Film Review 2… “After-Shave” (2004)

“After Shave” and “Mabrouk Again” are two films about modern day Lebanon but also about the trauma that it experienced during the 1975-1990 Civil War. Both are relatively short films and both comment on the tragedy but also frustration that the war presented.

“After Shave” is about a commoner barber who is called upon to shave an artist who just woke up after a long sleep during the war. The barber has a blatant financial reason for this work. It is simple but immeasurably rewarding for him. He gets a large quantity of a US dollar so long as he can continue to shave this guy’s face and groom him. Unfortunately for him, the artist wants to leave his house and enter the new Lebanon, a Lebanon that has a lottery, that has ceased to experience Civil War, and a world in which an Artist wants to revisit his prior life. In the end it does not prove to be bad for the barber as a large sum in the form of US legal tender lands in his hand.

This short film can serve as an allegory for the larger context of what has happened in Lebanon. It is certainly true that times have changed but in so many ways times have stayed the same. The 2006 Lebanon War proved to be incredibly costly for the small nation on so many levels. While the Lebanese cite their Phoenician roots to support their cosmopolitan heritage, half of their small land is ruled by a not-so democratically elected group in Hezbollah. This aside, the short film comments on the value (or novelty) of Americanism in Lebanon, the peace of mind that comes from the past, and the clinging on to something not so great for all the wrong reasons.

Essays on New Media...

Reading Review 2: “between rocks and hard places,” Hamid Naficy
This reading remarks on the difficulties of filmmaking but also new opportunities in the era of new media. It seems as though things are presented in pretty Marxist terms. In her world production answers to people who consume media…

The product of cinema is film, a commodity that in capitalist regimes
must return a profit to its investors at the box office, video stores,
Television outlets and cash registers (for tie-in products). Thus mode of
Production also specifies a social rela-fluence of these twin centripetal
developments. It is being applied here to the work of exile, émigré,
refugee, and displaced filmmakers working in the West since the 1960.

This is a very problematic interpretation of things. First of all it is all too unclear (especially after the time in which it was written) which is East and which is West. A lot of scholars studying Middle Eastern matters have tried to move away from this sort of speech which essentializes both East and West.
Just after the time in which this was written, a host of new opportunities for filmmakers has presented itself. There still are very valid points that the essay presents however. One of these is that ‘alternative’ filmmakers have been relegated to making unpopular films. This is still very much the case. As a result of making unpopular films, unpopular filmmakers become minor, and in turn irrelevant when they discourses they present prove to be anything but. So many films fit this criteria.

Reading Critique: by the bitstream of Babylon, -Ella Shohat In this reading Ella shohat-well known for her assessments and analysis of Israeli and Middle Eastern cinema, assesses the experience evoked from two 1990s Hollywood blockbusters and their implications for geography and nationalism in general terms. These two films are Congo and Pocahontas. They share many similarities but also many differences. One is about a western-ish experience in central Africa with gorillas and one is about a Native American experiencing outsiders in the form of 'western' (European) settlers to the 'new world.' Both of these raise a host of issues but also in Shoat’s words, paradoxes. The two movies elucidate the hybridity of identity and the perceived new world order which is the emerging irrelevance of physical geographical place. Either can be interpreted as modern allegories for emerging cyberland. Shohat contextualizes this in terms of the 'futurist euphoria' presented by the internet. This is a world in which one can travel inordinately rapidly wherever one desires. Unfortunately for the characters depicted in these films is the fact that this presents a new world of issues. These issues ironically are the same issues that humans have faced for centuries.They include, but are not limited to, eroticicizing a foreign land and learning the true reality of that land, finding out that 'old world' problems persist-humans dealing with each other, and Diaspora in a world in which even the Jews have their own nation. 'New media' as it is called acknowledge latent contradictions in the new world but 'have significant implications for charting diasporic movements across national borders, and perhaps for envisioning a creative navigation of diverse cultures and historical points of view, and of conflictual claims to homes.' This, the conclusion of the essay, puts it very nicely. It is now up to the consumers of this new media to decide how it is to be used (or abused).

"he is obviously articulate"

I think it is funny when they say this about people.

It basically implies that

A)the person is outspoken (if not demagogic) and

B) that the person that is talked about can't possibly do math or science if they wanted to.

