Film Review

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Dead Man (1995): Nightmare Vision of the Old West

Director: Jim Jarmusch
Writer: Jim Jarmusch
Genre: Drama/ Western
Music: Neil Young
Language: English
Color: Black and White
Running Time: 121 minutes
Starring: Johnny Depp, Gary Farmer, Lance Henriksen, Michael Wincott, Mili Avital, Crispin Glover, Gabriel Byrne, Iggy Pop, Billy Bob Thornton, Jared Harris, John Hurt, Alfred Molina, Robert Mitchum

This story of a young man's passage through a frontier crawling with violence, death and decay begins on a train whose soot-faced fireman (Crispin Glover) delivers an ominous prediction. Appearing in the car where William Blake (Johnny Depp), the film's protagonist, is playing solitaire, he warns Blake that when he reaches his destination, the town of Machine, he will find his own grave.
As the train hurtles westward, Blake, dressed in a bow tie and checkered suit, finds himself surrounded by silent faces. Peering out the window, he sees remains of abandoned covered wagons and other signs of decay. When the train passes a buffalo herd, his fellow passengers go to the windows with rifles and blindly open fire.
He arrives in Dickinson where he is going to be employed as an accountant but showing up at the place, he is informed that the post has been filled. When he confronts the owner, John Dickinson (Robert Mitchum), he is ordered at gunpoint to leave at once.
Blake visits a bar where he meets Thell Russell (Mili Avital), an attractive woman who takes him back to her shabby rented room filled with paper flowers she has made. While they're in bed together, Thell's former boyfriend, Charlie Dickinson (the company owner's son, played by Gabriel Byrne), appears and shoots at Blake but kills Thell instead. Blake shoots Charlie with Thell's gun, and jumps out a window, but not before he himself is critically wounded. Blake suddenly finds himself a fugitive with a bullet in his chest.
From here, the movie changes from a horrifying frontier into something more problematic and self-conscious. Pursued by bounty hunters and law officers, Blake makes his way westward until he reaches the Pacific. For much of the way he is accompanied by an Indian guide named Nobody (Gary Farmer), who has dressed his wounds and believes his companion to be the reincarnation of the English poet William Blake.
When Nobody tells his story, it turns out that he, too, is a sort of fugitive. Captured as a boy by white men, he was taken East and exploited as a sideshow attraction and from there to England, where he was educated and discovered Blake's poetry. The Indian appoints himself the poet's guide back into the spirit world.

So what is depicted in the movie is the idea that Blake encounters a world of danger and decay rather than promise and freedom. Dead Man suggests that the West was indeed vital, but was a place of death rather than growth. Instead of an optimistic assessment of virgin land and opportunity, the film presents the spread of what one might call "white blight," the viral meanness and ignorance spread by European industrialism onto the lands of the lands of the indigenous tribes. That Jarmusch respects but thankfully falls short of romanticizing his Native American characters is one of Dead Man's more singular points of interest.

Like most great Westerns, Dead Man holds the American West and its (white) inhabitants up to close scrutiny, and in this sense its radicalism surpasses virtually every earlier example. The film's power is impossible to extrapolate from its commentary on history and society. One cannot overlook its acknowledgment of environmental degradation associated with progress, its depiction of an indigenous people's ambivalence to whites and their encroachment, and its nuanced grasp of violence, particularly gun violence (not a simple "anti-gun" op-ed, but a beautifully literal rendition of firearms' deployment by people in moments of passion, stupidity, and cold anger).
It is scored by Neil Young, who lets loud, amplified electric guitar strains settle in among the pictures. The music is limited, but effective. It very well punctuates this imaginative Western which includes interesting meditations upon the myth of the frontier, violence, artistic outlaws, and the serious situation of mistreated Native Americans. Blake's arduous journey toward death is a wonder to behold
The movie takes place in a dream state. To drive this home, we see several shots of Blake falling asleep or passing out from pain, hunger or exhaustion. By the end of the film, the images we see are dazed and dreamy.
It is not like any other western. It's not an easy film to watch, and I predict that a lot of people will call it "joyless". But, I also predict that with the passing of time, this movie will settle in and find a place as a cinema classic.

Slow, dark and very cool, Jim Jarmusch's anti-Western movie can attract and at the same time confuse you.

