I bought the American History X DVD this evening, and watched it over dinner. I have two particular idiosyncracies when it comes to watching movies:
a) I'm a closet romantic and a total "I don't want to grown up, I'm a Toys'R'Us Kid" freak. I absolutely love watching sappy, romantic comedies - my favourite is 50 First Dates starring Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore; and family comedy movies like "Finding Nemo" featuring Ellen Degeneres('s voice). I must have watched both of these movies more than fifty times...each; probably could says the lines to the movies at a drop of a hat. Such movies make me happy.
b) And that brings me to idiosyncracy number 2. I don't watch what I call "no-brainer" movies - which would be typical car chase and explosion testerone fests (i.e. die hard, bad boys), and jock-geek-frat-zit face sad-excuse for movies (i.e. american pie). I guess in a way I'm a film snob, but it's not because I'm elitist. I'll watch those movies once in a while, when I just need to veg out, but I wouldn't pay good money to watch it at a theatre - not just because its a waste, but because I think there's only so much one can tolerate. I can just feel my braincells dying when I'm watching those flicks.
But I digress. Apart from sappy movies, I prefer to watch 'intelligent' movies with a social message or social analysis, but again, there's so only much that I can take in a particular stretch of time but for very different reasons. Rather than braincells, I can feel my soul dying. Such movies are painful to watch, but I feel that pain is important. It reminds me that I'm alive, although most times I wish I wasn't. Life is the ultimate life. American History X is an example.
The film stars Edward Norton, who is this young white supremacist who had recently been released after having served time for killing two African Americans who tried to jack his car. The prelude to that is that those two men were trying to get back at him for having humiliated them in a basketball game earlier that day. The problem is, he is coming out only to find that his younger brother is following in his footsteps. The rest of the film tells of how Norton's character changed his perspective about white supremacy while in prison, and recanting his racist views. Now, he is trying to make a new life for himself and his family, and win back his brother. This he does, but like any non-Hollywood ending, his brother (played by Edward Furlong) gets killed by a young African American schoolmate whom he had snubbed earlier in the movie. The whole movie is about class and racial politics, and how we are victims of each other's oppression, feed off each other's oppression, and propogate the very same opppression that oppresses us.
It was a very good movie... painful to watch, but good. I had to stop many times, and take breaks in between the movie because it was too painful to watch. I can only hope it reaches out to some people for the better the way I firmly believe that moving pictures such as films and documentaries have the capability to effect positive change as it is able to tell a story with justice. My problem with the movie is that it doesn't really addreess the system - that our complicit and mutual oppression of each other is a function of the system that we maintain and store faith in. It is a failed and hollow system which no one questions because we feel that there is no viable alternative.
Whether that system is democracy, communism, fascism, institutionalized religion, etc - they are all the same.
The systems usurps agency from each of us by binding us into the sytem where we are afraid to rock the boat for fear of how it will hurt us or our loved ones. In place, the system gives us the illusion of self-agency or freedom, but it is only a mere illusion. Freedom is a lie because it doesn't exist - Just like Plato's concept of idea and reality. We are fed lies every single day, from the moment we are born. What binds us is fear and greed. While it is possible not to greed, ;it difficult to not fear. Because fear is associated with pain and the pain we feel from love. Funny, because I think love is also the answer. Our love will help us overcome that fear. It is a precarious balance. I do not have the answer. There is no freedom even in death.