Bad Day at Barack Rock - a real-life film noir [View All]

[arendt]

DISCLAIMER: I will support the Democratic nominee, whoever it is. I have endorsed no candidate. But, its hard to ignore the media mugging that Obama is getting. And, as usual, I got carried away by the analogy.

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...something happened in "Black Rock" ,something that its inhabitants are anxious that it remains in the shadow.Enter Spencer Tracy who seems to know too many things he should.Then all the inhabitants all stand together ,and their conspiracy of silence becomes threatening...

Tight, clear characterizations...reflecting the inner lives of people in their self-constructed hell. Check out...how Coley (Ernest Borgnine), trying to run Macreedy off the road, resembles (probably unintentionally) Joe McCarthy, especially as caricatured by Walt Kelly; and of course how the arch-villain, Reno Smith (Robert Ryan), suggests limitless power with his inimitable smirk and almost languid movements: he controls the town without actually doing anything overt...Nicely turned performances by other major players, too: Dean Jagger (the drunkard Sheriff Tim), Anne Frances (nervous Liz), and Walter Brennan (loquacious, self-justifying Doc)...

Jagger and Brennan...represent those happy to watch bad things happen if they get a quiet life.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0047849/usercomments

In its post-war heyday, film noir told social truths that the establishment didn't want to hear. The genre was largely neutered by the McCarthy witchhunts, and today is still something of a cult item. That said, the current primary situation is better explained in film noir terms than by the 24/7 stream of mendacious garbage put out by the corporate media, as I will demonstrate.

I'm not black, so I'm only guessing; but it seems to me that we now have third-generation slavery (real slavery, Jim Crow, and now Drug Law Apartheid) for blacks. This is a shameful thing that most white folks (Jagger and Brennan above) just want to ignore.

The media establishment is taking the role of Reno Smith - "controlling the town without actually doing anything overt." You don't see Rupert Murdoch actually making racist remarks; but he's happy to have O'Reilly (Borgnine) or Limbaugh (Marvin) rough people up. The media audience (Jagger and Brennan) by and large keep their mouths shut, although the flap after the ABC debates reveals that there still is some decency left there.

Obama starts poking around primary-town with his inoffensive (and deliberately vague) message of "hope". He has money, and is well-dressed (clean, articulate :sarcasm: ); so there is no excuse to ignore him. Like Tracy, he is polite but firm about getting what he wants (hotel room, rental car). Just by showing up, however, he reopens the whole race issue.

And (just as Tracy had no idea of the murderous anti-Japanese racism he was stepping in front of) Obama's "first black" talking point is stepping on the media's script of the "first woman" - who will go up against McCain as GOP-lite and lose. (I am not dissing Hillary. I'm reporting the fact of what the media is doing.) So, its time to set the media bully boys on him. The flag pin thing was the kind of petty hassling that Lee Marvin engaged Tracy in, early in the movie - just probing to see what was there.

But, now we have the "Coley in a jeep" attempt by the media to run Obama off the road with the guilt-by-association Rev. Wright attacks. When, after days of media demands that he denounce Wright, Obama does it; the media beats him up for throwing Wright under the bus. This is like Borgnine demanding that Tracy pay for the damage to Borgnine's car that he got from ramming Tracy.

Just like the movie, the hatred (of the media for Obama) is finally out in the open. Its time for Obama to do something. The confrontation in the bar is the pivot point of the movie, the point where the confrontation changes from pussy-footing to outright fighting.

If Obama doesn't draw some media blood for the unconscionable racism that they are churning out to tip the vote against him, he is going to get chopped to pieces. This is America, where the electorate hates Democratic "pussies", like Mike Dukakis. Obama has been called out; he has to make somebody pay, or he will be labeled "soft".

As a film noir fan, I am glued to my seat to see how the rest of the movie turns out. As an American, I am ashamed that our country is run by such gangsterism.