American Identity

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Concept of Social Identity:

In sociology and political science, the notion of social identity is defined as the way that individuals label themselves as members of particular groups (e.g., nation, social class, subculture, ethnicity, gender, etc.). It is in this sense that sociologists and historians speak of the national identity of a particular country like American identity.

American Identity:

Traditionally, researchers of American identity have mostly focused on only two components of American identity: liberalism (America as a land of freedom and opportunity) and ethnoculturalism (America as a nation of white Protestants).
In recent years additional dimensions of American identity have been considered. Two newly overlooked elements of American identity are civil republicanism (America as a vibrant participatory democracy with dutiful citizens) and incorporationalism (America as a diverse nation of immigrants).

The content f American identity: Rooted in liberalism

Recent scholarship has identified complex and often competing components of American identity that are rooted in the widely accepted liberal tradition, civic republican tradition, the contested ethnocultural tradition, and the equally contested incorporationist tradition. This perspective has been termed the “multiple tradition” or multiple conceptions model of the content of American identity.
Liberalism, in short, is the image of America that comes most easily to mind when people think about what it means to be American and is widely seen as the defining essence of American political culture. It stresses minimal government intervention in private life and promotes economic and political freedoms along with equality of opportunity.
Ethnoculturalism has also been a defining element of American identity. It sets boundaries on group membership. In its extreme, ethnoculturalism maintains that Americans are white, English-speaking Protestants of northern European ancestry. Over time this tradition has been discredited, but it is far from breathing its last breath.
Civic republicanism emphasizes the responsibilities, rather than the rights of citizenship. It advances the notion that the well being of the community is more than just the sum of individualistic pursuits of private gain. Rather, a vibrant self-governing community needs individual members to act on its behalf. In his view, we should all be involved in social and political life and pursue ends that serve the public good. As Tocqueville noted, pursuing the public good engenders pride and patriotism, which further motivate people to “labor for the good of the state”.
Incorporationalism is a more recent tradition to the set of norms that constitute the content of American identity. The seeds of this tradition were planted nearly a century ago with cultural pluralism, and only in the past few decades have both elites and citizens come to endorse this notion that America’s unique identity is grounded in its immigrant legacy and in its ability to convert the challenges immigration brings into thriving strengths. Ethnoculturalism continues to exist, but it does so alongside an incorporationist challenge that has grown stronger over the years due to many factors, including rights-based movements of the 60s and 70s and the political incorporation of immigrants and their descendents.
The simplicity of incorporationism – the idea that the United States is a nation of immigrants – belies complex beliefs about the balance between unity and diversity. While there are people who advocate one extreme of complete assimilation and others reject the premise of assimilation altogether, most Americans do not fall at these extremes. Incorporationism celebrates Americans ability both to assimilate and maintain difference.
The above mentioned elements can make the concept of American Identity which can be studied and measured each separately and widely.

References:

1. http://www.wikipedia.org/
2. Schildkraut, D.J. (2007, February 20). Defining American Identity in the 21st Century: How much” there” is there? Journal of Politics.

Book Review

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David Domke, God Willing? Political Fundamentalism in the White House, the ‘War on Terror’, and the Echoing Press. London and Ann Arbor, Ml: Pluto Press, 2004. 240 pp.

The relationship between politics and media has always been a topic for vast researches. On the other hand the use of religious discourse in addresses and speeches of politicians to back their policies is not a new issue. But what is done in this book that makes is outstanding and different is an analysis of the interconnections among all these three together. Thus David Domke’s book is ideally positioned to cut right into the heart of debates about the modern developments at the intersection of religion, politics and media within the US. According to him, the foreign and domestic foreign developments in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 were not only (neo) conservative, but also firmly grounded in a (Christian) religious fundamentalism. Domke argues that the Bush administration has turned a religious worldview into political policy and has created what Domke calls a ‘political fundamentalism’, defined as ‘an intertwining of conservative religious faith, politics, and strategic communication’ (p. 6). The book is also a critique of the Bush administration’s disregard for democracy in the months following the attack.

