Brazil’s Charles Bronson

I want to see this when the subtitled DVD gets stateside. I’m a huge fan of the “hardboiled cop”-type movies, Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry series in particular. The larger issues raised in the article are also fascinating. Film scholars routinely analyze figures like Kiefer Sutherland’s Jack Bauer as throwbacks to the cultural archetype of the cowboy, the anti-hero who walks the thin line between civilization and savagery. Essentially, High Noon with cars and machine guns. But the theme seems to have wide resonance among many foreign audiences. I once read in a Criterion collection essay on Charles Bronson’s Death Watch that the author had seen it screened in Africa, the Middle East, and many parts of Asia–and each the time the audience broke into wild applause when Bronson began to gun down the gutter punks who killed his family. Perhaps the figure of the vigilante who takes the law into his own hands is more of a universal archetype than an American one.

“Apocalypse Tourism”

CTheory.net has an interesting look at the efforts of local bloggers, artists, and electronic musicians to revitalize inner-city Detroit. They bring with them a cyberpunk aesthetic that seems like a perfect fit for Motor City’s ghost-in-the-machine, all-purpose urban burnout. Unfortunately, that may be part of the problem. As Marcel O’Gorman inquires in the piece, do the digerati see themselves as part of a grassroots urban revival or as digital Hunter S. Thompsons, liveblogging from the 9th circle? Do they seek to construct something new and exciting with the aid of local artists and musicians, or use Detroit as a outsized canvas for their own narcissism? O’Gorman has guarded optimism, but his piece reveals a profound ambivalence.