#genuinely believe there is something special about being american that imbues a people with a quality that makes them greater

[a-god-in-ruins-rises]

[guerrillamamamedicine]

The Congolese gentleman had been living in India for about a decade. He had recently lost his job and been evicted from his apartment. He suspected that in both cases his dark skin was to blame. Africans have a very hard time finding housing in South Delhi’s more middle-class colonies because people don’t like to rent to Africans. Africans also report being vulnerable to sudden evictions and being harassed for rent money even when it’s not due.

The Dutch man’s white privilege makes him more effective in the workplace. It also imbues him with special status in the gated residential community where he lives with his family. He rents rather than owning an apartment, but was invited to sit in on meetings with homeowners – a privilege not extended to Indian tenants.

The Dutch and Congolese men’s experiences are echoed in many emerging market economies. My research focuses on migration and globalisation, primarily on what I call “frontier migration”: the movement of people, capital, technology and ideas from a more “developed” economy to one that’s less “developed”. Through my work in India and earlier research in South Africa, I have concluded that migrant experience is over determined by perceived socio-economic class and what the migrant looks like – eye shape, height, hair texture and race.

Traditional economists cannot quantify or measure the effect of white male privilege in facilitating business dealings or obtaining employment in emerging market economies. This is because white privilege cannot be easily measured. Ironically, part of whiteness’s privilege derives from its position as the “norm” against which all else can be made visible for dissection. Meanwhile, it remains almost invisible itself.

Social and economic capital

In both South Africa and particularly in India, white men from the West benefit from positive stereotypes. People believe they are wealthy, are a boon to the economy and are “legal” migrants.

In India, one factor stands out far above the rest. Almost every single white man from a “developed” country whom I interviewed candidly explained the positive effect his white skin had on his migration experience. Many felt a mixture of discomfort and surprise at the power they’d gained by moving from a white-majority society to a white-minority society. At home they looked like everybody else. In a country like India, their whiteness set them apart.

It also gave them an exponential social and economic advantage. They report being ushered into nightclubs and concerts and, according to one 20-something American man living in Bangalore, receive a lot of positive attention on dating apps like Tinder.

Whiteness is a selling point for many employers. I interviewed a British man in his 60s who was the headmaster at an elite South Indian private school. During a speech to parents, he explained that he was happy to relocate to India because one of his great-grandparents was actually Indian. His employers were unhappy that he’d mentioned this Indian heritage. Part of the school’s cachet and competitive advantage derived from having a “genuine white guy” in charge.

White women and darker-skinned migrants have very different migration experiences from their white male counterparts.

In India, particularly in the north, dark skin is associated with poverty and being low-caste. British colonialism exacerbated this prejudice. Indians discriminate against others based on their degree of “darkness”. Darker Indians also struggle with this, but dark-skinned African foreigners are the most severely hit by this prejudice.

This has been grimly illustrated by a spate of mob attacks on Africans in north India.

“Fairness” is associated with being high-caste. This is often correlated with a higher socio-economic status, so lighter skinned foreigners also benefit from this positive bias. A white South African man told me he feels “very welcome” in India because most Indians perceive him as a white Westerner, not an African.

[mrmichaelchadler]

Home Entertainment Consumer Guide: February 7, 2019

10 NEW TO NETFLIX

"About a Boy" "Annie Hall" "Bull Durham" "Casino Royale" "Jaws" "The Magnificent Ambersons" "The Master" "Personal Shopper" "Silence of the Lambs" "Zodiac"

8 NEW TO BLU-RAY/DVD

"Boy Erased"

Can a movie be given points for effort? The message behind "Boy Erased" is undeniably an important one to hear in 2019 as efforts to roll back gay rights or at least halt the implementation of them continue under the Trump administration. So the story of a family that learns the hard way that gay conversion therapy is an evil practice that denies human rights and damages people forever is one that feels urgent and important. And there are strong performances embedded in this film, particularly from Nicole Kidman as the mother who senses in her heart that she should just accept her son. The problem is that the film doesn't work as storytelling, keeping its subject matter under glass in a way that never allows us to know him, developing his parents as characters more than the center of this story. Still, it's a story worth hearing, even if one wishes it were told better.

