CleverDonkey.com …Musings, Commentary, Opinions, and Drivel

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When I first heard about this film I almost couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the duo behind South Park: Bigger, Longer, Uncut, were making a movie about America’s role as police force to a world terrorized by, well, terror…and they would make it using not animation, not actors, but…marionettes? I figured it had to be a joke, and they were just punking us all. Believe me, they weren’t.

Team America: World Police may be the most subversively intelligent political satire that I have seen since…well…Dr. Strangelove. Part of me is almost embarrassed to make that comparison, but it is nonetheless valid. Strangelove is an undisputed masterpiece, and when viewed today it is very easy to marvel in a clinical way at how groundbreaking, offensive, daring, and dangerous it would have been to the politically naive Ward Cleavers of that day. However, it is not the least bit controversial, offensive, or groundbreaking to the jaded audiences of today, who have seen it all. But we haven’t seen it all, and Team America proves it.

Just as Strangelove shocked the sensibilities of the America of its day, Team America will shock you, if you go see it. And I highly recommend that you do, but leave the kiddies at home (but take the later teens, who might actually learn something amid all the cursing, stereotypes, violence, and puppet sex). In today’s political era where every supposed “news” outlet proudly wears its affiliations on its sleeve (FOX is conservative/Republican, CNN is liberal/Democrat, etc), it’s nice to experience balanced political commentary, which is exactly what Team America is, if you have an open mind.

Parker and Stone attack the hegemonic hubris of America-as-latter-day-Roman-Empire, with our government’s proclivity of presuming to tell the rest of the world how to run its business (to our advantage, of course). But they also attack the rise of celebrity/activists, who presume to tell world leaders how to run the world, presumably using the insight they gleaned from scripts someone else wrote but that they nobly memorized (or read from cue cards).

In both cases, Team America hits the bull’s-eye with laserlike accuracy. One might think that if Parker and Stone are smart enough to see North Korea as a greater threat to world security than Middle-Eastern terrorism that the US government would be, too, but one would be wrong. One might think that celebrities would understand that the even though people listen to and report what they say, their opinions are no more valid or informed than anybody else’s, but one would, again, be wrong. One might think that there are no great truths to be learned by watching a drunken marionette collapse in a pool of his own vomit, but one would, again, be wrong.

The film itself is painfully funny, in that I laughed so hard that it hurt. It’s almost impossible to offend me with creative works, but Team America had me covering my eyes (but peeking through my fingers) more than once. I wasn’t offended in the “morally outraged” sense, but in the “I don’t think I’m old enough to see this” sense (I’m 43).

And the songs…my god, the songs. If you couldn’t understand how Trey Parker’s song Blame Canada from the South Park movie got nominated for an Academy Award (look it up), then prepare for more surprises. I doubt any of the songs from Team America will be nominated, but that’s only because they all contain curse words (and bad ones). Well, and the film skewers Hollywood so deftly that I doubt Hollywood would choose to reward them for it. But the songs may be the best part of the film.

Kim Jong Il’s (singing and spoken voice by Trey Parker) rendition of “I’m So Lonely” is a Cole Porter-esque ballad about the loneliness and misunderstanding that only a ruthless dictator can understand (which is why he’s so lonely). The patriotic, country twang of “Freedom Isn’t Free” probably makes Tobey Keith wish it were his song, because it’s played so straight that it could be a New Country hit, which make its ridiculousness even funnier. And the Team America theme song is pretty funny itself, but that’s really all I can say about it because I can’t even mention the title in this column. And do yourself a favor and stay through the end credits.

Oh, and to top it all off the film is also a dead-on spoof of testosterone-charged, Bruckheimer-esque, mindless action films. And if you thought it would be impossible to have marionettes perform complicated martial arts moves, well, you’d be right. But the aimless flailing and twitching that is used instead is HILARIOUS.

Speaking of the marionettes, intentionally lame puppet-fu notwithstanding, the puppets actually do some great acting. Their surprisingly flexible faces are able to emote, and the masterful string pulling allows them to demonstrate surprisingly convincing body language. Also, I didn’t notice any cheats, and all puppet movement seemed to actually be traditional puppet string pulling. They even left in some mistakes and awkward movements, perhaps because of the tight editing schedule, perhaps just to prove that it was all pure puppetry. The sets are also quite ornate, and the level of detail is overwhelming, if you can manage to tear your eyes away from the main action and peruse the background.