This is a picture that I took right before the North Carolina primary last year. It was taken from the same floor that the 2009 NCAA national champions played their regular season.

and yes, he is obviously articulate :-)

i am such a poser

2006 Lebanon War

UN Security Council Issues in the “Lebanon Crisis of 2006”

An Israeli Ambassador had the following to say about the peacekeeping force on the Israeli, Lebanese border: “UNIFIL, I'm afraid, is a joke. They’ve been there for 26 years and since then, there have been so many skirmishes [along the border]” (wikiquotes). It is no mystery that there have been security issues along the Israel-Lebanon border. It is also true that oftentimes international involvement has been an exercise in futility. Those individual actors involved with the UN Security Council commissioned UNIFIL, can vouch for the tragedy that occurred in this time period. These most recently came to fruition during the summer of 2006, in a vicious war known to the world as the 2006 Lebanon War.
Being an area that is very much in the crossroads of the world, any conflict that transpires in this part of the middle-east usually draws much international attention. This is not merely because of the interesting stories that occur but because of a heavy stake that many different nations place and have placed in the region. Of course this area was quite different 70 or so years ago or even 10 years ago. That being said, certain local actors proved to be more significant in this conflict relative to other conflicts in the area. The most important actors in this conflict were Israel and the paramilitary group Hezbollah. It is worth noting that this was a war not waged by the official government of Lebanon. Border patrol station
Nothing short of libraries of books has been written on the subject of the State of Israel in the last century. That being said, any work on its history, security issues and/or problematics in the world community can be cursory at best. Certainly people with an active interest in the area will notice that this is not the first time that Israel has encountered security issues from non-state actors to its north. In the second half of the 1970s and beyond, the PLO, among other groups waged war against the nation of Israel. In the 2000s, Israel found a different sort of enemy with a different set of tactics.
Hezbollah is a group that acts much like a government but is lacking in a state. In 2006 it was a foremost aggressor against the Nation of Israel. Hezbollah in this time frame launched Ketyusha rockets aimed at major Israeli population centers in the north of the small nation. Fortunately for Israel, this did not continue for too long, but much damage was done.
A notable absence in this conflict was that of the government of the nation of Lebanon. A nation divided in history albeit cosmopolitan in nature was found to be relatively powerless in this time period to have much tangible control over the south of the sovereign nation it purports to govern.
Many people remember the UN Security Council’s reaction to the conflict a failure to have exercised the “responsibility to react” (NASU). The truth is that the conflict did not drag on as far as it could have, and many of the problems that prevented the Security Council from acting as much as it could are in the language and underpinnings of its charter by the United Nations.
From the perspective of Israel, the most important failure of the Security Council was to prevent this conflict from occurring in the first place. It is unclear as to which actions could have been taken to avert aggression from a non-state actor in Hezbollah. Yes, therein lies a significant dilemma. Because Hezbollah is considered a terrorist group, because it is not a member nation of the United Nations, and because it is hard to keep track of a very non-transparent group such as this, unfortunately little could have been done save for strengthening the military apparatus of the nation in which it operates.
Lebanon itself has had no shortage of devastating conflicts. Most notable of course in recent times is the armed conflict which transpired between the years of 1975 and 1990. The UN has had a vested interest and strong commitment to keeping the peace between various groups since this time period.
In 2006 the UN security council had a great deal of choices to make in a relatively short amount of time. “ A question remains…whether inaction merely entails political impacts upon the Council’s authority or involves legal implications” (NASU 344). Basically the issue at hand is that the UN Security Council supposedly did not act at all. “The issue concerning wider implications is deep-rooted in the controversy over the normative power of the principle of non-use of armed force, as embodied in Art.2(4) of the Charter. While this principle has been accorded customary international law status, its normative power has been seriously challenged, especially by those who see its normativity premised upon the effective functioning of the Security Council” (NASU). It is hard to speak on this subject without getting wrapped up in international legal jargon, but quite obviously there exist problems in the language of the organization which purports to keep peace.

Minefield in the Golan Heights

The 2006 Lebanon war is said to have begun when Hezbollah militants purposely hit Israeli targets at an Israeli border town. This over a matter of weeks turned into a guerrilla war waged between the Israeli Defense Forces and Hezbollah. Because Israeli involvement in the area in past decades has been known to Israelis as “Israel’s Vietnam War,” involvement was skeptical from the get go. Hezbollah wanted to make its power known as it flexed its military muscles and Israeli purportedly wanted to keep the peace in the region. Needless to say, a lot of bloodshed and environmental degradation ensued in this time period. Hezbollah, as a proxy force in the nation of Lebanon, does not see eye to eye with the government of Lebanon on the issue of Israel’s existence. Lebanese government itself has been riddled with conflict but surely Hezbollah did not prove to be a helping matter in this circumstance.
After the dust settled in this conflict, Hassan Nasrallah, the commander of Hezbollah had the following to say: “Had we known that the capture of the soldiers would have led to this, we would definitely not have done it” (reuters). What he was referencing was the goal of Hezbollah to capture Israeli soldiers and then exchange them for certain prisoners that Israeli held. In economic theory there is a saying that “history is bunk.” What this means is that prior costs are never going to be recovered and that “sunk costs are sunk.” Certainly the south of Lebanon bore a huge cost for the actions taken from the armed wing of Hezbollah. Adding insult to injury is the fact that Hezbollah, functioning as a government as it may, was not democratically elected to govern in the south of Lebanon.

