can
escape that CONDITION! Share the political
flicks with the babies! This
ocurred to me yesterday as
I was brooding about the need for activists to educate the public by calling
up radio talk shows. What about educating our own children? Parents
handpicking the films their kids watch would be a great idea. Then, Mum,
Dad watches these videos/ dvds with them. This would be a super important
part of any family Cultural or political Enquiry. As a mother of four,
I know Kids have this rebellion thing. They don't want to sit with parents
to watch anything heavy. They don't seem to want to accept parents as think
gurus. They instinctively fend off 'thought police.' But if one could create
the family flick watching tradition with a flippergibbit pop movie the
first night, gook it up with popcorn, sodas, make it a regular, accepted
family tradition.
Then, slowly one could start to show kids films of substance, that are
relevant. Socially relevant films might reach into the darkest works of
art about the POWER STRUCTURE. There's a definite POST KAFKA design motif
to a film I was just watching SHADOWS AND FOG on cable the Woody
Allen movie, about pre-Nazi Germany very allied to any of Kafka's many
coded metaphoric novels, w. descriptions of repressive pre-fascist European
life..... and to see where else one could go for a double header, maybe
rent 1984 with Burton and John Hurt. Or Woody's THE FRONT about the McCarthy
hearings. 
That was Saturday nite, Then maybe Sunday nite, a jocular side enquiry
into facism via comedy BRAZIL which is
post Kafkaesque combined with Monty Python. Great winter movie watching.
But the point is to sharpen a.) our kids' sense of art lineages, Kafka,
Orwell, b.) our sensitivity to coded references in movies or literature
as a necessary part of art. Why? Cuz the Thought Nazis could destroy you.
No fun being the WHITE ROSE SOCIETY! There is repression.
So talk it over with the children, the big question. WHY do writers ENCODE these things? Is it necessary to create allegories with these jolting metaphors...in order to have it be art? Well the Great Dictator with Charlie Chaplin is kind of daringly upfront about Hitler. That film might be a great palate cleanser. How long is that movie? It's actually a main course. But no more overt film than that exists in this lineage.
FAMILY MOVIE watching as part of parents teaching kids about reality
could/should be attempted. Ya think most parents actually do not WANT their
kids to have leftist sensibilities? That it's like a florid tendency toward
being gay or being an artist which breaks out in society and while we love
to see its florid spots on another, we don't want it on our own kids? Then
we are allowing them to be trusting sheep led to slaughter. Eating candies
in Hell said the Chilean poet. Ignorant. Trusting a college degree will
get them a job in maybe that OFFICE in
BRAZIL. But it doesn't and they're flipping burgers or if they're lucky,
creating a cottage industry as janitors CLEANING that office. Do we fear
education? What are we doing that we're too busy on weekend nites to educate
our kids with selected flick flippin?
GREAT FILMS TO RENT: 'Burn" with Brando. "Under Fire"
Nolte/Hackman. Matrix w. Keanu Reeves
MISSING Lemmon/spacek SALVADOR by Oliver Stone James
Woods, Belushi. QUIET AMERICAN Brendan Fraser Michael Caine.
THE WHOLE LIST OF MOVIES
LIST OF POLITICAL VIDEOS, DOCUMENTARIES ON DVD AVAILABLE AT BLOCKBUSTER VIDEO.
MICHAEL MOORE's FILMS
"Who KILLED the Electric Car", narrated by Actor Martin Sheen.
AARON RUSSO's FREEDOM FROM FACISM busts IRS/ FED, IMF!
"Control Room", Al Jazzera TV station in Iraq, the people
who run it, and also about what Iraqis think and feel about the war
and the AMERICAN presence there, it's negative as well as positive effects
for Iraq.
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