Buy it here 

Special Features Deleted & Extended Scenes Jared Revealed - Featurette Becoming the Eamons - Featurette Man Consumed: Joel Edgerton - Featurette

"In the Heat of the Night" (Criterion)

It's a slower movie than I remembered now that I've revisited it for the first time in probably two decades, but it's still powerful, thanks in large part to Sidney Poitier's commanding performance and something I think I was too young to really appreciate the first time: Haskell Wexler's amazing cinematography. This movie looks phenomenal, capturing a time and place while also having a strong visual language as cinema at the same time. And the new 4K restoration really allows Wexler's work to shine. It's interesting that several people have brought up this film in the context of 2018 Oscar players "Green Book" (another film about an interracial partnership) and even "If Beale Street Could Talk" (Baldwin had some harsh words for the film in one of his most famous essays). It's incredible how often Criterion finds a way to release a film at just the right time, although "In the Heat of the Night" would probably find a way to resonate whenever it was released. 

Buy it here 

Special Features New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray New interviews with director Norman Jewison and actor Lee Grant Segment from a 2006 American Film Institute interview with actor Sidney Poitier New interview with Aram Goudsouzian, author of Sidney Poitier: Man, Actor, Icon Audio commentary from 2008 featuring Jewison, Grant, actor Rod Steiger, and cinematographer Haskell Wexler Turning Up the Heat: Movie-Making in the ’60s, a 2008 program about the production of the film and its legacy, featuring Jewison, Wexler, producer Walter Mirisch, and filmmakers John Singleton and Reginald Hudlin Quincy Jones: Breaking New Sound, a 2008 program about Jones’s innovative soundtrack, including the title song sung by Ray Charles, featuring interviews with Jones, lyricists Alan and Marilyn Bergman, and musician Herbie Hancock Trailer PLUS: An essay by critic K. Austin Collins

"Lu Over the Wall" "Night is Short, Walk on Girl"

Japanese animator Masaaki Yuasa released two films in Japan in 2017 that were both released by GKids in 2018 and are now new to Blu-ray from the wonderful company that brings some of the best overseas animation to American audiences. The sweet "Lu Over the Wall" owes a great deal to Hayao Miyazaki's wonderful "Ponyo," which, of course, owes a great deal to Hans Christian Anderson's "The Little Mermaid." In this iteration, Lu is a one of the mythical merfolk, who comes alive when she hears sullen middle-schooler Kai playing with his band in a small fishing village. She sings, dances, and even grows legs, becoming a phenomenon in the community, where they build a mer-theme park and turn her into an attraction. It's a cute movie that runs WAY too long at 112 minutes. I haven't had the chance to check out "Night" yet but wanted to include it for Yuasa fans or those looking for the latest from GKids, a company all film fans should keep an eye on. 

Buy it here 

Special Features Interview with Director Masaaki Yuasa Audio Commentary with Director Masaaki Yuasa Trailers TV Spots Original Japanese language and English dub versions

"A Private War"

Matthew Heineman's first fictional film tells a story in keeping with his experience as a documentary filmmaker but proves that what works in one may not work in another. Rarely has a performance fought against the weaknesses of a script more than Rosamund Pike's does here. You can almost see some of the cliched dialogue get stuck in her mouth, but she does just enough to ground the story of Marie Colvin in something genuine that she elevates what is a truly awful screenplay and pedestrian direction. Pike is one of those great actresses who always seems on the verge of finding the right part to make her a household name or Oscar winner. This could have been it with a better script. Watch it for what could have been.

