The other shoe already dropped

In the beginning of the graphic novel by Spiegelman, America was waiting for the next big attack by a terrorist faction or a rogue state. What happened instead was a preemptive invasion of an oil-rich Fascist state that had little to no connection with Osama Bin Laden or another Islamic fundamentalist group. After a year or so of convoluted lies ranging from Iraqi ICBMs to mobile Anthrax wagons that they had, America invaded Iraq to deliver freedom to the opressed population of that country. If we were so concerned with their plight before, we would have finished the first Gulf War in 1991 by occupying Baghdad. Our flimsy reasons for this current war astound the imagination. Perhaps this is what Spiegelman meant in the beginning, our worst fears of unending war have finally come true.

We have become as ( as the author describes) complacent as the pigeons of New York. Nothing seems to rouse of from our perch of apathy and self-delusion. The American populace seems to view itself as powerless when faced with a conservative power block hell-bent on achieving better quarterly results. The second attack, an escalating regional conflict streching from Tel Aviv to Islamabad, has just occured and all the vast political spectrum can do is either screech like a pack of blood crazed hyenas for reward or timidly disagree with what is going on. This has occured in the past to people like Spiegelman’s parents, with millions of innocents suffering for backroom intrigue and ambitious powerplays.

Up is Down, Black is White

The upside down section of page 7 offers an insight into how Spiegelman views the divided America he lives in. The political divide is now deeper than ever, with conservatives alienating the country from the rest of the world and viewing liberals as “unpatriotic”. The image of distorted figures marching on the ceiling above Spiegelman is unsettling.

In six frames, George W. Bush (wearing a cowboy hat and holding a paper sword and loaded pistol) marches arm in arm with a pig (carying a flag with a skull) in a suit and tophat. The pig represents Free-Market Capitalism and the President is indebted to it. Following the two is a Priest with a Crocodile head leading a congregation of abnormal creatures carrying flags and weapons. All the creatures stop as Bush and the Pig see a ravine and examine it, the Crocodile tells the crowd to stop. When Bush and his pig jump, the Crocodile follows with the rest of the creatures. They all cheer deliriously as they fall into an endless abyss. 

If I understand this correctly, Bush and Corporate America see opportunity in war and encourage the populace to embrace conflict as a means of keeping progress. The priest with a croc head represents Nationalist Christianity, it is encouraging the populace to agree with the leadership and go on “crusade”.

The Ostrich Party

A striking example of Spiegalman’s work in the graphic novel seems to be a heavy use of dark political satire on page 5. The author seems to be musing on the events leading up to President Bush’s second reelection. His tone goes from absolute despair to outright contempt for the manner in which the Republican Party figuratively wrapped a flag around their war in Iraq and how they used the war as an excuse to go after the oil fields. The center frame describes his anger at American society.

Spiegelman shrewdly points out that as a political system we follow the same ninteenth century path as going for either the Republican Party represented by the state or the Democratic Party, often the representative of the individual. Often when neither party represents the ideal hopes for the individual, apathy ensues and people forgoe their civic duty in helping to choose their representative government! Spiegelman seems to say that as a third party individual he would at least, in a self-deprecating manner, form an alternative party based on opposition to the government’s policies. It is disturbing to see how in times of crisis that the public seems to lose it’s free will as a political power. I wonder if this is what the Germans did when the Reichstag burned?

First impressions on No Towers.

Spiegelman seems to tap into the collective hysteria that is part of the post 9-11 world. The reader is treated to a cartoon charicature of a dagwood bumstead-esque figure that drops on eo his shoes and leaves the other one on, much to the annoyance of his neighbors. This outburst in the final panel of the comic represents collective anticipation and dread. In 1993 the world Trade Center was bombed in the garage level by a car bomb. In 2001, two planes hit the twin towers. Nowadays, the U.S. is expecting something much more sinister and terrifying, possibly the infamous Weapons of Mass Destruction.

By waiting for the “other shoe to drop” is our society gearing itself towards a world where nothing is safe? The previous administration had us chasing a non-existant threat in Iraq, claiming that Hussein was the next Hitler and a man of unspeakable evil. It is true that Hussein, a former partner with Donald Rumsfeld and an ally against Iran, commited atrocities against his own population. He used chemical weapons against Kurds and other rebellious elements against his elite clique. He did indeed sponsor the families of dead Palestinian suicide bombers. Did this make him, a secular Fascist, a partner of Osama Bin Laden who is an orthodox Sunni radical? This is a stretch, even for the Tom Clancy types out there. I honestly think that the other shoe waiting to drop is an indication of how we are on the edge of our seats, motivated by alert warnings and garbled video transmissions from Afghan caves. Perhaps the shoe will never drop. We are, after all, in a constant state of flux between momentary safety and sheer terror in a vicious cycle. This is called a siege mentality.

How the film is similar but not Kafkaesque

The Trial by Orson Welles seems to be a twentieth century interpretation of Kafka’s distorted Nineteenth century worldview. In many ways the film departs from Kafka’s view of the court as an elite enclave of nobles to a multi-faceted corrupt bureaucracy. The presence of Film-Noir is very pronounced in the early stages of the Trial film.  

