CHI-RAQ OFFERS A GUN CONTROL SOLUTION
When Chi-Raq begins, the screen is covered with slogans shouted anonymously. They complain about safety in Chicago but also paradoxically declare that they love their city. In the first full frame, Chicago’s bodycount during the era of the Iraq War is revealed as far exceeding that of American troops in Iraq, ergo the title. Filmviewers are also told that Blacks do the shooting and dying. Dolmedes (played by Samuel L. Jackson) makes sage comments as if a commentator outside a stage play and returns to the screen from time to time. Then a visit to the “hood,” including graphic demonstration that Blacks have better sex than anyone else. But death of a child from stray bullets is the main incident, serving to mobilize women to re-enact an Aristophanes play. The main protagonist (Teyonah Parris) has the name of the play, Lysistrata. Women announce that the will not have sex until peace returns to the community. But the paradoxes have only begun. For reasons unknown, the same protests occur overseas, from Athens to Tokyo, where gun violence is not a problem. White priest Mike Corridan (John Cusack) attempts a “hood” accent in rousing a Black congregation to action. After a standoff at the Chicago Armory, men turn in their guns (though women have not made that demand) and sign a pledge, but there is no inspection or verification that all have been surrendered. Police refer to protesters as “black and brown” despite the absence of Hispanics. Chicago mayor McCloud (D. B. Sweeney) lacks a clue about problems in the African America community, yet comes around to support the protest and offers, without Black demands, more health infrastructure to Chicago’s south side. Fortune 500 companies reportedly announce that they will hire everyone without a job. Much of director Spike Lee’s film, with dialog almost entirely in rap, will be unintelligible to those unfamiliar with the patois. And the sound is so loud that filmviewers must be cautioned to bring ear plugs to a screening. A litany of injustices is presented in the film, but the idea of surrendering guns for cash has already been tried outside Chicago with better results in Argentina and Brazil than in the United States (Baltimore, Boston, Camden, Detroit, Los Angeles, Newark, Oakland, Phoenix, San Francisco, Tucson). MH
THE BIG SHORT IS A TEACHING TOOL
Not everyone on Wall Street suffered financial disaster during the Great Recession. The Big Short, directed by Adam McKay, is primarily a biopic of economics student Michael Burry (played by Christian Bale), Greg Lippmann (renamed in the film Jared Vennette and played by Ryan Gosling), and Steve Eisman (Mark Baum of FrontPoint Partners, played by Steve Carell). Thanks to Burry, Lippmann tells Eisman that the effort of banks to loan with balloon interest payments yet with little or no credit checks could not last forever because an examination of payment histories of mortgages within mortgage-backed securities (MBS) in 2007 reveals many zeros as recent payments. Accordingly, sale of MBSs before the collapse proves lucrative. The format of The Big Short is unique, involving actors playing the key roles in a razzed up documentary, even including pedantic illustrations provided by a woman taking a bubble bath and a famous chef. What the film highlights is that the rest of Wall Street consisted of hustlers who lived on unquestioned assumptions, unaware of housing market problems of the 1930s, and nearly everyone paid the price. The message of the film, based on the book with the same title by Michael Lewis, seems aimed at high schoolers who were too young during the Great Recession to know why the financial world was so precarious. Thanks to the bailout, Congress and Wall Street are just yawning. MH