Harlan County, USA

Harlan County, USA is a kaleidoscopic account of a recently unionized group of miners’ struggle for a new contract with better wages and benefits. In under two hours Kopple somehow manages to cover not only the day-to-day life on the striking miners’ picket lines, but also the gendered complexities of the strike effort, the harsh facts of everyday life in an impoverished mining town, the cultural resources (notably music) locals employ for emotional support, the violent struggles in “bloody Harlan” during the 1930s, and conflicts within the United Mine Workers Union (UMWA).

In many ways the film is an extended sorrow song, providing an unflinching look at physical decay, death, and the necessity and ubiquity of suffering. Whether it’s black lung destroying miners’ ability to breathe, the atrocious living conditions for most miners, or the seeming necessity of one miner’s murder for the coal company to finally agree to a new contract, we witness a group of dignified men, women and children whose lives are filled with troubles. There are joyous moments, laughter, and the consolations of family and friends, but the tenor of life in this community is best captured halfway through the movie when Kopple films a daughter and her father singing the lament “O, Death” with its stark plea for death to “spare me over til another year.”

The young miner’s murder near the end of the movie marks the end of an increasingly violent struggle between the miners and the “gun thugs” hired by the company to break the strike. The escalation of violence – fists, bats, guns – and the necessity of this escalation for justice to be achieved are central themes of the film. (Kopple, who makes no effort to hide her sympathies for the striking miners, is at one point physically attacked by strikebreakers.) Individuals counseling non-violence are openly mocked by other miners. Responding to the use of handguns and machineguns by Basil Collins and his “gun thugs,” miners begin showing up to the picket-line with guns of their own. After one meeting by the women in the community, Lois Scott, the most vocal woman amongst many strong female activists, reaches down her shirt to withdraw and show to her compatriots a newly purchased handgun. (Why burn your bra when you can use it as a holster?) In a perceptive accompanying essay to the Criterion Collection DVD which places the film in the broader context of 1970s documentaries, Paul Arthur remarks that Scott “embodies the film’s most troubling, and enduring, question: how to fight against corporate intimidation without jeopardizing the goals or moral capital of the union cause.” Given the gross inequalities of power and prestige between the miners and the mining company (Duke Power), it is hard to believe that the company would have ever signed the contract if the miners had not become more willing to use violence as a regrettable means to a just end.

Elisha Cook Jr’s middle-age double sat in front of me on the T today. I love Cook as a desperately grasping (and in way over his head) husband in Kubrick’s The Killing and as the honorable tough guy who falls for another (minor league) femme fatale in Hawks’ The Big Sleep.

Bike Helmets and Radiohead -- Hurrah!

Pimp C on There Stands

So I don't know diddley about hip-hop. Pretty much everything I do know comes through my ex. (white man dancing to Edan y'all?) But this excellent blog, which I've been going to recently, has a strong embedded youtube clip from Pimp C -- someone I just found out about because he's another dead black man with a reputation in the musicworld. When I hear something this good -- it glides confidently -- I know how little I know.

Today's New York Times has a curious op-ed by Kenneth Woodward entitled "Mitt Romney is No Jack Kennedy." The title is misleading, for the piece isn't so much about Romney not being as "good" a human being or politician as Kennedy (Lloyd Bentsen's swipe at ol' Danny Boy Quayle), as much as it's about their respective religious and media environments. In short, Woodward argues that Kennedy faced a much more united and visible attack on his Catholicism-- led by such notables as Norman Vincent Peale and L. Nelson Bell (editor of Christianity Today) -- while Romney, though definitely hobbled politically by his Mormonism, is not encountering the same concerted criticism. The interesting twist Woodward provides is asserting that Romney is worse off because of this.

Using each candidate's religion-specific speeches – Kennedy's famous 1960 address in Houston to a group of Protestant ministers and Romney's meeting with Republicans in Dallas tomorrow – as test cases, Woodward writes:

Mr. Romney, in contrast [to Kennedy], faces no organized religious opposition he can allude to, no anti-Mormon campaign he can shame — as Kennedy adroitly did — for blatant religious bigotry

and:

Kennedy engaged a live audience of doubters and bearded lions in their own den. It was high noon drama. Mr. Romney will speak in protected Republican surroundings, unable to engage a pair of adversarial eyes or read a single hostile face.

I might ask how much Kennedy’s speech accomplished. Perhaps he was able to convince some Protestant elites of his respect for the separation of church and state, but did his command performance swing a significant number of Protestant voters into his camp?

I also wonder if Romney’s Mormonism is as much of a drag on his campaign as Kennedy’s Catholicism was on his? Woodward offers that many Americans will “accept Romney’s assertion that Mormons are [unorthodox] Christians.” And given that Christian conservatives have come to overwhelmingly support Republican Party candidates, it seems reasonable to think that they would not vote for a Democrat just because Mitt is Mormon.

But it’s that “unable” in Woodward’s last sentence which has me truly puzzled. Does Woodward actually believe that Romney (or any other contemporary politician) would welcome the opportunity to appear before a united front of religious (or political) critics and attempt to persuade them that he is to be trusted regardless of his religious beliefs? In this day and age of staged-managed electioneering I have my doubts.