                Josef K wakes up to find a trio of mobster types in his building, flatly stating that he is arrested. In the novel these individuals are menacing figures in “traveler’s jackets” with an assortment of belts, buckles, and pockets. The film’s “policemen” wear trench coats and fedoras and speak either as hoods from Staten Island or as detectives from Dragnet. The Mafioso image is further emphasized when K receives his instructions to go to the courthouse where his trial would be held. When he meets the inspector and two assistants, the viewers sees a foreboding factory landscape with low lighting. The three “cops” are shot from a low angle to emphasize their threatening demeanor to K. They are also bathed in “Jimmy Valentine”-esque lighting, making their facial features look grotesque and ghoulish. The similarities with the novel depart also with the landscape that Welles shoots his film in.

                When K meets Fraulein “Pittl” outside of the public housing project there is an eerie sense of foreboding outside of the building. In Welles words the director found: “hideous blockhouse, soul-destroying buildings”. These buildings were representative of an ever present entity that was watching over K and everyone else under its sight. Each building that was shot in Zagreb was intended to give this sense that in an absolutist political world, the individual would be crushed and an ill-defined “community” would be placed above all other precedence. The courthouse has also been expanded. In the novel the court of law is a sweaty backroom filled with middle-aged party members hiding in the shadows. In the film it is well lit and cavernous housing many thousands of people, almost visibly heaving like a predatory beast and ready to tear the individual to shreds at a moment’s notice.

                The main differences between the novel and the films is the twentieth century interpretation of where society is going and how centralization further stratifies people into immovable castes, no matter what social mobility is promised by those in charge.

The Trial Finale!!!

“Sometimes it is better to be in chains than to be free!”  These are the words of Josef K’s advocate when K departs in a huff. When I heard this a resounding epiphany had come to mind. Previously I had spoken about Orsen Welles’s vision of Kafka’s world as one that was a nightmarish mixture of the Cold War’s political absolutes. Seeing Bloch wheedle and beg for his case’s consideration before Hastler brings to mind how an untitled peasant would act before a fractious noble in medieval times. It is clear that the court higher ups do not care about cases or considering their client’s troubles, but to preserve the system in order to maintain their privileged stations.

                To make this point even more clear,I also draw upon numerous examples can be found in history about the absolute corruption that has infected the history of Russia and the United States. During the Soviet Era, district commissars would convey themselves around their party “fiefdoms” in their custom-made ZIL limousines. They would evoke the trappings of a people’s representative while behaving like Czarist princes. They were not above petty theft, graft and currying favor for helpless members of the proletariat that often resorted to the black market for subsistence living. In America, during Prohibition, there were mob bosses that drove their armored Lincolns and terrorized anyone that got in the way of their vast revenue streams. They would also resort to outright theft and brokering deals for people that had little muscle in local affairs. With these two examples of corruption in the political absolutes of Communism and Free-Market Capitalism, I can see Welles character for what he is. Welles’s character is like an angry Mafia Capo rather than a lawyer demanding tribute from a powerless shopkeep or a factory owner. He also reminds of footage of Nikita Kruschev banging the table at the U.N. with his shoe, demanding attention from his fellow delegates. He is part of an enclave that holds power through maintaining the system.  Lies and half-truths become a universal principal and he, like the rest of the powerful, has developed a God-complex, seeing any threat as intolerable to his own constructed reality. 

Kafka’s world=Stalin’s Paradise

The film so far seems to be a sort of Film Noir approach to the events of the Cold War. As mentioned in the previously blog I said that the “cops” or whatever they are, speak like 1930’s gangsters. Their mannerisms are more like Gestapo agents or members of the Stasi, KGB or another Eastern Bloc secret police service. They demand that Josef K go to a trial set presumably for him. After walking past an eerily draped statue, with middle-aged to elderly people freezing around it, K walks into a giant courtroom filled with party officials. The image of all the men and women wearing the same badge and arrayed in a circular manner facing the judges is reminiscent of Soviet Era propaganda. As a History major I watched several old Soviet newsreels of Joseph Stalin standing and delivering statement to a sycophantic audience in the Kremlin. I could not help but subconsciously compare this crowd with those in the old footage. What we see is K openly defying this Citizen Kane-esque crowd, by calling out their apparent error is mistaking him for a painter. They seem to view him as a pathetic individualist that foolishly desires defiance over submissions, something they call out to him as K storms off. There is also a very strange manner in which the “applicants” are portrayed.

                True to Kafka’s vision we see rows of old men packing a filthy old train station in an attempt to have their cases heard. They are all draped in shadows while K has light bathed onto his face. This seems to be an indication that the other men’s inner turmoil over their cases has subsided and are willing to accept their fates, whereas K still has much defiance and therefore this makes him standout. We get an indication that the system is overloaded, or simply does not care anymore about the plight of the average citizen, instead focusing on raising the elite apparatchik above the decaying morass of the utopia. We also see rows of old paper in the place where K meets Leni, another indication of the system’s apathy towards the proletariat. On the whole this eerie world of corruption and social malaise is the horror of the Socialist utopia that Welles seems to express through his work.  

