I watched You Don’t Mess With The Zohan last night. It’s an Adam Sandler comedy from 2008 about an Israeli spy who fakes his own death so he can live in New York and become a hairdresser. He falls in love with his boss, Dalia, who is Palestinian and the sister of the terrorist that Zohan is trying to defeat. (John Turturro unfortunately plays the terrorist.) Rob Schneider plays a Palestinian cab driver who wants revenge on Zohan for stealing his best goat. There are two Palestinians in the cast, in minor parts as Schneider’s buddies.
The movie ends with the Israelis and Palestinians in New York coming together (Turturro’s Phantom included) to defeat a group of mercenary rednecks pretending to be them to cause intentional conflict. The rednecks (led by Dave Matthews) dress as Palestinians and Israelis to torch and deface the stores on the block.
There’s a part in the middle of the movie where Dalia and Zohan discuss their relationship. Dalia explains that her family would go crazy if she brought home an Israeli. Zohan protests. Dalia says, “You don’t know my family… Or maybe you do.”
I think this line was supposed to foreshadow Dalia’s brother being Phantom. I didn’t know that twist so it hit me hard in a different way.
“You don’t know my family. Or maybe you do.”
I thought she meant that because Zohan is an Israeli commando that he may have murdered members of her family. He might not “know” them, but he’s met them. Maybe he’d slaughtered some, or ordered the slaughter of some. In the beginning of the film, when he chases Phantom through Palestine, Zohan tells his superiors he will obviously not cause any civilian casualties like he always does. It is Phantom firing his own rocket that causes the most damage during their fight.
When Zohan applies for a job at a children’s hair salon, he tells a crying child, “By the time I was your age I’d killed seven people. Maybe you should grow up.”
People.
Who though? What people? Dalia’s family?
I’ve been sick with a cold so I also rewatched Monty Python and The Holy Grail. I hadn’t seen it in twenty years but I could still quote almost all of it like a ‘quirky girl sleeper agent’ being reactivated. There’s the classic scene where two peasants question the system of government they live under, which has so much discourse around its timelessness and brilliance.
This time around, I noticed a couple other things. This movie came out in 1975. At the very end, the Knights of the Round Table are absurdly arrested by modern day police for a murder they committed at the beginning of the film. The cops show up and the knights hold up their shields. The police push them as they’re complying and backing up. A cop grabs one guy’s shield and rips it away for no reason. Another covers the camera to stop them from being filmed.
It is 1975. We know this is how the police act. We know it enough for it to be funny.
I watch live on social media as the mayor of my city lies.
It’s an interesting one. She’s speaking at an event to commemorate one year since the federal government occupied our city and raided local businesses. Their armed and masked agents tore people from their jobs, from the street, and from their cars. The agents took them away and put many of them in concentration camps. A year since.
The event I’m watching is put on by a local Latin American immigration rights organization. Everyone gets up to the mic when it’s their turn and speaks about those terrifying days in June 2025.
It strikes me as surreal and uncanny that they are talking as if a war has already ended. It’s like we’re looking backwards.
How strange. There is nothing to “commemorate.” How can you commemorate what is still going on? The Gestapo is leaping forward with no brakes even as these people speak.
“Come with us to commemorate,” the invitation read. You can not sit and have ceremonies and remember and commemorate and “keep in mind” and say “never again” about something that is actively happening.
“To reflect on.” “To stand shoulder to shoulder.” “To honor those who were taken.”
Were? They are still taken. They remain taken. They will get taken again. Where are they? Why aren’t we going to get them? Our thoughts mean nothing.
They’re talking like there’s an aftermath. The aftermath of what? That one series of days in June 2025?
Who are we commemorating? What do we do now?
“Fear did not defeat us, cruelty did not divide us, and militarization did not silence us,” says the press release in my inbox and I know what they mean.
But the past tense makes no sense.
Yet.
The fear did not defeat us. Yet. How can we talk about something still happening not having defeated us? We don’t know how this shakes out. We haven’t vanquished anything.
Cruelty did not divide us. Who is us? Families are divided. If the us is “us working against fascism” then have we really not been divided?
