The Brave One

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Post by Akash »

Flipp, if you haven't been to Time Square lately, you'll never know how apt your "Disneyland" quip is.

And never mind. I take back everything I said. I'm willing to call NY a crime ridden hell hole, if only so Giuliani can't run as the "guy who cleaned it up." (Man I hate this fucking gremlin. Can we just start calling him the 9-11 whore?)

http://www.nytimes.com/2007....d=print

October 15, 2007
Giuliani Sells New York as Town He Tamed
By ADAM NAGOURNEY


CHARLESTON, S.C., Oct. 13 — It was a depressed and devastated place: a city shoulder-to-shoulder with welfare recipients, free-spending city officials and greedy lawyers. New York was, in the telling of Rudolph W. Giuliani, a haven of high taxes and high crime, crumbling buildings and filthy streets. It was governed by liberals and dominated by Democratic voters who did not agree with the ideas of Mr. Giuliani but who nonetheless twice elected him mayor.

This is Mr. Giuliani’s New York — his portrait of the city he inherited when he became mayor in 1994, presented to the nation as he campaigns for the Republican presidential nomination. His portrayal offers an insight into the decidedly complicated relationship Mr. Giuliani has with the city that has made him such a formidable contender for his party’s nomination.

Mr. Giuliani is at once running against New York City and embracing it. It is his foil and fodder, a laugh line and an applause line. It is the city he has tamed and the place where he stared down — as he tells appreciative Republicans to hearty applause — liberals, criminals, welfare recipients, big-spending City Council members and the editorial writers of The New York Times. At times, talking about the city where he has lived most of his 63 years, Mr. Giuliani sounds like he was a stranger in his own land.

“I got elected and re-elected honestly not because the people of New York City agreed with my ideas,” he told an appreciative audience at the York County Republican dinner in Rock Hill, S.C., on Thursday. “They didn’t. They agreed with my results. You agree with my ideas.”

“Gosh, there are more Republicans on this side of the room than there are in all of New York City,” Mr. Giuliani said brightly at a breakfast the next morning in Columbia, as he gestured to the right side of a dining room filled with builders and brokers. “So I am really comfortable here.”

Mr. Giuliani’s description of how grim New York was when he rode into town — and the amount of credit he claims for its revival — would probably draw a skeptical reaction if he made it to many of his former constituents. For one thing, the economic turn-around that he touts was, to a considerable extent, the result of a surging national economy. And many New Yorkers found their city a vibrant and stimulating place to live before Mr. Giuliani took over. Beyond that, Mr. Giuliani, back when he was mayor, seemed more in tune with the views of his constituents than he now says he was: he supported gun control and gay rights, and promoted tolerant policies in the treatment of illegal immigrants.

Still, across the field of candidates no one is as firmly identified and defined — and by all appearances, helped — by the place he calls home as Mr. Giuliani, and it only starts with his identification with the Sept. 11 attacks. One of his opponents, Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, has done everything he can to cut his ties with his home state, while Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, the Democrat who is ostensibly from New York, almost never mentions her home while she campaigns.

Mr. Giuliani’s New York is certainly not all bleak, particularly when he describes what it was like when he left office at the end of 2001. It is also, in his telling when he visits rural parts of the country like Iowa, a city not unlike small-town America. (He is referring to Staten Island.) In Florida, where Mr. Giuliani is looking for New York transplants to lift him to victory in the January primary, New York is the source of shared memories: Arthur Avenue in the Bronx, Zabar’s delicatessen and the Yankees (well, maybe not this year).

“You know, one of the nice things about being New York mayor is that Yogi is a friend of mine,” he told a transplanted New Yorker in South Carolina, who stopped him for an autograph and to reminisce about the Yankees’ championship years.

But more than anything, Mr. Giuliani’s New York is the laboratory that proved the failure of Democratic Party policies, just as his role as a Republican mayor in helping to revive the city is a vindication, he argues, of the very conservative policies that Republicans assert are at stake in this election — personal responsibility, low taxes and the right balance of civil liberties and security. Again and again, he tells wide-eyed listeners of visiting London before he became mayor and being handed a brochure, that was being given to New York-bound Englanders by travel agents, that listed 10 tips to avoid being the victim of a crime.

“You know what the last tip was?” he asked. “‘Don’t make eye contact.’ Can you imagine going to a city and being told you shouldn’t look at anyone?”

He invokes the Time magazine cover headline in 1990 that most New York City residents would just as soon forget — “The Rotting of the Big Apple.” And Mr. Giuliani recalls the days when, as he remembers them, a New Yorker couldn’t walk up Third Avenue without being on the lookout for muggers, of the blocks of dirty book stores and prostitutes, of public urination and pot-smoking.