All in all this is an amazing and funny film. I think that Parker and Stone are making it clear that they actually have cogent points to make, but that they are smart enough to know that the first step in being heard is to put butts in the seats. They do this with humor and prurience, but those are not the points of their work. However, many, many (many, many, many, many, many) people are unable to see past the surface of their works and see the actual messages.

My suggestion is to treat their films like you would a piece of sausage. If you were to go through the bits and pieces of sausage and actually identify all the parts that make up the whole, I’m sure you would be disgusted (lips, hooves, and assholes, anyone?). However, if you take a good piece of sausage as a whole, and just savor the flavor of ALL the ingredients, it usually tastes pretty good. Even the disgusting parts add to the delicious flavor. Just like in Team America: World Police.

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The current Kobe Bryant case has highlighted the rape shield laws of Colorado, which protect the identity and sexual history of the accuser in rape trials. Rape shield laws are enacted to protect women from the embarrassment and degradation they might feel if their identity and sexual history, as well as the specifics of their rape charges, were made public. The goal is to make it easier and thus more likely for women to come forward when they have been victimized in this way. In the past, the public nature of our criminal justice system sometimes drove women to decide not to report incidents of sexual assault.

I think these laws have had their intended effect, for the most part, but I feel that they are unfair to the accused, in many instances. For example, in the Kobe Bryant case, my understanding of the facts is that Kobe checked into a hotel, and then invited one of the staff members, a 19 year old young women, to give him a private tour of the facilities. She agreed, and provided the tour. According to the accuser’s own testimony, during the tour Kobe flirted openly with her, and she was flattered by the attention. He then invited her up to her room, and she also agreed, and went willingly alone with him to his room. Up to this point, the facts are clear, undisputed, and publicly known.

Behind Closed Doors

After this point, however, the two were behind closed doors and nobody but them really knows what happened. She says that he raped her, and he says that they had consensual sex. One of them is lying, and either way it is a tragedy. The evidence does show that they had sex, but does not clearly show anything else. She had some minor injuries, but nothing that couldn’t also have resulted simply from an energetic tryst (or from her having other encounters before or after the one with Kobe).

In this particular instance, where it is simply he-said/she-said, I do not agree with the rape shield laws. There is no evidence of a crime other than the young woman’s accusations. Kobe has no history of any behaviors of this kind. Also, there is evidence that the young woman had sexual relations very soon before and very soon after her encounter with Kobe. The evidence was strong enough that the judge permitted it into evidence, even though in most cases a victim’s sexual history is inadmissible.

And now, as the criminal charges seem to be slipping away (editors note: actually have been dropped due to the young woman’s refusal to testify), the young woman has filed a civil suit for monetary damages. In civil cases the burden of proof is lower, as evidenced in the O.J. Simpson saga (where he was acquitted on criminal charges, but lost the civil case). In the O.J. case there were mountains of evidence against him, he had a history of physically abusing the victim, and many (including myself) are convinced that he did it. However, his lawyers managed to win the case, so officially he is innocent of criminal charges. The family of Nicole Brown Simpson then took O.J. to civil court and won a large monetary judgment, and also a small measure of vindication. In the O.J. case, I understand and applaud the use of the civil courts after the failure of the criminal justice system.

But the Kobe Bryant case is completely different. There is no mountain of evidence that he’s wiggling out of via lawyerly tricks. There’s not even convincing evidence that a crime has been committed. There is nothing but the statements of the accuser and some “evidence” that may or may not be relevant. And the accuser is not even waiting for the criminal case to conclude before starting her civil case (for money).

Remember the Constitution?

Obviously, there is no way that I (nor anyone other than Kobe and his accuser) can know what happened in that hotel room. In my opinion, rape shield laws should not be used in cases such as these, as all it takes is the word of an anonymous accuser to forever taint the standing and reputation of the accused. Rape is the only crime of which I am aware where the accuser can remain anonymous. I understand that rape is different from other crimes, and even though the Constitution-lover in me is appalled, intellectually, by the thought of secretive court proceedings, I see that these laws can serve the greater good, if used properly.

Reality Check

In my opinion, rape shield laws should require some sufficiency of evidence at a preliminary hearing in order to be invoked. During the hearing both parties should remain anonymous and the prosecution should have to show:

• Proof beyond a reasonable doubt that a crime has been committed.
• Sufficient evidence that the accused was the perpetrator.

