Two for Tuesday
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Author Archives: Reid Mukai
First Post-Crash Day Fully Conscious
The first group I encountered on my first day of full consciousness post-crash was a team of various medical professionals. A nurse recorded my vital signs while a doctor assessed my cognitive health through a series of questions which I answered by nodding or shaking my head.
A couple of people from the surgical team focused on the extent of my spinal cord injuries, asking if I was able to feel or move various parts of my arms and legs. I was able to feel everywhere, though in a tingly and imprecise way, similar to how one’s arms or legs feel “asleep” from lack of circulation. I could definitely feel a sense of touch, but it seemed to emanate not from the surface of the skin but from a layer beneath. As expected, I couldn’t move anywhere below the shoulders while areas touched on my arms were felt on corresponding areas of phantom limbs above my chest.
Lastly, a specialist investigated my emotional state through another round of questions including if I felt depressed or had suicidal thoughts. This line of questioning seemed absurd at the time for how self-apparent the answers should be. It’s inconceivable that anyone newly quadriplegic would not be depressed. Likewise, any sane person who loses movement of all limbs as well as loss or impairment of numerous internal bodily functions would be lying if they denied having suicidal ideation even fleetingly.
That being said, I nodded in agreement about being depressed but shook my head to signal “no” to the question about suicide. I didn’t want or need suicide counseling and even if I were seriously suicidal, what could I do about it? But my main motive for lying was the possibility that my family would find out. I imagined how they may have experienced trauma from witnessing the trauma I went through, and how much they’d want me to survive. It would hurt them to know they wanted me alive more than I did at the time. There are moments when I still have such thoughts, particularly when my wife and I experience economic setbacks related to my injury, but the emotional impact suicide would have on loved ones is enough to keep the thoughts ephemeral and in the realm of speculation.
As if conjured by thoughts and memories, my wife Danielle and mother Florence arrived soon after, looking just as worried as I expected.
Saturday Matinee: Homecoming
By Michael Gingold
Source: Fangoria
Part of the appeal of Masters of Horror has been the chance to see things on this Showtime series that you won’t see anywhere else on television. So far, that has mostly meant explicit gore, nudity and sexuality, which is all fine and well. But Joe Dante’s Homecoming, premiering December 2, treats us to sights that are not only unique in the TV horror genre, but have been off-limits anywhere else on the tube as well. Like, f’rinstance, rows of flag-draped coffins bearing the bodies of dead soldiers killed in a Mideast war.
Yes, Dante is back in horror-satire mode, and this time he and screenwriter Sam Hamm (adapting the short story “Death and Suffrage” by Dale Bailey) are directly taking on a target that the rest of TV-drama-land and mainstream Hollywood has heretofore largely danced around. The result is as pointed, clever and blackly amusing as anything the genre has seen in ages, a perfect example of horror’s ability to address subjects too touchy to deal with in other genres. It also takes the political subtext of George A. Romero’s Dead series and puts it right up in the forefront, without becoming preachy with its message. Dante and Hamm manage the tricky balancing act of shining a harsh light on current events without losing sight of the fact that they’re telling a horror story first and foremost.
Hamm’s script takes place in the near future, specifically 2008, when a certain Republican president is running for re-election and a war he duped the nation into fighting still rages on. The central characters are campaign consultant David Murch (Jon Tenney) and right-wing author Jane Cleaver (Thea Gill), who has written a popular book attacking the “radical left”—any resemblance to Ann Coulter is, uh, purely coincidental. After meeting on a dead-on parody of an issues-oriented talk show (Terry David Mulligan is perfect as the host), the two find themselves politically and romantically attracted—but their world is shaken up when the dead begin returning to life. Not all the deceased, mind you, just those who were killed in that particular overseas combat, and they’ve got a particular—pardon the pun—ax to grind. It’s an extrapolation of the Vietnam-era ghoul film Deathdream to the nth degree—the image of the first revived corpse pushing its way out from under the Stars and Stripes that cover its casket is the most pointed and arresting image the genre has recently offered.
No more should be said about the plot particulars of Homecoming, which is packed with wonderful details and images; given a document to read, a zombie missing an eye puts on a pair of glasses with a shot-out lens. The way in which Dante and Hamm keep the story twists coming, never losing steam or running in place thematically or dramatically, is kind of breathtaking; every scene has a revelation or line of dialogue that adds new dimension to either the story or the satire. The actors (also including Dante regular Robert Picardo as a political advisor with a secret of his own) adopt just the right tone of straight-faced earnestness, selling every line and never winking at the camera. The behind-the-scenes craftspeople do a good job of substituting Vancouver locations for the D.C. area (this is also the most expansive-looking Masters yet), and Greg Nicotero and Howard Berger contribute undead makeups that get the points across (like that eyeless ghoul) without being showy.
