Helen Highly Vindicated. In the last two days I’ve heard at least two pop-culture references to an ancient play by Aristophanes. As someone who can’t seem to stop writing commentary about popular culture by comparing it to classic theater, it is refreshing to hear someone else finally do it – two people no less!Alyssa Milano and Bill Maher, thank you very much for making me feel less out of touch with the world.
First, Alyssa Milano called for a sex strikeuntil Georgia’s new anti-abortion law is repealed. She didn’t mention the play Lysistrata by name, but I assume (and hope) it was buried in her subconscious and gave her the idea. In famous Greek literature, this character convinces women to refuse sex with their husbands until they end a war. Milano did reference contemporary director Spike Lee, who used the same idea as a remedy for gang violence in his film Chi-Raq.
Then, Bill Maher, on Real Time with Bill Maher, listed a New Rule he called “The Great Wife Hope,” suggesting that two famous ex-models, Melania Trump and Jerry Hall, both married to “super-rich Republican monsters” – Donald Trump and Rupert Murdoch, respectively, deny sex to their husbands. Maher specifically mentioned Lysistrata when explaining that getting men to quit their destructive ways by threatening to cut them off in bed is a tale as old as time. He added, “I know they’re rich, but is it worth Western Civilization?” See the clip, below:
So there: I guess American culture is not as disinterested in classic drama as it might seem. I don’t expect this small “win” for intellectual literature to change me from being mostly Helen Highly Irrelevant or to bring more people to my online essays, but I will mention them here nonetheless. I keep writing commentary about pop culture by comparing it to decidedly unhip, old stage plays, or just writing about the most esoteric aspects of culture, I guess. Most people have no idea what I am talking about and the rest don’t care. I am ridiculously irrelevant, and I can’t seem to stop myself.
I know that almost no one wants to see a new, controversial “cinematic memoir” about alleged sex-predator and old Rolling Stone Bill Wyman, much less read an article that compares that film to a vintage Samuel Beckett play – especially not on Mother’s Day! But I posted it anyway. Click here to read my review of The Quiet One, where Helen Highly Suggests that viewers might come for the music but stay for the existential irony. If nothing else, it’s an in-depth discussion of the absurdist nature of reminiscence.
Bill Wyman in “The Quiet One”Bill and Suzanne Wyman at Rupert Murdoch and Jerry Hall’s wedding
As a not-entirely-irrelevant tie-in, I am going to post a photo I found of the elderly Bill Wyman and his third wife Suzanne at the wedding of the aforementioned Jerry Hall and Rupert Murdoch. I didn’t have space to include the picture in my Quiet One review, but it kinda makes sense here, in a grotesque sort of way. I assume Donald Trump was in attendance as well. I call that triple-down monstrosity.
And before The Quiet One, I wrote about an urgently important advocacy documentary, Slay the Dragon, which discusses the least appealing political topic – gerrymandering, a term most people can’t pronounce, much less understand. Although, people’s disinterest in it only makes it more the symbol of everything that’s wrong with America. I tried to make my film review seem relatable by referencing Game of Thrones, which I did not do nearly as successfully as John Oliver did last night, when making The Green New Deal seem interesting by comparing it to Game of Thrones. But he is more clever than I, alas. Still, the topic of gerrymandering is actually more urgent than climate change, and there are more immediate and concrete actions that we can take. Click here to read my Slay the Dragon review and interview with the filmmakers. Really: this is THE most vital political film of the year, and if I can contribute anything to popular culture, it will be in getting people to see this surprisingly compelling movie, directed by Barak Goodman. (Note: Recent events have brought up correlations between gerrymandering and Alabama’s new, super-restrictive abortion law, which actually out-outrages Alyssa Milano’s Georgia abortion law. I’ve updated my Slay the Dragon article to include these latest events.)
