Reaction Shots

“ Pa inting..is an instrument of war.” - Picasso “Shut up and act (or write or play football or do anything but talk about political issues)” - Too many people who know nothing about art or politics. I didn’t really do much to celebrate the Academy Awards this year because my mind has been elsewhere. That said, I did see all of the best picture nominees and a few others, but if I’m honest, I’ve weighed in on the movies I genuinely cared about. Well, except   Nickel Boys , which was gripping and used first-person camerawork to good effect.  Emilia Pérez was a disappointment that I’ll have more to say about, below, as well. I feel I should at least give these films some due. They made it to the nominations and while one is more engaging and challenging than the other, I’m reluctant to completely dismiss the other.  More to the point is that I didn’t watch the show this year. I checked out Conan O’Brien’s monologue and enjoyed it well enough, but I figured I’d catch the win...

  “Of all the forms of murder, none is more monstrous than that committed by a state against its own citizens. And of all murder victims, those of the state are the most helpless and vulnerable since the very entity to which they have entrusted their lives and safety becomes their killer. When the state murders, the crime is planned by powerful men. They use the same cold rationality and administrative efficiency that they might bring to the decision to wage a campaign to eradicate a particularly obnoxious agricultural pest…[S]tates that have chosen to murder their own citizens can usually count their victims by the carload lot. As for motive, the state has no peers, for it will kill its victims for a careless word, a fleeting thought, or even a poem.” - Clyde Snow in   Witnesses from the Grave,   p. 217 In my lifetime, I’m guessing that the number of  mass executions by order of various states numbers in the dozens. This includes the disappeared and executed in Arge...