***Out In Those Mean Urban Neon Wilderness Streets- “Midnight Cowboy”- A Film Review

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of the movie trailer for Midnight Cowboy.
DVD Review

Midnight Cowboy, starring Dustin Hoffman, Jon Voight, 1969

Recently in a review of Bonnie and Clyde, a film that also deals tragic-comically with lumpen life, in that case the mock heroics of bank robbery in the popular imaginations of an earlier generation, that of the Great Depression, I noted that I was familiar, too familiar with that place where the lumpenproletariat, the dregs of society, intersects and intermingles with the working poor. And also of the dreams, sometimes the plain, old ordinary get-rich-quick dreams to get out from under that inflame those who have nothing and have no way of getting more than nothing.

In Midnight Cowboy we get a very solid sense of the convergence of those two sets of social interactions. Jon Voight’s Joe Buck, small town Texas twisted, second-hand dreams of making it in big time, big apple, New York as a hustler out in the neon wilderness of Times Square. And, Dustin Hoffman’s Ratzo Rizzo, home-grown boy, already on those mean streets scratching for nickels and dimes to keep body and soul together. And to get out the hell out of killer New York, as long as he does not have work to do so. Work, in real life, is the curse of this segment of society. I have known more than my fair share, and have had more than my fill of real Ratzos, including in my own extended family, complete with that bizarre logic that says black is white, as matter of course, and visa versa that drives their skimpy lives.

That said, this is a buddy story, in this case a male buddy film, that was a cinematic trend back in the late 1960s and early 1970s and at that level the movie works as old Joe Buck is ready to go to the mat, in the end, to get old Ratzo out of cold-hearted New York. But here is the “skinny” from personal experience, it is usually too little too late. And so it proved here. This film, moreover, despite my “high sociology” screed above is worth seeing for the outstanding performances of these two actors early on in their careers.

Song From Popular American Folklore-The Walkabouts' "Bonnie And Clyde"

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Bonnie and Clyde as video accompanying The Walkabout's song on the pair.

Markin comment:

See today's entry on the film Bonnie and Clyde.

A Victory For The Right To Bear Arms

Commentary

Sometimes it is actually fun to watch the maneuverings of the Justices of the United States Supreme Court as they form their various majority opinions (when they can avoid those plurality opinions where every justice who can put pen to paper gives a concurring opinion). Today’s, Thursday June 26, 2008, big decision is really big as this court has held that the Second Amendment to the Constitution concerning the right to bear arms means more than provision of well- regulated militia by the state and entails the individual right to bear arms. The specifics of the case involved overturning Washington, D.C.'s extremely restrictive handgun laws (and upholding the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals' previous holding overturning those laws). Justice Scalia, author of the majority decision (who by a fortunate quirk of fate as far as this decision goes never got past the legal decisions of 1791 in law school), is our ‘friend’ here. Along with ‘friends’ Roberts, Alito. Thomas and swing voter Kennedy.

They say that politics makes strange bedfellows and that is true on this issue. Of course we are also keeping company with the likes of the National Rifle Association but so be it. While they all have their own axes to grind here is what concerns us. We support, unlike the august Supreme Court Justices, the right to revolution just like our forbears did. That is why this decision is legally, at least, important to us. But as a practical matter here is the skinny- we do not want the cops, crazies and criminals to be armed while we are defenseless. No way. Enough said.