[PEN-L:11977] Re: Big mouth

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>I would bet on something like the toilet-plunger case appearing on one or
>the other of the cop shows this fall. But cops and/or prosecutors will end
>up as good guys in that episode, because that is the only way that
>producers think they can sell the shows.
>
>-- Jim Cullen
>

Louis P:

This must be the same Jim Cullen who wrote the book on popular culture,
right? How rewarding it is to have conversations with people who know what
they are talking about. Glory to PEN-L.

The problem is that television is a more heavily censored medium than any
other. Television has the specialized social function of establishing
ruling class values in the general population more than any other. Movies,
fiction and radio allow for much more nuance, but when it comes to TV, you
are really treading on Goebbels territory.

For a genuinely interesting take on NY cops, I recommend Abel Ferrara's
"Bad Lieutenant" which is available on video:
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
?Bad Lieutenant? (NC-17)

By Hal Hinson Washington Post Staff Writer  January 29, 1993

"Bad Lieutenant," the dark, acid urban drama starring Harvey Keitel, isn't
just another story about a cop gone wrong. Those are a dime a dozen. This
punishing film from director Abel Ferrara is something else altogether --
an illuminating, excoriating descent into the cesspool of sin,
self-loathing and defilement. This is not an easy film to watch.

Why would we sign up for such an unpleasant journey? And what compels us to
watch a figure so seemingly without redeeming value? Because somehow,
though this film's lead character is repulsive and his actions dastardly,
it is possible to learn from this grim parable something about our own
cruelties and weaknesses.

The Keitel character is given no name except The Lieutenant, and that's
entirely appropriate. He doesn't deserve a name. The Lieutenant is pure
appetite, pure libido, with only vestigial traces of his humanity intact.

To say that substance abuse plays a part in this journey into debauchery is
a grotesque understatement. During the course of the film, The Lieutenant
abuses substances that I didn't know could be abused. (And in some cases, I
couldn't even identify the substances.) Like a modern-day Caligula, his
excesses are epic: Sex, booze, crack, coke, heroin are indulged in such
gargantuan proportions that it's a miracle he remains upright. When a
gambling habit that eventually leaves him in hock to the tune of 120 grand
is added to the mix, full systemic meltdown becomes a question of when, not
if.

This suicidal betting, which centers on a seven-game playoff series between
the Mets and the Dodgers, drives the film's narrative. With each day's
losses, The Lieutenant plummets deeper into debt, raising the stakes for
himself -- and for the audience -- until we feel trapped with him in a
torture chamber with the walls slowly closing in.

In his past films (most notably "Ms. 45" and "King of New York"), Ferrara
has straddled the fine line separating art and exploitation, usually
landing on the side of the latter. And for about the first half of "Bad
Lieutenant" -- which is, not surprisingly, rated NC-17 -- we're not sure
where this one will come to rest either.

When The Lieutenant pulls over a pair of young teenage girls who've taken
out Daddy's car without permission and negotiates a sleazy exchange of
sexual favors for his silence, we may want to dismiss the picture entirely
as a disgusting exercise in sewer diving. Certainly, we might think, this
is not entertainment.

But The Lieutenant's atrocities -- committed against both himself and
others -- accumulate a critical mass that reaches far beyond the laws of
man to become sins against God. And, ultimately, it's God's attention he's
trying to get. This religious dimension is introduced when The Lieutenant
begins an investigation into the rape of a nun in a Spanish Harlem church
by two crackheads who, after brutalizing the woman, desecrate her church.

Ferrara is clearly drawing an equation between the criminals' actions and
The Lieutenant's, and as trite (and potentially shameless) as this may
sound, it actually works. The Lieutenant, who calls himself a Catholic and
then, several scenes later, snorts coke off a picture of his child at
communion, is raging against God and, at the same time, administering to
himself a cruel punishment for his own transgressions. In this sense, The
Lieutenant is like a rogue, self-flagellating saint drawing himself closer
to God through willful defiance -- a tormented, bedeviled man engaged in
unholy communion.

This bizarre ecclesiastical dimension is what makes "Bad Lieutenant" more
than a shallow wallow in the muck. Ferrara does make his moral points, and
though one feels dirtied in the process, there is an accompanying feeling
of purification as well. Ferrara and Keitel -- who by virtue of his work in
"Mean Streets," "Fingers," "Taxi Driver," "Bugsy" and, most recently,
"Reservoir Dogs" may be the only actor in America to have earned the right
to play this lost soul -- take The Lieutenant to the absolute limits of
self-inflicted human pain. They blot out every trace of decency and
goodness, yet the possibility of redemption is not entirely foreclosed. In
the shadow of this suffocating darkness, this slender hope provides the
only ray of sunlight.

"Bad Lieutenant" is rated NC-17 for, well, you name it.

Copyright The Washington Post