Little Big Man

Ford reveals his plan for robbing Fort Knox to pay for
Toronto's new subways.

On July 25, Toronto mayor Rob Ford held Ford Fest in a Scarborough park. The picnic/campaign event attracted a few protestors, but mostly it brought out the hardcore Ford supporters and those attracted to any kind of celebrity, notorious or otherwise. Toronto Life did a brief piece on the people who turned out to support Ford, and it's an efficient insight into the continuing puzzle of why this man, who appears to have absolutely no redeeming qualities, continues to earn the attention and admiration of perhaps a quarter of Toronto's electorate. As well, this article in Now provides an interesting look at the surprising (shocking?) support Ford gets from black voters.

What emerges from the two articles is that Ford's base can be divided into two camps. The first consists of those whose ears prick up every time Ford says things about working for the "little guy," a term he uses so often you'd be forgiven for thinking he's Mayor of Munchkinland. To back up his claims Ford regularly stages media events in which he visits public housing projects to knock on doors, shake hands, and listen to complaints about faulty elevators, leaky plumbing, and so on and so on. The fact that this isn't Ford's job and that his visits accomplish nothing is lost on "little guy" voters. The mere fact that he's paying attention to them, calling them by name, as it were, is enough to garner their adulation. Why? Because Ford has accidentally benefited from the class divisions in Toronto. The poor and the working poor in Toronto are largely ignored until one of them picks up a gun. The two other mayoral candidates of note, John Tory and Olivia Chow, spend most of their time currying favour with  the middle and upper-middle classes. On the provincial level, the NDP, supposedly the party of the working class, stayed mum on the subject of raising the minimum wage during this year's election. This election also saw them move vigorously towards the middle of the political spectrum. In sum, the people living on the economic edges of Toronto rarely hear a politician talking about them, and never see one turn up on their doorstep looking concerned. It's not surprising, then, that some of Toronto's proletarians would move into the Ford camp. They might be holding their noses while doing so, but their support for Rob is probably as much a protest against the way they're ignored as it is a vote for Ford.

The other group that loves Rob are those who like to see a "big man" in power. In large parts of the world the tribal chief, clan leader, capo, party boss or religious patriarch is expected be a big man, by which I mean a guy who throws his weight around, bullies, browbeats, acts tough, makes a show of his power and wealth and machismo, and, sometimes, is also physically large, or at least fat. In lots of cultures that are undemocratic or have weak democracies these are the kind of men people expect to see as a leader. Rob Ford is tailor-made for that demographic, and there are certainly lots of Torontonians who have come from countries and cultures that tolerate variations on Ford as leaders. And one has only to look at Italy and Silvio Berlusconi to realize it isn't just less-developed nations that have a weakness for loudmouthed, racist boors. Even Rob's brother Doug (a Toronto city councilor and Rob's more thuggish clone) got into the "big man" act this past Christmas when he gleefully handed out cash to residents of a public housing project as though he were the local lord of the manor or the resident drug dealer.

The socio-economic underclass and adherents to the "big man" theory of politics aren't going to be enough to get Ford re-elected (fingers crossed), but it's a reminder that when people feel ignored and lacking in representation, they'll be tempted to ally themselves with politicians who are willing to speak to them, even if those politicos have no intention or ability to do anything for them, and are singularly lacking in talent, intelligence and morals. Perhaps it's time for Chow and Tory to show up with their tool belts at their nearest public housing complex.

Book Review: The Honored Society (2008) by Petra Reski

The impetus for this look at Italy's various Mafia organizations was the 2007 execution-style murder in Duisburg, Germany, of six Italians from Calabria. The six were part of the 'Ndrangheta, one of southern Italy's three great Mafia crime groups, the other two being the Camorra, based in Naples, and the Cosa Nostra, based in Sicily. The German public and police were shocked to find that the Mafia were engaging in turf wars outside of Italy, and German journalist Petra Reski's book is a sort of field guide to the environment the Mafia comes from and is supported by.

Reski structures her book something like a travelogue, as she and her friend Shoba, an award-winning photographer who's made a career photographing the world of the Mafia, traipse around southern Italy checking in on sites and individuals who are key to the recent history of the region's mafias. This isn't the most conventional or academic way to go about chronicling organized crime, and at times the book reads like a loosely-stitched together group of magazine articles, but it's a fascinating read and Reski has some intriguing insights into the Mafia's entrenched position in Italian politics and society.

