Since the late 19th century, via the Theosophists and later through some of the novels of Herman Hesse, India has been conceived by much of the west as a land that is more humanely spiritual than virtually anywhere else on planet Earth. The Hippies and their New Age descendants intensified these sentiments to the extent that, to this day, India is basically a theme park for a New Age colonialism of religious seekers. Richard Attenborough's biographic drama Gandhi, about the great leader of Indian Nationalism, shows a nation deeply fractured under the weight of a cruel British colonial rule, a mean caste system, and entrenched ethnic hostilities.
Attenborough's film is important because Gandhi too has been idealized as a quiet, monkish figure, often remembered through photographs where he is shown naked and sitting cross legged. He's the guy who said "you have to be the change you want to see in the world" and other feel-good aphorisms. Gandhi shows him for what he was, a lawyer and a revolutionary theorist who would go take a beating from British officers, go to prison, and refuse food, to advance the cause of sovereignty for India and all of its citizens. Gandhi is depicted as intense and uncompromising in his leadership of the cause of Indian independence. He is also depicted as failing in some respects, to create an India united under its own independence, as he never sided with the cause of Hindu supremacism and was ultimately assassinated by an adherent to that cause, which comprises the final shot of the film.
One interesting aspect is that Gandhi rejected the caste system, insisting that, when his followers were building communal buildings (referred to as an 'asram') that all must share in all duties. So that some individuals of higher caste take part in the work traditionally reserved for the lower castes in order to break down this system and the consciousness it engenders. This aspect of Gandhi’s work is featured primarily in the beginning of the film however, much of the latter half of this long movie represents the leader as either an interview subject or as a hunger striker.
Dark Days is a black and white documentary that covers the same subject matter as Jennifer Toth’s The Mole People and Margaret Morton’s The Tunnel, the subterranean tunnel dwellers of New York City. The film is the sole documentary by filmmaker Marc Singer, and has won a number of ‘best documentary’ awards in the year of its release.
Singer’s documentary is essentially a film version of the above mentioned books. The Mole People is a flawed work of journalism, The Tunnel is primarily a book of black and white photos, and Dark Days is a step further than the two, providing a deep investigation into the lives of the people who live under the NYC streets that validates aspects of Toth’s scrutinized text (although not the most outlandish aspects, such as stories of an underground citadel beneath grand central station), and with its black-and-white aesthetic, provides the dimension of time to Morton’s photographic work. All this is set to a musical score composed by DJ Shadow. What’s notable about Singer’s film is the sense of society, in tension with a sense of individual isolation, in that, while it shows the men living in solitude under conditions of 24-hour darkness, the film also displays a number of friendships between these people. The film also partially displays an economy of scavenging and the sale of found objects, an essentially social activity. The film is also important for showing the resourcefulness of the tunnel-dwellers and their ability to find novel ways to fulfill the necessities of life.
Banksy’s Coming for Dinner is a mockumentary depicting a dinner party hosted by Joan Collins (an actress?) and her husband, on their aristocratic estate, where they entertain a small group of guests including the trendy and mysterious street artist, Banksy. The film is a play on celebrity and art, and particularly the notion that an individual can become a celebrity while remaining withdrawn from the public.
Banksy is an enigma, not simply because he’s anonymous - most street artists do what they can to conceal their identities - but because through some unknown alchemical process, he gets to be the graffiti artist who ascends to superstar. His work means more than other graffiti works and he has people who generally have no interest in graffiti and street art defending it as art rather than vandalism, and great art rather than good art. Banksy thus becomes a brand name for quality graffiti for people who wouldn’t know the difference, and this brand is produced through media, the circulation of reputations, and an art market rooted in contemporary consumerist practices based on shock, novelty, appropriation, and the exploitation of subcultures.
Massow’s film is a documentary featuring a dinner party with Banksy in attendance. The mockumentary is a prank upon the people who’ve caught the Banksy fever and are hoping to learn a little or just see the face of the artist in this film, as Massow leads his audience to believe that the film is an authentic dinner party, rather than a staged farce. Banksy appears as a pathetic man-child who attends the dinner with his mother, who drives him and makes sure that the ride is well-stocked with plenty of treats. Banksy is largely a source of pointless statements through the dinner, which is pretty much the extent of his presense in thhis film. This is obviously a fictionalized Banksy, and Massow is exploiting the artist’s anonymous status as a way of making fun of him and his admirers. Art is not really a topic in the film, but rather the magnetic draw of the celebrity - of celebrities towards one another, and of an audience so enraptured with an anonymous, heavily hyped artist, that they would watch a film where he eats dinner, just to catch a glimpse.
Malcolm Klein is probably one of the leading experts on twentieth century street gangs, their activities and social formations. His first books on the subject were published in the early 1970s, when modern street gangs were in their nascent stages (The Crips, for example, now the largest of the Los Angeles street gangs, and prone to internal fracture and conflict, was only a few years old at that time, and still operating with the Black Panthers as their model). Klein currently holds emeritus status at the University of Southern California with their department of sociology, and he is also a popular media expert on gangs.
Klein analyzes the gangs as social units and largely discerns them from other units which may look similar (like motorcycle clubs, for example) according to a number of different social factors. Many of which are personal factors wherein the gang is an appropriate social forum in which to express them, such as the need for respect, recognition, and achievement, while other factors are more broadly social, such as poverty. Klein is, however, sure to note that no single factor, including poverty, is sufficient in describing what directs young people to a gang life.
Klein also discusses the criminal activities of gangs, noting that while police exaggerate the crimes of gangs and reduce them to purely fighting units, often the gang members exaggerate their own criminal antics as well. Furthermore, according to Klein, while gang members gain respect for their demonstrated willingness to do violence or transgress against norms, gang leaders are not necessarily the most violent members, according to Klein, and may not be violent at all.
Much of Klein's analysis comes from speaking through his experiences in conducting past research and in working directly with law enforcement and with gang members in affected areas.The determination of a city as a 'gang city' circa 1995 had a politics surrounding it with both benefits and detriments to the urban centre that gained such a distinction so he acknowledges that some of his data might be questionable. This book was published during a peak period of gang popularity and hysteria, when music by Death Row Records hip-hop artists, and films like Menace II Society and Boyz In Da Hoodwere pushing very specific symbols and images of LA gang culture into the mainstream and it serves as a strong academic voice to counter the effects of such cultural forms.
The Maine Woods is an account of a trip taken in the Summer of 1846 by Henry David Thoreau, the great Transcendentalist philosopher, through Maine to the Mount Katahdin. The book, published after Thoreau’s death (like most of his writing), primarily gives the details of the plant and animal life of the wilderness he crosses by foot or by canoe. The descriptions of these natural features, I would say, make up most of the book and demonstrate a very focused attention on the natural world. This particular edition of the book also includes lengthy appendices that list the life Thoreau encountered.
Aside from noting all of the different forms of plant and animal life, The Maine Woods is filled with Thoreau’s musings on human activities in its interaction with nature, focusing both on American development and treatment of the land, and on the Indian interactions with the land. A particularly noteworthy passage was where Thoreau lamented the killing of a moose by a white hunter, just for fun. Thoreau was very critical of such activity which is, in essence, cowardly, stupid, and wasteful. He was also critical of some Indian (to use Thoreau’s term) practices as well, noting that they could be equally wasteful of natural resources at times, although he certainly also showed a great respect for Indian culture and the final section of the book is a list of words from the languages of the American northeast, and their English translations.