“We accepted pornography, prostitution as just commonplace,” he said to a conservative audience in Washington last spring. “We accepted street-level drug dealing as something we couldn’t do anything about.”

And this in South Carolina, as heads bobbed up and down across the room. “There was a tremendous amount of crime. It was the crime capital of America. It was a devastated city in many ways. It was a depressed city.”

He continued: “You probably don’t know that I took over a city that had 1.1 million people on welfare. That’s bigger than the population of, like, almost any city in America. I had, like, a whole city on welfare.”

It seems fair to say that New York City has become a bigger character in this campaign than some of Mr. Giuliani’s actual opponents. Mr. Giuliani talked about New York City so much at one debate that a focus group of viewers assembled by MSNBC chastised him for it.

And if Mr. Giuliani sees political gain in defining his candidacy around his mayoralty — it took him 90 seconds to raise the subject in Columbia — his rivals see in it opportunities to diminish him, arguing that New York is so fundamentally out of touch with the values of the rest of country that anyone elected there could not be a true conservative.

In one example of this, Mr. Romney’s campaign sent an e-mail message to reporters and bloggers attacking Mr. Giuliani that was headlined, “Big City, Big Spender.” It featured a montage of New York City, with Mr. Giuliani — his head thrown back, his arms in the air — superimposed over iconic photographs of New York.

The accepted wisdom on Mr. Giuliani is that he is showing surprising strength in places like South Carolina because of Sept. 11. Still, he now talks more about what he did before Sept. 11 than what he did afterward. And it’s clear that the image of him as a strong Republican mayor domesticating a Democratic city, true or not, is helping him greatly.

Glenn McCall, the county chairman in Rock Hill, introduced Mr. Giuliani by reading a litany of the crime reduction statistics that Mr. Giuliani provides, and talked of the time when New York City was seen as ungovernable. “Tourists didn’t go there,” Mr. McCall said. “At the time, my wife, Linda, and I were dating, and she said, ‘Can we go to New York?’ And I said, ‘No, are you crazy?’”

The audience laughed. Mr. Giuliani laughed with them.




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Post by Damien »

I haven't seen The Brave One and have no particular desire to see it -- maybe on DVD but it is curious that no one I know is talking about it -- or, as far as I know, has even seen it -- and my circles of friends and acquaintances are inveterate moviegoers. If it was supposed to be controversial, ithasn't connected.

On the other hand, everyone went to, and talked about Death Wish back in 1974. I saw it opening weekend at a theatre on the Upper East Side and people in the audience were laughing at it, although there was also cheering whenever Bronson offed some scum.
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Post by ITALIANO »

Hehe... Ok, now it's better.
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Post by Sonic Youth »

I, (Youth, Sonic) on the fourteenth of October in the 2007th Year of some people's Lord hereby declare my condemnation of the underlying theme behind "The Brave One", which I find morally repellent and sociologically disturbing.


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Post by ITALIANO »

Honestly - no.
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Post by Sonic Youth »

ITALIANO wrote:Before mentioning subjective anedocts or objective statistics, we should have the courage to say this clearly.
I wasn't clear ENOUGH?! ???
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Post by Akash »

ITALIANO wrote:First of all - the point isn't if New York is safer now than it was in the 70s. The point is that this movie's approach, and the easy answers it provides, to urban violence are completely wrong and unacceptable. They would be wrong and unacceptable even if New York (or any other city) were the most dangerous place on earth.
Very true. The movie was so bad in other ways that I completely forgot to point out its odious political message. I'm not going to open up the capital punishment debate that always goes nowhere on this board, but I will say that this film condones an eye for an eye ideology that I find highly disturbing (I'm surprised Foster wanted her name attached to this).
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Post by ITALIANO »

I have just come back from this movie, yet for once I promise I won't be anti-American - as difficult as it may be.

First of all - the point isn't if New York is safer now than it was in the 70s. The point is that this movie's approach, and the easy answers it provides, to urban violence are completely wrong and unacceptable. They would be wrong and unacceptable even if New York (or any other city) were the most dangerous place on earth. Before mentioning subjective anedocts or objective statistics, we should have the courage to say this clearly. (Personally, I've never had any problems during my once-frequent trips to New York - the only two cities where I've been in some kind of slight danger have been Rome and Bucharest - yet I can understand, because I felt its aggressiveness, that it isn't a very peaceful place. Still, in the movie, where every time Jodie Foster goes out of her house she meets a criminal, it's a bit too grotesquely dangerous).