One of the startling observations Reski makes is that the Catholic Church is a key spiritual component of the Mafia. Over here in North America we occasionally hear about brave anti-Mafia priests, or equally occasionally the Pope issues a statement decrying a Mafia atrocity, but the rank and file of priests in southern Italy are more than happy to provide mobsters with confession, baptisms, marriages, and all the other ceremonies held dear by Catholics. It's a symbiotic relationship. Mobsters value the way the Church has embraced them because it shows that they're not outcasts or apostates; they're still part of Italian society despite being murderers. The Church supports the Mob because it views it as being in opposition to the Italian state, which, in the Church's eyes, is sinfully secular. In short, the Catholic Church finds more to like in a cabal of killers than it does in a democratic state.

In the last thirty or so years one of the key tools in the fight against the Mafia has been the testimony of turncoat mafioso, from foot soldiers all the way up to capos. What's fascinating about these "traitors" is the way in which their families turn against them. Their wives, children and parents hold mock funerals for them, and generally make a great show of their hatred for anyone who betrays the Mafia. In this respect the Mafia comes across as a cult or religion. The loathing for Mafia turncoats is very real, and it has striking similarities to way in which religious fundamentalists of various stripes react to apostates.

After the Mafia's high-profile murders of public prosecutors Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino in 1992, the Italian government had a chance to really uproot the Mafia thanks to a groundswell of public outrage against the Mafia's contempt for the Italian state. For a few years the Mafia was on the run, but the rise of Silvio Berlusconi ended all that. He formed a partnership with the Mafia that gave him votes in the south, and the Mafia got a rollback of various anti-Mafia laws. The present situation is dire. The Mafia is now so embedded in Italian politics and finance that any attempt to remove it might, like cutting out a tumor, end up killing the patient. Simply put, Italy seems to have lost control of the southern half of the country, and any serious attempt to destroy the Mafia would cause so much economic/political disruption and dislocation that no ruling party is likely to risk undertaking such a campaign. This is an issue that concerns the EU as well, because significant chunks of the European economy are now controlled by the Mafia, and their growing financial muscle could seem them become a de facto member of the EU.

This isn't a book filled with colorful tales of Mafia shootouts and assassinations (alright, there are a few), but it is a wake-up call for anyone who thinks the Mafia is nothing more than a localized Italian problem. It's also a reminder that any capitalist organization, no matter how criminal, becomes immune to prosecution once it becomes large enough and powerful enough to get its hands on the levers of power. .

Film Review: Malena (2000)

Back in the late 1970s and early '80s my friend Andrew and I were frequent attendees at Toronto's trio of grindhouse cinemas: the Rio, the Biltmore and the Coronet. Of course, back then the term grindhouse didn't exist. We just thought of these theatres as places where for one low price you could watch five extravagantly crappy movies. The patrons were exclusively male and either retired, unemployed or homeless. A lot of snoozing went on at these grindhouses. One of the three had a cat that liked to patrol up and down the aisle, feasting on the mice that hoovered up the spilled popcorn. And the washroom of the Biltmore was either a gay cruising spot or a drug den. I never hung around long enough to find out which.

The bill of fare at these cinemas usually consisted of a kung fu film, a horror/slasher offering, an action movie of some kind (western, cop, adventure), an older A-list film, and finally, and inevitably, some softcore porn. The porn usually took the form of a sex comedy, and they came from the four corners of the world, although by the time they made it to Toronto they were usually heavily scratched and missing whole scenes. And in this way I received a beginner's course in sexy-time world cinema.

Robin Askwith-Jagger

The Brits were represented by the Confessions of (a Window Cleaner/Driving Instructor, etc.) series of films, and, to a less sexy degree, the Carry On films. The Confessions franchise (four in all) starred Robin Askwith, an actor who owed his success to looking like Mick Jagger's brother. Whether he was a better-looking or uglier brother is up for debate. Anyway, Robin's role was always that of a cheery, chirpy working-class bloke, Cockney division, who stumbles and bumbles his way into ogling, or having sex with, a variety of women, most of whom sit a few rungs up on the social ladder. The key point in these films (and the Carry On films) is that the men are generally reluctant Lotharios. They always seem baffled or embarrassed by the prospect of sex. This certainly helps fuel the comedy, but the lesson learned is that Brits find sex to be an essentially ridiculous activity.

As for German sex comedies...well, comedy in reference to anything German is probably stretching a point, but they did try. Their films often took the form of traveler's tales, beginning with a group of men and women meeting in a railway carriage, bar or hotel who decide to pass the time by telling stories of sexual escapades. As a storytelling device this format dates back to Boccaccio's The Decameron, but it was an effective way to trot out six or seven erotic tales. And the Germans were all about the eroticism. No fannying about like the English; the German films kept the comedy at its most basic level ("Oh, no! Your badly-behaved dachsund has torn my dress off!") and moved straight to the romping. Germans seem to take their sex seriously.