The introductory chapter of God Willing? identifies four main characteristics of the Bush administration’s communication that were grounded in a conservative religious worldview: (1) a binary concept of reality (apparent in the consistent use of two constructions: good vs. evil and security vs. peril); (2) an obsession with time and demands for immediate action against terrorism(manifest in two beliefs: that action in the here and now is imperative, and that one’s commitment to a certain course of action, if perceived to be God inspired, should be of an enduring nature); (3) declarations about the will of god for the united states and the values of freedom and liberty; and finally (4) an intolerance for dissent(apparent in the administration’s unified voice in public communication, its appeals for other political actors to act with political unity and its harsh criticisms of dissenters). In each of the chapters that follow, one of these characteristics is defined and discussed in detail, with evidence offering its consistent presence in the public communications of the president between 11 September 2001 and 1 may 2003.

In chapter 2 he examines the presence of two binaries in the president’s discourse and news coverage after September 11- good versus evil and security versus peril- and argues that these conceptions of reality reflected and contributed to a sense of moral certitude among the bush administration that was used to justify limits on civil liberties and major preemptive military action while also helping to engender public support for the president and administration’s “war on terror”.

Chapter 3 offers evidence of time fixations throughout the administration’s discourse and news coverage, and argues that they allowed the administration simultaneously to push for immediate action on specific “war on terrorism” policies and to justify this desire as a requisite step in a long-term, God- ordained process. The implication was clear: to not act quickly or to not endure in the campaign against terrorism was to risk another September 11.

In chapter 4 evidence is offered of how the universal gospel of freedom and liberty, offered by the president and echoed by the press, functioned as a central rationale for the administration’s foreign policies, particularly in justifying the new preemptive doctrine and the Iraq war.

Chapter 5 focuses on how the administration’s emphasis upon political unity and harsh rebukes of those dissented worked together to encourage support for the administration, and to suggest that anyone who held opposing views was unpatriotic and potentially placing people in the United States at risk.

Chapter 6 reflects upon the collection of evidence, in three central sections. First, it argues that the Bush administration offers an instructive case study of how political fundamentalism can gain wide support in the United States. The chapter’s second section scrutinizes the role of news media in these processes, with the argument that in a nation-challenging context, commercial mass media are drawn to the discourses of political conservatives, particularly those that are religiously grounded. The final section of the chapter explores how cultural leaders might craft a moral discourse that counters the predominance of political fundamentalism, and why it is crucial for U.S. citizens and others that they do so.

Chapter 7 offers conclusions, focusing on implications of the administration’s political fundamentalism for democracy, both in the United States and globally.

In the way the writer brings a rigorous analysis of a wide range of empirical material, David Domke’s work is of great value to study. However, to what extent his work can contribute to a better understanding of the relationship between religion, politics, and the media is a matter of question. Some scholars may find it the role of religion has been exaggerated. Some scholars may question the way he has analyzed meaning formation and reception in media as it is a subjective matter. Nevertheless, the book very well clarifies how the actions of the Bush administration and the news media are directly counter to fundamental American democratic ideals and principles. It shows how civil religion is used to promote its political goals and to justify self-interest. So "God Willing" is a must-read for anyone who cherishes American democracy, anyone who feels uneasy about the Bush Administration's use of religious images, as well as those who have concerns about the way the press helps Bush advance his agenda. However, the potential and necessity for further discussion on the subject exists that can encourage other scholars.

overview on white house site

On the site of white house http://www.whitehouse.gov/ there is a part related to the history of the white house building itself.Going through this part you can find everything about it from the beginnig up to now. There is information about presidents, first ladies and even the kids. There is also a part dedicated to happenings, holidays and ceremonies. One of the intresting part is the panoramic tours that let you view the white house and west wing through movies. There are several rooms in the buliding with different names and different uses. You can also find photos, essays and anecdotes about it.

Generally providing complete information on the white house, it tries to focus on and present its rich history to the viewer.The speeches made on tours seem so influential, giving information about each detail. what makes it more intresting is presenting the idea that every thing, every furniture, shape, photo, etc. is chosen on purpose and all symbolize the commom aim of the country.

