Superman: Foe of Musk and Putin

I've been following and enjoying Superman's exploits since I started watching him played by George Reeves on television when I was a kid in the 1950s, and started reading the comic book a few years later, created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster way back in 1938.  And as an adult I even contributed an article about The Man of Steel -- “Superman, Patriotism, and Doing the Ultimate Good” (which explored why Superman didn't just wipe out Hitler and the Nazis in World War Two) in The Man from Krypton -- an anthology published in 2006.

I think I've also seen most of the movies.  Like the TV series and the comics, they were all immensely entertaining.  But none packaged that with the political acumen and clout that James Gunn invested in the new Superman movie that my wife and I just saw in the LOOK Dine-In Cinemas in Dobbs Ferry.  Andrew Slack and Jose Antonio Vargas nailed in their guest column in The Hollywood Reporter, "Yes, Superman Has Always Been an Immigration Story," what Gunn did in his movie.  Superman has always been the ultimate alien -- literally, he came from outer space.  And just as people from other countries helped build and protect America from day one, so Superman has done the same since he started growing into adulthood in Kansas.

The movie also gets all the related political travesties and depredations that currently afflict our country and thereby the world right on target, too.  Lying buffoons on a Fox-like "news" channel, a fickle populace gobbling down fake news like it was cotton candy, a Putin-like character invading a neighboring country just as Hitler did in the 1930s, and most important, making Lex Luthor, Superman's brilliant, demented arch-enemy who first appeared in the comics in 1940 into someone we've all come to know all too well the past few years.

My nine-year-old grandson called it when he saw Superman with my son a couple of days ago and told him: "Lex Luthor is Elon Musk".  I don't know if Musk is as smart or as evil as Luthor, but he's certainly done plenty of damage.  Among the many reasons to cheer what Gunn has done in this movie is the way he put up Musk in Luthor.

And there are indeed many other reasons.  Superman is not only powerful but vulnerable and amazingly admirably sweet and good -- he takes the time to save a squirrel.  David Corenswet (who was in one episode of House of Cards) was excellent in the title role.  So were Rachel Brosnahan (Mad Men, Mrs. Maisel ) as Lois Lane, Edi Gathegi (For All Mankind, StartUp) as Mr. Terrific, and Nathan Fillion (The Rookie, Castle) as Green Lantern.  In fact, everyone was in fine form, including the super heroes I didn't know, the robots, and especially the dog.

So, if you're a fan of Superman, you can't go wrong with this movie.  And if you're a fan of democracy and a foe of fascism, you can go wrong with this movie, either.

***

Note added: James Gunn claims in this interview that one of the biggest pieces of fake news in his movie -- a recording of Superman's parents, released by Lex Luthor, urging their son to use his super powers to dominate the world -- actually wasn't fake news at all, that is, Superman's parents really said that.

My response: as I. A. Richards advised way back in the 1920s, it's a mistake to ask the author or creator what they intended in a given passage (or scene). They may be trying to manipulate the public, for whatever reason. It's far better, Richards says, to let the work speak for itself.

(Thanks Cynthia Walker and Nick Leshi for getting a conversation about this going on Facebook.)

Joan Baez at the Beacon Theater

There are so many ways I could begin my review of Joan Baez's superb concert at the Beacon Theater tonight -

• This is the second time in less than a week that Tina and I attended a farewell concert - Paul Simon's at the Prudential Center in Newark last week and Joan Baez's tonight.  In both cases, the concerts were so good that it's hard to believe these masters of music, voice, and lyrics are retiring from touring.  
• Joan Baez, always current and trenchant, sang a powerful Woody Guthrie song about immigrants.   We couldn't help thinking about Joy Reed's interview of Jose Antonio Vargas at the Powerhouse Arena in Brooklyn Wednesday night.
• One of Joan's last songs was Paul Simon's "The Boxer" - also one of the last encores that Paul Simon sang last week.  "I am leaving but the fighter still remains" was never more apt.

And all of those openers are valid.   And there is much more to be said about Joan Baez's concert tonight.  She said, after one song - a song her sister Mimi sang all the time - that it's hard to sing and cry at the same time.  At several times in the concert, I felt the same way about applauding and crying.  Especially after she sang Zoe Mulford's "The President Sang Amazing Grace".  (Yes, that's exactly what the song's about.)

Baez sang one of her masterpieces early on - "Diamonds and Rust," her parting reflection about Bob Dylan.  This was after opening the concert with a Dylan song.  She followed with a wonderful rendition of Phil Ochs' "There But For Fortune" - a lyricist who never received the recognition he deserved as someone right up there with Dylan.  And she sang several more Dylan songs, including the incomparable "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall," which Baez linked to the state of the nation and world today.   After all these years, Joan Baez remains the best voice Dylan ever had.

And we do live in a world "where souls are forgotten," certainly by the White House and its minions.  Which means we need Joan Baez's voice more than ever.  I remain ever hopeful we can hear it again.