If the prosecution can show the above, then I am tolerant of rape shield laws, as they help to address the horrifying aftermath of a despicable crime. However, in the Kobe Bryant case, it’s clear that while Kobe was certainly involved in the incident, there appears to be little or no evidence that an actual crime has taken place. And in this case, I feel that the accuser should have to abandon her claim to anonymity and publicly stand behind her accusations, particularly if the action is in civil courts in pursuit of monetary damages.

Harsh Punishments

All that being said, I am also very much in favor of the harshest possible penalties for sexual assault and rape convictions. I am not a criminal, but I can visualize dire circumstances where I might rob, steal, hurt, or even kill. These are highly unlikely scenarios and would depend on extreme situations, such as the collapse of civilization, but I can see myself stealing or killing to keep my family alive.

However, there are no situations – extreme, hypothetical, or otherwise – where sexual assault can be justified, or the character of the perpetrator defended. There can be no extenuating or mitigating circumstances. Sexual assault is heinous and evil, and demonstrates something irretrievably wrong with the perpetrator. Most rapists assault multiple victims, and continue their evil ways even after incarceration. There is no treatment or rehabilitation that can “cure” someone that is twisted and evil enough to commit a crime like this. I would support and applaud the treatment of rape as a capital crime, with life imprisonment or even the death penalty as the appropriate responses.

Fair Trials

However, the trials must be fair. Yes, rape shield laws create a situation where more rapists will be taken off the streets. However, it also creates a situation where more falsely accused innocent people will lose their reputations, or be wrongfully incarcerated, due to false charges. The American justice system is built on the foundation that we err on the side of releasing the guilty and strive to never punish the innocent. There are many documented cases where women have lied about the identify of their rapists, or the nature of the events.

For example, Linda Fairstein, head of the New York County District Attorney’s Sex Crimes Unit, says “there are about 4,000 reports of rape each year in Manhattan. Of these, about half simply did not happen.” Also, the FBI’s official statistics say that 9% of all rape accusations are “unfounded”. This only includes cases where the accuser recants or the evidence directly contradicts her story, and does not include cases dismissed for lack of evidence. The most common reasons given for the false accusations are spite or revenge, or to provide an alibi for questionable behavior or a surprise or unwanted pregnancy.

These are not trivial numbers. The zeal to protect victims and convict rapists should be balanced against the fact that people will always attempt to pervert the justice system for their own reasons. Given these facts, I think that rape shield laws should be tempered with the reality checks suggested above. This will provide equal protection under the law to all of us.

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We went into The Forgotten knowing almost nothing about it other than what we saw on the few, brief trailers we had seen on television. We had a day off, headed to the theater, and decided to let fate play a hand by picking the next available, acceptable movie, which turned out to be The Forgotten. The film stars Julianne Moore, Gary Sinise, Anthony Edwards, and Dominic West, and follows the travails of Telly Paretta (Julianne Moore’s character) as she attempts to deal with the grief of losing her son in a plane crash.

One of the other parents at her local park, named Ash Correll (played by Dominic West), also lost his daughter in the same crash, which was of a plane headed to a summer camp that both kids were going to attend. They do a little reserved commiserating, but really only know each other distantly as parents of one of their kids acquaintances.

Telly is undergoing psychotherapy to help with her grief. Her doctor is played by Gary Sinise. She has been fixated on her son’s death for the nearly two years since it happened, spending several hours a day in his room, pulling his belongings out to look at, watching videotapes of him, and generally not getting on with life on the schedule that those around her would consider normal.

But then, one day, she has either a breakthrough or a breakdown, where her husband and doctor tell her that she never had a son, and that all of her memories of him are delusional and were brought about by a miscarriage that caused her to snap. Based on the film up until this point, it seems obvious that they are trying to pull one over on her, and I started to get quite annoyed that she didn’t just go down to her son’s school and ask any of the 200 kids there if they remembered him.

But she doesn’t do anything like that, at least not at first. But over time she does. She eventaully talks to her neighbor, a fairly anonymous lady who we saw interacting with Telly’s son in flashback, but the neighbor appears not to know who she’s talking about. At this point I couldn’t quite figure out what was going on, as this neighbor did not appear to be anyone that the husband/doctor could get to and convince her to play along with their charade.

