Fellow Travelers - a film review

 

A good reason for watching Fellow Travelers is that it stars easy-on-the-eyes Matt Bomer. His co-star, Jonathan Bailey, doesn't need to hide his face, either. Another good reason is that it is a pretty decent history of the history of gay liberation as well as a powerful condemnation of anti-black racism in America from the witch-hunting days of Senator McCarthy and Roy Cohen's manipulation of American fears of communism, and the "Lavender Scare" in the 1950s through the years of the AIDS crisis to the long-time-coming general acceptance of LGBT Americans of the modern day.

Fellow Travelers is both romance and political thriller.  Brought to the screen in eight episodes by Paramount, the 2007 fictional story by Thomas Mallon follows historical events closely enough to come across as a documentary. In fact, there are moments that brought back such ugly memories that I was tempted to shut it down. You'll need to steel yourself against the reminder that America's susceptibility to proto-fascist authoritarianism didn't begin with the current Trumpist effort to replace democracy with a Führer-and fear-centered regime, but has been a risk since 1787, when Benjamin Frankin answered the question, "What have we got, a republic or a monarchy?" with the ominous words, "A republic, if you can keep it."

And it's not just the external political scene that makes this a difficult watch at times. The flawed characters of Hawkins Fuller, played by Bomer, and also of Tim Laughlin, played by Bailey, are reminders that heroes can take their time growing into their roles. Bomer and Bailey are first-rate actors, but watching them stumble and occasionally fall is often painful.

I wish the filmmakers might have told the story with fewer jumps back and forth in time; I don't like having to retain multiple story-lines at once. But that's not a criticism as much as a preference, and some will appreciate the way that story-telling method can layer the richness of the characters. Chronologically, the story of the lovers begins when Tim comes to Washington as a theology student and meets and falls in love with Hawk. Hawk is a user and a climber, very much at home in the world of Washington political hypocrisy. We are left to wonder what draws them to each other, Tim the earnest romantic struggling with the demands of his Catholic faith on his sexuality, and Hawk, the diplomat living a double life, with wife and kids at home, and seedy contacts with rough trade when he can get away with it. Hawk personifies the expression "fellow traveler" of the title of the story, someone whose silence in the face of wrong-doing, enables that wrong-doing. Originally popularized by Trotsky to refer to supporters of communism who wouldn't make the effort to actually join the party, it still works today as a synonym of "enabler," the sort of person that tyrants and other miscreants depend on to make their policies socially acceptable.

An important sub-plot is the relationship between Marcus Gaines (Jelani Alladin), a black reporter for the New York Post who runs up against a ceiling keeping black perspectives out of the news and his lover, Frankie Hines (Noah J. Ricketts), a female impersonator, who reminds us that gay life once existed only in dark alleys or on the outskirts of town. Marcus gives up, in the end, and goes to write for Jet, a publication for blacks, tying together the two liberation struggles - for racial and sexual identity. Blacks and gays can make it, as long as they stay in their lane as entertainers and portray stereotypes to maintain the illusion the customers are looking for in theaters and nightclubs, as Marcus learns when he is refused entry to a club where Frankie is performing. A hypocrisy not exclusive to America, but certainly characteristic of its cultural values.

Fellow Travelers has been described as "a journey from shame to pride," if not for the lives of its leading characters, for the evolution in the larger world.  I don't want to spoil the viewing experience for those who want to make that journey, but if you are already familiar with American history from the nightmarish McCarthy era through Vietnam and the AIDS epidemic, you'll be prepared to accept that a journey through history is often a bumpy ride, not for the faint of heart. 

But watching actors bring it to life on screen, as they do in Fellow Travelers, can make it a trip very much worth making, all the same.

photo credit: 

Realpolitik or BS: Are these really America's only options?

While clearing out my e-mail storage, I came across this screed I felt prompted to write when Henry Kissinger celebrated his 100th birthday, a year ago next month.  Never posted it, for some reason - don't know why.

It still rings true to how I feel about the man, so let me risk beating a dead horse (what a horrible metaphor!) and send it now.

Mostly I'm trying to figure out what's worse. being led by a self-serving narcissist, like the charlatan now on trial in New York City, or being led by a proponent of Realpolitik, as Kissinger was - the notion that you can't fight city hall and might as well lie down in the road and let the enemy tanks roll over you. What a choice!  Surrender your better self to a liar-manipulator Führer type, because you see no reason to doubt the imagined paradise you want so much to believe in is reality.  Or congratulate yourself for seeing things as they are, and not as you'd like them to be.

