1) When I first joined there was a discussion about The Lord of the Rings films. On January 11, 2004 they will all be playing at Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center. The Director's Cut of the first two will be shown along with the release version of the third. The cast will introduce the screenings and there is a Q&A with Peter Jackson after the third film. Tickets go on sale at the Alice Tully Hall Box Office on Monday, October 27th.
http://www.filmlinc.com/specials/lotr/lotr.htm
2) Also on October 27th there will be a screening of a restored print of The Hustler (1961) at The Lighthouse at 111 East 59th Street at 7:30 p.m. To me The Hustler is the great anti-capitalist/marxist movie made in Hollywood with Bert Gordon/George C. Scott as the screen's ur-capitalist manipulator. Producer/writer/director Robert Rossen is interesting: joined the Communist Party when he went to Hollywood; wrote radical scripts for Warner Brothers (the only studio where he could have); blacklisted after winning Best Picture Oscar in 1949 for All the King's Men (he was one of the original 19 subpoenaed who eventually become the Hollywood 10); finally named names; then went on to make one of Hollywood's great subversive films that called into question and discredited the system that financed it. That he ever got it past the studio heads is a miracle. The Hustler also represents one of Hollywood's last radical/Brechtian-distance movies. The late '60's would usher in the sentimental bathos of Penn, Scorcese, Coppola, Spielberg, Lucas et. al. Preminger and Mankiewicz would keep it up for a while, but they too were eventually crushed.
The screening is only $5, but I have never been to the venue so I do not know about the quality of projection or sight lines. But Academy screenings are usually held in good places. See link below for how to reserve tickets in advance.
http://www.oscars.org/events/the_hustler/index.html
3) Finally, I found this brief commentary which uses queer Black philospher Alain Locke's theories (he is a personal hero of mine) in approaching the issue of white/black imagery in The Lord of the Rings which the list had discussed earlier.
Between Tolkein and Toby Keith: A Lockean Approach to the Problem of Disentanglement, by Greg Moses (Marist College)
In his 1930 essay, "The Contribution of Race to Culture," Alain Locke argues that it is not "irreconcilable with the future development of internationalism and the approach toward universalism to foster the racial sense, stimulate the racial consciousness and help revive the lapsing racial tradition" (Harris 202). The consideration that reconciles racialized consciousness with internationalism in Locke's view is found in, "an almost limitless natural reciprocity between cultures," which weakens exclusionary claims of "proprietorship and vested interest" that might otherwise be made in behalf of racialized cultural achievements (Harris 202-203). Locke is thus able to defend racialized cultural projects, because, ultimately, the great "working principle" of reciprocity must enter the historical process (see also Harris 73). Racialized cultural projects will draw upon resources outside racialized groups, and such projects will also lend themselves to developments beyond their proximate racial milieu.
If, for Locke, the concept of racialized consciousness escapes a theoretical identity with impervious nationalism, Locke warns in other writings that, "we are for the most part unaware of the latent absolutism at the core of many of our traditional loyalties" (Harris 58). For instance, in the appeal to "one hundred percentism" or to "my country right or wrong," Locke discerns vestiges of fundamentalist dogma. "Far too much of our present democratic creed and practice is cast in the mold of such blind loyalty and en bloc rationalization, with too many of our citizens the best of democrats for the worst of reasons--mere conformity" (Harris 58).
Taken together, the two arguments above suggest that Locke has reason to be less worried about the limitations of racialized consciousness than he is about certain appropriations of democratic rhetoric. If we take the problem of white consciousness as an example, it appears that Locke would be arguing that there is less reason to be worried about white consciousness as such than there is to be worried about a particular claim that white consciousness lays an exclusive claim upon democracy. "We must live in terms of our own particular institutions and mores," argues Locke. "But that is no justification for identifying them en bloc with an ideal like democracy, as though they were a perfect set of architectural specifications for the concept itself" (Harris 59).
Locke's pluralistic ethic of culture suggests that racialization itself becomes more anti-democratic the more it arrogates to itself exclusionary claims to instantiate the democratic heritage. Locke's antidote for the problem is a "functional relativism" that would help us, "arrive at some clearer recognition of the basic unity or correspondence of our values with those of other men, however dissimilar they may appear on the surface or however differently they may be systematized and sanctioned" (Harris 59-60).
Even in the face of a crisis, when American democracy is threatened by totalitarian force, Locke argues that, "intellectually the greatest single obstacle to any extension of the democratic way of life on an international scale" is just the reflex toward "democratic uniformitarianism" that follows from the conception of our heritage as the democratic way life, where democracy is to be evidenced in just the forms we have produced (Harris 62).
With these philosophical foundations in mind, this paper explores the problem of Locke's pluralism when applied to two case studies in contemporary American culture: the film adaptation of Tolkein's Fellowship of the Ring, and the recent hit songs from country music artist Toby Keith. Tolkein's art draws heavily on European mythic images, such as dwarfs and elves, whose entire world order is thrown into cataclysmic conflict with evil forces exemplified by black riders. The tapestry of black on white conflict culminates in the scene where the character Strider swears that he will not let the white city fall.
Turning to the recent work of country-music artist Toby Keith, we find assertions of self-importance combined with a belligerent pledge to protect "the American way." The juxtaposition of Tolkein and Toby Keith suggests a cultural milieu that is centered around white audiences, with expressions, both sublime and profane, that problematize our ability to sustain Locke's distinction between cultural superiorities, on the one hand, that may be appreciated as contributions to international humanity, and cultural supremacies, on the other hand, that get foisted by one people upon others without intellectual commitments to functional relativism.
I want to call the resulting problem "the problem of disentanglement." In other words, how do we approach critically the problem of appreciating the cultural values that are found in the works of Tolkein or Toby Keith while maintaining a balance that does not tilt away from Locke's injunction to resist assertions of cultural supremacy. In my emerging explorations of an ethic of whiteness, I am often asked how I plan to address the hard-core racist perspective. I think the answer may be found in a successful resolution of the problem of disentanglement, where affirmations of superiorities may be appreciated without abandoning concerns about the worrisome implications of supremacy.
Brian Dauth Queer Buddhist Resister