Rogers: Powwow Highway and Saint Marie

This is a picture of one of the warriors at the 71-day Siege at Wounded-Knee in 1973 that Buddy Red Bow and his friend Wolf Tooth mention that they were a part of.

Buddy Red Bow, Philbert Bono and Marie all have one thing in common: staunch determination. Buddy Red Bow represents a sort of new age man-about-town type. He plays a mean game of pool, curses fluently, has a good rapport with everybody on the Cheyenne Reservation and seems to hold a lot of sway over the council in the beginning of the film where the rudiments of the plot are spelled out. An Indian representative, (Sandy Youngblood) from a big mining company, is eager to drain the ore resources on the reservation even further, promising jobs and recompense. It is in this scene that Red Bow's strong character traits are illustrated. He is shown to be both engaged in his community but also bitter and tired of fighting "the man" for the rights to the land that his ancestors have traditionally owned but who are now seen only as impediments to "progress". Economically, even though Red Bow seems to be an upstanding member of the Reservation, he cannot even afford to bail his sister out of jail and must approach the Cheyenne Chief Joseph for bail money. Also, he must rely on Philbert's ridiculous "pony" for transport to Santa Fe since he does not even own a car. Red Bow, a Wounded-Knee veteran with a "warrior" necklace to prove his valor in battle, feels betrayed by the country that is really his ancient birthright. On several occasions in the film, his anger boils over and he commits acts of violence. First in the radio store when he thinks that he is being duped by the patronizing store-manager and then again when he knocks Sandy Youngblood out at the bar in Santa Fe. Red Bow's determination to save the sister he hasn't heard from in a decade is more than admirable and though there is never any resolution regarding the mining venture on the reservation, it is pretty clear that the failed attempt to frame Bonnie Red Bow marks the mining company's failed attempt to sway the reservation council.

Philbert Bono is my favorite character in "Powwow Highway." He is the kind of person/character whose goodness shines through his otherwise imposing figure. Although he is not a warrior, he is perhaps even more connected spiritually to his Cheyenne heritage then his best friend, Buddy Red Bow. He speaks the language and knows the stories. And he is determined to win for himself the coveted label of warrior. To some viewers, some of his actions might seem trivial and somewhat silly; he leaves a Hershey chocolate bar as tribute when he climbs the sacred mountain. But the power with which he is imbued as he comes down off of the mountain is not at all silly, but very powerful. Heretofore, this hulking giant of a man had let himself be pushed around, never reacting with more then a bashful grin or sad frown. But when Red Bow lays a hand on him in anger, Philbert roars, "Nobody pushes me no more!" and shoves him away. This is a very powerful moment in which Philbert, intoxicated by his spiritual journey, takes control of himself and his destiny. Throughout the film there is a power struggle going on between Philbert and Buddy, not the usual power struggle between two men, but a struggle of the spirit. Philbert is very in touch with the spiritual aspects of his culture while Red Bow, who really is an actual warrior, does not appreciate the continuation of traditions that Philbert thinks are so important for the proliferation of the Cheyenne culture.

Marie, from Louise Edrich's "Saint Marie" is a different animal altogether, although she is fighting the same fight against different oppressors. Headstrong and willful, Marie does not want to be broken, but as we learned in this week's notes, too many Native American children were. The Catholic church, allowed and encouraged by the U.S., raided Indian reservations searching out young children to bring up the Christian way, so as to avoid what they thought was a certain hell-sentence, not to mention bringing up a cheap, ignorant, work-force. It is clear that Marie craves what she thinks will be a better life in the convent. She craves companionship, perhaps, as we are told that her infrequent trips into town are what she lives for. But the terrifying Sister Leopolda, representing the oppression of the Church, means to cleanse and scrub every last bit of the devil out of Marie, that last bit being her Indian blood which makes her prone to "darkness." She inflicts mental torture on Marie by locking her in the closet, only letting her out when she begins to scream. She also physically tortures her, getting some sort of sadistic pleasure out of pouring scalding water onto her back. But Marie is determined that she will not be cowed by the nun and fights back. Marie gets the upper-hand on Leopolda. Having inflicted stigmata-esque wounds on Marie, Sister Leopolda is then forced to pay homage to her as she would a saint.

One part of this week's film really stuck out to me as an illustration of oppression and the social genocide of the Native American people. Bonnie Red Bow's children profess ignorance even of the name of their tribe. Their mother, who looks to be a full-blooded Cheyenne, has not even brought them up with the knowledge of their own tribal name. This is truly the best example in this week's media of the genocide of the culture of the American Indian's by the U.S.

Tregre:

Removed midterm on blog.