Jose Antonio Vargas and Joy Reid at Powerhouse Arena

 I first heard about Jose Antonio Vargas in 2007 from my wife Tina.  She was editing Barack Obama's and Hillary Clinton's Wikipedia pages, and Jose had called her for an interview in a article he was writing for The Washington Post about the impact of Wikipedia on that Presidential election.  Those were early days in the advent of social media - or what I call New New Media (buying a book online is new media, creating a book online is new new media, or consumers becoming producers).  Twitter and YouTube were just a year old, and Wikipedia, though a little older, was not allowed as a reference in student papers in probably every class except mine at Fordham University.   But it was a new new medium par excellence - anyone who could read an article on Wikipedia could edit it - and Tina and Jose recognized its importance.

Tina and Jose kept in touch after that article was published in 2007.  We were delighted when Jose's team at The Washington Post won a Pulitzer Prize the following year for their reporting of the Virginia Tech massacre, and applauded his incredible bravery when, in 2011, he announced that he had been living here in the United States since age 12 as an undocumented immigrant.  Jose and I had met for the first time, a month earlier, in May 2011, when we both were guests on The Dylan Ratigan Show on MSNBC, talking about social media and politics.   Tina and I greeted him at a screening of his autobiographical documentary Documented at the Village East Cinema in Manhattan in 2014 and saw it again on CNN.  (Jose had asked Tina to look at part of it before the film was completed.)

We of course were in the front row last night when Jose was interviewed by Joy Reid at the Powerhouse Arena in Brooklyn about his new book, Dear America.  First, the venue, with a Manhattan Bridge archway out the window as backdrop for the speakers, was perfect.  And Joy conducted a savvy and sensitive interview, not easy when you're better known than the subject of interview.  Jose told the story of his difficult and dangerous life, which is the story of his book, which I'll review here in the next few weeks, after I've read it.  It's the story of someone not only unwilling to accept the hand our idiotic and arbitrary immigration laws has dealt him, but unwilling to accept this for everyone else in the same or similar boat as he.   Not only does Jose refuse to live off the radar, he and his group Define American actively campaign in every way they can to take this discriminatory radar, inconsistent with the true spirit of America, totally offline.

From such an all-out warrior, we shouldn't be surprised to find unusual opinions.  Jose of course sees Trump as a threat to what is good in America, but musing about Presidents and their impact on immigrants, he cited George W. Bush as the President who was most congenial to immigrants, meaning that Bill Clinton and Barack Obama not as much.  In other words, Democrats and Republicans have been more equal opportunity abusers of this crucial aspect of the American dream than we may have supposed.

Go see Jose talk wherever you can.  And get his book.  And look here soon for my review.

Jose Antonio Vargas' Documented - A Review

Tina and I had the pleasure of seeing Documented tonight, Jose Antonio Vargas's auto-biographical documentary about the struggle of undocumented Americans - known in the popular culture as "illegal aliens" - to achieve their just place in American society.   Tina and I each have a little good history with Jose.  Tina was interviewed by him about her work on Wikipedia's political pages in 2007, for a front-page article in The Washington Post.  And Jose and I talked politics and the Internet on Dylan Ratigan's MSNBC show in 2011.  Still, if I hadn't liked the movie, I wouldn't be reviewing it.  And if I had any problems with the movie, I'd say so in my review.   As it is, I found the movie nothing but exceptional.

The movie in effect was presented in two intertwining parts - Vargas's political battles after he came out as an undocumented American, and the personal travails of not having seen his mother in 20 years. The political part of the movie is much like Michael Moore's best work, with one big advantage: Vargas is not only investigating how the cards have been stacked against undocumented Americans, he is an undocumented American himself.  Thus, when he objects to being called "illegal," his complaint comes from a directly wounded heart.  Frankly, the term "illegal alien" is idiotic in any case - where I come from, an alien comes from another planet (science fiction writer Rob Sawyer captures this well in his novel Illegal Alien) - but Vargas is able to demonstrate how being called an "illegal" is an insult to any person working hard in this country, regardless of where they were born or how they got here.   We see Vargas's tears when he learns about Obama's giving undocumented Americans a path to citizenship - but only if they're under 30 years of age - and this provides as accurate an assessment as ever I've seen of Obama's Presidency and its failure so far to take the full steps needed to set America on the right path on more than one crucial social issue.

You might be wondering how Vargas got into this country and managed to become a reporter at The Washington Post without the proper work visa.   This gets into the second element of the movie, which shows us how Vargas arrived here as a 12-year-old, to live with his grandparents, with his mother back in the Philippines.   His grandfather arranged for a doctored green card for Jose, who had no knowledge of what had happened until later on.   Meanwhile, Jose's mother was unable to even visit him in America, because she had no employment back in the Philippines to support her visa application.   The impact of this separation on Jose was painful, to say the least, and continues to this very day.   An emotional highpoint of the movie is the healing that begins when Jose has a difficult Skype reunion with his mother and half-siblings on the other side of the world - it's easily the most effective Skype conversation scene I've seen to date in any movie or television series.

What becomes searingly clear as the movie progresses is the absurdity of our immigration policy - an absurdity which is self-destructive not protective of the best in America.  That a man who has lived such a life and made such a movie could be considered either illegal or alien shows how far our country has veered from its original ideal of all people created equal.   We were and are a country of immigrants, and we're fortunate indeed to have an immigrant such as Jose Antonio Vargas bravely working on behalf of our better natures.   In fact, he could be deported any day for his coming out as an undocumented American - Obama does deserve credit thus far for not deporting him - and this movie provides an inspiring testament to this American whose work is still in progress.