The True Colours of Success

This has been traveling around the Internet for a couple of weeks now, but I feel compelled to add in my own two little cents.

Moviehole had an interview with Robert Downey Jr (RDJ) about his recent success with Iron Man and Tropic Thunder.
Most of the wank has been directed to this statement, quoted from the interview:

"My whole thing is that that I saw 'The Dark Knight'. I feel like I'm dumb because I feel like I don't get how many things that are so smart. It's like a Ferrari engine of storytelling and script writing and I'm like, 'That's not my idea of what I want to see in a movie.' I loved 'The Prestige' but didn't understand 'The Dark Knight'. Didn't get it, still can't tell you what happened in the movie, what happened to the character and in the end they need him to be a bad guy. I'm like, 'I get it. This is so high brow and so fucking smart, I clearly need a college education to understand this movie.' You know what? Fuck DC comics. That's all I have to say and that's where I'm really coming from."

Coming from a man who acted in Chaplin, Wonder Boys, Fur and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, I find this statement a tad, um, weird?

Because my thought were in regards to this was that The Dark Knight isn't really that complicated. It's a layered movie, much like Iron Man but in a different way. Iron Man focused a whole lot more on character development and cultivating ground for the next movie, while The Dark Knight was about the shifting of Batman's position from Hero to Anti-Hero, similar but not the same.
I mean how complicated is "Good vs Evil" and "Dark vs Light".
Duality is not that hard a concept.
I don't know Game Theory, and the lack of knowledge didn't take away from the enjoyment at all (multiple viewer, like hello!).

Also, could RDJ be more jealous?!

But something in the interview bothered me even more.

[When] Asked how much research he did in order to get these various ethnic stereotypes down pat [for Tropic Thunder], the actor says none, "because it was my goal for there to be nothing stereotypical except for when the story demands that he's momentarily specifically stereotypical - for which the actual black man puts him in his place. So the funny thing about this in retrospect - looking at how we did this and decisions that were made and all that - is that I remember that we had discussions and then the talk is over and you're out there shooting a fucking movie and so my idea was to try and be natural and entertaining."

I can't help but rage at the paternalism of this statement.
Yeah, they're poking fun and everyone is in on it, even the real Black guy was cool with it, how fucking enlightened right?
I haven't seen Tropic Thunder, though this sort of thing coming from one of the lead performers isn't giving it the best impression.
Man, you played a bastard who takes himself too seriously and put on blackface... RDJ, please don't become that same kind of bastard who takes himself too seriously.
I like him too much as a performer in order to dislike his public persona.

But fucking hell. Racism, anti-intellectualism and just your basic Hollywood elitism in one measly interview... fucking hell.

in the mean time Just Some Random Guy does it again:

DC indeed won the Summer.

The Border Police's Dirty Games

A few weeks ago the Israeli Police department came out with a new demonstration dispersion method called the Boash - the Skunk - it is a stink spray.
It gets in your clothes, your skin, eyes and stick to everything you come in contact with, meaning it will stink up a bus, a car and your own house.

As one of the demonstrators in Na'alin said in the Ha'aretz article about the Boash:

"A terrible stench - the smell of a rotting, dead animal," says left-wing activist Dr. David Nir in disgust.
[...]
"A week after the demonstration in Na'alin, a white truck arrived at a demonstration in Bil'in," Nir continues. "It began approaching and we tried to keep our distance." The truck stopped near the fence, "and then we heard the motor working harder in order to create condensed air for operating the Skunk cannon. And then it came: Strong bursts of a foul-smelling spray were showered on us, directly hitting those who didn't move away, at up to a 30- to 50-meter radius. Because the wind was with the cannon, most of us were enveloped in vapors of stench that penetrated our lungs. On the way to Tel Aviv we drove with open windows, but we were unable to get rid of the smell even when we sprayed ourselves with deodorant. There are no words to describe it; it's the worst odor imaginable. It's an experience equal to jumping headfirst into a sewer. The Palestinians simply call it 'shit.'"

One would think that this is better than tear gas grenades (it is for sure better than rubber bullets which are lethal), but the smell stays.
And stays.
Beyond the fact that this is a humiliating method of dispersing legitimate demonstrations, it's not as though they're going to be using this exclusively now that it's developed. The Border Police and the IDF are going to continue using the bullets and the tear gas and the various other ways in which these non-violent demo's are radicalized in order to squash them.

What really grinds me though, is this:

Ben Harosh [the Skunk's main developer] claims that using the Skunk in Bil'in and Na'alin was as an alternative to rubber bullets. "What I saw is what I wanted to see," he notes. "The Skunk worked and the soldiers stood behind it, they didn't fire a single rubber bullet during the entire demonstration. After the first use, most of the demonstrators left the area and streamed into the village. They fled in panic. And that's the success, the deterrence. In the final analysis, with all their ideology, they don't want to stink."

Emphasis mine.

This statement really shows me the arrogance and the lack of understanding coming from the Border Police and the IDF and by proxy the whole attitude coming from the government and mainstream analysts. It's not about the bloody Israeli demonstrators! It's about the fact that that fucking fence-to-be-a-wall is appropriating land way, waaaaay beyond the lines put down by International Law and the fact that a fence/wall inhibits the movement of the people living in that place, that is the Palestinians.
The ideology of us bleeding heart Israelis in neither here nor there.
The Palestinians have the basic, human right to protest and object to the fact that an Army is marking no-go areas that belong to the villagers of Bil'in and Na'alin.

As I mentioned, the fact that they didn't have to use bullets in one demo doesn't mean they won't in a next, especially once avoidance tactics are developed to oppose the Skunk.

How humiliating it is for the people living in those villages, who are treated like livestock, sprayed like misbehaving pets to be kept away from an area that actually belongs to them:

Ahad Huja, 52, a father of three and an activist in the Al Mubadara-Palestinian National Initiative, a political movement that favors democratization of the Palestinian Authority, decided in desperation to wash himself with chlorine. The Skunk had hit him in his village of Na'alin.

"When I approached one of the policemen to tell him that we are adults who intended to hold a quiet, peaceful demonstration, he began to spray me with the substance," Huja recounts. "I have never in my life smelled such a terrible smell. It was very humiliating, I was unable to get rid of the smell. I immediately went home, took off my clothes and showered. But that didn't help at all. The entire house was filled with the smell. My wife was cooking at the time and the stench got into the food, stuck to the walls. The children didn't want to eat. After several showers I had no choice, so I tried to clean my body with chlorine. But that didn't work either. Then I tried to shower again with hot water. Nothing. The smell stayed on me. For a week when I went outside everyone smelled my stench from a distance."

This is a dirty tactic.
In every meaning of the word.
I'm not looking forward to it when I get back out into the field, but then again, what do I have to complain about, right?

Tear gas may hurt like hell and also smells, but at least it comes out after a wash and showering once also makes sure that the smell doesn't stay with you.
And as I said, I don't see panicky 18 year olds with guns refraining from using them on the civilian population they've been trained to view as monsters and the Lefties they've come to consider traitors.

All you other Demo goers, look out for this think over the coming months, no way this thing isn't going to be marketed elsewhere.

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