Raymond: The Pianist

Many people that are survivors of important events that take place in history write novels to re tell their experiences. Here we read and watch a film about a man named Wladyslaw Szpilman, whom was a survivor of the wrath of the Holocaust. In the book The Pianist, we have the man himself retelling the story word for word right of the horse’s mouth as we say. This of course is the best perspective to learn about ones experiences and accounts for what they went through. You are able to empathize with the character as if you are there with him only to a point. I do not like that in a book you cannot see exactly what is taking place. Szpilman does tell it like it is and tries to give as many descriptive words to allow the read to really see what is happening. Just in the beginning of his book, he speaks of the children whom smuggle goods all day long. Then the scene goes into one day how we see a little boy almost having his task complete without being caught. Then he is stuck and you can hear the Soldiers on the other side the wall he says. As I read, I try to see all this happening in my head, yet it is hard to do. This exact scene and others are best in movies you get the full understand and rush of is he going to make it or not. I’m a more visual person and prefer movies rather than books. I do however, believe that some films can and do chop up the actual events to receive better ratings and reviews for the audiences. When we watch the movie The Pianist, Polanski I think did a great job portraying the accounts that Szpilman endured through his long journey. One scene, that takes place in the movie, where Jews are seen as military types. They march in lines and follow commands of the SS soldiers, and then they stop marching, a few are called out of line and asked to lie on the ground. Once these very unlucky chosen ones lied down a SS soldier comes by and shoots them in the back of the head. Then the SS soldiers and rest of the Jews march on as if nothing just took place. I do not believe that reading the book you would be able to feel as much sympathy and heart ache for the ones who are killed. This gives you a firsthand seat and an in your face look at a few of the horrific acts taking place. Polanski, I do not believed doctored up this scene for movie purposes. This was an actual daily occurrence during the Nazi’s being in charge and gaining control. Again, as I watched this scene and others, I think how do they kill these random people and move on with their lives? How is this not affecting them? Why are they listening and carrying out these orders? All these and many other question will I’m sure go unanswered and/or asked for years to come.

Gommel: The Pianist the book and the film

A modern use of artistic expression as a setting for the production of The Pianist

Bert Cardullo queried in his article, Shoot the Piano Player, whether we should have “a continual flow of films about the subject” of the holocaust? He infers that these images are already etched in our memory. This question I feel is not necessarily for the general public, it should be posed to those that lived through the ordeal in a tyrannical society, and to their descendants, as well as to the artists or film makers. Survivors should have an outlet to express their stories. The experiences of those involved are all so unique for they came from so many different paths of life; so there is always some new perspective to be seen. As was seen in The Pianist, books are so much more detailed and true to life than the film which Cardullo argues is a morality play. Degradation after degradation was read about in the books from simply having to bow to the SS to seeing innocent people shot in the street for sport. Since people are basically cognitive misers though, many more are likely to view a film than read a book. The psyche of humanity wants to forget anything painful, so maybe we need reminders of the past atrocities in tyrannical societies. Though films will not reflect the intensity of the first-hand account, they have value. As Elie Wiesel said, “I have tried to keep memory alive…Because if we forget, we are guilty, we are accomplices (Night 118).”

In regards to The Pianist, I found the article interesting by Alexander Stein when he spoke of the intrapsychic function of musicians in trauma. Time, memory and fantasy are enhanced. Music can bring one back in time or excel them forward, as well as stop time. Szpilman spent so much time in isolation it was advantageous for him to have his music to pass the time to maintain his sanity. Music was his hope and consolation as it could actually lift him out of the place he was in and transport him to another place in time, as he expressed he would rehearse all his compositions in his head. I experienced this effect of being transported to another place in time when I was diagnosed with cancer. So, I can attest Stein’s analysis. It was not necessarily through music for me, though it did also have a profound impact. It was just by telling myself you won’t always feel the pain that you do at this moment. It will be better later, or tomorrow, or next week. In a few months you won’t even remember how this pain felt, if you even remember it at all. It was a coping mechanism that gave me hope to persevere by forwarding myself in time - thirteen years ago.

