Review of Jordan Peele’s “Us”

The opening 30 minutes of Us is well photographed, and the scenes are full of foreboding and suspense as one might expect. Jordan Peele is very good at composing shots and moving the camera ominously. The entire production feels well executed. I also enjoyed the 1987 setting in the initial setup of the story. This spate of 1980s nostalgia is very bankable these days-Stranger Things, The Goldbergs, and Ready Player One are recent examples. 

The underlining political message of the film is essentially about what privilege and class does to people in American society - spoiler alert - it’s bad! Popular culture can be an effective vehicle for promoting or expressing political ideas. The political messages in recent Hollywood productions are more obvious these days. I never subscribed to the idea that there can be non-political art. The question for me is execution. Big Hollywood films are supposed to be entertaining. That’s what most people expect when they pay to see a major American movie. The entertainment value of a film lowers when the message is primary. One’s agreement with the preceding sentence has entirely to do with whether a film’s message comports with the given viewer’s beliefs, and that is why politics in entertainment is contentious. It’s because that’s what politics is. I think what rankles people is when the politics are shoehorned into the narrative, or when the internal logic of the story is affected because of that shoehorning (at least that’s what rankles me). 

The entire premise of Us depends on our suspension of disbelief, and the politics are the driving reason.  In order for the argument that nurture wins out over nature in social development, every person must have a doppelgänger created by some unexplained organization. Every person in the US has a double? Over 300 million people? Living where? The film opens with a caption saying: “There are thousands of miles of tunnels beneath the United States ... Abandoned subway systems, unused service routes, and deserted mine shafts ... Many have no known purpose at all." That’s the only explanation for how millions of people lived unnoticed by society since 1987 until Red (the main antagonist and double of Adelaide - the hero) leads the glorious rebellion from underground. That’s over 30 years- it’s silly. 

I know this sounds churlish to many, especially because Peele is being hailed as a genius and this film is a “masterpiece,” but so much of the story or action is contrived that I have to obliterate my disbelief - not just suspend it.  many convenient plot points are clearly there just to move the story in the direction that Peele wants it to go. When the Wilson family (the good guys) first encounters their evil “tethers” in their driveway at night, the father’s (Abraham) timid response to these strange trespassers is just weird. I remember thinking “swing the fucking bat.” Most fathers or husbands (I would hope) would take more forceful action to protect the safety of their family, but Abraham hides behind the locked front door as the tethers pound it down. He is eventually wounded and given a limp in order to help us believe this 6’5” man can’t pose more of an obstacle to the bad guys - it’s silly.

Another mainstay of the horror movie genre appears: lack of police response. Even the lowliest B movies have to explain why the police aren’t responding. Adelaide calls 911, but the cops never show up, thus allowing the second act to unfold.  The tethers get into the house and now have the Wilsons at their disposal in front of the fireplace. So why didn’t they just kill them right off the bat? Because that would not allow Red to move the story forward with her expository soliloquy in her weird scary voice.  Adelaide was literally chained to the table - the father was helplessly on the floor after being beaten. There are many more contrivances throughout the film. For example, each family has their own elaborate individual scenarios with their double.  An unconscious Abraham is taken by his double onto the lake in a boat only for Abraham to regain consciousness and have a dramatic fight in the water - why not just knife him while he was out? The Wilson family becomes quickly adept and comfortable at killing, even though they are supposed to be sheltered middle class Americans who likely have no experience with violence. 

I think most reviewers are ignoring the flaws of the film because it has such a potent and popular political message. They are committing the same sin as Peele i.e. allowing their personal or popular politics to lead in their aesthetic and critical judgments.  I also think many in the entertainment industry want Jordan Peele to be the second coming of Hitchcock that they are going to simply will it into being. This has a erie parallel in many big media outlets’ coverage of most things lately (see the Russia collusion fiasco).  In many ways, Us is a product of our time. We see want we want to see. 

To make sure that she gets to be 25

By Toufic El Rassi
April 20, 2009

Roger Cohen is one of many pugnacious liberal American Zionists that I tend to ignore but his op-ed piece in yesterday’s New York Times bothered me so much that I wanted to respond. In “Israel, Iran and Fear,” Cohen, who has been advocating a softer line on Iran in his columns received a letter from Eran Lerman, the director of the Israel/Middle East office of the American Jewish Committee who, of course, sees the Iranian threat as imminent and existential. By the way, how come every threat to Israel is “existential” but any threat to Lebanon, or Palestine, or any other country isn’t?