Gerrymandered Dragon“Us” movie poster
Before that, I reviewed the much-anticipated pop-culture phenom Us – the latest horror flick from super-cool Jordan Peele. But I compared it, point by point, to a theatrical adaptation of Uncle Vanya by Anton Chekhov(in a new play titled Life Sucks).I asked if the two were tethered together like combating doubles of each other. I know; it seems random, but at a time when immigration has become a national emergency in our country, both stories deal with issues of outsiders vs insiders, us vs them (within ourselves and society), and blame vs responsibility, and I thought it was worth discussing. And also, both mix humor into their portrayals of pain, which makes them both meaningful genre-benders. Doesn’t even matter if you’ve seen the film or Chekhov, methinks; it’s all good food for thought. Click here to read that incisive review. – A little scissor humor there. ha. (Hey! Play just got an extended run uptown starting June 4! Go buy tickets!)
Maybe Wikipedia is happy to have me around. I seem to do nothing as much as insert Wikipedia links in an attempt to help people understand what the hell I’m talking about. So it goes. I’m thinking that next I will discuss The Avengers in terms of Henrik Ibsen’s Brand. Just kidding! I promise I won’t. Happy weekend, y ’all!
Game of Thrones is ending, and now where will we hide from our disillusionment and despair? Hell, even that doesn’t provide the escapism it promised; we are confronted with a Starbucks cup in the Land of Westeros. It’s not just the crass contemporary brand in our escapist fantasy television that offends. Don’t forget that Starbucks owner Howard Schultz was campaigning for president just a few weeks ago, and the prospect of our upcoming presidential race only reminds us of our collective disgust. That Starbucks cup was like a cruel joke wrapped in a bad dream plopped in some dragon dung. What are we supposed to do with all our alienation and desolation? Well, if watching Jon Snow learn to ride a dragon in Game of Thrones didn’t give you quite the lift you wanted, Helen Highly Suggests you try watching Slay the Dragon,directed by Barak Goodman and Chris Durrance – an earth-shaking documentary that follows a brutal civil war for the prize of Democracy in the land of the United States of America. It’s a movie about gerrymandering, and it doesn’t matter how unappealing the word sounds or how nerdy it seems, it’s THE most important thing to watch right now on any screen. (And really, if you can handle a name like Hizdahr zo Loraq, then you can handle the complexities of gerrymandering.)
Gerrymandered Dragon
If you feel you have been abandoned by your belief in democracy, your sense of justice, your morality, then this is the movie for you. If you feel hopeless and helpless in the face of political power that seems beyond your control, this movie is for you. If the dragon you have is not the dragon you want — whether you aim to slay it or to ride it, this movie might make your fire-breathing wishes come true. But it’s not just big-wing-span enthusiasm on film; it’s a highly timely Call to Action. Strained dragon metaphors aside, and regardless of your party affiliation, this movie is the most significant and vital political film of the year, and perhaps the most empowering. Produced by Participant Media and premiering at Tribeca Film Festival 2019, Slay the Dragon tells the story of a fight for the soul of our country that is real and urgently relevant.
About this Dragon: Gerrymandering, the practice of redrawing electoral maps to serve the party in power, has been around for centuries. It often results in districts that are bizarrely shaped, and this film points to one famous case in which critics said the redrawn district resembled a mythical dragon. So, that’s how we got this gerrymandered dragon. Going further, the film looks at how gerrymandering has been used in the past and what’s so different and dangerous about it now, in our hyper-partisan times. It shows how a secret gerrymandering initiative launched 10 years ago used newly unregulated Dark Money and newly available high-tech analytics that produced Big Data demographics to enact “the most audacious political heist in modern times” – an unprecedented extreme in gerrymandering that effectively negated the will of the majority of voters across the country.
Now we have this beast of a dragon that is threatening American democratic principles by overpowering the will of the people. Late-night comedian Seth Meyers pointed to a recently gerrymandered district in North Carolina and asked, “What do you see in this shape? I don’t know, it’s either a dragon or 300 years of institutional racism.” The real problem, however, is that the “old gerrymandering” was bad, but starting in 2010, the “new gerrymandering” has jumped into the steroid era.
