Your Weekly Dose (2/14/22)
Two eye-opening documentaries (one a feature film and the other a four-part series) and one heckuva page turner for your viewing and reading pleasure this week. As always, thanks for subscribing and sharing! Take care.
FILM
Ascension
In the documentary, Ascension, filmmaker Jessica Kingdon explores the pursuit of the “Chinese Dream” in contemporary society, which emphasizes productivity, loyalty, and innovation. Kingdon moves through various environments, from factory floors to business etiquette and personal branding seminars to butler training to online gamers and sparsely populated theme parks. There are no talking heads or a narrator to comment on what we see, and the only dialogue we hear is what the camera captures. There is virtually no camera movement in any of the scenes as Kingdon simply chooses a point of view and captures what takes place. In this way, it recalls Rodrigo Reyes’ documentary, Purgatorio, which explores the U.S./Mexico border.
The result is simultaneously beautiful and terrifying. The level of Chinese production is being increasingly matched by the level of Chinese consumption, which will certainly contribute to some disastrous tipping point. One of the consultants in the film says seven chilling words, “[…When] China’s consumer potential is finally realized…” Well, we might sense that the end is near. Kingdon captures the repetitive, rhythmic nature of so much of the factory work there, employees making everything from Christmas trees to cell phones to sex dolls to Trump merchandise. It’s a cheeky juxtaposition, those last two, subtly hinting at the ways in which the consumers of both are getting screwed. Dan Deacon’s score is a perfect match for the visuals, echoing the rhythms of the work or intensifying as would-be Chinese influencers hype up both their products and their fan bases.
In some cases, the employees’ level of devotion to their company (or at least what is demanded/expected of them) is fascinating. We see one group of new employees (recruits?) undergo military style training, during which they recite pledges with assertions that “…my fate is tied to the company….” This self-identification with a company/brand recalls the sci-fi novel, The Light Brigade, whose dystopian narrative envisions a future in which individuals no longer identify as citizens of a nation, but members of various, warring corporations.
All of this is almost enough to make you swear off “stuff.” But I’m aware of my own hypocrisy and unwillingness to do so, as I type this on devices made in China, watched the film on a device made in China, work in an industry whose fate is increasingly tied to China…well…you get the picture. Ascension, which was recently nominated for a best documentary Oscar, is currently streaming on Paramount+.
TV
Lincoln’s Dilemma
Based on David S. Reynolds’ award-winning book, Abe: Abraham Lincoln in His Times, Lincoln’s Dilemma revisits Abraham Lincoln, his rise to the presidency, his navigation of succession and the Civil War, and his evolving viewpoints on and role in the abolition of slavery in light of our current era of political and cultural division and increasing polarization. This is a truly necessary docuseries, which not only paints a more complex portrayal of Lincoln, but situates him in the work to abolish slavery that had long been underway before his ascension to the White House, namely through the subversive acts of enslaved and free African Americans and their abolitionist allies. Of important note are the ways in which the series elevates the work and words of Frederick Douglass, without whom, Lincoln may never have navigated those tumultuous waters as effectively as he did. One could argue that, as many historians in the series do, Douglass, as much as Lincoln, steered the course of American history.
Throughout the series, multiple historians and scholars reflect on the need to more accurately recount events of the past if we are to address the injustices of the present. Lincoln’s Dilemma is a contribution to more integral and honest storytelling. The ways in which it ties both current racial injustices and progressive activism to events throughout history is inspiring and dispiriting. In a brief but powerful sequence in episode four, the series provides as clear an argument as possible that Confederate monuments, for example, are not (and were never) memorials to the fallen but rather violent means to preserve a status quo built on the dehumanization and terrorization of an entire race of people.
There is much to learn from Lincoln, for politicians and citizens alike. His life was one of political and personal evolution, never arriving at a place of perfection or completion (as if that’s possible for anyone). It was also marked by deep compassion and humility and a willingness to listen. Lincoln’s Dilemma is a reminder that democracy is work…hard work…and that it may always exist on a precipice. An implied question lingers at the end of the series: will we short it up or let it fall?
Lincoln’s Dilemma benefits from a wealth of diverse historians, academics, and writers, whose collective wisdom help situate the events and words of the past. Bill Camp provides the voice of Lincoln, while Leslie Odom portrays Douglass. This collective contextualization of well-known events and speeches make them come to life in new and evocative ways. The Gettysburg Address has never sounded so powerful.
Take the time to watch this series…it’ll do you good. All four episodes of Lincoln’s Dilemma launch on Apple TV+ this Friday, February 18.
Mouth to Mouth
Antoine Wilson’s new and deliciously Hitchcockian novel, Mouth to Mouth, weaves a story steeped in the tensions between agency and fate, innocence and guilt, opportunism and exploitation, art and commerce, and more. The narrator, a struggling writer bound for Berlin to promote a recent publication, has a chance encounter with a college acquaintance, a man by the name of Jeff Cook, during an unexpectedly lengthy layover at JFK. Jeff begins to unravel the story of his life since college, which was drastically and irreversible altered when he saved the life of a drowning man early one morning on the Santa Monica beach. Wanting to know more about the man he saved, the famous art dealer Francis Arsenault, Jeff begins spying on him and soon inserts himself into (is drawn into?) his intoxicating sphere.
Mouth to Mouth’s short chapters and forward momentum make it hard to put down. You can easily read it in a weekend or over a couple of nights. As such, it’s difficult to say too much more about the plot without spoiling it all. I hope you enjoy the ending as much as I did. Along with the themes above, Mouth to Mouth is about self-perception and -deception, about how we see ourselves and the actions we take in the world and the consequences, over which we have no control, that spin out from them.
Mouth to Mouth is available everywhere books are sold, but consider purchasing a copy from an independent bookseller like Skylight Books in Wilson’s Los Angeles.