Telly finally heads over to Ash’s apartment, which she had been to once before when her son and his daughter had a play date. At least, that’s what Telly remembers, but the guy has no recollection of her, her son, or his (alleged) daughter. When Telly vigorously attempts to convince him that he had a daughter, Ash surreptitiously calls the cops to come get this crazy lady out of his apartment and into some kind of help.

At this point I was confused enough to be very interested in just where the hell this story was going. The story wasn’t confusing in a sloppy way, but in a very deliberate way, that engaged me in the way that a well-done mystery does. As Telly is being escorted out of Ash’s place by the cops, some official looking feds show up, say they’re from the NSA, and take Telly into custody. That was a real head-spinner, and very unexpected. While this is going on, Ash has realized that Telly lit a slow fuse of recognition in him about his daughter, and suddenly all of his memories of her come flooding back. He races downstairs and manages to wrest Telly from the custody of the feds, and the chase is on.

At this point you may be thinking that I’m giving the whole story away. Believe me, I’m not. In fact, right up until this point in the film I was on the verge of walking out because the story seemed to be so implausible (even given the suspension of disbelief granted to films). But from this point on the movie starts moving in some very unexpected directions that make the story make a whole lot more sense.

These new directions also make this a much better film that it first appears to be. But overall it is ultimately disappointing because while the film is slightly above average, it could have easily been very good, or even great, if the creative forces behind it had just stuck to the artistic principals of the first 2/3 of the film. But the ending falls into the trite, simple, overblown, ridiculous ruts that seem to please studio execs and not scare middle-America, and so the very interesting first parts of the film are wasted. What a shame.

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Combine Sex in the City, the Stepford Wives, and The Gilmore Girls, add a dash of Twin Peaks, and you have the recipe for Desperate Housewives, based on what we saw in the pilot tonight. The story focuses on the ladies of the house along a stretch of Wisteria Lane in an unnamed, but hyper-American, upscale suburb. The primary characters run the gamut of stereotypical suburban American ladies, and include the single mom (replete with wise-beyond-her-years teenage daughter), the Martha Stewart-esque “perfect” housewife (replete with desperately unhappy husband and children), the former model who married for money (and regularly gets her lawn trimmed by the yard boy, if you know what I mean, and I think you do), the former high-powered executive who abandoned corporate life to become a full-time mom (replete with three little boys who make the Tasmanian Devil look like a narcoleptic sloth overdosing on Ritalin), and the divorced slut.

The pilot was entertaining, sly, surprising, and quirky…things that I like. To those of you who understand what this means, you can understand everything you need to know about this show by hearing that the theme music is done by Danny Elfman.

The pilot sets the stage for the series with a voice-over by one of the ladies. She happens to be the one who appears to be the most strong and the most normal of the bunch. Things kick into gear when she promptly commits suicide. Her voice-over persists after her death, and provides running commentary on the goings-on of the neighborhood, while providing only tantalizing clues as to the reasons for her self-off-age. Suffice it to say that it wasn’t because of suburban malaise, or anything else mundane and/or every day. The reasons for her suicide are hinted at by the end of the pilot episode, but nothing is revealed or explained.

There’s also a new guy on the block, a single plumber who is renting one of the houses. He may or may not be more or less than he seems, but I couldn’t quite figure out how a plumber could afford to live on this street (notwithstanding what they charge).

Round things out with one of the wives attempting to kill her husband (maybe accidentally, maybe not, but she does apologize to him), and one of the husbands taking a pickaxe to the bottom of his drained pool to dig up…who knows what…and you have a pretty good idea of what’s going on with this series.

The stories go in unexpected directions, the show is funny (but isn’t a comedy), some of the situations are textbook soap opera (but it isn’t a soap), bizarre things happen (but it’s not The X-Files), and several crimes are committed (but it’s not a police procedural). It’s an interesting mix of all of these things, and more, and the pilot was very interesting and entertaining. Based on buzz, we had set TiVo to record the pilot, and we have now set up a Season Pass to be sure we get all the episodes. If they live up to the standards of the pilot, this should be an excellent show.

The only thing I don’t like about Desperate Housewives is that it’s so quirky, strange, original, and entertaining that it’s almost guaranteed to get cancelled. Unfortunately, and I don’t mean to generalize here, the American network TV viewing public are pretty much a bunch of easily spooked sheep who quiveringly cling to the middle-of-the-road, who just want to get their Survivor on and don’t really want anything that challenges their intellect or sensibilities. This show will do both.

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