“Voters should choose politicians, not the other way around.” — Katie Fahey
Goodman and Durrance offer a staggeringly thorough investigation into the entrenched and increasingly perilous problem of “dirty redistricting,” which enables politicians to ignore the decisions of the people they govern. Slay the Dragon gives some harrowing examples of what happens when legislators are no longer accountable to the people. It explains how gerrymandering is directly connected to real-life issues such as: the much-publicized and still unresolved water crisis in Flint, Michigan; Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s removal of collective bargaining for public employees; newly extreme voter-ID laws intended to disenfranchise targeted groups; and North Carolina’s bathroom bill.
Goodman says, “I felt very strongly about connecting the dots and showing not that gerrymandering in some abstract way dilutes your vote but how the policies that are passed in these states are so out of step with the people in these states. If you’re a voter, it’s not just a sense that your vote doesn’t count. It’s actual things that affect your everyday life, whether it’s environmental stuff or a union issue or whatever. It’s real-life stuff. It’s not abstract.”
Gerrymandering cartoon from the Florida Sentinel
The film explains why, to so many of us, our democratic representation doesn’t feel representative, at both the state and federal level. Interwoven into those bleak realities, the film also follows ordinary people as they speak up and organize and fight to make their votes matter in a system that has been rigged against them by what can fairly be called one of the greatest political manipulations in American history.
We can pretty reliably count on John Oliver at HBO’s Last Week Tonight to address our nation’s most serious and most complicated issues with wonderfully instructive and hilarious style. See his treatment of gerrymandering, below, where he says, among other things, “Everything about gerrymandering is stupid and wrong.”
Although not as comedic as John Oliver, this documentary wastes no time with unconstructive outrage. While it efficiently functions as a lesson about the recent history of American politics and its dark underbelly, the film is most crucially about activism — why it matters and how it works. It speaks about what is happening in our country right now, last week, next month – who is doing what, and where, and why, and how it’s all affecting you, whether you realize it or not (and how you can participate in ways that will make you less helpless and hopeless). But its aim is not to proselytize; its aim is to educate and motivate – now, before 2020.
The filmmakers have faith that once regular people understand the terrible truths that lie behind the boring word “gerrymander,” those disturbing realities will galvanize them to join with their neighbors and take back the reigns of democracy that has run amok. In fact, the film shows us some daring individuals and grassroots organizations who have already done just that, with amazing results.
With 2020 bringing both elections and another census that will further shape how voting districts are drawn, Goodman and Durance are hoping their film will make people aware of the urgency of the current gerrymandering problem and embolden them to take action.
Chris Durrance. Katie Fahey and Barak Goodman from Slay the Dragon, at TFF
“I feel there’s a lot in common between the two. In both cases, the story is about ordinary people, especially young people who have a different vision of the world, and how they’re taking that into their own hands and making change. In that respect, I find both films totally inspiring, and I’ve immensely enjoyed working on both of them. For old fogies like me, to see that kind of thing – to see how young people can do so much just with passion and vision… it’s inspiring. Working on these films has renewed my faith in America. I see that democracy is still very much alive. And that’s what I wanted to communicate in both documentaries.”
Rat F**ked by David Daley
Shaken by the book Ratf**ked: Why Your Vote Doesn’t Count, written by veteran journalist David Daley, Barak Goodman initially set out to make a film that would shine a spotlight on the enormous dangers of this little-understood problem.
“It was a complete revelation,” says Goodman of Daley’s book. “I had heard of gerrymandering, of course, but like a lot of us, I didn’t completely understand it. And I certainly didn’t understand the extent to which it had been used as a partisan political weapon in the last eight years, and the threat it posed to some of the bedrock principles of democracy.”
Goodman adds, “I think most Americans – Republicans and Democrats – however much we might disagree with each other on other issues, feel that every person’s vote should count equally and that everyone should have the opportunity to vote.”
Goodman called Daley to ask if the film rights were available for the book and if the author would be interested in participating as a consultant on the project. Happily, the answer to both questions was yes. Goodman then approached frequent collaborator Chris Durrance about co-directing the film.