Buy it here 

Special Features Becoming Marie Colvin: How Rosamund Pike transformed herself for A Private War Women in the World Summit Q&A: Featuring Rosamund Pike, Jamie Dornan and Director Matthew Heineman, moderated by Tina Brown Requiem for A Private War: Inspiration behind award-winning musician Annie Lennox's song

"The Sisters Brothers"

One of the films already popping up on "Underrated" lists for 2018 is this character-driven Western from Jacques Audiard, an entertaining rental with a great quartet of actors. Seriously, how does a movie with John C. Reilly, Joaquin Phoenix, Jake Gyllenhaal, and Riz Ahmed slide this far under the radar? Perhaps it's for the best in terms of the film's longevity in that this is a movie that I'm certain people will find on DVD and Blu-ray and recommend to their friends. It's more than just a competent genre flick thanks mostly to its cast, especially Reilly, who imbues his Sisters brother with a perfect blend of world-weariness and dedication. It's a reminder of how good Reilly can be in the right part. 

Buy it here 

Special Features Striking Gold: Making a "Modern Day" Western Q&A Panel Promotional Featurettes: Brothers Forever Wanted Dead or Alive Gallery Theatrical Trailer

"Suspiria"

You would think that the director of my #1 film of 2017 ("Call Me By Your Name") reimagining one of my favorite films of all time would be an easy slam dunk for this critic, but "Suspiria" is more of a modest lay-up. It's a film that I can appreciate in terms of ambition, but it has a number of elements that simply don't work. I'll never understand some of the washed-out visual choices, especially when compared to the unforgettable imagery of the first, and I don't like the way it uses real political upheaval as cheap background. Still, there's that Tilda Swinton performance and that climax, which is like nothing else released in 2018. It's funny how divisive this movie became when it was released, making some top ten and some worst ten lists at the end of the year. I really don't understand either extreme reaction, but love to see the debate. 

Buy it here 

Special Features "The Making of Suspiria" Featurette "The Secret Language of Dance" Featurette "The Transformations of Suspiria" Featurette

"Widows"

I don't believe I had to defend any 2018 review more than my 4-star write-up of Steve McQueen's latest, now on Blu-ray and DVD. I stand by every word. And I think history will come around to reveal the criticisms of this film being petty or unfounded. "Too much movie"? Yeah, how often do we get to say that? Yes, there are a lot of characters to follow and a few plot threads left dangling, but that's true of a lot of classic cinema that attempts to capture the pulse and people of a major city like Chicago. A lot of those '70s crime epics you love? They've got some plot holes too. We're in an era in which we sometimes fail to see the forest for the trees, too eager to pick apart little plot details when we miss the overall fabric of a piece like this one. It's a great movie. And it gets better every time I watch it. And every time I have to defend it too. 

Buy it here 

Special Features Widows Unmasked: A Chicago Story Plotting The Heist: The Story Assembling The Crew: Production The Scene Of The Crime: Locations Gallery

from All Content http://bit.ly/2WJ8LkJ

[theconservativebrief]

Everything is a witch hunt. President Donald Trump will tell anybody who will listen that Robert Mueller’s investigation into the Trump campaign’s Russia connections (and other alleged misdeeds) is a political witch hunt. The single greatest political witch hunt, in fact.

The New York Times publishes the list of questions Mueller wants to ask Trump? With a clear interest in whether Trump obstructed justice? Witch hunt.

It would seem very hard to obstruct justice for a crime that never happened! Witch Hunt!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 1, 2018

So disgraceful that the questions concerning the Russian Witch Hunt were “leaked” to the media. No questions on Collusion. Oh, I see…you have a made up, phony crime, Collusion, that never existed, and an investigation begun with illegally leaked classified information. Nice!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 1, 2018

This is sort of Trump’s thing. Trump has tweeted about the Robert Mueller “witch hunt” more than 60 times in 2018.

This is the single greatest witch hunt of a politician in American history!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 18, 2017

You are witnessing the single greatest WITCH HUNT in American political history – led by some very bad and conflicted people! #MAGA

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 15, 2017

A TOTAL WITCH HUNT!!!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 10, 2018

He’s not alone. When Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens was facing allegations of horrendous sexual misconduct, he unsubtly said it was “exactly like what’s happening with the witch hunts in Washington, D.C.” The critics of #MeToo — often but not always men — have compared the campaign to eradicate sexual abuse to a witch hunt.