If you go the Realpolitik route, you'll find yourself in good Republican company. I'm not talking about the morons like MTG but about those who your gut tells you know know better: the new crop of Enablers, led by the likes of Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham, Republicans who represent not the party of Lincoln, but of his successor, Andrew Johnson, whose approach to reality was to act as if the Confederacy had won the Civil War. Less risky in the long run than running down traitors and putting them on trial.

__________

"Sometimes you have to choke the dog to get the medicine down its throat."

I remember hearing a Japanese official utter that useful cliché when defending Japan's invasion of Manchuria, way back when I was first acquainting myself with recent Japanese history, as I prepared (not knowing what I was doing or where I was going) for a life in Japan.

To argue that the ends justify the means, that sometimes you have to do bad things to arrive at a good outcome, is the routine defence used by proponents of Realpolitik.

A parallel argument is made in philosophy discussions when you haul out the "lesser evil" examples in morality and ethics seminars. "If you see a train about to run over twelve people and you have the chance to pull a switch which would divert the train and make it run over only three people instead, do you pull the switch?"

People who say yes are utilitarians - people who say we should aim for the greatest good for the greatest number of people - and people who say no are Kantians - people who argue we should be governed by principles - and the overriding principle here is that one should never engage in any activity that leads to treating other human beings as a means to an end.

I prefer the Kantian approach; I retain the conviction that there is such a thing as evil, and that there are good guys and bad guys in the world, and that we should align ourselves with the good guys and "fight the good fight" whether we believe we will win in the end or not. I don't know who put that notion into my head. I probably got that conviction in Sunday School. Or maybe from my grandmother, who had a marvelously practical worldview and refused to let people complicate things she saw as simple and clear.

People are complex. Most people, even the good ones, do bad things at times. And one should, I think, not reject anybody out of hand.  I like the Christian narrative, in that regard, the notion that God forgives you and once he does he wipes away all your sins, the notion that plagued Hamlet and kept him from killing his uncle when he found him praying, because his goal was to avenge his father, not to facilitate the uncle's entrance into heaven.

On the other hand, I part ways with the Christians - and other people who tell you that forgiveness is good for you because holding a grudge will only eat away at your soul in the long run. I don't believe in forgiving people if they don't ask for it and show some evidence that they have seen the error of their ways. I place a much greater weight on the Jewish valuation of justice. Bad things need to be put right. Forgiving somebody who doesn't seek it and doesn't deserve it merely prolongs the injustice and maybe even encourages the wrongdoer to do wrong again. No, I'm in favor of arresting criminals and locking them up - if we're talking legality here - and shunning them - if we're talking simple morality.

Mostly I'm in favor of spotting the bad guys and reminding ourselves constantly who they are, watching to keep them from getting away with doing bad things. Hitler, Pol Pot, Stalin, and others who have caused widespread misery need to be held accountable by history.

For reasons I've never fully understood, I've always found Augusto Pinochet to be the quintessential bad guy. If you don't want him in the Number One position, can we at least agree that he deserves recognition as a leading contender among the Bad People of History.

Right up there in my book with torturing dogs and cats is dropping people from airplanes into the sea - something that happened during the time of the Argentine dictatura, when Argentine, Brazilian and Chilean heads of state were all competing for the role of chief bad guy of South America. While living in Argentina, I was glued to the TV watching the trial of a priest who joined the junta's efforts to eliminate political opposition by throwing them from planes and helicopters. And according to a Guardian article in 2001, Chilean authorities followed the same practice. 

All of them, you can be sure, surrounded themselves with others who shared their mindset that, as harsh as their methods got, they were ultimately serving a greater good. Ditto Henry Kissinger.

And, while we're at it, let me give a nod to another Enabler of Henry Kissinger's ilk, Jeane Kirkpatrick. I once heard her coming out of a meeting with Pinochet respond to a question about what she thought of him, respond, "Amable. Muy amable." I maintain that it's not necessarily the killers who shoot or stab their victims who most clearly represent evil, but the enablers, the ones who make the wheels go round and justify it all under the rubric of Realpolitik.

To get back to Kissinger, now surrounded and celebrated by the likes even of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, I believe if there were justice in his case, he would be in jail as a serious war criminal. It is to America's undying shame that that man is treated like a hero.  One can argue that I'm being Kantian here when I should be utilitarian. But that's where I stand.

I will not say anything good about Henry Kissinger.