One of the tours that attracts a lot of attention is tour of Oval Office now owned by George W. Bush. There is a brief history on this office that follows:

On an early October morning in 1909, President William Howard Taft became the first President to walk into the Oval Office. Greeting the 27th President of the United States were silk velvet curtains and a checkerboard floor made of mahajua wood from the Philippines. Caribou hide tacked with brass studs covered the chairs in the room. President Taft chose the olive green color scheme.
The Oval Office was different from the office of President Theodore Roosevelt, who built the West Wing in 1902. Roosevelt's office was rectangular. Taft relocated the office and changed its shape to oval, like the Blue Room in the White House.
Preferences for oval rooms date to the time of George Washington. At the president's home in Philadelphia, Washington had two rooms modified with a bowed-end in each that were used for hosting formal receptions called levees. As his guests formed a circle around him, Washington would stand in the center to greet them. With no one standing at the head or foot of the room, everyone was an equal distance from the president. The circle became a symbol of democracy, and Washington likely envisioned the oval Blue Room as the ideal place to host a levee.
For President Taft, the Oval Office may have symbolized his view of the modern-day president. Taft intended to be the center of his administration, and by creating the Oval Office in the center of the West Wing, he was more involved with the day-to-day operation of his presidency than were his recent predecessors.
What President Taft could not imagine in 1909 when he built the Oval Office was that the office itself would become a symbol of the Presidency. Over the years Americans developed a sentimental attachment to the Oval Office through memorable images, such as John Kennedy, Jr. peering through the front panel of his father's desk or President Nixon talking on the phone with astronauts after a successful voyage. Television broadcasts, such as President Reagan's speech following the Challenger explosion, would leave lasting impressions in the minds of Americans of both the office and its occupant.
The Oval Office became a symbol of strength and reassurance the evening of September 11, 2001, when President George W. Bush delivered comforting words through a televised address from the Oval Office. Less than six months later, President George W. Bush welcomed Afghan Interim Authority Hamid Karzai to the Oval Office. The meeting was a sign of significant progress in the war on terrorism.

Watching the tour and listening to the explanations president Bush himself gives can provide you with the impressions one can take about the United States.

More Muslim girls wear scarf in games
By JEFF KAROUB, Associated Press Writer

DEARBORN, Mich. - Dewnya Bakri loves her faith — and the feeling of sinking a three-pointer.
For much of her life, the 20-year-old Muslim has found a way to balance practicing Islam and playing basketball, including wearing a head scarf and long pants on the hardcourt, even if it's meant taunts as she blazed trails on her middle school, high school and college teams.
Now a college senior at University of Michigan-Dearborn preparing for law school, she spends free time coaching Muslim girls and sharing what she experienced in Dearborn, home of at least 40 mosques, to help give them the confidence to follow in her footsteps.
As more covered Muslim girls take up competitive sports, Bakri and others say it's time to get beyond merely allowing the hijab — the traditional Muslim head scarf worn for modesty — and help those wearing them feel welcome.
Experts and advocates say the number of Muslim girls wearing the hijab on the court, track or field is rising because girls are growing more comfortable pursuing mainstream activities while maintaining religious traditions.
"They don't see the barriers," said Edina Lekovic, spokeswoman for the Los Angeles-based Muslim Public Affairs Council. "They take it for granted they can play in competitive sports ... and work out the clothing issues at the same time."

It is worth considering...
In the U.S., the National Federation of State High School Associations' rules say state associations may allow a player to participate while wearing a head covering for religious reasons as long as it isn't dangerous to another player and unlikely to come off during play. The rule-making federation also allows pants, shorts or skirts.
That's interesting to find out that while in a democrat country you can choose to wear every thing you like to wear and no rule forces you to wear already-chosen clothes, some choose to wear hijab even in sports .

Rice seeks Russian backing on Iran
By MATTHEW LEE, Associated Press Writer

BRUSSELS, Belgium - Armed with support from NATO allies, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will try to convince a skeptical Russia that it should back U.S. plans to step up pressure on Iran to suspend its nuclear activities.
Having won NATO endorsement to stay the course despite a new U.S. intelligence assessment that concludes Iran stopped its atomic weapons development program in 2003, Rice was to meet Friday with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who has become the public face of opposition to new U.N. sanctions.