Stein also spoke of a metaphysical relationship musicians have with their instrument and score and psychosexual development. In the film, Szpilman has a woman friend that is not in the book. As I watched the film I wondered if she represented Szpilman’s music. In the book Szpilman often worried about his fingers being destroyed. Though he was starved and freezing, his main concern was taking care of his hands, keeping his fingers warm. Music was Szpilman’s life, especially now that he no longer had a family; so preserving his fingers would afford him the ability to live out the life he so loved. In the movie I noticed that Dorota would bring him sustenance, compassion, company, understanding and a physician to care for him so he would be able to survive (to be reunited with his music again.) She gave him hope. All the things one would do for a beloved. Music was Szpilman’s beloved and his hope that gave him the desire to survive. Music was his sustenance that befriended him bringing him joy (as we saw him beaming at the end of the movie.) It is what kept him company as he lay quietly in hiding rehearsing all the notes in his head. So, I didn’t find this falsity in the film appalling (as did Cardullo), but an artistic expression. Another point about comparing Dorota to Szpilman’s music is that before he went into hiding, she excited him and he desired to be with her when he saw her on the streets. However his friend said it would only get her killed if you spoke with her. So he had to be silent; just as his music had to be silenced while in hiding.

Though artists have a special way of capturing a moment in time, I don’t believe it gives them the right to get away with hurting other people. Everyone deserves dignity and should not be allowed to be a pawn to an artistic person’s whims. Roman Polanski’s behavior with a thirteen year old brought this question to the forefront. However in his case he stated he did not realize the girl’s age and it was consensual and the girl dropped the charges. However the judge didn’t. But when it comes to immoral behavior just because one is normally held in high regard, influential, rich or talented this should not deter prosecution. They may be gifted, but the Germans thought their race was greater than any other and we saw the negative repercussions of that mindset. Their behavior towards those regarded as “other” devalued them as people and led to gross atrocities contrary to basic human dignity.

Tran: The Pianist

Warsaw after the war.

For this week, I watched The Pianist first before I read the book. In a way, it really allowed me to have a define perspective on the Warsaw ghetto and Szpilman’s story. In the film, we get a boarder sense of Warsaw and the war. Scenes of Warsaw are accompanied by the piano as the film navigates us from the city center to the boulevards, to the streets of the ghetto, and finally the ruins of a once great city. As I read the book I was able to see it exactly from Szpilman’s perspective with his personal feelings put into it.

I don’t know if I would say that there is a huge difference between the film’s third person perspective and the memoir’s first person perspective. The film wasn’t an ensemble cast so we mostly follow Szpilman’s story and don’t look at the lives of any other characters. I would say the biggest difference would be that we get inside Szpilman’s head in the book which we can’t do with the film. In the film, we saw Szpilman’s time hiding out in apartments and eventually in abandon homes, but it isn’t until you read the memoir to understand the full extent of his isolation, hunger, and detachment from life. You could only imagine it in the film, but you can feel it and understand it better by reading the book. The film does change a bit of Szpilman’s story by adding in Darota who is a Jew sympathizer and a sort of love interest for Szpilman though nothing happened. I think the character was added in there to help show that there were Poles who did care and weren’t accepting of the Nazi’s oppression against the Jews. Another change in the film was the promotion of Hosenfeld to Captain. In reality, he was just an officer, but Polanski wanted to emphasize that someone so powerful and of that magnitude would help a Jew like Szpilman. Since Polanski experienced the war too, he was able to understand it better and wanted to contrast the different types of people from the Jew hating Poles (the woman who discovered Szpilman in the apartment) and German, to the ones that were kind and helped them (Darota and Hosenfeld). I think the memoir shows more of Szpilman’s struggle to survivor and how he kept himself from going insane and the many other hardship he endured like the many hiding changes he had to go through (which was shown in the movie, but not as many as the book).

With the two articles we read for this week, they both make an argument that musical aesthetics is a way of coping and escaping the hardship of cruelty. Though the piano is well used in the movie to display Szpilman’s abilities and way of coping with the war, I don’t it was the main focus of the film or the book. Being a pianist was part of his life and though Cadullo’s article criticizes Szpilman for only worrying about his fingers and making sure they work after the war, I think that every single person focus on something to would help them imagine a life after the war and for Szpilman, it was his piano and career. I never thought for once in the film or the book that Hosenfeld spared Szpilman’s life just because he was a pianist. As we’ve seen in the film and the book, people were killed instantly whether they spoke out of turn, random selection, or for any reason whatsoever. If Hosenfeld wanted to kill Szpilman, he would have immediately and he saved Szpilman’s life because he wanted to and already had been doing so with other people. In the memoir, there was a scene where Szpilman, his father, and brother return home later after curfew and stopped by an officer and the officer spared them because he said, “It’s your lucky day, I am a musician too.” That may have been the only time he was really spared because he was a pianist.

