[T]he journalistic portraits of the 9/11 hijackers that Terry McDermott of The Los Angeles Times pieced together — from interviews with acquaintances of the hijackers, "The 9/11 Commission Report" and material from interrogations of captured terrorists — in his 2005 book "Perfect Soldiers" are a hundred times more fascinating, more nuanced and more psychologically intriguing than the cartoonish stick figure named Ahmad whom Mr. Updike has created in these pages....How I wish some filmmaker would do to this book what Stanley Kubrick did to "Red Alert"!
[He] is given to saying things like "the American way is the way of infidels," and the country "is headed for a terrible doom." Or: "Purity is its own end." Or: "I thirst for Paradise."
In other words, Ahmad talks not like a teenager who was born and grew up in New Jersey but like an Islamic terrorist in a bad action-adventure movie, or someone who has been brainwashed and programmed to spout jihadist clichés. Much of the time he sounds like someone who has learned English as a second language.
Mr. Updike does an equally lousy job of showing us why Ahmad is willing to die and kill for jihad. We're told that the imam who teaches Ahmad the Koran has become a surrogate father to the fatherless boy. We're told that Ahmad is disgusted with his flirtatious mother and her succession of boyfriends. And we're told that he wants a mission in life and can't think of anything else he wants to do after high school.
Actually, the first movie this review made me think of was not "Dr. Strangelove," it was "Napoleon Dynamite." Something about the teenager who doesn't fit in and talks funny called to mind the unforgettable dialogue:
Do the chickens have large talons?We need to make more fun of the terrorists. I don't want to see the World Trade Center burning in a horror movie. I want to see merciless fun made of the terrorists. Updike seems to be trying to understand terror-boy. Somebody throw a Kubrick at him.
Do they have what?
Large talons.
I don't understand a word you just said.
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15 comments:
It would be a good start to actually call them terrorists, rather than "gunmen" or "bomber" or "minutemen." The liberal media sees the terrorists as a protected class - if the terrorists were white then it would be open season.
Do The Chickens Have Large Talons?, from the 2005 Spelling Bee.
Re making fun of terrorists, see Osama bin Laden Has Farty Pants, a South Park episode which aired on 11-7-01.
I was thinking abou that very old "South Park" episode when I wrote the post. But that was 5 years ago! It was daring to do it then. Why has nothing like that happened since? And it was tucked away on a cable channel. That's hardly enough!
Also that episode was pretty much against the Afghanistan war.
Dave: "Well, I don't understand the Kubrick reference..."
If you went to the link a read a sentence or two you would. You know, the links are provided for a reason. Do you know what "Red Alert" is?
"Ann, relax."
No. And don't make me spend time writing a whole post about how I hate that exhortation. It's always bogus! But I'm too busy to go into detail about that right now.
I watched some of "Team America: World Police," but fell asleep. I mean, I was tired, but I was also kinda bored. I woke back up when the guy was puking. I don't know why he was puking, but he sure was puking. I'll have to finish the movie some time
Andrew: Here's a little something. Russian Rhapsody.
Bissage: Bless you. I [heart] Gremlins from the Kremlin. Am just trying to remember who all the caricatures are of.
There probably are some great screenplays out there on this very subject; however, it takes (a very rich) iconoclast to make one. So we get Team America. Hey, it's a start!
For me, the funniest terrorist video is the clip, endlessly replayed, of the jihadis zipping across the overhead bars. Sort of like an Olympics for skinny losers with really bad clothes.
'...he wants a mission in life and can't think of anything else he wants to do after high school.'
I had the same problem, and my guidance counsellor made the same suggestion, but I was all, y'know, hate to give up beer, so... may as well go to college instead.
If only I'd known then what I know now...
But anyhow it sounds like Updike's making the mistake a lot of people make in trying to understand that stuff: These very normal, liberal, utterly secular middle-class euroamerican post-religious ex-protestants or whatever sit down and ask, "what would drive a person just like me to do a thing like that?" But the answer is "nothing". Nothing makes people like them die for anything. It's not people like Updike who do it, so any answer to that question is bound to be idiotic.
Or maybe it's just a "tin ear for cultural signifiers", like Tom Wolfe thinking he's hep to this swingin' new punk rock jive, daddy-o.
so Updike can't make even interesting material interessssszzzzzzzzz.....wha?
I don't know about anyone else's critique of Updike, but I listened to him being interviewed on NPR. On the one hand, he sounded sincere in his attempts to understand suicide bombers. On the other, it sounded like he merely settled for misanthropic judgements to be substituted for radical Islamic thought. There wasn't really anything original in his thesis, and on top of that, it wasn't anything that hasn't already been said by Communists, Fascists, and any other sort of revolutionary for years. Updike made such a generic critique, yet to hear him talk, you'd think he believes he stumbled across reasons specific to radical militant islamicists alone that accounts for their hostility to America.
I really mean it. He really didn't state anything original when he was describing the motivations of the protagonist. It sounded like a simple redressing of '60's era revolutionary philosophy in a suicide bomber's vest. The central thesis -- which was that the protagonist was motivated by what he saw in American culture -- could've come out of the mouth of anyone from Castro to Chavez, from Mao to Ho Chi Mihn, or any of the revolutionary followers of those people.
I wanted to read his book, but I'm much less motivated now. If all he's done is retail clichés, then I don't know if there's anything useful to be gotten out of his book.
Then again, who knows? This was just an interview. Maybe the book is more nuanced, more insightful. Unfortunately, the section he read doesn't get my hopes up any, but it was merely one small excerpt.
Updike has a full head of hair at 72. He has his own teeth....it looks like. Hemingway didn't have that.
---Of course they hate him!
He's on his way to Helinski to collect the Nobel Prize next year.
I don't know anything about Dr. Strangelove. I like "Clockwork Orange". Is that Kubrick?
(Relax, Ann). ---What's not to like about that statement?
How about (Chill out) ???
Or, (Ann, call your agent!)
Which is most annoying?
Peace Maxine
Marghlar said that Dr. Strangelove is a movie "you still laugh at when watching it for the tenth time."
It's also a hoot to read.
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