tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12917687.post3612343107279741341..comments2008-07-04T23:30:00.656-04:00Matt Zoller Seitzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16921028537989131859noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12917687.post-61795857933687964062008-07-04T21:28:00.000-04:002008-07-04T21:28:00.000-04:00"Babel" is a cautionary fable, but the message is pretty simple: Stay home. Don't leave Tokyo to go on safari, don't leave the aegis of your American employer if you're a nonwhite domestic, don't leave your mud hut if you're a Third Worlder and, above all, don't leave the United States if you're white and American.<BR/><BR/>Western imperialism is the subtext of Brad Pitt's threat to his fellow bus passengers if they leave him behind, and the threat of U.S. retribution is liable for the local police's brutal response to the shooting. U.S. immigration policy is commented on in a cartoonish way as well. "Babel" is indeed a political movie, but it lacks subtlety and invention. It's "Crash" with subtitles and hypnotic cinematography.Scotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09600793842192477998noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12917687.post-80814219543849128352008-07-04T13:03:00.000-04:002008-07-04T13:03:00.000-04:00<I>Both are cautionary fables for a global world...Everyday people suffer, struggling with political corruption and repression in their own lands and xenophobia and alienation abroad. Lapses in communication cause crises, and so does Western imperialism.</I><BR/><BR/>That's how you interpreted <I>Babel</I>? As a cautionary fable for a global world (I assume you mean "globalized")? (Oh, and where in Babel does Western imperialism cause crisis? -- seriously, I can't remember this coming up.)<BR/><BR/>The "globalized" world in Babel is merely a modern backdrop for a human-specific theme-think. The theme: "In what ways do we communicate with each other, in what ways do we miscommunicate, in what ways do we get through, in what ways are we blocked -- and in what ways do we lie to ourselves and others?" <BR/><BR/>The point was not to render a "cautionary fable for a global world" so much as to demonstrate how these problems of communication play themselves out as human-universals. The film was, in this sense, not even apolitical; it was metapolitical. To collapse the story into all these push-button categories -- political corruption, repression, xenophobia, <I>imperialism</I> -- is to trade a sublimely human experience for a good old fashioned Western navel-gaze.John Aristideshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03700631461116826909noreply@blogger.com