As the film goes on and we learn more about the characters (particularly Murch), Homecoming’s antiwar message gains new levels of resonance, and it comes to a stirring and completely apt conclusion that perfectly ties up the assorted story threads. And even though horror fans are the species of television viewer least likely to be conservative, you don’t get a sense of preaching to the converted here; the writing and filmmaking are so sharp, even some red-staters might respond to the material. For the second year in a row, a satirical zombie project stacks up as the year’s best horror production; here’s hoping someone in Hollywood notices, and gives Dante a shot at a feature that will show off the skills that, on this evidence, are only becoming sharper with time.
Assessing the Damage
In hindsight, what obsessed my thoughts upon regaining full consciousness at the neuro ICU was described by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’ five stages of grief: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Acceptance. I certainly experienced all of them, though in varying order and levels of intensity and repetition, for my mind kept looping back to different stages and emotions.
Denial was one of the earliest stages, which I felt as soon as I realized I couldn’t fully move. Anger was less dominant and would be directed at what I felt to be an unjust god or universe, myself, or anyone else who may have been involved (I had no idea since I had no memory of what happened). I also experienced my own form of bargaining, imagining what I’d sacrifice or do differently were I to have a chance to regain my former body and way of life. Depression permeated my mental state at the time, and though I knew I needed to accept the reality of my situation, it was and still is a struggle to retain acceptance and resist the temptation of magical thinking.
To distract from thoughts related to grief and loss, I focused instead on physical sensations. Though I couldn’t see intentional movement below my shoulders, when I attempted to move arms or legs I detected certain muscles firing. The signals were fairly weak but were hopeful signs nevertheless. Occasionally I’d feel a sudden random leg twitch which made me think of rigor mortis. With each twitch, as well as whenever I moved parts of my shoulders still capable of movement, I felt a surge of tingling similar to how it feels when one’s leg or arm is asleep.
My sense of touch below the shoulders was altered in other ways as well. The cloth touching my body felt odd and unnatural while parts of my arm that were exposed seemed extra sensitive to even the slightest breeze such as the one emitted from an overhead AC vent. I felt the sensation of a metal bar over my chest just below my neck which was actually the separation line between the paralyzed and non-paralyzed parts of my body. Overall, my body felt numb, which I was later informed was a result of widespread inflammation due to trauma. This was a small blessing since as inflammation reduced over time, muscle tightness and spasms increased and continue to plague me to this day.
My phantom limbs were in the same position over my chest while actual arms were still alongside my torso. I’ve always thought phantom limb syndrome only occurred when one loses limbs, but apparently it also happens when the brain has faulty connections to limbs. I’ll never get over how strange it is to feel my limbs at the wrong locations.
The main source of physical pain I felt at the time came from the breathing tube near my throat and an additional tube taped to my nose which I later learned was a medication feed tube. The pain was heightened every time I swallowed. I also detected a few chipped teeth with my tongue. The only other notably altered sensation was a feeling of tiny sparks on the skin of my forehead. This turned out to be the new way I experienced sweating.
Having spent what felt like sufficient time alone, I looked forward to the staff and visitors that I expected would soon show up.
Two for Tuesday
Surrendering to Reality
When I woke up with the full realization that I was paralyzed, my mind was deluged with questions, speculations, fears and regrets. Judging from the faint light though window blinds, it was still early dawn. I was relieved no one else was in the room because I needed time alone to think.
One of the earliest and most reoccurring thoughts was simply why? I felt the more literal and simplistic answers such as bad luck or bad choices the least satisfying and hardest to accept, and turned my attention towards religion. I wasn’t a deeply religious person before the crash but did hold some hope for the existence of karma. But it’s easier to understand in the abstract how one’s circumstances could be the result of actions in a past life or how current actions affect future incarnations. When one suddenly becomes quadriplegic, such knowledge is of little comfort though it did provide an explanation.
Were I Christian I’d probably want to believe god works in mysterious ways or that my catastrophic injury was part of a master plan. Conversely, I could imagine becoming so disillusioned that I rejected my faith and now characterized god as cruel or indifferent. But if by some miracle I was completely healed, then god would once again be loving and merciful. Recognizing the futility of such magical thinking, I found it comforting nevertheless. I visualized being back home as if my life had never been disrupted. Perhaps that was my reality in an alternate timeline or parallel universe? As much as I wanted to escape into fantasy, I knew I had to focus on the present.
No matter how I felt about my situation, the reality is that it happened and there might not be a satisfying explanation. I could relate to existentialists who, after confronting the incomprehensible nature of existence, sought to create their own meaning. I was also more inclined to believe in the Gnostic concept of a malicious demiurge as creator of a corrupted material world. As hard as it might be to accept, the universe is chaotic and owes us nothing.
