Post 233 - October 30, 2020

Day 233…

The cat and I spent most of yesterday on the couch.

It rained all day and all night.

This morning it is cold (37F/3C) and just as wet. The rain should clear later on today, but it’s going to stay cold. It’s also dark.

In normal times, I would invariably have needed to go to work on a day like this. I would leave the apartment looking back longingly at my folded-up sweatpants and want nothing more than to get in them and curl up underneath a throw blanket. Of course, I don’t get to choose, but there are worse things than being stuck at home on a day like this.

In the last two days, from the couch, I’ve watched two remarkable things on television: What the Constitution Means to Me, by Heidi Schreck and Borat, Subsequent Moviefilm: Delivery of Prodigious Bribe to American Regime for Make Benefit Once Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.

The original subtitle of the Borat sequel was: Gift of Pornographic Monkey to Vice Premiere Mikhael Pence to make Benefit Recently Diminished Nation of Kazakhstan.

The Borat film is dark satire. So dark, at times, that it isn’t funny at all. At its heart it is the story of a father reconnecting with his daughter. Then there’s all the stuff around its heart.

In a nutshell, the plot is about Borat, who is sent to the US to bribe the Vice President to look favorably upon Kazakhstan with a monkey who is a national treasure. Unbeknownst to him, his young daughter stows away in the monkey’s crate. The monkey doesn’t make it, so when he discovers his daughter in the crate, Borat decides to give her to the Vice President, instead. His daughter is thrilled. She dreams of being kept in the same kind of cage as her hero, the First Lady.

Whatever the line is, Sacha Baron Cohen, who created and plays Borat, crosses it often. What makes this film remarkable, is not so much the film, itself, but rather the mere fact of its existence. It is a crushing and brutal indictment of this Administration.

Real people, who are unaware that they are in a Borat film, are filmed. There is a woman who babysits Borat’s daughter. The babysitter was apparently told that the girl was being groomed to marry an older man.

Towards the end of the film, the daughter, who pretends to be an interviewer actually gets an interview with Rudi Giuliani. The real Rudi Giuliani. The actress who plays the daughter is, in reality, in her twenties. As far as Giuliani knew, however, she was just 15.

She interviews him and then they go into the bedroom. Giuliani has given her a drink and has one himself. She takes his microphone off and, in the process, untucks his shirt. He then lies back on the bed and puts his hand in his pants.

It is completely clear by what he is doing that he is not tucking in his shirt.

Sacha Baron Cohen, who had been hiding in a closet, bursts into the room to keep anything further from happening and says, “She 15. She too old for you.”

In any other world, this should have ended Giuliani’s career once and for all. We have, however, grown so inured to this kind of deplorably morally bereft behavior from the key figures in this Administration, that it has already become just yesterday’s news.

Giuliani has denied that he was doing anything wrong. He claims that he was being set up because of the Hunter Biden emails that he discovered. (And by discovered, I mean given to him by Russian operatives who are friends of his). You only have to look at the footage to know how ridiculous his denials are. If that doesn’t convince you, then perhaps the fact that the scene was filmed months before the whole email brouhaha happened, might.

The film also has plenty of footage of the Vice President downplaying the pandemic plus QAnon idiots outlining their absurd theories.

There are countries on this planet where somebody making a film this critical of the government could be put to death. In this country, however, freedom of speech is one of our given rights.

Most everybody in the movie damns themselves. Borat and his daughter just wander America’s heartland, and Baron Cohen just films people saying what they really think.

The only thing that the President has been able to do in response to the film is say, “That’s a phony guy and I don’t find him funny. To me, he’s a creep.”

Baron Cohen then responded with a tweet, “Donald — I appreciate the free publicity for Borat! I admit, I don’t find you funny either. But yet the whole world laughs at you. I’m always looking for people to play racist buffoons, and you’ll need a job after Jan. 20. Let’s talk!”

Heidi Scheck’s play What the Constitution Means to Me is, perhaps, a bit more esoteric. As a play, it was a Pulitzer Prize finalist and nominated for a Tony Award. The current version on Netflix was filmed last year during a performance on Broadway.

It is largely about a Constitutional debate that her 15-year-old self, participated in several times. Time shuttles back and forth from then through to now.

In the play, she delves deeply into the 9th and 14th amendments to the Constitution, the latter of which outlines citizen’s rights. The main thrust of her narrative is her showing just how much the Constitution is designed by and for rich white men at the expense of everybody else.

Women, people of color, indigenous people, anyone really who isn’t wealthy, white and male are not afforded the same protections. The Constitution was not written to protect them. At the end of the play, Schreck debates a 14-year-old girl over whether to keep the Constitution and continue to try and repair it or to abolish it and start again.

Going into this election season in the middle of a pandemic has been somewhat of a gift. Not always a pleasant gift, but a gift, nonetheless.

The United States of America is a country where we have access to almost whatever information we want and can participate in any discussion about that information that we’d like.

The political extremes of this election have illuminated discourse in a way that we’ve never really experienced before.

The murder of George Floyd and so many others have created discussions about race that, up until now, we’ve avoided having in this generation.

The COVID-19 pandemic has taken us out of our lives and allowed us not to be distracted. The shutdown of our lives has effectively helped to shed a light on the cracks and crumbling masonry of our national institutions.

The bedrock upon which this country is constructed is not as solid as we once thought it was. The Constitution, which we consider to be the greatest document ever created has been allowed to age and yellow.

The newest member of the Supreme Court considers herself an originalist. In other words, she believes that the Constitution should be interpreted through the lens of what the Founding Fathers originally intended when they wrote it.If she truly believed that, then she should leave the Court because the Founding Fathers certainly never intended a woman to serve in the way that she currently is.

We, as a country, and as a people, have changed and evolved. Our hallowed institutions need to change and evolve along with us or else be abandoned and then rebuilt.

Just because we can’t go outside, it doesn’t mean that we can’t keep exploring.

The news is relentless, but the more you understand just how this country operates, the easier it is to know what to react to and what to ignore.

The Borat film is arguably not for everybody. It is very crude at times.

What the Constitution Means to Me, on the other hand, should be required viewing for everyone.

Both of the people who created these pieces are extremely intelligent and extremely committed to shining a light on what’s wrong. They both admire this country and want it to be better.

We are four days away from being able to start to fix a lot of what is wrong. We won’t fix it all. As time passes, we will decide not to fix some things and, instead, to start fixing some others.

In the meantime, there are plenty of people out there with a fierce love for this country who are creating art that reflects back upon us who we really are. We shouldn’t turn away from that. We should be grateful to them for their service.

We should also be grateful to live in a country where artists can express themselves that way at all. It’s not a given that we have that right. We need to diligently protect and fight to be able to keep that right.

Every. Single. Day.

The truth might hurt, but it will also set us free.

We just have to figure out what it is.