Hezbollah flag on a hill from the perspective of a northern Israeli Kibbutz

Israel did not exactly see this war as a success either. A majority of Israelis according to one radio poll even wanted the Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to resign due to his handling of the war (203). Of course this was not and would not prove to be Olmert’s first crisis of confidence. It is also true that a majority of Israelis believed that no one won (202). Israel of course has a great deal of leverage with its military might as it is. Probably the greatest deal of detriment to the nation was the war’s unpopularity domestically speaking.

Graves in the National Cemetery for Armed Forces

With respect to the Security Council’s involvement in the conflict, Hitoshi Nasu of International Peacekeeping had the following to say…
It has been generally said that the Security Council has reinvigorated its authority and powers under the Charter and dramatically expanded the scope of activities in the past few decades. However, its failure to react to a specific conflict in southern Lebanon in July 2006 indicates that this is not always the case, and even demonstrates a setback from the previous instances where it responded more promptly…The idea of ‘responsibility to react’ is in harmony with the overall reform agenda toward a responsive and more accountable Security Council.


Me with David, an IDF soldier who encountered tragic combat in the 2006 Lebanon War.

It is nothing short of tragic for all parties involved that the Security Council did not prove to be effective for the reasons cited above. This conflict was all too real for many. When I had the opportunity to travel to the border of Israel and Lebanon and then Israel and Syria in the winter of 2007-2008, I spoke with people whose communities were shelled and a soldier who was in the heaviest of combat. I sometimes do not know whether or not sunk costs are truly sunk when people living today bear this burden and when history repeats itself and when history, in the form of archaeological artifacts and the collective memory of individuals is destroyed.



Patrol in the North of Israel.

self PROMOTION

check out what journalism majors have to say...

on the right hand columm....

something to keep in mind about the site...

there are a lot of things on here that aren't moderated by myself. this would include the things on the right hand side

the casbah?

The Clash - New Music - More Music Videos

the following is an essay i wrote for my middle eastern film class... to be edited




- “The principal characteristic of Third Cinema is really not so much where it is made, or even who makes it, but rather the ideology it espouses and the consciousness it displays. The Third Cinema is that cinema of the Third World which stands opposed to imperialism and class oppression in all their ramifications and manifestations.” (Gabriel, Third Cinema in the Third World, pg. 2) Assess the usefulness and tenability of Gabriel’s definition and assertion in light of the cinemas of the Middle East, past and present.

Appearance and Reality in “Third Cinema”

In the early 1980s a new generation of rock bands was exploring an entirely new medium. This medium was called the ‘music video’ and it was to be broadcast easily and without interruption on a cable television station in the US by the name of MTV. A part British-part multinational politically charged band by the name of The Clash seized the opportunity and made arguably the most successful music video of all time. The name of this video is ‘Rock the Casbah.’ It depicts a ‘Shareef’ and a Rabbi dancing together in what appears to be a middle eastern desert as military jets, presumably Israeli pass by and the band rocks out in front of an oil rig. The song has been cited as being used as a rallying cry for the US Air Force in the First Persian Gulf War (Songfacts.com). How this song was made and what its intentions were are almost a mystery at this point but the truth is that it was not filmed in the middle east but in Austin, Texas. The disconnect between the message and the message maker is anything less than illusory. This historic media moment cannot be overstated but really the question is begged …what was the point?
Precisely because this question is asked in the first place (and it is not limited to one rock music video), Gabriel’s definition is implicitly and inherently problematic in relation to the media it defines. This paper will demonstrate that because the media itself is explored in all too many works of Middle Eastern, North African, and/or ‘Third Cinema,’ the explicit parameters of the definition limits its ability to provide a lens for dialog and/or discourse.
To reference literature inside a work of literature for the purpose of promulgating a dialog in society is nothing new at least in the Western Hemisphere. Of course one of the most widely cited example is in Shakespeare’s Hamlet where the title character states “The play is the thing wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king” (Act 2 scene 2). This has obvious ramifications for a geographical entity that has been never been so littered in the conflict b/w appearance and reality with political and communication systems in constant flux.
Cinema of the Middle East and North Africa has thus been presented with a historic opportunity to explore the conscience of these ‘kings’. In Unthinking Eurocentrism, Ella Shohat and Robert Stam explore the implications of this opportunity: “many of the Third World films conduct a struggle on two fronts, at once aesthetic and political, synthesizing revisionist historiography with formal innovation.” By commenting on the medium itself and how in the past the medium has presented a revisionist history, many films of the ‘Third World’ have explained how this operates.
In West Beyrouth, there is an exchange between the protagonist of the story and his father about the efforts of unveiling these misconceptions. It should be noted that the protagonist of the film has a penchant for documentation and is willing to across a ‘no man’s land’ in order to simply get film. This exchange and the entire crux of the film elucidated the frustration experienced by film makers. Lizbet Malkmus and Roy Armes remark on this in Arab and African Film Making: “ In much of Africa and the Arab world there is quite literally no system to work outside. Film-makers operate in a context where there is no pre-existing tradition of film-making, no standard procedure for organizing production or conventional source of film finance, no pool of experienced technical or acting talent, and virtually no appropriate models for a film’s dramaturgy or visual style” (61).
The confusion in narrative that arises as a result is most blatant in Chronicle of a Disappearance, a film that could be interpreted as deliberately confusing. The film is littered with irony on so many levels that is quite unclear as to what is going on. Perhaps remarking on the absence of the art form itself, the post-modern film presents a deliberately unclear objective. Motifs seem to exist in the vacuum of the media itself and every sort of observed dialog seems to be quite literally lost in translation. In the article “Palestine: The Presence of the Absence,” Hamid Dabashi remarks on this…