American sex comedies ran towards stories about horny teenagers in high school. They were dull and predictable, and the teenagers always looked closer to their thirties than their teens. Occasionally the grindhouse would offer up an older American blue movie, the sort of film that featured tales of wife-swapping and lots of polyester clothing. I'd have to say Americans just don't approach sex with any kind of imagination.

And now we come to the Italians. As you would expect from a country that produced Silvio "Bunga Bunga" Berlusconi, Italian sex comedies have off-the-charts levels of testosterone. The men in these films are inflamed and engorged by the slightest glimpse of a woman's anatomy, and to that end a lot of time is spent in scenes of voyeurism. And once they spot naked female flesh, their exaggerated cries and hoots act like a Greek chorus of lust . Need I mention the accompanying hand gestures and arm waving? Interestingly, these films often had the least amount of actual sex. The whole point of them was apparently to show male desire reaching the boiling point. The other peculiarity of these films is that they often feature young teens (sometimes very young teens) lusting after adult woman and even bedding them. Want another oddity? Each of these films seemed to have a requirement for one terrifically ugly male to end up getting it on with a Sophia Loren lookalike. I suppose the answer to all this weirdness lies in the toxic combination of Catholicism, machismo and patriarchy, but it makes for some awesomely bad and entertaining schlock.

And how does Malena fit into all this? The answer is that it's nothing less than a big budget, epically-scaled version of the classic Italian sex comedy, which thereby makes it possibly the worst Italian film of all time. Why? Because it's attempting to hide it's softcore, exploitation roots behind a patina of production values, top quality cinematography, hordes of extras, and the heady combination of Monica Belluci's sex appeal and acting ability. I hope she got a boatload of lira for this film because the director doesn't miss a chance to exploit her body. When she isn't being spied upon while undressing, she's being groped by a conga line of gargoyle-ugly men. On top of all this we have a boy barely in his teens who worships her from afar and likes to imagine himself in her arms, breasts, legs and so on. The plot? Malena (Belluci) is the town hottie and all the men lust after her. Vile rumours circulate that she's bedding men for money, rumours that everyone is happy to believe in. Malena eventually decides she might as well profit from her reputation and becomes a prostitute, largely because it's the only way she can provide for herself in World War II Italy.

Malena is also a blatant ripoff of Fellini's Amarcord, copying that classic's comic tone and style down to the last detail. There's a definitely a case of copyright infringement here. The other film it steals from is Malizia, a classic cheapo sex comedy from the 1970s starring Laura Antonelli, the Monica Belluci of her day. That film was also rife with voyeurism and horny little boys. The most shocking thing about Malena is the respect it's garnered over the years. There are special edition DVDs, and I wouldn't be surprised if the Criterion Collection added it to its catalogue one of these days. This is further proof, as if any was needed, that the film world is still in the sweaty hands of 16-year-old boys.

Book Review: Bandit Love (2009) by Massimo Carlotto

I'm a big fan of Massimo Carlotto, but Bandit Love is a mess. Carlotto is one of the better Italian crime writers, and knows more about the subject of crime than most writers thanks to having once been thrown in prison for a murder he didn't commit. His autobiographical novel about his ordeal, The Fugitive, is sensational, and his crime novels The Goodbye Kiss and The Master of Knots are lean, tough and gritty.

The problem with Bandit Love is that it's issue-driven. The issue is the corruption of Italian society from top to bottom and from side to side. In the Italy of Bandit Love everyone takes bribes, pays bribes, use drugs, sells drugs, hires illegal immigrants, or is an illegal immigrant. And while Carlotto obviously has a lot to say on this subject, he doesn't have a plot to carry his editorializing along for the ride. The story has "Alligator" (Carlotto's private eye character) helping a friend track down his kidnapped girlfriend. That story is wrapped up halfway through the novel and then Carlotto switches gears and we follow Alligator and his friends as they take revenge against the Serbian mafia boss responsible for kidnapping the woman. Both plots are lazily developed and generate zero tension.

Another sign that Carlotto really didn't have a coherent plan for this novel is that he has Alligator nattering on about jazz and blues, mentioning his favourite songs, and so on. Any time a crime writer has his main character making frequent commentaries about music, films, food or local history, you know the author's treading water because his plot is too thin. If Silvio "bunga-bunga" Berlusconi is any indication I can well believe that Italy is as rotten as it's depicted in Bandit Love, but whining and bitching about it isn't a good basis for a novel. Carlotto should take a look at Dominique Manotti, a French crime writer who effortlessly mixes political commentary with complex, fast-paced, violent plots.

Below is the trailer for Arrivederci Amore, Ciao, the film version of The Goodbye Kiss. The film's excellent, and even though the trailer isn't in English, it is available on DVD with English sub-titles.