If you want people to believe you’re wrongfully accused, the subject of malicious scrutiny on the part of your enemies, you cry that you’re the target of a witch hunt.

Trump didn’t pick this phrase out of thin air. Politically, this goes back at least to McCarthyism and Watergate. The Nixon White House also claimed he was the subject of a witch hunt. Critics of Sen. Joe McCarthy’s insidious anti-communist probes called them witch hunts. Back in those days, playwright Arthur Miller made the subtext text with his play The Crucible, an anti-McCarthy allegory set during the Salem witch trials of the 1690s.

Which is where our story really begins. In the modern setting, “witch hunt” is a useful defense because people living in the 21st century know that the “witches” of 17th-century Salem were almost certainly innocent and, therefore, that the persecutions that led to 20 deaths were unjust. It’s a hyperbolic if undeniably powerful rhetorical device to claim one’s innocence.

There is also, once you stop to think about it, something distasteful about men in power — particularly two men credibly accused of sexual assault — using a term that harks back to an era in history in which a patriarchal society wrongfully persecuted (mostly) women.

“We’ve turned the expression on its head. Traditionally a witchcraft charge amounted to powerful men charging powerless women with a phony crime. Now it is powerful men screeching that they are being charged with phony crimes,” Stacey Schiff, who wrote a 2015 book about Salem called The Witches, told Vox over email. “Unfair targeting is the only thing the two have in common, and even that is debatable.”

What exactly caused the mass hysteria in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1692 and 1693 is still a subject that divides historians and others who study the witch trials. What we know for sure is that between 1692 and 1693, 19 people were hanged, and one crushed to death, ostensibly for the civil crime of practicing malevolent witchcraft, after an outbreak of mass hysteria. They had all maintained their innocence — with the exception of Tituba, a local enslaved woman, whose confession may have been tortured out of her.

The majority of the Salem witch trials didn’t actually happen in Salem Town — what is known as Salem today — but in Salem Village, an inland hamlet that was renamed Danvers in 1752.

Mary Beth Norton, a Cornell University professor who wrote 2007’s In the Devil’s Snare with an eye toward explaining the crisis in its historical and political context, connected the hysteria over the witch trials and the actions taken by village elders to Native American attacks on the New England settlers.

She summarized her understanding of the witch trials to Vox like this:

I argue in my book that the judges at the trials, who were also the military leaders of the colony, used the search for “witches” as a means of deflecting their own responsibility for the disasters then afflicting the colony. But as they genuinely believed in the existence of witches (that was the accepted opinion at the time), we can’t say that they manufactured a belief in witches for political reasons. Still, the search for witchcraft was very beneficial to them politically, until it all came crashing down on their heads after about nine months when skepticism about how the trials were being conducted prevailed in the colony. People didn’t stop believing in the existence of witches, but they stopped believing that the Massachusetts judicial system was successfully uncovering and convicting them.

As Norton emphasized, it’s simplistic to think of the Salem trials as purely political: Christians living in New England in the 1690s absolutely believed that witches were real and that they could serve as consorts of the devil to wreak havoc in their town.

But the relevance to our modern understanding of a “witch hunt” is eerie. Sinister authorities using the specter of “witches” to protect their own interests. The deteriorating faith in political institutions. Right from the start, “witch hunts” were imbued with much of the meaning that would make them such a powerful rhetorical tool in 2018.

As a result, Salem has held a prominent place in America’s political imagination ever since.

As Texas Tech’s Gretchen Adams chronicled in her book The Specter of Salem, the witch trials served several political purposes in the intervening centuries. In the 1790s, textbooks would use Salem as the quintessential example of America’s less enlightened past, a history the new nation was abandoning as it embraced Enlightenment ideals in its early years.

