Chris Willie Williams (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} disclaimerwill) wrote,@ 2008-03-25 19:37:00 |
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I call Blanka!
I just watched Street Fight, which is Marshall Curry's Oscar-nominated documentary about Newark's 2002 mayoral election (recommended a few times in Television Without Pity's recaps of The Wire's fourth season). Relevantly enough, it follows fresh-faced "candidate for change" Cory Booker through his campaign to unseat awesomely-named incumbent Sharpe James, and the many dirty retaliatory tactics Booker faces in that campaign. It's claimed that Sharpe James intentionally spreads disinformation, steals Booker's campaign signs, uses the local police to coerce business owners to fall in line, and essentially engages in racial warfare against Booker (both men are black Democrats in a largely black city, but James apparently refers to the light-skinned Booker as "a white Republican").
It covers some interesting ground, but it's ultimately a poorly-made film, because the anti-James sentiment relies almost entirely on innuendo, hearsay, and--most frustratingly--Curry's first-person narration, detailing personal threats Curry received/perceived, examples of James's poor behavior that Curry claims to have witnessed, and other events that were not captured on camera. Meanwhile, to hear the film tell it, Booker's worst vice is that a word as offensive as shit might occasionally pass his lips. Though Booker does seem sincere and I don't necessarily doubt the many accusations that are leveled against James in Street Fight, the most damning thing we actually see is the mayor's security team palming Curry's camera lens and trying to illegally keep him from filming. It's annoying, of course, but in the absence of other documented shadiness, James doesn't come across as any more dangerously corrupt than the average bedding salesman featured on your local news's "Hall of Shame Problem Solvers" segment.
The thing that Curry and other post-Michael Moore documentarians and reporters need to learn is that the audience is not automatically on your side. Michael Moore can get away with completely one-sided narration for a few reasons: he's funny, he shows enough firsthand footage to effectively lend credence to his secondhand claims, and everyone knows he's got an agenda. Moore's strength (as well as his failing) is that he fights propaganda with propaganda and builds his cases to bait people to come after him for it. Depending on the result, it can be an ingenious or maddening technique, but it's his and he's earned it through sheer ballsiness. Other documentarians cannot simply piggyback on it by making a nuisance of themselves and then acting victimized when people tell them to cut it out. We, the viewers, do tacitly agree to take the director's perspective as a guide when we sit down to view a documentary he's assembled, but without "the camera doesn't lie" footage to buttress whatever thesis he's laying out, we're also savvy enough to know we need more proof before ruling, and that's something Street Fight does not provide. I'll give it a C+.
Random memory:
In Miss Hackett's ninth grade language arts class, we would occasionally play a fun game to kill time: Everyone would take out a sheet of paper and write the alphabet, one letter at a time, down each line of the sheet. Then, next to it, we would write, one letter at a time, the first 26 letters of some specific cliche, like "An apple a day keeps the doctor a." The two columns would form 26 pairs of initials which we then had to use to name famous people, real or fictional. (Using the above phrase, for instance, the initials would read AA, BN, CA, DP, EP, and so on. So you could name Alan Arkin, Bill Nye, Carol Alt, Dennis Polonich, and Emo Phillips. Get it?) You got a point for each name you came up with that no one else in the class came up with. During one game, Kelly Duffy and I were amused to find that we'd both named Hans Moleman. I had a brief crush on Kelly Duffy after that. Anyway, Miss Hackett gave me a warning for going too obscure when I named Camper Van Beethoven bassist Victor Krummenacher for "VK," and I was ultimately disqualified for naming Murphy Brown actor Joe Regalbuto.
CURRENT MUSIC: Frenching the Bully by The Gits.
CURRENT MOOD: Eh, fine.
CURRENT DISTANCE TO COMPLETING MY REVIEW OF TWIN CINEMA BY THE NEW PORNOGRAPHERS: Roughly 3/4 to go.
I just watched Street Fight, which is Marshall Curry's Oscar-nominated documentary about Newark's 2002 mayoral election (recommended a few times in Television Without Pity's recaps of The Wire's fourth season). Relevantly enough, it follows fresh-faced "candidate for change" Cory Booker through his campaign to unseat awesomely-named incumbent Sharpe James, and the many dirty retaliatory tactics Booker faces in that campaign. It's claimed that Sharpe James intentionally spreads disinformation, steals Booker's campaign signs, uses the local police to coerce business owners to fall in line, and essentially engages in racial warfare against Booker (both men are black Democrats in a largely black city, but James apparently refers to the light-skinned Booker as "a white Republican").
It covers some interesting ground, but it's ultimately a poorly-made film, because the anti-James sentiment relies almost entirely on innuendo, hearsay, and--most frustratingly--Curry's first-person narration, detailing personal threats Curry received/perceived, examples of James's poor behavior that Curry claims to have witnessed, and other events that were not captured on camera. Meanwhile, to hear the film tell it, Booker's worst vice is that a word as offensive as shit might occasionally pass his lips. Though Booker does seem sincere and I don't necessarily doubt the many accusations that are leveled against James in Street Fight, the most damning thing we actually see is the mayor's security team palming Curry's camera lens and trying to illegally keep him from filming. It's annoying, of course, but in the absence of other documented shadiness, James doesn't come across as any more dangerously corrupt than the average bedding salesman featured on your local news's "Hall of Shame Problem Solvers" segment.
The thing that Curry and other post-Michael Moore documentarians and reporters need to learn is that the audience is not automatically on your side. Michael Moore can get away with completely one-sided narration for a few reasons: he's funny, he shows enough firsthand footage to effectively lend credence to his secondhand claims, and everyone knows he's got an agenda. Moore's strength (as well as his failing) is that he fights propaganda with propaganda and builds his cases to bait people to come after him for it. Depending on the result, it can be an ingenious or maddening technique, but it's his and he's earned it through sheer ballsiness. Other documentarians cannot simply piggyback on it by making a nuisance of themselves and then acting victimized when people tell them to cut it out. We, the viewers, do tacitly agree to take the director's perspective as a guide when we sit down to view a documentary he's assembled, but without "the camera doesn't lie" footage to buttress whatever thesis he's laying out, we're also savvy enough to know we need more proof before ruling, and that's something Street Fight does not provide. I'll give it a C+.
Random memory:
In Miss Hackett's ninth grade language arts class, we would occasionally play a fun game to kill time: Everyone would take out a sheet of paper and write the alphabet, one letter at a time, down each line of the sheet. Then, next to it, we would write, one letter at a time, the first 26 letters of some specific cliche, like "An apple a day keeps the doctor a." The two columns would form 26 pairs of initials which we then had to use to name famous people, real or fictional. (Using the above phrase, for instance, the initials would read AA, BN, CA, DP, EP, and so on. So you could name Alan Arkin, Bill Nye, Carol Alt, Dennis Polonich, and Emo Phillips. Get it?) You got a point for each name you came up with that no one else in the class came up with. During one game, Kelly Duffy and I were amused to find that we'd both named Hans Moleman. I had a brief crush on Kelly Duffy after that. Anyway, Miss Hackett gave me a warning for going too obscure when I named Camper Van Beethoven bassist Victor Krummenacher for "VK," and I was ultimately disqualified for naming Murphy Brown actor Joe Regalbuto.
CURRENT MUSIC: Frenching the Bully by The Gits.
CURRENT MOOD: Eh, fine.
CURRENT DISTANCE TO COMPLETING MY REVIEW OF TWIN CINEMA BY THE NEW PORNOGRAPHERS: Roughly 3/4 to go.
