The Weather Man

Have you ever heard a piece of music that tugs a bit at your tear ducts? Rent the DVD to "The Weather Man" starring Nicolas Cage, and you'll hear one such piece. It's called Pling Plong, composed by Hans Zimmer.

Pling Plong is a simple, short, softly percussive work written for xylophone, hand chimes, toy piano, and synthesizer. On its own and out of context, the song sounds pretty, but it is pretty much just a pleasant lullaby. The emotional impact it has on me is due far more to the powerful film that the music accompanies.

"The Weather Man" is one of the saddest movies I have seen in a very long time -- really, not since Cage's other wrenching portrayal of a tragically flawed man, as an alcoholic in the devastating "Leaving Las Vegas" (not to be mistaken for the incomparably lighter comedy "Honeymoon in Las Vegas"). This time, Cage's character is not trying to drink himself into oblivion; rather, David Spritz is trying very hard to succeed in life and to earn the approval of his family. But for some reason, the harder he tries, the harder he falls.

Spritz is a weatherman in Chicago, and though television audiences see only the smiling, handsome, annoyingly chipper Spritz, we see the man both on and off the green-screen. In the studio, he is relatively confident and sure of himself. But then we see him wandering the jammed streets of the Windy City, picking up an overweight, unhappy daughter, arguing with his ex-wife Noreen over how to handle their son's return from rehab, taking a stern, critical father to the hospital to discover that he is dying of lymphoma, and getting continually hit with fast food from drivers passing by. In one of David's frustrated streams of consciousness, we hear him trying to understand..."why?":

...the whole think is, who gets hit with a fucking pie, anway?
Did anyone ever throw a pie at Thomas Jefferson?
Or Buzz Aldrin? I doubt it.
But this is like the ninth time I got...

Then, a realization:

Clowns get hit with pies.

In some ways, David is like a clown. Whatever he does goes comically wrong. During trust-building exercises at a relationship counseling session, David has what is probably his last chance at restoring his marriage. When told to "name something you did that affected your partner and that you're not proud of," he blurts out:

I had this thing with porno on the computer, sort of.
I got a little preoccupied...

The therapist pauses, then politely reveals:

Actually, I want you to write it down, not say it.

Oops. The audience laughs. For men, it is a laugh of relief -- "I'm glad I wasn't the joker who said that."

Then there is the moment when David tries to restore some of the lost playfulness he had with Noreen by throwing a snowball at her. But (you guessed it) she turns into the toss and is hit in the eye by the ice. Instant guffaw.

More often, however, David's blunders have far worse consequences. For the same trust-building exercise mentioned before, David and Noreen trade notes, which neither of them are supposed to read -- EVER. Giving into temptation (who wouldn't?), David reads Noreen's note the first chance he gets. It reveals that she thinks his attempt to write a science fiction novel was "stupid and sucked...and a waste of time." A hurtful thing to say, especially to someone whose own father was a Pulitzer-prize winning writer, a man whose shoes David could never hope to fill.

The tragic blunder comes afterwards, during dinner with Noreen. Too preoccupied with the note he was never supposed to read, he is completely oblivious to his ex-wife's hopeful look in her eyes. She is, perhaps, ready to give their marriage a second chance. But David's leg is bouncing up and down, he looks distracted and resentful, and when David blurts out his resentment to Noreen, we are not surprised.

Noreen is, however:

You're an asshole. God
You are a champion asshole.
You're a real blue-ribbon fuck!

David's explanation for his behavior is honest, and understandable:

I just want to know everything, so I can make it work. That's why I...
I want to try again.

But it is lost. Noreen can't listen:

I'm not going back. You fucked it up.

The amazing thing about Nicolas Cage's performance is that we desperately want him to do something right for a change. It is so clear that he loves his family, but as he smiles at his overweight, unhappy daughter, we notice an endearing mix of care and cluelessness. He is well-intentioned, he is loving, it's just that he is, well... a clown.

But we don't want him to fuck up. We don't want to laugh at him. We want the same thing for him that he wants for himself, and that his father wants for him, and that his children so clearly want from him: we want for David to be able to finally knuckle down and get it together.

There are two powerful motifs that the filmmakers use to key the audience into David Spritz 's existential struggle. First, there is an almost subliminal omnipresence of clocks, accompanied by a score that plings and plongs rhythmically and repetitively. Framed in the backgrounds of shot after establishing shot, there are clocks with second-hands ticking interminably into the future. Time is running out for David's father, who is dying of lymphoma; and time is running out for David to get his act together and make his father proud of him before he dies. Played by Michael Caine, Robert Spritzel (David dropped the 'e-l' from his own last name to make his screen name sound 'refreshing') is an involved, concerned father who is dismayed by David's haplessness. David is Robert's only failure in life, and though Caine restrains his performance, he succeeds in conveying the defeated resignation that Robert must feel as he watches his son's family life unravel.