As I pointed out in my first post, opposing nuclear energy program in Iran, the U.S. has been successful in leading two rounds of U.N. Security Council sanctions against Iran and is pushing for a third set of economic sanctions if the country refuses to suspend uranium enrichment.
For this purpose they need two more admissions, one from China and one from Russia.
In my first post you read how they tried to convince Chinese to accept but the result was not successful. Still, along with China, which also has opposed new U.N. sanctions, Russia appeared isolated on Iran, which long has denied it is seeking nuclear weapons and crowed that the U.S. intelligence report was a total "victory" for the country.
So they arranged a meeting, this time to have a try on Russians but it seems once more they have been unsuccessful. Because Lavrov on Wednesday said Moscow had not seen any evidence that Iran had, in fact, ever had a nuclear weapons program, not even one that it had given up on four years ago. He also criticized the United States for its missile defense plans.

As it is going on it seems this long story in near its end. May be it is better if the U.S. stop bothering himself more and accept what the others have accepted.

Co-author Book Review

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Me and Miss Sara Sajjadi have written a bookreview that follows:

Stanley Coben, Rebellion Against Victorianism: The Impetus for Cultural Change in 1920s America. New York and Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1991. 242 pp.

The 1920s in America was a decade of rebellion, reform, and reaction as traditional Victorian values came under attack from all sides. When various groups of intellectuals, blacks, feminists, and dissatisfied economic and political groups assaulted on Victorianism.

Through a descriptive writing style, Stanley Coben goes through the reasons for the tremendous cultural changes during the 1920s and explains them historically. He begins with the concept of Victorian "character," which is a familiar concept for Americans of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. A character that, as Coben himself defines, was dependably self-controlled, punctual, orderly, hardworking, conscientious, sober, respectful of other Victorians’ property rights, ready to postpone immediate gratifications for long-term goals, pious toward a usually friendly God, a believer in the truth of the Bible, oriented strongly toward home and family, honorable in relations with other Victorians, anxious for self-improvement in a fashion which might appear compulsive to modern observers, and patriotic.

In the following chapters, he illustrates how intelligentsia developed, how intellectuals’ values were changed over time and how it led them inevitably into conflict and then he describes vividly the events that supported the growth of this intellectual subculture. Making it easier to understand he puts the events in a frame of four particularly consequential ones.

The book pays a special attention to cultural matters, showing how art forms of the '20s-like jazz or the novels of Ernest Hemingway and Sinclair Lewis-were part of the rebellion. It devotes one whole chapter to describe how the steady flow of black migrants north caused demographic changes and suggested opportunities to them to improve their status and enforce their activities. And then Jazz as one of the most destructive activities of blacks was there to stay as Leopold Stokowski, conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra, asserted in 1924:

“Jazz has come to stay …and it is useless to fight against it. Already its vigor, its new vitality, is beginning to manifest itself.
The Negro musicians of America are playing a great part in this change. …They are not hampered by traditions or conventions, with their new ideas, their constant experiments, they are causing new blood to flow in the veins of music. In America, I think, lies perhaps the greatest hope in the whole musical world.”

Going through feminist movements and the changes in economic and political order of the country that set the scene for the rebellion, at the end there is a fascinating chapter about the Ku Klux Klan which reveals the Klan as the most visible and powerful guardian of Victorianism during the 1920s.

What makes the whole more thoughtful is the new perspective that Coben brings to show how the contradictions that were the trigger for the rebellion in 1920s still exist, the ones that brought together workers, farmers, socialists, ethnic groups, intellectuals, black leaders, and many feminists.

Coben’s study is of great value particularly for its perfect historical analysis. In fact it has got a refreshing change from most boring history texts. Illustrating the relationship between culture and politics through describing the process of a phenomenon happened in the history of a country like America, he gives the reader a real example that can be contemplated and compared with similar issues. The process through which Coben leads the reader to come to some conclusions and think about present-day issues is designed skillfully and at the same time the way he addresses the existing problems forcefully is appreciable. However it could be better if the idea suggested at the end was developed more to give more evidences to the readers and let them make better judgments. Nevertheless, Rebellion Against Victorianism certainly receives careful attention from scholars and students interested in the intersections between culture and politics, as well as the wider concern about the similar contemporary problems. It can also be a good supplementary text for use in undergraduate courses on 20th-century American history or in American studies courses focusing on twentieth-century cultural development. It will be unfortunate if doesn’t trigger or contribute to a discussion about the effective role of cultural changes in politics and examining the same issues in the present society.