Saturday Matinee: La Haine
La Haine: So Far, So Good
By Ana Saplala
Source: Medium
With Les Miserables signalling Ladj Ly’s rise to recognition in contemporary French cinema, one simply cannot watch the director’s debut film without bringing to mind its predecessor — a film that not only broadened its examination of racial tensions in France, but would come (and continue to) define the country’s prevalence with race relations to this day.
La Haine is the film in question, as Mathieu Kassovitz’s 1995 debut became a nationwide success. The dialectics of Ladj Ly’s Cesar win for Best Film reflect this, given that Kassovitz achieved the same feat 25 years prior. The result would not only cement his debut in film history, but further accentuate the undoubted declaration of La Haine as one of the most prolific French films of all time.
While clearly drawing inspiration from the likes of Ernest Dickerson and Spike Lee, La Haine remains difficult to categorize, but also inseparable from its influences. This is due to Kassovitz’s work being deeply ingrained with its own share of sociopolitical messages, whose prevalence with current events keeps it closely linked to any discourse related to the film.
Unlike films of a similar nature, specifically Do The Right Thing, La Haine does not attempt to intertwine the stories of humans who function as several moving parts of Parisian banlieue (suburbs) as a whole. Rather, it focuses on Vinz (Vincent Cassel), Said (Said Taghmaoui), and Hubert (Hubert Kounde), three adolescent boys and residents of said setting who go about their day. Because of its near abandonment of plot, the film initially presents itself as a reflective lamenting of grievance. The actuality of Abdel’s death opens and looms over the majority of the film, quickly becoming the driving force of its characters’ intentions.
The lines between cause and effect constantly blur from one vignette to the next, as the film’s plot slowly races to its unexpected finishing crescendo, or should I say derescendo, given that the film’s actual standstill does not even come in the form of its mostly mundane happenings. Despite this, these happenings still manage to show us more than several glimpses of life in the banlieues. In fact, the only difference between the film’s depiction of police reinforcement to the present day is a jarring increase in police hostility (first shown in Wesh Wesh, Qu’est-ce qui c’est passe?, then rehashed in Les Mis).
As a result, the film’s plot moves towards its ending with no checkpoints in between. Its brilliant performances are briefly forgotten once the banlieues’ cultural equilibrium (despite the actual absence of unity due to class circumstance and police presence) is shattered. With this in mind, the best way to describe the chronicling of these events is as follows: the build-up doesn’t matter as much as the result itself.
Another element that this film brilliantly uses in executing a correlation between plot and character development is tension. Its simplistic premise is cemented in both the value of time and the counterproductive reality of choosing violence. Time punctures all minor wounds caused by each subsequent event, putting each character at a risk of surviving a long and winding evening — but especially Vinz.
Time’s transformative effect on La Haine’s scenes instills the stagnance of progression, as well as giving urgency to Vinz’s constantly violent tendencies in the midst of composing events. It can be likened to Tupac’s Bishop from Ernest Dickerson’s Juice, given that their intentions appear to be inherently violent and remain impassioned within violence as an objective solution. This projects their idea of violence as an act of reclaiming power and restoring justice. However, as a result of time being an all-encompassing element of the film, it poses the potential for these tendencies to seep into reality at any given moment.
The film manages a passage of time with the simple use of timestamps and the sound of a ticking clock, indicating that time is like a ticking bomb that only continues to pass with each inconsequential event. Oftentimes, we believe that time has run out whenever characters face consequences in this film, but it only adds to the fact that time can do no more than elapse. Time seems to stop when Said is arrested, but it continues even when he is released. Time seems to stop when Vinz begins seeing visions of a cow, but it continues even when Said pulls him away. They further accentuate the meaninglessness of scenes, dismissing the possibility of characters working against the worst imaginable circumstance, and ultimately coming to the somber realization that all these three boys have been doing was waste time.
An undoubtedly significant theme of this film is centered on cultural identity, given that three of France’s most marginalized backgrounds (Black, Jewish, and Arab) are represented through its trio of individual characters. Because France’s white predominance does not vindicate those groups as authentic representations of national identity, this manages to cause the most friction amongst two separate parts of French society. This also includes visible minorities in positions of authority serving to practically betray the safety of their own culture.
Much like housing projects in major American cities like New York, the culture of les banlieues is also in alignment with what isn’t considered as pure French. As a part of showcasing insignificant events, there remains the background significance of the banlieues’ cultural mosaic; a true passport to surroundings that are more otherworldly and intersectional than the iconoclastic capital housing the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre. This leaves a profound impact on the characters’ conversations and language, both of which only continue to return to a means of getting by. An emerging French identity is formed in front of us, and this fusion of cultures can be largely attested to its use of hip-hop music and its incorporation of hip-hop culture.
