I generally don't have much patience with anti-American sentiment. There just doesn't seem to be a justification for it. Foreigners may dislike the current government, but only a very, very slim majority of the population voted it in. The Middle East may detest our foreign policy, but we were one of the only nations in the world to help Muslims when they were being slaughtered in the Balkans. Mass consumerism may turn people off, but then again, corporations wouldn't exist if societies didn't need or want their products. And, more generally speaking, I'm not a fan of any movement or "ism" which uses a wide brush to paint pictures which would be better done in detail. Now that I've established my credentials -- everything I've said thus far I mean with the utmost sincerety -- I want to praise the newest movie of Lars Von Trier, often called, with justification, one of the most anti-American directors working today.
Evan and I went to see Von Trier's newest film, Manderlay, last night at the Chicago International Film Festival. It was, quite simply, the best film I've seen this year. The plot is deceptively simple: A young woman comes across a plantation where, in 1930, slavery still exists. Using her mob-boss father's minions, she forcibly liberates the slaves and attempts to teach them how to work as a functioning, democratic community (Interestingly, this film was written and produced long before the invasion of Iraq, a fact some critics seem to skip over). As in most Von Trier films, no good deed goes unpunished, and things never go as planned.
The film has two targets that I can see, and I admit that my interpretation may not be the correct one. The first target is the racist legacy of America. Aside from paleo-conservatives, most intelligent people would never deny this fact. But Von Trier does not deal with this issue in a normal fashion -- in fact very little dialogue at all is spent on pre-Civil War society. Rather, he focuses how, in spite of slavery's abolition, American society was still unwilling to accept black people as equal citizens. And I think that he's right here -- America's most shameful legacy isn't slavery, but rather the period of discrimination immediately following it and continuing up until today. At least slavery, when it existed, had the imprimateur of law behind it. But following the Civil War Amendments, discrimination was not only morally wrong -- as it always had been -- but also legally wrong, and America's great shame is not using the courts before Brown v. Board of Education to redress these grievances. And it was this period that saw the rise of the KKK, mass lynchings, Jim Crow laws, unconscionable contracts, and so forth. I think one can make a legitimate argument that life was more difficult as a minority in the period between the end of the Civil War and the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement. This is by no means said in defense of slavery, but rather in condemnation of our only half-hearted efforts to ameliorate its damages.
Yet Von Trier's other target is the condescension liberal white guilt, represented by the main character who presumes that she knows what is best for the slaves. As most of you know my political opinions, you won't be surprised that I agree with this. The fatal conceit of all plans is a confidence which precludes questioning one's own premises. Such surety of one's self is despicable and dangerous, whether it comes from George Bush or Michael Moore. The world is complex and absurd; to think that any single one of us understands it and can fix its problems, without doing any wrong, is patently ridiculous. Solutions to difficulties, real difficulties, are messy, and usually have to be rethought at least a few times. I can't say how Von Trier deals with this idea without giving away major parts of the film, but suffice to say, his indictment is scathing.
In many senses, Von Trier isn't anti-American -- he's anti-humanity. So while Manderlay is definitely not the feel-good hit of the fall, it's still worth seeing.
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