The Elephant in Arizona

"An injunction against SB 1070! Hip hip hooray!" That was my first reaction upon hearing the news that federal judge Susan Bolton has ruled against the major sections of the anti-Latino immigration law signed in April by Arizona governor Jan Brewer. It would have been enacted tomorrow.

Since April, 7 different lawsuits have been brought against the law. Today brought Bolton's ruling on the federal government vs. AZ. Still to come are the decisions regarding human rights' groups and law enforcement officials who have filed suit against the law.

The injunction will effectively block the provisions of the law that would make it a 'crime to fail to apply for or carry alien registration papers or "for an unauthorized alien to solicit, apply for, or perform work," and a provision "authorizing the warrantless arrest of a person" if there is reason to believe that person might be subject to deportation' and the provision which required cops to solicit "papers" from individuals who by "reasonable suspicion" they deem may be illegal.

Needless to say, I am happy about this ruling, but I know that the war has just begun. In addition to the inevitable backlash that this injunction will cause (Brewer will bring it to the courts of appeals), the injunction can not put a stop to the misguided and hateful attitudes towards Latino immigrants that caused the bill to be drawn up initially.

[Warning: the following paragraph was not preconceived. It is an erratic stream of consciousness. Read at your own will.] Even though racial profiling is now outlawed in the state of Arizona, there's been enough attention given to Arizona throughout this process, that I almost feel as though they have still succeeded. Jan Brewer and her cronies have, if you will, planted the idea of being Mexican as being a criminal, and too many Americans have subscribed to this idea instead of thinking for themselves and seeing the truth. I offer an analogy: the elephant is to the room as immigration status is to Arizona. Does that make sense? The government has protected the elephant for now, but the poachers are there, waiting to take down the elephant in Arizona. Immigration status and race is the only thing on Arizona citizens' minds now. Remember the scene in Inception when Joseph Gordan Levitt explains the concept of inception to the Japanese dude? He says, "I say to you, 'don't think about elephants,' what do you think about?" The answer: elephants. Susan Bolton rules against SB 1070. What's gonna happen? Citizen support of SB 1070 is going to skyrocket. Ughhh.

Like I said, the above was a total diversion from my main point, which was supposed to illuminate the varying roles played by the major television news outlets in reporting the SB 1070 ruling.

Earlier this afternoon, I flipped between Fox, msnbc and CNN, which were all covering the SB 1070 news, each from their own charming political perspective. I payed attention to three aspects of the news shows: footage, commentary and key terms when referring to the bill. I observed the following:

Fox News

• Footage: "illegal aliens" being handcuffed, sitting on curbs under supervision of ICE agents
• Commentary: mainly came from an Arizona sheriff
• Key terms: The provisions blocked in the injunction were the “toughest teeth” and the “critical parts” of the bill SB 1070.

msnbc

• Footage: Activists protesting against law in Arizona, prior to ruling
• Key Terms: The provisions blocked were the ones that were "unguided," "unjust" (quoted from Obama's immigration speech)

CNN

• Footage: immigrant workers picking fruit, scenes on the border with the fence and border patrol agents
• Commentary: legal analyst, conservative latino group leader
• Key terms: The provisions blocked were the “controversial parts”

Moral of the story: know what you're watching. Avoid brainwashing.

Thoughts on "Inception"

Warning: Kind-of Spoiler Alert (I don't ruin anything, but if you haven't seen the movie you probably won't be able to follow; this is not a review, just my raw thoughts on the film)

I have seen Inception twice now, and each time left the theater utterly mind-blown and in awe, bursting with questions, insights and observations. After feasting my eyes on this masterpiece two nights in a row, I have concluded that the beauty and genius of the movie Inception lies in its manipulation of the simple.

The constructed complexity of simple ideas that makes the movie a psychological maze for viewers is a direct reflection of the concept of “inception” created within the movie, which involves planting a basic idea in a person’s mind through manipulation of dreams. With this film, form equals content. The technical production of the movie mirrors the themes that are revealed in the plot. For example, director Christopher Nolan plants a simple plot into the creation of the movie, and layers it with incredibly powerful and effective cinematography, action, symbolism and music that combine to make Inception a mind-bending experience instead of a mere film.



The basic sequence of events in the movie relies on the concept of a dream within a dream. Simple enough? It gets complicated when a dream becomes a dream becomes a dream becomes a dream, and all of a sudden the viewers in the theater, along with the characters in the film, have lost any concept of the real, or at least what was supposed to be real from the beginning.

Time is also toyed with. In the movie, 5 minutes becomes 1 hour becomes 6 months becomes 10 years becomes 5 minutes again, and I am walking out of the theater 3 hours later wondering where I am, what time it is, and how long I have been sitting inside staring at the screen.

A simple spinning top becomes a “totem”, a clue into real versus subliminal, which becomes a symbolic motif, which becomes through Christopher Nolan’s manipulation a clever choice of movie prop that will inevitably draw viewers back to see Inception a second, third—dare I say—fourth time, in an attempt to catch a slight subtlety of its spin, a nuance in the angle of the top in its trajectory, which will reveal the state of Cobb’s mind and life.

Inception is a movie that rewards viewers who come back to view it again, through an intense buildup of slight details that, only with the sharpest eye and most focused mind, can serve to confirm or deny any sound conclusions drawn in the end (ah yes, do you detect a paradox? Remember, form equals content).

A simple musical scale serves as the main score to the movie, haunting unsuspecting viewers with the sinister dissonance of the C minor scale. A simple succession of 8 consecutive tones (C major) is disrupted by two half-steps thrown into the otherwise pleasant scale, and all of a sudden, an 8-note scale becomes a repetitive and drawn-out melody, a crashing and gloriously sinister tune layered with an entire symphony orchestra, which appears in each of the most tense and suspenseful scenes of the movie (the spinning hotel hallway fight scene, the white van suspended in freefall inches above the river, the door to his father’s hospital room opening at Fischer’s command to reveal his last words and final will).

Even the structure of the movie—a framed tale—is a classically simple concept that Nolan manipulates to the max, so that the majority of the action in the plot is actually just layers within a few moments during an all-important revelatory scene with Cobb and Saido that sandwiches the plot events.

And I don’t even really understand Inception completely. That said, I can’t wait to see it again tomorrow night.