Modern Gerrymandering Shapes
Durrance was equally shocked by the revelations in the book. It reminded him of his – and many other observers’ – confusion after the 2012 national elections. That year, President Barak Obama won reelection comfortably and Democratic House candidates received 1.4 million more votes than their Republican opponents nationwide, yet Republicans came out of the election with a 234-201 majority in the House. “I remember seeing the gulf between the number of votes and the number of seats they won,” he says. “Some people said it was a matter of geography. I bought that for a long time. But after reading David Haley’s book, it was brought home to me that no, this was orchestrated. What happened was by design.”
Goofy and Donald Duck gerrymandered in PA
As they started trying to explain the complexities of the situation in ways that would translate dramatically to the screen, Durrance says he quickly realized that the film would be far more compelling and relevant if it moved beyond the historical perspective of the book and focused on the people who are leading the fight against gerrymandering today.
“The film really clicked into gear when we came across Katie Fahey, who was running what was then a fledgling online group of political neophytes who had decided to take on gerrymandering in Michigan,” says Durrance. “That’s when we realized this was a film that could live in the present, but a present informed by what had happened in the recent past.”
Fahey, a 20-something with no political experience, is the founder of Voters Not Politicians, a grassroots organization dedicated to wresting redistricting control in Michigan away from political parties and putting it into the hands of a citizens’ commission comprised of people from across the ideological spectrum. The group’s argument that voters should choose politicians, not the other way around, struck a chord with Michigan voters, and with an extraordinary door-to-door effort, despite all the big-money opposing forces, the group managed to get the gerrymandering Initiative Proposal 2 on the 2018 midterm ballot. The film also focuses on similar initiatives in Wisconsin and North Carolina.
Slay the Dragon documentary
The story of the Proposal 2 campaign was so gripping that the filmmakers decided to hold off on completing the film until the fate of the initiative was decided in the November 2018 elections. The proposal passed. But the story didn’t end there.
There is a new term for political neophytes to learn: “weaponized lame-duck legislation.” The Powers That Be do not release their power easily, even after losing an election.
It gets more complicated from here, but I will say that the story continues in ongoing court battles and in different states across the country. (In early May, the Supreme Court ruled on Ohio’s Congressional map, and new actions are being taken almost weekly on cases around the country.) In fact, after the documentary’s final scene of Fahey’s group celebrating their win and drinking champagne, the filmmakers felt the need to place a screen graphic at the end of the film to update viewers. It reads:
WITH A ‘BLUE WAVE,’ DEMOCRATS
RECAPTURED CONGRESS IN 2018.
BUT IN NORTH CAROLINA, MICHIGAN,
AND WISCONSIN THE GERRYMANDERS HELD.
IN ALL THREE STATES, LEGISLATURES QUICKLY
MOVED TO PASS NEW VOTER SUPPRESSION LAWS AND
STRIP INCOMING DEMOCRATIC GOVERNORS OF POWER.
Honestly, when I saw that final graphic, my heart fell. It put me back into the defeatist “even when you win, you lose,” mindset that has felt so overwhelming in recent years. After Goodman spoke so enthusiastically about how both his new documentaries shared a spirit of optimism about democracy, I asked him a hard question. I asked, “Do you say you believe that democracy is alive and well because it’s the thing you want to believe and that you hope can and will be true, if people keep trying despite the setbacks, or do you honestly believe that democracy is alive and well in America – based on your real experiences and what you have seen happen over the past few years? Is functional democracy a wish or reality?”
Katie Fahey, Voters Not Politicians
He did not pause before he answered, emphatically, “The latter. I believe it. I’ve seen it.” He is here to testify. But he adds, “People have to fight for their democracy. They have to get upset and they have to get mad and really make it clear to politicians that they will not stand for it. That’s what happened in Michigan. It’s what is going to happen everywhere.” And Fahey stepped in to add to that answer:
“I spent two years of my life, every single day, seeing what democracy can be, seeing strangers join together and decide to stand up for doing what was right over what was easy – take democracy into their own hands and talk to their neighbors about how to make a better future. And what we did… we changed the course of history. There may be setbacks but there is no turning back. The tide is turning. Change is happening.
Katie Fahey winning, in Slay the Dragon
“And what we’re doing now is… we had so many people reach out to us after hearing about our story on the national news and say that they want to challenge gerrymandering in their states, so now I’m working on creating lessons based on what we did and organizing to help other people do it for themselves too.”