These four weeks have made me think about a lot concerning the Holocaust and the treatment of people and trying to connect it to other events going on at the time. Every time I read or watch films about the Holocaust, I wonder how could people let this happen and did they not see what was going on or cared. I really thought about this in the sense of Britain, but especially in America even though they were occupied to fighting the war in the Pacific. I just watched the film The Help a few weeks ago and when you think about it, African-Americans were treated very similar to the Jews at that time, to a lesser extent. African-Americans weren’t allowed the same opportunities, had to use different facilities, were treated as second class citizens. Of course Americans weren’t trying to extermination, but I just mean in the way they were treated and people’s attitude towards African-Americans. Lynching went on and people weren’t brought to justice and they faced a segregation and abuse by law enforcement and other people. The Japanese at the time were put into internment camps which were labor camps, or simple relocation camps in the West. By no means I’m am trying to compare the two or saying African-Americans experience and suffered the same as the Jews, but just in terms of treatment and the way politics and laws were against them at the time.

Rogers: Perspectives on Szpilman

Although the film version of Wladyslaw Szpilman's autobiography is a morale-killing, tear-jerking two and a half hours long, it was still not long enough to truly let us engage with the characters other then Wladyslaw and even though Adrien Brody's mournful eyes are haunting, I feel that I only truly understood his characters development and sensitivity through the book. For example, in a beautiful testament to his mother's steadfastness, Szpilman tells us readers how she always kept a lovely home and table waiting for them so that their starving eyes could find a little comfort. But as the months pass, Szpilman's says that the gray in her hair and the wrinkles around her mouth grow more and more pronounced. And later in the book, "The light in her bright black eyes seemed to have gone out, and a nervous twitch ran down from her right temple and over her cheek to the corner of her mouth." In the film, we see his aging mother caring for the family but not through the eyes of Wladyslaw, so it is taken, perhaps, a little bit in stride. Similarly, Wladyslaw's father is differently represented in the film then in the book. In fact his actions are completely dissimilar. In the book, his father, the devoted musician, bows ironically to passing German's, when that mandatory decree is passed. In the film, his father is struck for NOT bowing to two German guards.
Another example of how the book an film differ in perspective is how they deal with the interaction between the German SS Officer Wilm Hosenfeld and Szpilman. The film, though Hosenfeld certainly takes on a heroic light, does not make it clear to us that he is rather a self-hating German. In the book, when asked if he is German by Wladyslaw, he says, "Yes, I am! And ashamed of it, after everything that's been happening." We know that Hosenfeld was actually a great friend to those who were misused by the Nazi's and was full of hatred for the Nazi's and their regime.
One touching scene that both the film and the book brought across equally well in different ways, was when Wladyslaw staggers out of his hideout to fulfill his promise to kiss the first Poles he sees. In the book, it's a Polish lieutenant, but the sentiment still shines through.

Ramon- Week 4 Szpilman

First, this is not my first time seeing Roman Polanski’s The Pianist. It is a very well done film. However, does the film really need to be two and a half hours long? Granted, I know that Polanski knows just a little more about filmmaking than I do, but there were a few time in the film where I felt that there was no progression. One example is when he is hiding in the Warsaw ghetto and is locked in a room. Yes, it was good to see the physical struggle of lack of nutrition that Szpilman was going through. However, that was already evident in the starvation others were suffering. Namely, his brother.

In terms of the first and third person viewpoints, there is a sense of bias attached to many first person narratives. In Szpilman’s autobiography and supported by Polanski’s film, a first person bias was not evident. Rather, Szpilman portrayed a feeling of truth and reality to the reader. Dr. McCay indicated in her notes sheet how in the film, the audience was not truly brought into the situation. The example she stated and a defining event in my own reading of the autobiography was the ignorance or the lack of generosity rich Jews showed to children. In the film, Szpilman’s borderline interrogated a little boy as to what he was doing with the money he made from selling snacks in the ghetto. This two-minute encounter in a film that is one hundred and fifty minutes takes away from the first-person narrative. Meaning, this sort of injustice within the ghetto was much more evident in the autobiography.

Lastly, I had an issue/observation regarding the names of individuals in the film. Polanski of course did this on purpose. We are only given the first names of characters in the film as opposed to the autobiography. Also, the only time in the film when we are given a last name is when Wilm asks Szpilman his name. At the conclusion of the film, the audience is reintroduced to Wilm as a prisoner of war. He wants to send his remarks to Szpilman, but can not remember his name. When the messenger asks for Wilm’s name, the Russians hush him. Thus, the complete message was not sent to Szpilman. However, the memory of Wilm still lives on thanks to Szpilman’s autobiography.

Although a first person narrative can in many times be biased, a third person film is much more biased. When telling a story over again, key moments and the personal thoughts (such as the rich jews’ ignorance of the suffering) are not so much manifested in film so that the audience listens to the director’s message.