If the unraveling of time were the only thread in this story--if ticking clocks were the only motif--then it would be an oppressive downer. Yet, a second image in film begins to counter the unrelenting march of time, and to offer hope for continual progress and improvement in David's life. The image is also a circular one, but of a decidedly different nature: that of a target with a bull's eye.

One of David's early attempts to bond with his daughter Shelly is to take her to an archery range and enroll her in lessons there. After she quickly loses interest, however, it is David who begins to take up the hobby. He uses the bow, quiver and arrows he had bought for Shelly and enrolls in classes himself. Archery proves to be the only thing in his life where the rules are clear, results are predictable, and accuracy is possible. And for too long in the film, it is the only area in which we witness David improving. But he does improve, steadily and perceptibly; his aim becomes more and more sure, his release swifter and more confident, and his marksmanship approaching perfection.

And then, subtly at first, almost imperceptibly, David begins to bring his life into a sort of alignment as well. He defends his son from a pedophilic drug counselor; he makes amends with his father before his funeral; and he is offered a job with the national morning news show, "Hello America!" There are moments when he comes precariously close to his breaking point, and when we fear that he will ruin these precious chances as well. Ultimately, though, he succeeds in tilting the balance back towards stability, towards an acceptance of his life. It is a bittersweet acceptance, one that involves a resignation to who he is, what he is capable of and what he is not. In an inner monologue that touched too close to home for me, David reflects:

I remember once...
...imagining what my life would be like, what I'd be like.
I pictured having all these qualities.
Strong, positive qualities...
...that people could pick up from across a room.
But as time passed...
...few ever became any qualities I actually had.
And all the possibilities I faced, and the sorts of people I could be...
...all of them got reduced every year to fewer and fewer...
...until finally they got reduced to one...
...to who I am.
And that's who I am...
...the weatherman.

This is why the song Pling Plong from "The Weather Man" soundtrack nearly brings tears to my eyes when I listen. It is a song of time passing, of the reduction of possibility from many to one, and of a quiet fading of hopes and dreams.

Filth, Treason, Blasphemy?

There's a great little temporary exhibit at McCormick Tribune's Freedom Museum called "Filth, Treason, Blasphemy? Museums as First Amendment Battlegrounds." Basically, it's about censorship -- about artists who provoke, museums which display provocative art, and citizens who protest the public display of provocative art.

Case study: In 1999, the Brooklyn Museum of Art opened an exhibit called "Sensation: Young British Artists from the Saatchi Collection." Sounds non-threatening enough, no? Well, the exhibit itself might have created little sensation had it not been for one particular work of art by black artist Cris Ofili. The piece was called The Holy Virgin Mary, but that wasn't the controversial part; nor was the depiction of the mother of Jesus as a large black woman. The true 'crime' was that in addition to paper, oils, glitter, resin, and push-pins, the artist had intentionally flung a most unusual substance onto the linen canvas: elephant dung.

You can probably instantly see why this might be offensive to some people. Excrement thrown onto the representation of such a sacred, revered, and pure figure would be offensive in ANY religion, wouldn't it? Well, not actually. In India, where cows are sacred, bathing in water mixed with dung is considered a purifying act. And in some African cultures, dung has ritual significance: for instance, among the Samburu in Kenya, elephant dung is burned in order to bring luck to newlyweds. In defense of his art, Cris Ofili claims he is simply alluding to his own African heritage (though he was born in Manchester, England), and includes a lump or two of dung in all of his work.

So was Cris Ofili intending to be provocative? Probably. "My project is not a P.C. project," he admits. "It allows you to laugh about issues that are potentially serious." Was Cris Ofili intending to be blasphemous? Probably not.

Nevertheless, 'blasphemous' was how many public visitors to the Brooklyn exhibit interpreted the painting. Most notably, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani himself denounced the museum for daring to exhibit such a "sick demonstration of clear psychological problems." His angry reaction became government censorship when he threatened to withdraw millions of dollars in funding and kick the museum out of its city-owned building unless it canceled the exhibit.

The kicker, though, is the following quote by William Donohue, president of the Catholic League, who shared Giuliani's righteous indignation: "When you throw dung on our Virgin Mother, it is hate speech. It is the same thing as drawing a swastika on a synagogue."

Well, no. It's not the same thing at all.

When you draw the swastika in this example, you are not merely defacing the synagogue. You are reviving in its parishioners a horrific collective memory of relatives being systematically targeted for brutal eradication, and you are insidiously suggesting that it can happen again, anytime, right here where a Jew should feel safest.

When you throw dung on a painting of the Virgin Mary, you're pretty much just throwing dung on a painting of the Virgin Mary. True, your are defacing an icon considered sacrosanct by millions of Christians. But you are most emphatically NOT calling up past horrors or threatening renewed genocide. Dung is dung. It has never been associated with the near-extermination of an entire faith community.