Okay then. This is testimony from people on the front lines of the fight. Helen Highly Persuaded: I will give hope a chance.
This is not an ordinary archive-on-film documentary; it’s not just a history lesson, a story about ideas, or something you put on your to-watch list; it’s a breathing thing, with a life force and a will for justice and hope to offer, but it needs daylight and care to stay alive. The fight is happening right now. The hope the film holds is not just an offer; it’s a plea. I am pleading with you; let’s not give up on everything quite yet. Watch this movie first.
(Slay the Dragon is set to be released later this year, but keep an eye out for updates.)
Following up on my previous What-to-See article, which focused on Archival Movies at Tribeca Film Festival, I am listing a few more Top Picks that I could not exclude. There is really SO MUCH great stuff at Tribeca2019 (including Tribeca Television Festival and Tribeca Immersive, which I won’t even touch but are worthy of exploring), that it’s tough to pull out a short list. But here are some films that grabbed my attention during the pre-festival screenings, and which you cannot fail in seeing. I am recommending two Magic Realism films that are beautiful and dramatic, and two Activism films that are urgently important. Plus, one of the several Music Documentaries that I haven’t seen but is sure to be a winner.
How can a documentary be so gorgeous and tell such a perfectly formed narrative? It doesn’t seem possible; it’s a rare thing. Our Time Machine is a profound and poetic film that is achingly uplifting as it tells a universal story about the exquisite sadness and joy of life. Shaken by news of his father’s dementia, Chinese artist Maleonn sets off to build an intricately-designed time-machine puppet that will unite him and his father as it transports them to the memories his father has forgotten. (If you don’t understand how puppetry can be a true art form, this film will show you.)
Our Time Machine, at Tribeca
This Chinese-language film is full of tableaus that blend the real and the surreal as Maleonn follows in the artistic footsteps of his parents; his mother was an actress and his father, Ma Ke, was a long-time director of the Peking Opera Theater. Through the lens of a father-son relationship, Our Time Machine explores what it means to be an artist in China in the 20th century and today. From the condemnations of the Cultural Revolution to contemporary financial and social challenges of putting on a complex and wholly original hybrid art performance, directors S. Leo Chiang and Yang Sun probe the artistic impulse across generations. Mixing haunting imagery with real-life moments, Our Time Machine conveys the mystery and consolation of art against the ravages of time.
I put this movie on my Pick List because of its evocative use of animation and graphic elements (by Smith and Lee), which seem to lift the vibrancy and energy of this film off the screen and make the entire experience feel palpable and enthralling. The depressive grittiness of the story layered with the magical storytelling mechanism make for a rich film that stays with you after you’ve left the theater. Plus there is the electric actress, Slick Woods, who plays Goldie; when she is on the screen, it is impossible to look away.
Slick Woods as Goldie, at TFF2019
Goldie is a street-wise, 18-year-old dancer with big dreams of big fame, even as she is stuck at home minding her two sisters while their mother is in jail. When an opportunity to audition for a real music video comes her way, Goldie feels the time has finally come for her star to rise. All she needs is the perfect canary yellow fur coat she has had her eye on in a local vintage store window. But with the day of the shoot rapidly approaching, and Goldie’s pockets still empty of the cash needed to purchase the coat, her desire for it—and its perceived promise of transformation—becomes an all-consuming obsession.
Sam De Jong’s second feature is a stylish coming-of-age fable, anchored by a magnetic debut performance from Woods. Against the background of the vibrant Bronx streets in the summer, viewers are invited to keep up with Goldie’s breakneck race to realize her dreams or lose it all.
After the 2008 election, a secretive, well-funded partisan initiative poured money into state legislative races in key swing states to gain control of their redistricting processes and used high-tech analytics to dramatically skew voting maps based on demographic data. The result is one of the greatest electoral manipulations in U.S. history, one that poses a fundamental threat to our democracy and exacerbates the already polarized atmosphere in Congress and state houses across the country.
