A man sees what he wants to see and disregards the rest

Last week the oscar nominations came out, and for the first time in Donkey's years I hadn't seen a single one of the five films nonimated for best picture. I had a chance to watch Finding Neverland for free back in October but it seemed a bit schmazly, though that's not usually that much of an issue for the acadmedy. A couple of other of the nominated flicks had been on release for a few weeks but I preffered to indulge of the brooding European Angst of movies like Vera Drake and The Inheritance.

Yesterday I tried to rectify this situation by catching up with two of the nominated films. The Aviator wasn't bad at all. Million Dollar Baby was.

I expected to come out of this movie saying, like, y'know, it was alright, but no girlfight, the way poncey soi-dissant film buffs like myself usually do. Instead I was left reflecting how troubled a society must me to take such a militantly rascist, right-wing movie to it's collective bosom.

I was hardly expecting a radically anti-establishment film from the Republican mayor of whatever one-horse shithole Clint Eastwood is the mayor of. He is the guy who made his name playing the one-man hippy-killing machine Harry Callahan.
And it is a movie about boxing. Ever notice how most American movies on this subject seem to concern people descended from non-aryan countries like Ireland (City for Conquest, Gentleman Jim, The Great White Hype); Italy (Somebody up there likes me, Rocky, Raging Bull); Puerto Rico (girlfight) or the Israeli diaspora (Body and Soul)?

It seems that Hollywood is trying to tell us that while Americans from ethnic backgrounds are pugnacious trogladytes that can only express ourselves through our fists, those or Anglo-Saxon or German/Scandanavian origin are peaceful people that are only stirred to violence when threathened by peasants from Afganistan, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Vietnam, Laos, etc.

Eastwood's latest work continues this igniminous tradition. He might have considered actually making a movie about an African-American fighter; as, astonishingly, when I looked up my 1996 Time-Out film guide, I couldn't find a single film about a black American fighter, though since then, Ali and The Hurricane have been made, though even then both of these are factually based.

Eastwood hamfistedly attempts to redress this balance by having the film narrated by a black boxer played by Morgan Freeman. Oddly enough, many of the same people who criticised Alexander for excessive use of narration are salivating over this movie. I've never liked Morgan since he lectured a vegetarian journalist insisting that she'd have a weak immune system as a result of her humanitarianism. Maybe he should go to India and drink the same water as Hindus and then see who's got a stronger immune system.

He didn't endear himself to me any more with a performance that makes Uncle Tom look like Brother Huey, as a feckless, improvident gambler. The only other black character is an obnoxious bully who taunts both a simple-minded hick and the girl played by Hilary Swank.

She's Irish, so she is. Oh, faith and begorrah, she's as Irish as a bowl of mashed potatoes cooked over a turf fire. She wears a green robe with a harp and the words Mo Chuise. She's got great teeth, which means she ain't English. And guess what? Her family, the Fitzgeralds are feckless and improvident, like all Irish-Americans. And they're from that well-known centre of the Irish diaspora, Missouri, though some IRA propagandists like to put it about that most of them live in Rich, liberal states like Massacheutsits. (I probably didn't spell that right, but then I am an ignorant Irish hick myself)

Made by Bush-backing AOL-Time-Warner, the film seems like an advertisment for the Republican plan to destroy social security, by portraying her welfare-dependent family as overweight, ignorant, greedy, ungrateful scum. What happened you, Warners? You used to make movies that sympathised with the disenfranchised, like The Public Enemy and I am a fugitive from a Chain Gang. Now you seem to think that it's there own fucking fault that they're disenfranchised.

Trying to free herself from a life of anomie, Ms. Fitzgerald does the one thing that Irish people know how to do, and that's fight. She fights her way through Europe where there's always a sea of green, white and gold, as there's always ( according to Morgan) either Irish people or people who want to be Irish. It's more the former than the latter dude. If you put on a cap backwards and started talking in rhyme, you'd find out that they wanted to be black. Taking on those slimy Europeans proves to be her downfall, as she fights a black former prostitute from East Berlin who likes to fight dirty. Any more right-wing American prejudices you'd like to reinforce, Clint? Why didn't you portray her reading Dude, waroom ist mein land? before the fight?

The odd thing is that many liberal critics seem to have taken this movie to their heart as it lambasts the hicks who often vote repeblican, though there isn't a bush-Cheney sticker in sight. The truth is that Missouri isn't the most right-wing state by a long way and preffered a dead dude to John Ashcroft.

In trying to make himself more Irish, he reads Yeats translated into "Gaelic" (oddly enough) and then renders The Lake Isle of Inishfree perfectly back into the original, so maybe he gets TG4 by cable. But even though, as may be clear, I despised the film, I could see genuine echoes of Ulysses in Clint's search for his real spiritual daughter.

But Clint's a republican and they don't read books, preferring Fox News and Radio Talk shows. If you think that's a stereotype, then go see Million Dollar Baby yourself. Then you'll know what stereotypes are.