So this was a clear case where artistic censorship was just plain wrong. Right?

I thought so. And I still do, with some reservations. My hesitation comes from what I noticed while exploring a "Cast Your Vote" interactive outside of the "Filth, Treason, Blasphemy?" exhibit. The touch screen of this interactive presents you with seven censorship controversies over seven works of art that have been exhibited in museums in recent years. For each work of art, the interactive asks, "Should this be censored?" Once you cast your vote, results appear in horizontal bar graphs, displaying the percentage of people who agreed with your 'Yes' or 'No' answer.

Overwhelmingly, visitors responded with "No, this shouldn't be censored" to all of the featured works of art--we're talking upwards of 75% on each 'what if.' Now, that's probably a good thing; these liberal (most likely) or libertarian Chicagoers acknowledge and value all artists' 1st Amendment Right to freedom of speech. But on two occasions, I found myself casting a vote for "Yes, this should be censored." And each time when the poll results displayed, I experienced something that felt disconcertingly like peer pressure.

I don't even remember what the paintings were about. But in each case I had firmly believed that "yes, this pointlessly and genuinely offensive work of art should be censored".....until the bar graph results appeared and I was told that "592 visitors disagree with you (76%)." Those words made me feel wrong, deviant...unpopular.

Was I wrong to think censorship was called for in this situation? Did that make me a Giuliani, or worse yet, a William Donohue? Did that mean I was one step away from becoming a right-wing moral crusader who burns Harry Potter books?

A creative, spirited, and liberal ex-girlfriend of mine named Friday would probably have answered yes--at least to the first two questions. I remember an unpleasantly heated conversation with Friday in which she confronted me about even considering the possibility that censorship might be justified in some situations. To her, censorship was right up there with murder as an unambiguous, unpardonable evil. I'm not so sure.

Let's look at an extreme example in which censorship could have saved an untold number of lives: the Rwandan Genocide of 1994. Anyone who has seen "Hotel Rwanda" with Don Cheadle knows the story; in just a hundred days, nearly 1 million Tutsi minorities--men, women, and children alike--were brutally murdered with machetes and guns by their Hutu countrymen. Only a handful survived, thanks to the efforts of brave men like hotel-owner Paul Rusesabagina and UN commander Romeo Dallaire, but even more could have been spared had but one simple step been taken by the peacekeeping forces: jamming the broadcast transmissions from the hate radio station, Radio Mille Collines. As shown to chilling effect in the film, the Hutu used Radio Mille Collines to coordinate their genocide--to inform, instruct, and incite the killers.

What is not shown in "Hotel Rwanda" is the unwillingness of the U.S. government to take any steps whatsoever to jam the radio broadcast, or even to simply destroy the station's antenna. And what was their justification for their inaction? "The American commitment to free speech."
(Samantha Powers, A Problem From Hell, page. 372).

So there are definite, clear-cut instances where censorship is not only acceptable, but advisable. Indeed, I know many Americans agree with me. If you take a look at the 2006 State of the First Amendment Survey (pdf), for instance, you'll find that quite a few people (42%) do not agree that "people should be allowed to say things in public that might be offensive to racial groups." In fact, the more liberal you are, the more strongly you will probably believe that racist terms like the 6-letter 'n' word should never be uttered by a white person's lips, and that offenders should be dealt with firmly--if not punished. If you believe this, then realize that you believe in censorship.

What's my point, then? That us liberals are hypocrites? Well, yes. But so are conservatives. No one on earth holds flawlessly consistent beliefs. (As Aldous Huxley cleverly stated, "The only completely consistent people are dead.") My real point is this: we liberals must resist any knee-jerk reaction against censorship simply because "that's what those crazy conservatives do." When there is a public outcry against a work of art, as there was against Cris Ofili's Virgin, we should take pause and consider the point of view of the offended, without dismissing them off-hand. "What has made them so distressed?" "Which nerves is the painting 'getting on', which buttons has it pushed?" "Why do they care so much?"

A beneficial exercise might be to try and proceed backwards from the emotions that we see in the offended group's outcry, and imagine, "What would it take for me to arrive at such a reaction?" "What would need to be on display for me to feel those emotions?" Then, connect the two points of view and evaluate: "Are the two emotional triggers really comparable?" "What information do I have that the protesting party might be lacking, or vice versa?" "Are they using any metaphors that simplify or polarize the issue unnecessarily?" "When you throw dung on the Virgin Mother, is it really the same thing as drawing a swastika on a synagogue?"

When we pull ourselves through such empathic cognitions, we arrive at a more nuanced appreciation of the dilemma, and a more open stance towards the solution. Should we censor the swastika? Yes. Should we censor elephant dung? No. Do we now understand why someone might be strongly offended by the elephant dung? Certainly.

Where you go from there, from that new understanding, is up to you.