Post by nancylebovitz on Jan 10, 2009 8:52:52 GMT -5
the-red-shoes.livejournal.com/1491411.html?nc=36
From a review of Milk:
"And you know, for all the omg-but-why/how-could-he-do-it? questions that were never answered about Dan White (was he gay? was he in the closet? was it a police conspiracy, as the movie heavy-handedly hints? ((not that the SFPD in those days was ABOVE such things, oh no, and they still aren't that great TODAY)) was it too many f**king twinkies?) I think in the end, the answer is really f**king simple: he lost his power. And his life, by virtue of who he was and where he had been born, had been up to then an exercise in belonging comfortably within various circles of power: male, white, cop, firefighter, Catholic, straight, father, middle-class....and, whoever you are, how much or how little power you have had in your lifetime, when your power is taken away from you, it sucks. The fancy political word for it is "disenfranchisement." Some psychological terms for it are "outward locus of control" and "loss of autonomy." It is precisely what Harvey Milk means in the scene in the film when he says to Dan White (which I am not sure ever happened, but it works) "We're fighting for our lives. It is not an issue." When you feel that someone else can basically do whatever they want with you -- beat you or hurt you or arrest you or just plain f**k you around, for kicks, because they can -- that fuels rage, which fuels action.
"I think Dan White probably resigned in a giant snit, because from what little I managed to learn about him he did not sound like the most stable of individuals, or frankly all that politially savvy either, and then the cops and the firemen and the bigots who had helped get him in said: Oh no you don't, without you there Moscone has a majority, and he went to Moscone and said I want my seat back and Moscone said Oh no you don't (because without White he did have a majority), and at that moment Dan White got just a little taste of how Harvey Milk and Harvey's friends and lovers and supporters had been routinely deprived of their power, their autonomy, their ability to act, the thing that -- you could argue -- is one of our most important psychological tools, the ability to feel as if we can affect our own lives with our own actions. That we matter.
"And the problem is, if you do not know what that is like, if you have not dealt with it for a lot of your life, the sudden horrible shocking realization that you are not in control can drive you crazy. I am not trying at all to be sarcastic or mean here. It is a brutal fact to have shoved in your face, and if you are unprepared for it, the very revelation itself can unseat your sanity. And, because of who he was, and where he had come from, and how he had been made, in no small part, by those things -- what drove Gandhi to pick up a grain of salt and what drove Harvey Milk to pick up a bullhorn, drove Dan White to pick up his gun.
"It wasn't until I read The Mayor of Castro, starting right after I picked up the only copy I could find in a giant bookstore and lasting on and off til this late afternoon, that I learned Dan White had taken enough ammunition with him to City Hall to be sure to kill all his targets; that I learned he had stopped to reload, in between shooting Moscone and going on to kill Harvey; and that he had reloaded with much more powerful 'dum-dum' bullets, designed to rip apart the victim on impact. If the reloading proves premeditation, surely what was reloaded proves that kind of incinerating rage that serves the human psyche as jet fuel. It can power a revolution (when are you going to get angry? What will it take? Half of you are dead already) or it can spark off a murder. Dan White did not kill Harvey Milk. He killed the symbol of all the people -- the gays, the minorities, the godless -- who were claiming their power, and therefore, his twisted logic went, depriving him of his. If you have all your life enjoyed the power of being the master, when the slaves rise up your first instinct is not to set them a place at what you still think of as your table."
From a review of Milk:
"And you know, for all the omg-but-why/how-could-he-do-it? questions that were never answered about Dan White (was he gay? was he in the closet? was it a police conspiracy, as the movie heavy-handedly hints? ((not that the SFPD in those days was ABOVE such things, oh no, and they still aren't that great TODAY)) was it too many f**king twinkies?) I think in the end, the answer is really f**king simple: he lost his power. And his life, by virtue of who he was and where he had been born, had been up to then an exercise in belonging comfortably within various circles of power: male, white, cop, firefighter, Catholic, straight, father, middle-class....and, whoever you are, how much or how little power you have had in your lifetime, when your power is taken away from you, it sucks. The fancy political word for it is "disenfranchisement." Some psychological terms for it are "outward locus of control" and "loss of autonomy." It is precisely what Harvey Milk means in the scene in the film when he says to Dan White (which I am not sure ever happened, but it works) "We're fighting for our lives. It is not an issue." When you feel that someone else can basically do whatever they want with you -- beat you or hurt you or arrest you or just plain f**k you around, for kicks, because they can -- that fuels rage, which fuels action.
"I think Dan White probably resigned in a giant snit, because from what little I managed to learn about him he did not sound like the most stable of individuals, or frankly all that politially savvy either, and then the cops and the firemen and the bigots who had helped get him in said: Oh no you don't, without you there Moscone has a majority, and he went to Moscone and said I want my seat back and Moscone said Oh no you don't (because without White he did have a majority), and at that moment Dan White got just a little taste of how Harvey Milk and Harvey's friends and lovers and supporters had been routinely deprived of their power, their autonomy, their ability to act, the thing that -- you could argue -- is one of our most important psychological tools, the ability to feel as if we can affect our own lives with our own actions. That we matter.
"And the problem is, if you do not know what that is like, if you have not dealt with it for a lot of your life, the sudden horrible shocking realization that you are not in control can drive you crazy. I am not trying at all to be sarcastic or mean here. It is a brutal fact to have shoved in your face, and if you are unprepared for it, the very revelation itself can unseat your sanity. And, because of who he was, and where he had come from, and how he had been made, in no small part, by those things -- what drove Gandhi to pick up a grain of salt and what drove Harvey Milk to pick up a bullhorn, drove Dan White to pick up his gun.
"It wasn't until I read The Mayor of Castro, starting right after I picked up the only copy I could find in a giant bookstore and lasting on and off til this late afternoon, that I learned Dan White had taken enough ammunition with him to City Hall to be sure to kill all his targets; that I learned he had stopped to reload, in between shooting Moscone and going on to kill Harvey; and that he had reloaded with much more powerful 'dum-dum' bullets, designed to rip apart the victim on impact. If the reloading proves premeditation, surely what was reloaded proves that kind of incinerating rage that serves the human psyche as jet fuel. It can power a revolution (when are you going to get angry? What will it take? Half of you are dead already) or it can spark off a murder. Dan White did not kill Harvey Milk. He killed the symbol of all the people -- the gays, the minorities, the godless -- who were claiming their power, and therefore, his twisted logic went, depriving him of his. If you have all your life enjoyed the power of being the master, when the slaves rise up your first instinct is not to set them a place at what you still think of as your table."