In the letter to Cohen Lerman explains that his17 year old daughter, who lives with fear from Iran, “has often demanded to know what I have done, and what Israeli and American leaders have done recently, to make sure that she gets to be 25.” First off, could you imagine a Palestinian father writing a letter to an American Op-Ed writer “demanding” to know what is being done to ensure his child’s right to a 25th birthday?

Of course every 17 year old deserves basic human rights and I actually think that 17 year olds are more like children than adults and should have a chance to live, unlike the Israeli government which killed over 300 children in its recent assault on Gaza

As much fear and dread that 17 year old Israeli girl has over the prospect of reaching the age of 25, the fact is that she is much safer and has a much better chance at reaching 25, and not just reaching 25, but having a living standard, education, and a life that is generally much better than the average Palestinian. The image of a hapless, innocent Israeli 17 year old awake at night thinking about Mahmoud Ahmadenejad and Iran and the specter of the holocaust and annihilation of Israel is a masterstroke of propaganda especially when compared to the reality of Palestinian children not imagining annihilation but actually experiencing it.

To the children of Gaza this is not a fear in the abstract, it is their daily lives, living with cluster bombs and white phosphorous blowing their brothers, and sisters to pieces is an actuality. Let me try to put it another way:

Palestinian children are actually facing annihilation today, right now. But Cohen won’t write about that. In America, Israelis feelings of fear and anxiety are more appropriate topics than the actual death and destruction of Arab children

The question that never arises or is even considered, or will ever be considered is this: Why is the Palestinian and Arab fear and psychological disorders arising from Israeli bombs and occupation less important than Israeli anxiety?

So we in America hear the voice and feel the angst of this young girl who worries about her destruction and feel sympathy and anger at the source of this angst. While the Palestinian boy or girl who goes deaf because of the constant and deliberate sonic booms caused by American made jets flying low over Gaza would never be able to “demand” or even ask in The New York Times if he will reach the age of 25.

Sources:

http://www.ajc.org/site/apps/nlnet/content2.aspx?c=ijITI2PHKoG&b=849241&ct=6903267

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/20/opinion/20iht-edcohen.html

http://www.counterpunch.org/dickinson11032005.html

Thomas Friedman Endorses Terrorism

By Toufic El Rassi
January 14, 2009

Thomas Friedman, influential American writer and commentator, op-ed contributor to The New York Times, and author of best sellers like From Beirut to Jerusalem and The World is Flat, considered to be an expert on the Middle East, openly endorses the use of terrorism in today's New York Times. Friedman is a strong supporter of Israel so it is no surprise that his opinion on the war on Gaza would reflect this but today's article is just so over the top that I think it needs to be addressed.

First I think most would agree (regardless of political persuasion) that there is a rough definition of terrorism: using violence against noncombatants (namely, women and children) to achieve a political goal constitutes terrorism. I realize not everyone would agree with that definition but I would venture to guess that most reasonable people (again, right or left leaning) would tend to favor it as a relatively objective definition.

So Friedman essentially admits that Israel was (and is) engaged in terrorism when he writes that Israel's goals in the 2006 Israeli war against Lebanon were "to inflict substantial property damage and collateral casualties on Lebanon at large. It was not pretty, but it was logical. " And this infliction of "substantial property damage and collateral casualties" was done to reach a political goal; the only way to achieve a "long-term source of deterrence was to exact enough pain on the civilians — the families and employers of the militants — to restrain Hezbollah in the future."

Friedman goes on to say that this is potentially the same policy being pursued by Israel in Gaza today. Indeed Israeli Major-General Gadi Eisenkot has clearly stated with regard to the Gaza campaign: "we will wield disproportionate power against every village from which shots are fired on Israel, and cause immense damage and destruction. From our perspective these [the villages] are military bases," and went on to say, "this isn't a suggestion. This is a plan that has already been authorized." I suppose it is somewhat superfluous to point out that targeting entire villages constitutes a war crime.

Here is the essential hypocrisy of people like Thomas Friedman and others like him - that it is justified even "logical" for Israel to kill civilians in order to achieve a political goal but it is "terrorism" if Bin Laden or any other sub national group does it. Imagine if a supporter of Bin Laden wrote an op-ed in the New York Times justifying the 9/11 attacks saying:

The goal of the 9/11 attacks were "to inflict substantial property damage and collateral casualties on [the United States] at large. It was not pretty, but it was logical " and the only way to create a "long-term source of deterrence was to exact enough pain on the civilians — the families and employers of the [political leaders] — to restrain [the United States] in the future."

