profit making enterprise. Second, it’s too expensive for news corporations to have correspondents in every area of the world, so they rely on the U.S. government for a lot of updates and information. There are more “filters”: flak for instance (i.e., “how much flak will we receive from the public if we run this story”), but those first two are big. Information from the government that must generate a profit. That criteria certainly narrows down the sort of information we’ll hear, or the perspective news sources will take.

The book was written in 1988, so the information was dated, but I liked reading about events I wasn’t familiar with, such as the 1981 assassination attempt on the pope, or the murder of a Polish priest during the Solidarity movement. The book also made me think about the media’s coverage of the “Arab Spring”, particularly the coverage of Libya. I remember there was a week or two where this Libyan woman who was allegedly held captive and raped by soldiers was all over the news. On the one hand, yes, rape is terrible, and a crime, on the other hand, why was one isolated incident picked up and obsessed over as opposed to the other crimes being committed every day? Chomsky would say it was because the media considered that woman a “worthy” victim. The US opposed the Libyan regime, and that story was used to remind the US public that the regime was bad. After reading Legacy of Ashes, the history of the CIA, I also think the whole story could have been a CIA media campaign.

Also, I've been listening to a  lot of Bob Dylan over the holidays, and I'm hearing the song "Blowin' in the Wind" differently than before. I used to think of it as a coming-of-age song, probably because of the first line, "How many roads must a man walk down/Before you call him a man," but recently it's struck me as a song about social justice, or a resignation to the fact that it'll never come. I read an article on the day the troops left Iraq that estimated 150,000 Iraqis have been killed during the course of the war, four out of five of them civilians. That's a shocking number of civilian deaths, and there's no way Americans would stand for any kind of sacrifice like that here. Anyway, I was thinking of that article and how we was Americans respond (or don't respond) to violence overseas when I heard the lines "How many times can a man turn his head/Pretending he just doesn't see," and also "How many deaths will it takes til' he knows/That too many people have died."

It's kind of ironc that as I'm transcribing Bob Dylan lyrics and waxing liberal about the war as Clint Eastwood is fondling his six-shooter, gazing out a tavern window and talking about how much money he can make from killing. Anyway. I was going to write an end-of-year round-up on my favorite movies, novels, and poetry selections from 2011, but I think I’ll wait a day or two. I keep stopping to glance up at the movie. One of Clint's old amigos is explaining the gang situation, which sounds complicated. Two gangs, Ramon of the Rojos is kind of the big dog, smugglers are running liquor and guns to America, there is money to be made, and the military is coming into town tomorrow. Now Clint is walking toward another bar, telling the coffin maker he passed to “Get three coffins ready,” so I better start watching. Brett's Best of the Year to follow shortly.