Kafka movie 1

The first theme that needs to be pointed out is the image that the court seems to project in the book and in the film. In Kafka’s Trial, there is the feeling that the court is a euphemism for the emerging nobles of the industrial feudalist society of the late 1800’s/early 1900’s. There is the idea that the court and the positions held in it, as well as society in general, are inherited arrangements and not gained from competence or experience. It is made apparent that everyone is born in their stations, and those that are not as privileged as the elitist enclave must compromise and make do with what their “caste” allows. In the film there seems to be a much darker tone in regards to the theme of those that hold power.

                Instead of individuals running society, the film gives the idea that a faceless system is holding the people in thrall. The shooting location of Zagreb, right in the middle of Tito’s Yugoslavia!, gives the viewer the idea of how easily the individual can be destroyed. Nowhere are the picturesque central European streets of Prague that Kafka was so fond of. Instead the drab gray stucco buildings of Eastern Europe circa the Cold War are visible. Everywhere the viewer looks; individuality is marginalized or outright done away with.

We see thousands of typists banging away on their typewriters, creating a hive like din in the vast office space where Josef K works. We also see the image of the freezing senior citizens, most in their underwear, in front of a draped statue. This is by far the most disturbing sight in the film. This is as if to say that the state does not care for their suffering and that justice is blind, that the individual only deserves reproaches rather than mercy. The final part of the shaping of Welles’s unique environment of Kafka’s book is the vapid, almost inhuman, presence that the “police” have in Welles’s film. They speak like gangsters from an old James Cagney movie from the 1930’s or police officers from the Dragnet T.V. show. Instead of a colorful theatrical presence they represent the lifeless disposition of secret policemen such as the Gestapo or the Stasi. The environment of a motionless landscape and barely functioning human beings suggests that a powerful force is out there waiting to destroy individuals’ lives.

Another theme that is taken to another extreme is Welles’s depiction of Josef K by Anthony Perkins. Perkins is by far a more active person than the imagined Josef. He is not passive as he all but rails against his “wards” that he is innocent and that all supposed signs of sedition, including the marks left on the floor by the deceased Mr. Grubach’s dentistry office, are easily parried by K. We see him getting dressed and having his breakfast despite the perturbing presence of the “police”. He even shoves aside the three clerks as they are examining Fraulein Buerstner’s possessions, screaming at them as “informers”. Perkins’s Josef K still acts the fool around women as he seems to have a craven and immature school boyish disposition when trying to seduce Fraulein Buerstner. It is expressly clear that his weakness is still being misguided by women, assuredly as the priest would preach to him later.

This new vision of Kafka’s work is exciting and very though provoking. It seems worthwhile as it seems to be a film-noir representation of Communist Eastern Europe and the inhumanity that the “worker’s paradise” poses for the rest of the world. I cannot wait for the next segments.  

Chapter 9 and 10

The final two chapters of The Trial was in fact a sheer disappointment. It was a surreal and sickening conclusion to a confusing yet thought provoking tale. I understand the parable that the priest or prison chaplain told to K beginning in page 213. A man from the country comes before a chamber guarded by a dissolute looking man. The man attempts to ask his way in, but is refused. Furthermore, the man from the country is told that if he goes through the door other guards would stand in the way. In the end the man tries to bribe and beg the guard, but is told that the bribes are taken only to “keep him from feeling that he left something undone”. The visitor spends his whole life at the door and suddenly dies, never realizing the options he could have taken. K says that the door keep deceived the visitor, only K is told otherwise by the priest.

The parable is about mankind fearing its own potential. There are two fears: one is defying something powerful and fearing retribution i.e. a faceless bureaucracy. The other is getting past the first obstacle and finding that the way to the law or other goal is endless and without meaning. So we wait and hope that we can be shown the way, sometimes at great cost to our own personal dignity and time that could have been spent elsewhere. K seems to take this into consideration and resigns himself to execution by the court. He never quite rebels for fear of retribution, even though that is his fundamental right as a human being! He could have ignored the court as farce and gone on with his life, but he could not perceive a world without some kind of overarching structure that could hold him together. In the end his dependence on the system was his undoing.

Chapter 8

The first interesting statement that Josef K seems to make is when Leni tries to distract him. He flatly says: “I don’t want you to kiss me now.” This indicates that Josef seems to have learned some degree of self discipline as the story has moved along. K’s realization of self-discovery even includes his dismissal of his lawyer with the words: “I came to tell you that I dispense with your services as of today”. This shocking statement echoes the end of chapter two when he dismisses the court as a farce and the Examining magistrate talked about how K threw away all the advantages of the court freely and without compulsion. To this the Lawyer replies “well, that is a plan we can at least discuss”. The Lawyer views the statement as an idea rather than as an order and thus cancels out the semi-authoritative manner that K tries to use. It is evident that no matter how many times K realizes his potential in working the system, he give in to his frustration and demands immediate results.