[R-G] Taxi! Taxi! The Dark Side of the Oscars

[Anthony Fenton]

March 6, 2008
Taxi! Taxi!
The Dark Side of the Oscars
http://www.counterpunch.org/ross03062008.html
By JOHN ROSS

For Americanos living abroad, Oscartime is a moment in which to touch  
bases with what they have left behind. Each year, my poor old commie  
mommy, who spent the last quarter century of her life on the shores  
of Andalusia, would sit up until 5 AM local time on Oscar night,  
surrounded by bottles of Soberano brandy and flagons of Spanish  
champagne and the little white envelopes that contained her choices  
for best actor, actress, movie, director et al right down to best  
best boy. Whenever her picks coincided with the Academy's winners,  
she would clang on a cowbell to the intense annoyance of her  
neighbors and guzzle her beverages of choice until the cups were dry.

The Oscars were a time of bonding for us. In the morning, I would  
pick mom off the living room rug and tuck her safely into bed.

Serendipitously, I found myself slumming in California this past  
Oscar night. In fact, I donned my new kaffia fresh in from Baghdad  
and caught a taxi to "Taxi to the Dark Side" at the exact moment Alex  
Gibney was striding to the podium to receive his Big O down in  
Lotuslandia for his cinematic treatise on American Torture.

In his acceptance speech, Gibney, who had just sold "Taxi" to HBO for  
six figures, magnaminiously dedicated his Oscar to Dilawar, the taxi  
driver whose demise he documented, and his late father Frank, a U.S.  
Navy interrogator who had become outraged at Bush and his associates'  
obscene violations of the Geneva Conventions, the so-called "rules of  
war."

"Dark side," the younger Gibney hoped, would bring light back to  
America.

* * *

Given the darkness of the times, the filmmaker's speech itself was on  
the "lite" side in comparison say to Michael Moore's stormy self- 
promotional tirade when he won the O-Man for "Fahrenheit 9-11," or  
Sacheen Littlefeather's 1973 45-second stand-in for Brando during  
Wounded Knee (Littlefeather was threatened with arrest if she spoke  
longer - but she then went backstage and read the press a 15 page  
speech Brando had written for her.) Gibney reiterated his happy face  
litany two mornings later on Amy's place (rush transcript available.)

"Taxi" (the Movie) is an epiphany of the American Dream. Only America  
can flagrantly invade another person's country, kill and capture  
those who resist, detain, interrogate, and torture citizens they  
suspect of harboring hatred for Americans, make a movie about this  
war crime, and win the Oscar for it. It's mindboggling! And you  
thought the American Dream was dead?

The conundrum upon which Gibney's docu turns is where does torture  
begin and the rule of law end? Where in the process of conquest is  
the line crossed? In Gibney's argument, it appears perfectly legal  
(though unfortunate) to seize those suspected of being suspects,  
usually of a darker hue, rip them from their families, destroy their  
livelihoods and their lives, and "interrogate" them unto death to  
extract information that "could save American lives." How this is  
physically accomplished is the nub of the controversy.

For extremes, Gibney installs U.C.-Berkeley law professor John Yoo,  
Bush's button-down legal hyena in the soft glow of the campus library  
and nicely back-lit by a stained glass window, to argue that the  
President as Commander-in-Chief is constitutionally mandated to crush  
the testicles of children to "save American lives."

Liberals like Gibney and his pop contend the crushing of children's  
testicles violates the rule of law - although threatening to do so to  
elicit information or just squeezing the kids' balls might be o.k.  
"To save American lives."

Such a schema implies that beating a subject to death with brass  
knuckles and police batons crosses the line but slapping his or head  
with an open hand so as not to leave marks does not. In Dilawar's  
case, hanging him in chains with a black bag over his head was  
standard operating procedure but kicking him to death was not.  
Putting the hajis in orange jumpsuits, black goggles and earblocks to  
accomplish complete sensory deprivation is benign but filling their  
lungs with water might be borderline.

Playing Nirvana at maximum levels or never-ending tape loops of Obama- 
Clinton debates is a great way to Save American Lives so long as the  
torture stops short of organ failure.

In Gibney's opus, John McCain is an American Hero who waffles when it  
comes to the waterboarding he may or may not have been subjected to  
by his interrogators. No mention is made of why the North Vietnamese  
felt compelled to treat him so harshly: to save North Vietnamese  
lives. McCain, after all, literally crushed the testicles of many  
Vietnamese children when he won his medals bombing the civilian  
population of Vietnam back into the stone age, a war crime under the  
Geneva protocols.

To counterbalance the detestable Yoo, Gibney introduces us to an  
avuncular FBI agent who posits that you only get bad intelligence  
from such draconian torture and its best to use psychological  
coercion and bribery to save American lives. Your life is over he  
tells a frightened detainee but maybe we can pay for your kids'  
education. This seems to be the technique favored by Gibney's  
interrogator dad who believed so fervently in the rule of law.

"For my friends, anything. For my enemies, the law." (Peruvian  
"President" Oscar Benavides 1933-40.)

The Oscar winner also exhibits a certain sympathy for the grunts -  
the "bad apples" shaken from the torture tree - who almost gleefully  
detail how they killed Dilawar the taxi driver. The filmmaker  
espouses the vision that they too are victims, pond scum down at the  
bottom of the food chain just taking orders and trying to make points  
with their superiors.

There is no question that the torture parade starts with the  
Torquemadas at the top - Bush, Cheney, Gonzalez, Yoo, the jackals who  
issued the orders and winked at their underlings for their bizarre  
sexual escapades at Abu Ghraib, now so perversely enshrined by the  
Colombian sculptor Botero right there on Yoo's campus.

But under the rule of law, everyone is complicit in this conspiracy  
to violate the Geneva Conventions, the so-called "rules of war", even  
those who made up the rules and yes, even Botero. Just taking orders  
or making art out of torture is a shopworn defense. All who aid and  
abet these crimes should be drawn and quartered, pulled apart by  
horses, sodomized on national TV, or sentenced to cameo roles in  
Oscar-winning documentaries.

Blame for the unspeakable death of Dilawar cannot be confined to  
those we love to hate. Who can doubt that Obama, who also wants to  
bring light back to America, would order the crushing of children's  
testicles to "save American lives" (which, indeed, are the only ones  
that count?) Hillary, political dominatrix that she is would probably  
delight in such an opportunity "to save American lives."

Americans, after all, have been waterboarding the first Americans  
ever since the Spanish Inquisition. Torture is as American as apple pie.

 From what the trades are waggling, a sequel to "Taxi To The Dark  
Side" is already in the works. The scenario features Alex Gibney  
catching a taxi back to Dilawar's village to show the dead driver's  
family his Oscar. The look on the faces of the family members is  
worth the price of admission.

John Ross will bash his 70th birthday at San Francisco's Café Boheme,  
24th & Mission Street Sunday March 9th from 4 to 8 PM. Be there or be  
cuadrado.