BLOW-OUT

I watched Brian De Palma's Blow-Out about a month ago, but I've been having a hard time collecting my thoughts about it.  It's a very good conspiracy theory based thriller, with references to both trashy porno/horror flicks and high art, Blow-Up and The Conversation.  While it's take on the mind of a conspiracy theorist is obviously relevant to this blog, it has been hard for me to decide how I feel about the film as a whole; whether it achieves it's goal of being sort of ironically kitsch and trashy as well as a cohesive film, or if the the kitsch covers up certain weaknesses in performance and plotting.

Spoiler alert: I'm going to talk about this film as if you've already seen it.

The movie ends in an insanely over the top chase scene in which Jack Terry (John Travolta) drives his car through a parade in downtown Philadelphia, somehow managing to not kill anyone, until he runs into the front display window of a shop, and then escapes the ambulance, using an ear piece connected to a radio transmitter hidden in Sally's (Nancy Allen) coat to find her in the middle of the crowds based on the sounds of fireworks and screaming.  He arrives in time to kill her assailant, Burke (John Lithgow), but not in time to save the girl.  Terry weeps as he holds Sally, against a backdrop of fireworks and a giant American flag.

This is the primary moment in which Travolta's acting and De Palma's political commentary are most in question.  The film is about corruption in American politics, but it takes on the plot of horror film with a deranged serial killer, avoiding a full fledged conspiracy theory.  So the overblown imagery of American patriotism at the end feels strangely out of place.  In the face of a vast political conspiracy it would register as deeply ironic and cynical, but as the climax of a cheesy horror flick it is just cheesy.

The plot is neatly resolved in the end.  Terry uses Sally's screams, recorded as she is brutally murdered by Burke while he helplessly listens, for a scene in the skin flick he is doing sound for, which, at the beginning of the movie, was the first sort of plot point: the girl in the movie couldn't produce a convincing scream, and without it the movie was worthless.  Terry wasn't looking for that scream when he wandered into the Philadelphia night recording owl's and car sounds with his tape recorder, but it led him to record the tire of Governor McRyan's car being shot out, which led subsequently to his heroic rescue of Sally and involvement in the conspiracy that led to McRyan's death.

Blow-Out has all of the right trappings of a good conspiracy theory movie, cool looking recording technology, a well done portrait of paranoia as felt by Terry as he realizes the scope of the conspiracy, a creepy hitman played by Lithgow, and seedy characters that are pawns in the execution of the conspiracy.

However, what we discover in the end is that the conspiracy that Terry is working to uncover is really the work of one rogue agent, Lithgow's Burke, it takes it into his own hands to murder Sally, and creates a sick plot of serial murders of prostitutes intended to avert attention from McRyan's enemies involvement.  Although there was a conspiracy to catch McRyan in an immoral situation (that of being in a car with Sally, who was meant to appear as a prostitute and had in fact been making a living by acting in similar situations), involving members of an opposing political campaign (McRyan is favored to win the presidential election), once the plot goes wrong and McRyan dies, the higher-ups remove themselves from the situation, allowing Lithgow to turn it into his own quest for destruction.

Burke becomes the single antagonist of Terry and Sally.  He breaks into Terry's home, erases his tapes, and murders Sally, all in order to cover up the conspiracy of his employers, who have more or less lost interest.  And so it becomes difficult to understand De Palma's intentions.  Is the conspiracy theory that he created just a back drop for a thriller?  Or is this an attempt at a commentary on the nature of paranoia, the idea that while Terry's paranoia isn't unwarranted, it is somewhat inaccurate. 

Why is Jack Terry obsessed with doing the right thing in this situation?  He has a background in law enforcement, recalled in the painful memory of the failure of one of his recording devices resulting in the death of a fellow police officer, but he has apparently spent the past two years of his life doing sound for sleazy horror flicks.  I guess it's sort of an archetypal character, the good guy who is down on his luck, but has ideals, which eventually lead to his downfall.  Had he left the conspiracy alone, would he and Sally had been able to escape Burke and live happily ever after?  Is it his obsession with "the truth" that drives him to put Sally and himself in danger?  Is he doomed to repeat this sequence of events and be alone forever?  The dynamic between Travolta and Allen is one of the film's successes, which lends some weight to the overwrought resolution.

 

Spoiler Alert: The Assassinatin of Richard Nixon is super depressing

I watched The Assassination of Richard Nixon in the van driving back from Boston last weekend, after opening for Katy Perry, which was a surreal experience. It was definitely a weird movie to see after what was probably the most ridiculous performance of my life, being one of the more depressing things I've seen/read in a long time. I'd rank it up there with Dancer in the Dark, which I saw in the theatre with my Dad when I was probably fourteen or so, and haven't been able to watch again since, though I loved it. Um, anyway...





















If Assassination of Richard Nixon hadn't been based on a true story, it would come off as someone just trying to create the most depressing movie possible. The above still is Samuel Bicke, the protagonist played by Sean Penn, toward the end of his downward spiral, standing half-naked in the post office, waiting to receive a loan from the government which is ultimately denied. The movie basically just follows Bicke as his life falls apart, ending in his suicide after murdering a bunch of people in a totally stupid plot to assassinate the president, who he equates with the system of power that has opressed him and kept him from his rightful happiness.
