During the 1830s, during a religious revival known as the Second Great Awakening, which rejected the Enlightenment, critics would compare those new religious orders to the Salem elders, seeking to remind people of the dangers of unchecked fanaticism. During the Civil War, Southerners would cite the witch trials to attack the Union for its supposed irrationality in persecuting the war.

But for modern politics, the turning point seems to have been Arthur Miller’s 1953 play The Crucible. A retelling of the trials, the play was a coded indictment of the anti-communist hysteria of the 1940s and ’50s. Miller heavily implied that the accusers and magistrates of Salem were motivated by a combination of fear and greed, including a desire to seize the lands of the accused. The story of Salem, for Miller, was the story of any mass panic — how self-interested humans use fear and panic to stoke “witch hunts” for personal gain.

“It’s a 20th-century term that comes into use during the Cold War. There was no single, directed, witch-identifying force in America’s 17th-century prosecutions,” Schiff said. “In that sense, Salem does not actually constitute a ‘hunt.’ It’s more a panic, or an epidemic, or a societal delusion.”

As Vox’s Dara Lind noted previously, Richard Nixon (or his staff) invoked Salem as the Watergate investigation was gaining steam:

President Nixon and his top aides believe that the Senate Watergate hearings are unfair and constitute a “political witch-hunt,” according to White House sources. The sources, said, that the President in recent weeks had expressed bitterness and deep hostility toward the two-month-old proceedings. “The President sees the hearings as an attempt to get Richard Nixon and do it just damn unfairly,” one source said.

According to four separate sources, the hostility toward the hearings is pervasive among the White House staff, especially among former assistants to H.R. Haldeman and John D. Ehrlichman, the resigned top presidential aides. One White House source said he saw the struggle with the Senate Watergate committee as not just politics but a battle for survival. “The Ervin committee is out to destroy the President,” he said.

Vox’s Lind wasn’t the only one to connect Nixon and Watergate to Trump’s use of the phrase. Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward cited Trump’s laments of a “witch hunt” as they described the “eerily similar confrontation” that Trump is having with Mueller and that Nixon had with special prosecutor Archibald Cox.

On the one hand, Trump comparing the investigation into his campaign to a crisis that left 20 people dead in the 17th century is clearly ridiculous — there is much more evidence in the criminal indictments, the court-sanctioned wiretaps, and the consensus of Republican and Democratic investigators for Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election than there is for witchcraft — and rather unsavory.

As for Greitens, who so transparently drafted off Trump’s tactics, his use of the term might be even more galling: This is a man accused of coercing a woman into sexual acts and then threatening to blackmail her if she talked.

“There is something twisted, misdirected, and vaguely demented in the cries of ‘witch hunt,’” Schiff said. “Many American women (and a handful of men) did protest their innocence. They were not witches, though the courts decided they were; they hanged all the same. None ever cried ‘witch hunt.’”

But Trump’s never-ending laments of “witch hunt!” can’t just be dismissed. They serve an important function for the president: discrediting the Mueller investigation.

A total WITCH HUNT with massive conflicts of interest!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 19, 2018

It isn’t an accident that Trump’s most influential allies in the media, like Fox’s Sean Hannity (a man also connected to Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, whose current presence on the national stage arose from alleged payouts to women on Trump’s behalf), deploy the exact same rhetoric.

For now, most Americans still support the Mueller investigation, though support has been slipping. Screaming “witch hunt” didn’t save Nixon either — not that we should necessarily believe the Mueller probe will end the same way Watergate did.

But at the same time, Mueller’s investigation is underwater with Republicans. Trump’s “witch hunt” claims have found a particular audience, it seems — and that audience is responsible for the majorities that currently control both chambers of Congress, whose leaders claim they do not want Trump to fire Mueller but at the same time have refused so far to take any steps to protect the prosecutor.

Investigating potential crimes against the country shouldn’t be a partisan issue. But it’s become that way. Trump — and the screams of “witch hunt!” — have helped make it so.

Original Source -> “Witch hunts” explained, from Salem to Donald Trump

via The Conservative Brief