Hip-hop’s significance is especially given its due and proof on an international scale, and La Haine is this American genre’s earliest example. This is also proof of the benefit of arguing that a musical genre and culture made by and for minority communities is the most universal of its kind. To add onto this, the globalization of hip-hop would truly come to fruition by the late 90s, and France’s scene would eventually receive recognition through the likes of Assassin and Supreme NTM. No genre remains more fitting for Kassovitz’s debut, as these groups also share inherently sociopolitical themes within their music.
It comes as no surprise either that La Haine’s influence is inherently American despite still being ingrained in French culture. The likes of Brian de Palma, Gordon Parks, and Martin Scorsese also come to mind, given that New Hollywood cinema seems to stay more true to the middle-to-lower-class French experience than the works of Robert Bresson, Claude Sautet, and Francois Truffaut.
Perhaps the only exceptions to the rule would be the forerunners of the 80s cinema du look, whose stylistic influences also extended to American cinema. Then again, only a select few in les banlieues could truly relate to a Subway, or a Diva, or a Mauvais Sang. These filmic fantasies still remain largely out of reach to the experiences of those living on the fringes of the era’s sprawling city settings.
La Haine comfortably splits its plot in two, shifting from suburban homeliness to the uncanny city. This is also why the film’s second half reflects the indiscernible identity of Parisian life, which only seems to take on many faces (and phases) on screen. Here, Kassovitz shows Paris as bare and devoid of the ethnic intersectionalism of its suburban outskirts. There’s an increasing sense of discomfort once these characters step out of a melting pot and into a homogenous place of lifelessness. Paris’s identity is as conflicted as its hesitance to embrace its characters. One scene shows the trio loitering at an exhibit, only for its highbrow bourgeoisie to oust them from a gallery. Its reality only contradicts the seemingly welcoming feeling that defines Paris as a cityscape and hegemonic extension of movie magic.
Overall, La Haine does not merely grieve over the disturbing normalcy of police brutality, but stands as a grievance of French society’s oppression towards its increasingly minority population. Its end result is an eruption to the most gradual anticipation that dominates the film, and it proves that the most profound influence on our identities lies within our surroundings. Its loss of control does not happen through an individually caused circumstance, but the reaction of an external force towards its inhabitants that becomes the film’s penultimate decision, its ultimatum literally shrouded in the ambiguity that continues to paint a sombering portrait of an unchanged reality.
Its structure continues to pose the same questions to all of French society: Who controls our own lives if we do not? And even then, is this world truly ours to begin with?
I could ask the same question of every racially counterproductive society at the moment, but especially France’s, whose innovations in film do not necessarily account for the lack thereof in every other facet of society. Where their movies are more than four miles ahead, their definition of personal and political authority remains centuries back.
Hatred begets more hatred, as Hubert says in this film, and it is one’s hatred that begets the film’s destruction of temporary unity. The beginning reemerges, and all progress is forgotten. That how you fall doesn’t matter. It’s how you land. This is what makes La Haine a cinematic masterpiece.
Watch La Haine on Kanopy here: https://www.kanopy.com/en/product/214683
From Dream to Nightmare
Upon waking up at the Neuro ICU, I rested for some time with my eyes closed. I noticed an odd sensation of movement despite not hearing or feeling wind and vibrations which would indicate movement. What I did feel was my arms hugging my chest tightly as if in a straight jacket, though the material felt more like a rubbery mesh than cloth. Meanwhile a nearby machine produced a steady hiss similar to an air pump roughly synchronized with my breathing patterns.
Disturbed by everything I was sensing, I reluctantly opened my eyes to a dark room bathed in a dim green and purple glow from various monitoring devices. As my vision adjusted, I craned my neck and realized my arms were both flat on each side of my torso and I was wearing a standard hospital gown. I also glimpsed various tubes all over my body. An IV in my right arm, some type of nose tube, and a breathing tube connected to a ventilator.
My first instinct was to attempt to go back to sleep, hoping what I was experiencing was sleep paralysis or a false awakening within a nightmare. This proved to be futile, as my mind struggled to reconcile the disconnect with my body. One likely factor was medication, as the initial feeling of movement while awakening was similar to the feeling of heavy drunkenness. As for the illusory straight jacket, the only theory I could come up with was that it was some form of phantom limb syndrome. I struggled to move phantom limbs and “actual” limbs to no avail. At that moment I wasn’t experiencing phantom leg limbs but nevertheless could not move my legs or any part of my body below the shoulders nor could I talk.
With that realization I felt like crying but was perhaps too much in shock to do so. I also may have held out hope that I was still in a bad dream and that when I actually woke I would be back to my normal self. I was definitely in a nightmare, but not the type one can wake up from, though I did grant myself a brief respite by eventually falling back to sleep.
After the Crash 