Bicke is a case study in paranoia. His downfall is a direct result of his inability to compromise himself. His loan is denied because he checks the box for "Negro" on the business owner application, indicating his partner and best (only?) friend Bonny Simmons, played by Don Cheadle. He intended to use the load to start a dilivery tire service with Bonny. He lost his job at his brother's tire shop because he couldn't bear lying to the costomers about the cost of the tires like his brother asked him to do. He lost his job selling furniture because he couldn't lie like that boss expected him to. His wife left him and took the kids, presumably because he couldn't hold a job. And his wife is seeing some new guy, and treats him like a nutcase (which he is). So, basically, everything sucks, and Bicke, who has nothing to pass his time with but television, develops paranoid theories about the system of opression in America that keeps people like him and Bonny from succeeding.















Bicke begins to equate his struggle with that of African-Americans, and the civil rights movement. While his relationship with Bonny seems based on something real, it becomes distorted by his desperation to succeed and his increasing paranoia. Bicke attempts to join the Black Panthers, suggesting they change their name to the Zebras, which he claims will double their membership. He is aware that he is not exactly welcome, and offers the idea and one hundred and seven (or six?) dollars before leaving. He says, "Slavery never really ended in this country."















I recently read Flaubert's Memoir of a Madman, which I actually blogged about here about ten minutes ago, which proposing a sort of useful dichotomy: Flaubert's narrator, a thinly veiled Flaubert, claims he would "rather be a madman than a fool." Bicke embodies this idea. He is powerless against the American system, for reasons that he cannot understand, and paranoia becomes his only way of having power over his life. By believing that the world is unfair and possibly even bent on his enslavement and destruction, he makes himself an outsider. He refuses to be a "fool," excepting his fate and bending to fit into the system, by lying about the price of furniture and reading "The Power of Positive Thinking." But in the end, Bicke really is little more than a madman. His paranoia takes over and he resorts to taking power in the only way he has left, violence.















That Cheadle's character is the source of his gun creates a most likely unintentional editorial on the part of the director or writer or whoever made that decision, assuming it isn't absolutely faithful to the actual story of Samuel Byck. I really doubt that it is true, because so much of the movie is speculative fictions based on a very bizarre and obscure news story and life. Anyway, the fact that the Bicke of the movie gets his fire power from a black man is difficult to interpret without some sort of reference to the Panthers and civil rights movement, and the association of black Americans with violence by the news and white America.

Whatever the film's intended politics, the character of Samuel Bycke provides an interesting model of a conspiracy theorist. While Bycke isn't necessarily a theorist himself, he believes in a vague, vast conspiracy, and focuses that conspiracy on a figure head, Nixon, to which he attributes his lack of power. This is probably similar to the what happens in the evolution of a conspiracy theorist like an Alex Jones, or your average YouTube video maker. Bycke's act of recording his actions and sending the tapes to Leonard Bernstein (a minor fact that the movie turns into a greatly important thread and narrative device, in fact Byck in real life sent tapes to other public figures as well) is reminscent of the radio shows and documentaries made by conspiracy theorists that have become part of the culture.

Also, this is random and weird:

Feminist Conspiracy

I just found a gem: www.SaveTheMales.ca. "Exposing Feminism and the New World Order"

Articles include:
"Nine Traits of Masculine Men"
"Miley Cyrus: Pedophilia: The Next Frontier"
"Overrated: Romantic Love, Young Women, Sex, Lobster"
"Why All Porn is Gay"
"The Scent of Feminist Desperation"
"Helen Gurley Brown: 'How to be a Whore'"



This guy, Henry Makow "PHD" takes paranoia to a new level. He basically attributes anything outside of heterosexual, procreative sex, to a vast conspiracy of media manipulation by the Illumanati and everyone else to brain wash people into being obsessed with sex and idealizing women. Recently I've been accutely aware of how paranoia can rule your life, because I've been out of the country, away from most of the people I know, left to imagine what is happening to all of my friends back home in my absense. It's easy to imagine how one might think that sex is evil if they aren't any good at it, or have had bad experiences with it (hence the Catholic church). This guy is scary though. His paranoia is so deep that he's devoted his life to debunking basically everything. Convoluted arguments about homosexuality and romantic love are obviously the product of the paranoia that seems to consume his life. This is starting to sound like psychotherapy, but I think this guy is a very extreme example of what most conspiracy theorists are, people whose paranoia is so intense that they believe that people are controlling their lives in ways that they can't see. As Makow puts it: "Popular occulture programmed me for failure." It's paradoxical because it is both incredibly egotistical and a absolute surrender of ego and power. Conspiracy theorists believe that they know the truth that no one else can see or accept, while at the same time they are unable to accept responsibility for the events of their own lives. It's fucking crazy. This dude is fucking crazy.

Obamathon

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	M - Th 11p / 10c
Baracknophobia - Obey
thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Economic Crisis Political Humor

I'm halfway through the "Obama Deception" by Alex Jones, which is basically another New World Order movie, with some funny stuff that explains how Obama is involved (which actually kind of makes sense, if you're crazy), when I noticed this Daily Show clip James posted on Facebook. I guess the conspiracy theorists are finally making it to the mainstream, via Fox News, which really actually makes so much sense. It kind of debunks the idea that the media is controlled by the political/financial elite, but it really just proves that Fox is bullshit and is willing to put anyone who has any criticism of Obama on the air.

I'm also doing some research into the history of conspiracy theories, which is pretty interesting, as well as the history of paranoia. The Internet definitely added a lot to the proliferation of conspiracies, but there's some funny stuff from like the sixteenth century too, it looks like.