In Italy - where a massive immigration from Eastern Europe and the Arab countries is bringing lots of social problems - this movie is, unsurprisingly, a big hit. People may laugh at it - still they do go to see it, and even in my small, relatively quiet Bergamo (from which nearby Milan is looked at as some sort of jungle) the cinema was packed. This, I realize, says alot about my country and what it is going through these days.

I hated this movie, and I think that it's even worse than Death Wish. Oh, much better produced and directed, true, and definitely much better acted (my parents called me and asked me what the name of "that excellent black actor" was). I'll even say that the interplay between the two leading characters has some moments of good writing - but the movie is still worse. Death Wish was revoltingly, proudly fascistic, but at least it was honest about it - you knew what you'd get when you went there. This one is more coward - it gives you plenty of guilty feelings and would-be subtle meditations on personal responsability etc - it even leads you to hope that maybe by the end it will be refreshingly "different" - but no, it turns out that the ending is the predictable one - still deeply fascistic - and the moral ambiguity was just a hypocritical device - and hypocritical in a very American way (I know, I had promised...).
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Post by Mister Tee »

Just for the record: my wife and I live (and she lived in 1974) on the very block where the initial assault on Bronson's family took place in Death Wish. It wasn't a completely posh neighborhood at the time -- it is now, I guess -- but most residents didn't live in 24 hour fear. Death Wish was controversial -- loathed by liberals, extolled by righties -- because it embraced the Nixonian law-and-order view of society as out of control and needing an iron fist to restrain it. It was a huge exaggeration even then, but it spoke to inchoate fears, the same way 50s sci-fi films tapped into feelings about the A-bomb. (Zodiac, as I mentioned in my comments on the film, touches on some of these same ideas, but with more skepticism)

I'd have to (sight unseen) side with those who say The Brave One is even less germane to 2007 society than Death Wish was to its, because Brave One caters to a mind-set that isn't backed up by any statistics or even a generalized feeling (though there will always be anecdotal evidence to the contrary, and, flipp, I'm sorry for what you've had to deal with) -- it chiefly panders to aging Dirty Harry fans, for whom fear of the underclass of 1974 never went away. Given that we're once again fending off authoritarian government figures who want to instill greater and greater control, it seems a particularly inopportune time for such a film.
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Post by Sonic Youth »

So I'm gonna get it from both sides, huh?

You're right. I forgot how early in the decade Death Wish was released before everything spiked. But at least it helps make my point. However ungrounded in reality Death Wish was, The Brave Heart is even less so.
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Post by Big Magilla »

Sonic Youth wrote:"Death Wish" at least had an excuse for existing back then, when New York WAS very dangerous and played upon a collective anxiety many shared.
Poppycock!

I haven't seen The Brave One, so I don't know whether I'd like it or not. I did see Death Wish on video after avoiding it for many years. In retrospect, it's just a movie. At the time of its release, however, the film was intensely reviled by liberal New Yorkers. It had absolutley no basis in reality and no reason for existing other than to flame the fires of national political conservatives who were already painting the city as a modern Sodom and Gomorrah.

I happened to live at the time in one of the neighborhoods in which Death Wish was filmed. While crime certainly occurred, NYC was not a place where its inhabitants lived in fear. I could walk the entire city at all hours of the night, even walk through Central Park at midnight on occasion. It was the quickest way to get from the East Side to the West Side and probably still is.

Having been mugged in San Francisco thirteen years ago I've been much more cautious about my noctornal wanderings since, but I still have no fears about taking public transportation.

I think The Brave One has less impact today than Death Wish had in 1974 because it is not only a retread of that film but of every other show on TV in which not only New York, but Las Vegas, Miami and other cities are seen as hotbeds of crime. The fact that the film is a flop will have less impact on the tourist industry.

Also, the fact that Jodie Foster is a much loved actress with impeccable liberal credentials whereas Charles Bronson was prior to Death Wish an action star whose acting abilities were questionable, keeps the liberal press at bay. Her film is not the cause celebre that Death Wish was.
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Post by Sonic Youth »

It's very much a Death Wish retread, in many ways.*

Most important is the identical theme. Both films are about the imminent death of the big city society as well as the poisonous environment that hands-off liberalism breeds. EXCEPT... "Death Wish" at least had an excuse for existing back then, when New York WAS very dangerous and played upon a collective anxiety many shared. "The Brave One" arrives at a time when Harlem is celebrating a "renaissance", and it plays upon the collective anxiety for people who avoid big cities.

Obviously, if you have stronger personal/anecdotal evidence than most particular individuals, you're going to view NYC with a different perspective and come to this movie with the same such perspective. And I can't argue your experience. But at the same time, the city-wide statistics (which are based on the personal/anecdotal evidence of entire populations) can't be dismissed either.