And, on that subject, let me suggest you have a listen to Mehdi Hassan's take on the man:

Manhunt - a film review

I've just finished watching the first six episodes of Manhunt on AppleTV and am looking forward to April 19th, when the seventh and final episode is scheduled to be shown. It's the story of the pursuit of John Wilkes Booth, the confederate sympathizer who shot Abraham Lincoln in the back of the head and killed him for his efforts in eliminating slavery and holding the Union together.

It took me a while to get into the drama. As with every TV serial, it suffers from unavoidable flaws: the characters become tiresome because they keep making the same mistakes over and over again, the plot line is padded with irrelevancies, the characters change from good guys to bad guys and back again, often without discernible motivation.

I had trouble getting into Manhunt the first two or three episodes. The writing is loaded with anachronisms, the dialogue is hard to follow in places, and mostly I wanted to break away from the darkness of the world the story portrayed and retreat to something more uplifting.

In time, though, I got drawn in by the awareness that I was getting huge gaps filled in my knowledge of American history.  Good history can be as good as good fiction, especially when writers take liberties with it.  I learned the name John Wilkes Booth in a high school history class, as most American kids do, but it has never been more than just a piece of information useful perhaps when doing crossword puzzles or playing trivial pursuit, and nothing of serious consequence. I knew that he was an actor, and that's about it. Manhunt turns him into flesh and blood, somebody who matters enough to make you want to join a posse and dash off and catch him before he crosses the Potomac into Virginia and makes it back to safe ground in Richmond. It turns out the writing wasn't so bad, after all. Nor were the characters at all bland and indistinguishable from one another as I had thought there for a while.

Suddenly I had to pause the series and go to Wikipedia to get at the list of those characters. I knew Andrew Johnson was Lincoln's successor and I think I remember that he had been impeached for some reason, but I didn't know a thing about William H. Seward, or George Sanders, or Edwin Stanton. Or David Herold, or Samuel Mudd, or John and Mary Surratt. In the end, Manhunt is more about Edwin Stanton than about John Wilkes Booth. Stanton was the historical character the writer of Manhunt took the greatest liberty with. In reality he was a political opponent of Lincoln's who ended up joining his cabinet and becoming one of Lincoln's most trusted colleagues when he took on the job of Secretary of War. The Manhunt version of the man hunts Booth down and that's apparently fiction. What is not made up, though, apparently, is the counterweight Stanton was to Andrew Johnson.

The two men, Stanton and Johnson, fought over two of America's most crucial post Civil War challenges: how to go about reintegrating the rebel states back into the Union and what to do with the newly freed African slaves. Johnson advocated pretty much a forgive-and-forget policy with the states which had formed the Confederacy, and he was unmoved by the argument that the slaves lacked the ability to handle the responsibilities of the freedom they had just been given. Stanton felt justice demanded that treason be punished and that forty acres and a mule was the least the country could do to give black men and women a leg up in the challenge they faced now that they would be living alongside whites as equals.  It is one thing to remember that a hundred and sixty years since the Emancipation Proclamation we are still arguing over racism, segregation and the possibility of reparations. It's quite another to be taken back to a time when half the white men running the country barked orders at their black servants and called them by a name we today believe decent people should not even be allowed to say out loud in public. 

The revulsion that rushes over you at the depiction in Manhunt of white Americans coming to terms with the freeing of slaves in their midst puts the drama, even if it is partly fictionalized, in the same category as other films of recent years depicting slavery and racism. I'm thinking particularly of Lincoln in 2012 and 12 Years a Slave in 2013, and am sobered by the fact that a full decade has passed since those two powerful treatments of slavery in America were capturing so much attention. 

Manhunt is set in the historical period in which the Republican Party, led by Abraham Lincoln, was formed as the corrective to the failure of the founding fathers to pay more than lip service to the claim that "all men are created equal" in our founding documents.  You can't watch it without reflecting on the irony that that same Republican Party is now in the hands of white supremacists who want to "Make America Great Again." 

Does history have to repeat itself?  Is America destined to wipe out the society generated by Lincoln Republicans and replace it with one more in tune with his impeached "bring back the good old days" successor, President Andrew Johnson?

At some point watching Manhunt, I conjured up a vision of a Martian doctoral student doing research in Washington, D.C. for a thesis making the case that, although it took them over a century and a half, it was actually the Confederate States of America that won the Civil War.

Manhunt, it turns out, is not a downer to run from. It's the pick-me-up in the end I was wanting to search for.