Slay the Dragon documentary
Gerrymandering, the practice of redrawing electoral maps to serve the party in power, has been around for centuries. But in today’s hyper-partisan political environment it has been taken to unprecedented extremes, fueled by the elimination of corporate campaign contribution limits and the availability of vast amounts of personal information. The effects of this audacious plan have continued to bear fruit through the 2018 midterms. But voters, fed up with cynical efforts to sidestep the will of the majority, have begun fighting back. In one example, a grassroots movement led by a young woman with no political experience gathered hundreds of thousands of signatures to put an anti-gerrymandering initiative on the ballot in Michigan.
The new documentary Slay the Dragon shines a light on this timely issue, and follows a handful of citizens’ groups, outraged by what they see as an attack on the core democratic principle that every person’s vote should count equally, as they battle party operatives and an entrenched political establishment to fix a broken system.
Katie Fahey, in Slay the Dragon
In this film, we learn about “packing” and “cracking” and witness creative redistricting lines full of twists, curves, and squiggles to guarantee a certain majority. But we also experience hope in the form of Katie Fahey, a Michigander who forms the group Voters Not Politicians working to bring a measure onto the state’s ballot to require an independent group—not the legislature—to draw the lines. And in Wisconsin, an activist group challenges the state’s redistricting in a case that makes its way to the US Supreme Court. Directors Barak Goodman and Chris Durrance craft a detailed, infuriating, ultimately inspiring look—deftly balancing the facts and maps with the tireless work of people like Fahey to get us to act to ensure that democracy will survive. But the battle isn’t over yet; you need to be informed and vigilant.
Note: Barak Goodman and Chris Durrance have directed several films together, including Clinton for PBS’s American Experience, and the six-part series Cancer: The Emperor of All Maladies. Separately and together, they have won numerous Peabody, Emmy®, and Writers Guild Awards, and an Academy Award® nomination. Barak is also the director of another film at TFF this year, which I also recommend — Woodstock: Three Days That Defined a Generation, detailed below.
Captain Paul Watson has dedicated his life to fighting for one thing – to end the slaughter of the ocean’s wildlife and the destruction of its ecosystems. Without the ocean’s ecosystems, Watson contends that life on earth itself will not survive, and he makes a surprisingly convincing case for the urgency and necessity of his mission. Co-founder of GreenPeace and founder of Sea Shepard, Watson is part pirate, part philosopher, in this provocative film about a man who will stop at nothing to protect what lies beneath. Like a crime-fighting superhero of the high seas, Watson and his crews confront illegal whaling vessels from Europe to the Southern Ocean, seal hunters in Canada, and shark finners in Central America. Impervious to threats, with more than one nation issuing warrants for his arrest, Watson continues to intervene on behalf of the endangered ocean creatures and ultimately life on this planet.
Captain Watson, at Tribeca
Braiding contemporary interviews with Watson, archival footage from decades of Watson’s ferocious activism, and spectacular underwater nature footage, award-winning documentarian Lesley Chilcott (An Inconvenient Truth and Waiting for Superman) tells a story that is shockingly informative, magnificent, and deeply disturbing. Watson is a must-see for anyone concerned about the future of our planet.
When business partners John Roberts and Joel Rosenman floated the idea of hosting an opening day party with live music to celebrate their new recording studio in Woodstock, New York, they had no idea what it would eventually become: a pilgrimage of 500,000 like-minded radicals and hippies to Max Yasgur’s farm in Bethel, where they would find spiritual reassurance and release in a celebration of freedom.
Woodstock: Three Days That Defined a Generation
50 years later, Barak Goodman’s retelling of the three-day music festival captures the zeitgeist of the time. Structured faithfully around audio testimony from attendees, Woodstock: Three Days That Defined a Generation focuses not just on how it all came to be, despite enormous challenges, but how it felt for it to happen: an endless traffic backup was elevated to a communal experience, and a food shortage became a collaboration rather than a disaster. Historic musical performances spotlighted in the film, from Jimi Hendrix to Joan Baez to Crosby, Stills, and Nash, form the backdrop to what is fundamentally the audience’s story. Woodstock takes us all back to a time and a place now captured in a time capsule, but also reminds us of the immediacy that love, music and shared experience can elicit.