Militarization silences. People want to help but are scared of getting shot like Renee Good. Like Alex Pretti. Like Lorenzo Salgado Araujo. Like Joan Sebastian Guerrero.
We don’t even know what type of militarization we’ll be dealing with. The local police assist the federal agents and everybody knows it. They could become one soon. There’s a bill in the Senate now to merge a few parts of Israel’s military with ours.
What is the action post-commemoration event? Who will tell us what to do?
Everyone goes back to their offices.
I rewatched The Matrix movies again.
Every single line in the original is a banger. I watch that one a lot, but I spend less time on the rest of the franchise.
This time around, I was struck by a scene from the second one, The Matrix: Reloaded.
I rewind over and over the park bench conversation between Keanu Reeves’ Neo and Gloria Foster’s The Oracle. The Oracle instructs Neo to get his obvious questions for her out of the way.
He guesses she is not human. He is right. What is she then?
Neo: If I had to guess, I’d say you’re a program from the machine world…
The Oracle: So far, so good.
Neo: But if that’s true, that can mean you are a part of this system, another kind of control.
The Oracle: Keep going.
Neo: I suppose the most obvious question is, how can I trust you?
The Oracle: Bingo! It is a pickle, no doubt about it. The bad news is there’s no way if you can really know whether I’m here to help you or not. So it’s really up to you. You just have to make up your own damn mind to either accept what I’m going to tell you, or reject it.
If The Oracle is created by the world that seeks to kill Neo then she is “controlled opposition.” Someone that seems like an ally, but is actually there to placate. If we have the “safety” of The Oracle, why do any more terrifying work on our own?
It’s worse than just The Oracle though.
The movies come to show us that the free city of Zion itself is “controlled opposition.” The fascist machines count on Zion as a place where the humans that are freed from them can go to live. It’s how they keep tabs on them. A human is freed from The Matrix and heads to Zion. But they are not free. They are allowed to be there because the machines would prefer that to the humans fighting for actual freedom.
Devastating. Depressing.
There is no “The One.” Neo, himself, is “controlled opposition.” There have been six “Ones” before him and they were all allowed to rise by the machines to lull the freed ones into false comfort and empowerment.
He is not a savior. He is part of the cage.
There is no new politician who will save us. We are not free even when we think we are. And we are not the firsts. There are so many people who came before us.
More Ones.
We have to stop relying on them.
In Blade Runner 2049, which I also watched this week, Ryan Gosling’s character Joe is convinced he is the miraculous son of a Replicant.
It would change everything if enslaved robots could give birth. The baby is the key to their freedom. It is also dangerous for rich men who want to easily birth an unending supply of new slaves.
Eventually, Joe finds out the baby was actually a girl. It cannot be him. He is not the savior of the Replicants. He’s devastated. Freysa, the woman who tells him the news, comforts him.
“You imagined it was you? Oh, you did. You did! We all wish it was us. That’s why we believe.”
I love movies. But aren’t they also “controlled opposition?” Is it playing into the hands of the machines that I’m finding meaning in big budget Hollywood films?
Isn’t that the same as The Oracle?
The very Matrix that placates the masses with circuses is what delivers me these messages.
How can I trust them? I love the Wachowskis but would a studio really put out a film that wasn’t also a balm? “Get good at computers, get a trenchcoat and some tiny sunglasses and you’re there. You’re it. You’re enlightened.”
It’s the same anxiety I felt when I saw I Love Boosters, the new Boots Riley film about a group of shoplifters who end up taking on a fucked up world. The message was great. The story was great. The way it was all presented was wild.
But I am scared of believing in it too much. It’s a movie put out by Megan Ellison, the daughter of billionaire Zionist monopolist monster Larry Ellison. We can’t brush that aside.
How can it be anything other than aloe vera on burnt skin?
Does this convince people they’ve done something? They saw this movie. They posted about it, just as I am doing now. They believe it’s put some good out into the world through its art. And then what?
Nothing is screened without the approval of all of these people with evil intentions. They wouldn’t dare finance art that they truly felt would create actual change. They don’t want us woken up. They want us in Zion, believing we’re free.
Is this all just a binky for a baby? I’m sucking on it and falling asleep, my tired eyes glued to their screens to find salvation.
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