Making a case for the cause and consequences of Palestinian cinema as one of the most promising national cinemas cannot stop at the doorsteps of simply proposing that its local perils and possibilities are now transformed into a global event. The proposition itself is paradoxical and it is through this paradox that it needs to be articulated and theorized. How exactly is it that a stateless nation generates a national cinema – and once it does, what kind of national cinema is it?

The irony in this film isn’t magical realism however, it is painfully just real. Lacking a linear narrative, lacking conventional dialog, and implicitly versed in exile, the film demonstrates the frustration at documenting misconceptions. All it can do and does is present things that are all too real… examples include a failing religious icon shop, a very westernized Palestinian machismo, and French presumed academics remarking on the bloodshed while they experience the security of a Jerusalem luncheon hour.
A group of people that are familiar with this film-maker’s expatriation are the Kurds, a cross-sectioned group of individuals depicted as such in the film Turtles Can Fly. This movie makes very potent references to the work of literature Lord of the Flies. The similarities are all too blatant- they exist explicitly in the title, a young male protagonist that is successful in the manipulation of his peers, and the hubris that leads to tragic consequences. The Kurds, a nation long without an official state, are a very appropriate group to depict in this context.
The aptly titled protagonist ‘satellite’ is a male longing for the free flow of information and possessing the needs of any Citizen Kane protégé. In the same way it is unclear as to what “Third World,” really want, it is unclear as to what the boy wants. Is it an American life or is the cessation of ignorance? Either way, it is quite apparent that he has an unambiguous obsession with media in general and stops at nothing to gain it. In this sense he is an articulation of widely held stereotype that has characterized Jews in recent history. This stereotype is that the “Jews control the media.” While this stereotype is no mystery, linking this obsession for media draws some clear similarities between the Kurds and Jews: they have long people a nation without a state.
In “Rock the Casbah,” as military jets fly over head and as a Shareef and a Rabbi dance in concert, a longing for a message is apparent. The historic opportunity presented by cinema has made it difficult to catch the conscience of kings, but at least the message exists. The Shareef may not ‘like it’ and may not think that is ‘kosher,’ but surely it is a challenge to the status quo. In a decade so defined by Western involvement in the Middle East, the new era of scholarship and understanding presented by film is relatively unprecedented. While exploring media inside media is nothing new, the mode is different and time, by definition, is as well. Thus the definition of the medium limits those who promulgate and disseminate its message. Not so coincidentally, this frustration has manifested itself in Middle Eastern films as of late. To ask whether or not a work such as “Rock the Casbah” is Third Cinema only proves to beside the point. It was of course filmed in Texas.


Works Cited
Chronicle of a Dissapearance.
Dreams of a Nation On Palestinian Cinema. New York: Verso, 2006.
Malkmus, Lizbeth. Arab and African film making. London: Zed Books, 1991.
Song Meanings at Songfacts. 14 Apr. 2009 .
Turtles Can Fly.
West Beyrouth.

what is good for GM... (it has been said)

is good for the USA...

is this true?