Sukhbir,

Even the CNN call-in show, hardly a bulwark of intellectual breadth, featured
an Islamic commentator and many turbaned speakers in the audience.  American
people, me included, have repeatedly stood up against the stereotyping of
Persian and Arab peoples.  Yes, there are red-necks in this country who show
their prejudice at every opportunity.  They are dispicable.  Should we
characterize a whole nation by their actions?   And must we focus on them
rather than the killing of five thousand at one blow?    God forbid we include
the assassins themselves in our criticisms.   Their concern for the turbaned
inhabitants of the WTC was not particularly noticeable.  Citizens of many
countries perished in the WTC and in the planes.

A sarcastic remark (gleeful perversity?) about Noam Chomsky is hardly
bloodthirstiness, nor is it necessarily undeserved.   It's not really a topic I
would seriously take on at the moment, but really, I think Chomsky is in no
danger from me.   I doubt if he is much taken with the idea of living in
Afghanistan either, so the Taliban need not worry about being subjected to his
objective assessment.

Conversation about "dangerously aroused emotions" is certainly not irrelevant,
either to film or to life.  Your remarks just have no balance whatsoever.
Grief and anger are emotions that are natural in this situation--as natural to
Americans as to victims of violence, even our violence, in other countries.
Images of that grief are part of the immediacy of the experience.  There is no
aesthetic in your immediacy, only acrimony.  It is full of name-calling and
dangerous oversimplifications.  It does to Americans what you accuse Americans
of doing to others.  Maybe no worse than us, but not one whit better.  You have
no insight to offer and and your criticisms are as oft-repeated as the images
of the plane hitting the towers--and every bit as inflammatory.  Objective
analysis IS important at a time like this, but there is more objective analysis
on the Oprah show than there is in your posting.

Your lack of compassion at this time is remarkable.  Thousands of our friends
and families are dead, wounded or missing.  What attempts to pass for
"objectivity" is really kicking the opponent while he is down.  I'd rather cast
my fate with the Jerusalem Palestinians who can at least take a moment to light
a candle and share a grief that they fully understand.  There are many images
being shared in this country, images of love and brotherhood and sympathy that
include all cultures, as well as images of death and violence.  We are
struggling to hold on to those images of humanity in the midst of this carnage,
and so many nations are helping with that struggle.  Their empathy will shed
light in places that your hostility cannot reach and help to dissolve the
dichotomy of black and white that you are practicing as much as anyone else.  I
can't find the sadness--any sadness at all-- in in your positng.  It sounds
pompous and self-righteous.  I admire the restraint of others on the list, some
of whom have been even more directly affected than I have.

Sukhbir, I do apologize for taking my frustrations out on you personally.  I
just wish you would see that you are no more objective, no more sensitive, no
more sophisticated than we are.  So far, you have offered nothing new to the
image.  The Americans you describe are cartoon characters, boring and
familiar.  "Cast first the mote from your own eye" and maybe the black cows
will follow.  I'm not especially proud of being drawn into this fruitless
argument, so I will desist in future.  Better to talk about film.

Kathy Agar




Sukhbir Garewal wrote:

> With so much of hateful blindness, completely unselfcritical rhetoric of
> political morality, ecstatic endorsement of the televisual images (film
> analysts have been shown to be mere visceral consumers of the televisual
> image and have singularly failed as media critics). With so much passion
> being roused, a stray murder or two in the back alleys of Arizona and Texas
> go unreported. These gun-wielding goons stalk the streets of Dallas and
> Manhattan like the proto-policeman that is being sought to be constructed.
> Turbans are suspect. A certain way of speaking (the murderers are suddenly
> self-assured phenticians) is taken gleefully to be an endorsement of
> identity and a cathartic licence to kill. UN is completely sidelined. US is
> merely interested in only ITS war against terrorism. The other/s are
> completely forgotten except as targets of annihilation. The urbane film and
> media critics want to wait for the moment of objectivity and find the whole
> idea of talking about the dangerously aroused emotions puerile and downright
> repugnant. They have obviously not heard of the aesthetics of immediacy in
> documentary cinema of a certain persuasion and the dire need to intervene.
> The moralists - the harbingers of 'good' against 'evil' - are crying blood
> and in gleeful perversity advising Noam Chomsky to undergo a sex change and
> shift base to Afghanistan. "In the night of their ignorance, all cows are
> black." We have indeed fallen on sad days.
>
> Sukhbir
>
> _________________________________________________________________
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