The question must be asked and answered honestly: why is there no widespread outrage when the American media justifies the killing of innocent Palestinians and other Arabs? This is a simple question - in any other context, with regards to any other ethnic or religious group, Friedman would be (rightly) accused of aiding and justifying war crimes. But there is no outrage, there will be no retractions or apologies, instead ordinary Americans will read Friedman's article and find another justification for Palestinian women and children to be blown up by U.S. made weaponry. And we will never get an honest answer to the question: Why is it OK to kill Arab civilians?

Sources:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/14/opinion/14friedman.html

http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/war_on_gaza/2009/01/2009110112723260741.html

The Guardian Reviews Arab in America

The London Guardian reviewed my book recently - below is the article and a link:

http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,2267344,00.html


-Toufic El Rassi


Graphic novels

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On the defensive

Craig Taylor rounds up recent releases

Saturday March 22, 2008
The Guardian

Arab in America: A True Story of Growing Up in America by Toufic El Rassi (Last Gasp, £9.99)

Those looking for lush artwork and nuance will do well to skip El Rassi's autobiographical tour of his troubled American existence, but Arab in America is more complex and rewarding upon closer examination. The scrawled black and white drawings track a journey from El Rassi's birth in Beirut to his struggles with and in America. He understands he's different after a childhood production of The Wizard of Oz places his face among his classmates - a "dark splotch" beside the white. From there he examines his family and his role in this eternal war against terror that seems to have shuffled him into the opposing camp. Why do they have to be referred to as "our troops", anyway, he asks. Not only does El Rassi feel the sting of racial slurs, but he often receives the wrong ones altogether: "Americans don't even know who they're supposed to hate."

He explores the different degrees of Muslim activism through the reactions of the friends around him. Throughout El Rassi remains an inert figure, held in by the constraints of his personality and his culture. The struggle to find an identity is kickstarted finally by Rage Against the Machine and a reading list of revolutionaries. Even then El Rassi questions the best intentions of the liberals around him. He decides to become a US citizen to save himself from a possible one-way ticket out. The work is most powerful when El Rassi is recounting his own failures, his missed opportunities and outrages, petty or otherwise. The post-9/11 context he's gathered to illustrate his thesis seems to be snipped from newspapers. At its best, his personal history is enough to illustrate a life lived constantly on the defensive.

Arab in America in The Wall Street Journal

Hi Everyone,

Here is the blurb I got in Wall Street Journal last weekend :


http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120673988076572759.html?mod=2_1167_1


BOOKS

Picks
Comics: Pen Power

A Graphic Novelist's Personal Portrait
Tackles Fear, Anger and History


By JEFFREY A. TRACHTENBERG

March 29, 2008



In Toufic El Rassi's debut graphic novel, "Arab in America," he explains what daily life has been for someone born in Lebanon and raised in the U.S. "Since it was clear that the average American couldn't distinguish Arabs & Muslims from other nationalities & faiths I soon felt both fear & anger," he writes.

Mr. El Rassi says his book, published by Last Gasp, an independent publisher based in San Francisco, is primarily autobiographical, although he has made some changes. He intersperses his story with historical events such as the 9/11 terror attacks and the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in order to "tell my story while presenting history and politics from an Arab point of view.

The 30-year-old author decided upon the format of a graphic novel because he has always loved to draw. "So much has been written about the Middle East, but I wanted to do it in a way that nobody has done before," he says. Mr. El Rassi is an adjunct instructor at Oakton Community College in Des Plaines, Ill., where he teaches history and political science.

Mr. El Rassi, who was born in Beirut and immigrated to the Chicago area with his family in 1979, got the idea for the book while attending a fund-raiser at a local mosque. A woman got up and said her children were ashamed of who they were. They didn't want to tell anyone they were Arabs, and they refused to speak Arabic at home.

"While she spoke, it seemed like my life experience came flooding back into my brain," he says. "Every time I met somebody who was noticeably Arab, they told me they'd had a similar experience. So I decided to make this book for them."

Arab in America Reviews and Blurbs

Hi

Welcome to my inaugural blog. I plan on updating it regularly and commenting on issues and events, but we'll see how that goes.

My new graphic novel "Arab in America" has been out for a of couple weeks now and the response has been overwhelimg (especially from the Arab and Muslim community). I was not expecting this reaction so I am a little behind in responding and keeping up. I will post some reviews and blurbs that I have received so far on this blog so watch for them. Below are some panels from the book.

Toufic El Rassi