"The Public"
Rating
SupportConsume If Free
Neo-Marxism
Affirmative Action
Try as it might to seem hip and relevant, Emilio Estevezโ€™s hero-librarians vanity project The Public never manages to shake a vague feeling of being something slightly quaint left over from the 1990s. Estevez, in a role perhaps intended to reference the actorโ€™s iconic turn as a cool school library detainee in The Breakfast Club, appears as an idealistic but hardship-weathered employee of the Cincinnati Public Library whose personal and professional ethics are tested when a mob of crazy homeless men occupies the facility and demands to be allowed to use the library as an overnight shelter on a bitterly cold evening. Curiously, writer-director-producer Estevez appears to cling to the outmoded liberal convention of the white savior coming to the aid of downtrodden blacks and browns โ€“ in 2019. Star-power casting, with Christian Slater and Alec Baldwin also appearing, make the movie more watchable than it probably deserves to be. 3 out of 5 stars. Ideological Content Analysis indicates that The Public is: Green. Annoying but well-meaning millennial chick Jena Malone rides the bus to work to reduce her carbon footprint, and the presence of a taxidermied polar bear (โ€œBeary Whiteโ€) in the library serves to remind the viewer of wildlife impacted by melting ice caps. Anti-drug. One subplot involves the search for a missing opioid addict (Nik Pajic). Estevezโ€™s character is also revealed to be a recovered alcoholic who once lived on the streets. Media-critical. A self-promoting local reporter (Gabrielle Union) intentionally misrepresents the protagonistโ€™s stance of solidarity with the homeless, leaving viewers with the impression that he is a madman holding hostages inside the library. Her cameraman (Ki Hong Lee) objects, but is ultimately complicit in the duplicity. Provocatively, the term โ€œfake newsโ€ is applied to the mainstream media rather than to independent commentators. Communist. โ€œTo each, according to his needsโ€ is very much the moral of the film. Racially confused. The Public represents a partially naรฏve effort at postracialism while also including distinctively anti-white elements. Against expectation, the film casts black actress Gabrielle Union as the unlikable reporter โ€“ showing that blacks can also be bad โ€“ but other blacks in the movie appear well-intentioned or victimized, with some depicted as harmlessly insane. Jeffrey Wright, however, appears as a polished and capable black library director. Christian Slater plays a slickly dressed law-and-order prosecutor and mayoral candidate who, though his political party is never mentioned, represents a heartless all-white Republicanism that must eventually give way to a more inclusive vision represented by his compassionate black political opponent. Oddly, the movie opens with an angry black rapper shouting โ€œBurn the books!โ€ and ranting about tearing down monuments as various unfortunate street people appear queuing up to get into the library and out of the cold. The rapโ€™s apocalyptic vision forecasts what is presumably the fate awaiting reactionary whites who fail to get โ€œwokeโ€ and join the fight against inequality. European-American literary heritage in The Public is a universal legacy and an inspiration for all of โ€œthe peopleโ€, but Europeโ€™s classical civilization is also insulted. The setting of Cincinnati invokes Cincinnatus, the exemplar of selfless public service, but the name โ€œAthenaโ€ โ€“ evoking the Greek goddess of wisdom โ€“ is given to an eccentric old anti-Semite (Dale Hodges) who suspects those around her of belonging to โ€œthe Tribeโ€, while another of the vagrants (Patrick Hume) is nicknamed โ€œCaesarโ€, with antiquity symbolically displaced, homeless, and reduced to pitiable madness in the context of multicultural modernity. A library book defaced with a swastika, meanwhile, reminds viewers of the persistent threat of white bigotry. More interesting is the treatment of the preserved polar bear, โ€œBeary Whiteโ€, which โ€“ whether intentionally or otherwise โ€“ evokes โ€œpolar bear huntingโ€ or the anti-white โ€œknock-out gameโ€ in a ghettoized urban setting in addition to bolstering the global warming messaging. The film concludes with a shot of the towering, fierce, and triumphant-looking polar bear, which is perhaps intended to symbolize the moral victory of white-liberal-savior-with-soul Emilio Estevez, who redeems himself and his race and hopefully avoids the hunt by self-sacrificingly taking up the cause of impoverished minorities. The irony of such an interpretation is that the life-like bear is merely a feat of accomplished taxidermy and that the once-majestic creature is already dead inside.
Apr 21st 2019
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