*(For example, both protaganists are New Yorkers. Both have an ideal career that big city inhabitants would plunder for. Both have a tragic event befall them. Both go through a mourning period. Both buy a gun. Both use it in self-defence. Both are stunned by what they have done. Both get over it, and look for trouble. Meanwhile, in both films an intelligent detective spends much of the film pursuing them. In both films, the media hypes the shadowy vigilante into superhero status. The endings are a bit different. Otherwise, it's a straight remake with a gender twist.)
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Post by flipp525 »

Akash wrote:Thank you Sonic. I'm glad someone pointed that out. I've lived in NY and still consider it my "home" and anyone who thinks those crimes wouldn't be hard to find has obviously never been to NY since the 70's.

Maybe in "your" NYC, crimes are non-existent and the city is truly the Disneyland that it promotes itself as. I, however, have an entirely different impression of it which is why crimes and situations in The Brave One didn't seem like a 1970's Death Wish retread to me but things that could conceivably happen today. I was beaten up in Grammercy in 2003 (black eye, broken wrist), my mother was robbed and stabbed in the arm outside of Grand Central in 1998, and a friend of mine was beaten so badly in a gay-bashing incident near Greenwich Village a couple years ago, that he required three months of hospitalization. (And that occurred not long after something similar happened to an acquaintance of mine in D.C. Oh, yes -- didn't you hear? Gay-bashings are also a thing of the past.) I'm so glad though, that NYC is the safest place in the United States for you and Sonic. Congratulations.




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Post by Akash »

Sonic Youth wrote:Yes, in this day and age, it WOULD be difficult to find such situations in New York City at such a rate.


Thank you Sonic. I'm glad someone pointed that out. I've lived in NY and still consider it my "home" and anyone who thinks those crimes wouldn't be hard to find has obviously never been to NY since the 70's.

What would Guiliani think?




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Post by Sonic Youth »

If entertainment is all you ask for in your movies, then there's nothing inherently wrong with The Brave One. It's nicely produced and moves along at a decent clip. Neil Jordan again proves he's as good as any Hong Kong filmmaker when it comes to capturing neon lighting in dark, urban settings. And there is an astonishing overhead shot of Jodi Foster trying to find her way out of a maze of alleyways I wanted to applaud, although you'd think a smart filmmaker would find better solutions to capture her disorientation of losing a loved one than close-ups in extreme angles. Foster is interesting, affecting an NPR persona and putting a body to it. It has intrigue, it's ocassionally suspenseful. If you can overlook credibility issues and moral qualms, then it's not such a bad film.

But I can't overlook such things. The Brave One is bullshit. Of course we feel we want to cheer Foster on. As with its nearly identical predecessor "Death Wish", the movie is a stacked deck. How can you possibly argue the motives of such films as "Death Wish" and "The Brave One"? So let's get a few things straight. What we see in both "Death Wish" and this film may be plausible for New York in the 70s, back when there were an average of 5 murders a day. But according to Wikipedia, in 2005 the crime rate fell to its lowest level in forty-two years. Of the ten largest cities in the U.S., New York ranks 10th in crime rate. As for personal experience, all I can say is I have been on New York subways in the middle of the night and it is ALWAYS crowded, contrary to what The Brave One would have us believe. Yes, in this day and age, it WOULD be difficult to find such situations in New York City at such a rate. The New York Tourist Board must be pulling their hair out.

(And while we're on the subject of credibility, there is no way a radio station would allow Foster to do the sort of program she does with live commentary. These programs are always pre-recorded, much to the convenience of the producers, reporters and voice personalities, and in Foster's case it would have been vetted by the higher-ups before airing. No way would a station take a risk in letting Foster blather live, particularly not a public radio station and not with today's FCC.)

The criminals Jodi caps are unquestionably bad guys, and they all deserve what they've got coming to them. They are a racially diverse bunch, of course. A little bit of white, a little bit of black, a little bit of Latino, she's just an equal opportunity off-er. No court would dare acquit them short of a tecnicality, so Jodi's hands are clean and her soul is pure. Whatever issues she has with herself and her actions are more character issues rather than any musings over the broader social implications she may have set off. No one is copy-catting her actions. She is always conveniently alone with her assailant/victim-to-be, which avoids messy narrative complications like witnesses, but it also avoids any complex moral quandaries such as: what if she shot an innocent bystander? But the movie isn't interested in challenging its premise all that much. So, as entertainment, it's perfectly okay. As wish-fulfillment, I'm sure plenty will get off on it. As a corrective to society's ills, it's utterly vile.
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