Week Four: Broncos at Bears Open Thread
Why Do I Like the Chicago Bears this Week?
I.
Always.
Like.
THE.
Chicago.
Bears.
(The following is a work-in-progress introduction for a longer piece I’m developing about a fascinating period of cinematic history. And it seems quite fitting to be writing about rubble right now on a Chicago Bears blog.)
“Let’s go up to my apartment. It’s only a few ruins away from here.”
-Erika von Schlütow (Marlene Dietrich), A Foreign Affair (1948)
Robert Shandley, in his book Rubble Films, argues that “the end of World War II not only brought with it the destruction of the genocidal German nation state, but it also signified the end of an entire people’s understanding of itself.” (Shandley 1) This existential crisis not only permeated the psyche of the post-Hitler German citizenry, grappling with the innate evil of their actions and the questionable morality of their inaction, it was also pervasive in the nation’s once proud film production industry which, spearheaded by Joseph Goebbels during the war, had been relegated to a propaganda tool for the Third Reich’s vile notions of “a master race.” The national cinematic machine responsible for influential expressionist works such as Robert Wiene’s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) and Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927) was now enlisted to produce contemptible, antisemitic detritus like The Rothschilds and The Eternal Jew, both in 1940.
The work produced in Germany in the period immediately after the war (1946-1949) is referred to as trümmerfilme, or rubble films. These pictures, created as “Germany lay in physical, political, and moral chaos” (Shandley 2), were shot directly on the ruins of major cities like Berlin and Munich; their mise-en-scene providing an immediate historical reminder for the spectator and a sociopolitical context for the action depicted. The “rubble” of rubble films suggests that while the war may be over, the German people will be attempting to excavate a postwar identity from the landscape for years to come.
But categorizing this period of German cinema as exclusively German ignores an essential nuance of its production structure. One must navigate beyond a formalist investigation of the texts and engage in a broader historiographic approach. Cultural historian Mary Rizzo, analyzing representations of Baltimore in her book Come and Be Shocked, provides a framework for such an inquiry:
Understanding how a film or TV show shapes and reflects society requires more than examining its depiction of a place. We understand the political economy by asking, Who gets to produce culture? Who has access to funding? Whose work is circulated? How does the meaning of text change as it circulates? Culture is a space of struggle over power, politics and place. (Rizzo 13)
It is Rizzo’s “space of struggle” that applies to any properly considered discussion of the trümmerfilme period. As the allies came to occupy German territory, and specifically German cities, they sought to limit cultural and religious activity, “passing laws such as Law 191 of the Military Government, Germany…which transformed the German film industry from an industrial superpower to a cottage industry in a matter of weeks.” (Shandley 10) In the year immediately following the German surrender on May 7, 1945, no films were produced in Germany; a period historically known as the “Filmpause”. As the United States, Great Britain, France and the Soviet Union apportioned sections of these cities, cinema production was slowly resumed, with the allies installing their own censorship guidelines and insisting that German cinema in the aftermath of the war be an antidote to the poisonous cinema of the war.
Another emerging dynamic of the period was the blossoming ideological hostility between the Americans and the Soviets, portending the Cold War that was to define the remainder of the 20th Century. The American sector was frequently visited by emissaries from Hollywood, including German émigré Billy Wilder, and it was believed the primary focus of these tours was to “seek ways for the Americans to establish a monopoly in Germany.” (Shandley 13) The American motivation was unsurprisingly driven by economics while, by contrast, the Soviet motivation was politically driven, as they sought to “establish ideological control” over those they now occupied. (Shandley 17)
Understanding this context, the trümmerfilme period should not be considered an explicitly German one, but instead a transnational artistic, commercial – and perhaps most importantly – moral collaboration between a defeated Germany and the colonizing forces that had stripped the nation of its sovereignty. While there is a collection of films written, directed and produced by Germans, including the period’s seminal work, Wolfgang Staudte’s The Murderers Are among Us (Die Mürder sind unter uns), these films were produced under the strict moral “guidance” of the allied occupiers. Subsequently, the period’s most commercially and critically popular efforts were not German at all, instead reflecting an international intervention in postwar morality by Hollywood and two young, immigrant directors: Wilder (A Foreign Affair, 1948) and Austrian-born Fred Zinneman (The Search, 1948).
Jeff and I are LIVE talking #Bears-Chiefs — come join the conversation!https://t.co/9zbYktsjgE
— Robert Schmitz (@robertkschmitz) September 24, 2023
Robert Altman’s Kansas City (1996)
Why Do I Like the Chicago Bears this Week?
I.
Always.
Like.
THE.
Chicago.
Bears.
Here are my three easy ways to make Sunday’s game a more palatable experience for you, the Bears fan.
(1) If you drink, start drinking at kickoff of the early games. You don’t have to go crazy, but you don’t want to be angrily staring at the television screen as Fields stands endlessly in the pocket, failing to notice both his wide-open receivers and Chris Jones sprinting at him. I recommend 2-3 drinks during the early window, with an option for rapid acceleration as Bears/Chiefs gets out of hand.
(2) Parlay the Chiefs ML with whatever bet you like for Sunday Night Football. You’re not getting anything when the Chiefs win the game, but if you parlay them with either the Steelers OR the Raiders on Sunday night, you’re suddenly in the +odds. If the Bears win, you’re happy! When the Bears don’t win, you’ll have a chance to win a few quid come the evening hours.
(3) Disassociate yourself emotionally. I know this is easier said than done but give it a try. I have personally not invested one ounce of emotion into either of the first two contests this season and I’m the better for it. This is not a good football team. They are poorly coached. They are poorly quarterbacked. And neither of those things is going to radically improve in the coming months. The ceiling for this season is “eh” so why invest more than that?
I.
Always.
Like.
THE.
Chicago.
Bears.
Everybody is down in the dumps, especially those fans who spent the last six months absurdly taunting other fans on social media with dumb phrases like “Fields is going to own the North” and “King Poles.” The Bears are still, quite obviously, not a good team. But no objective analyst expected them to be a good team. We did, however, expect them to be a far better team than was seen at Soldier Field on Sunday.
Forget a grain of salt. Week 1 should be digested with the tonnage of salt that is dumped on Michigan Avenue in anticipation of a January blizzard. That is not to say one should ignore the failings of the Bears against the Packers. But looking around the league, it was quite obvious that half the sport (if not more) was not ready to play regular season football. Joe Burrow couldn’t complete a pass. The Chiefs couldn’t catch. The Giants, with their supposedly top head coach, forgot they had a game. And then there is whatever Josh Allen was doing Monday night.
The Chicago Bears goals for the 2023 season do not change with Sunday’s result. This Bears team can still play relevant football in the month of December. They can still mount a campaign that inches near .500. But in order to do so they have to find a way to win Sunday in Tampa. With Kansas City looming in Week 3, they must do everything in their power to avoid an 0-3 start. (And one could argue a 1-1 start would give the Bears an opportunity to erase the sadness of Week 1 with a Week 3 upset.)
But perhaps most importantly, this program needs to overcome the building toxicity around it and deliver a solid effort. No more somber faces on the sideline. No more complaining about fans to the media. The Bears need belief, and belief only comes with victories. And this club hasn’t had one of those in a long time.
Bottoms. Emma Seligman’s up-and-down comedy has a tour de force final half hour that’ll make it the most rewatchable film of the year.
Oppenheimer. Flashy and beautiful, Christopher Nolan’s historical epic is also a dramaturgically flimsy and emotionally hollow experience.
Past Lives. The foreign darling of the art house scene, Celine Song’s film is a lovely, if minor, effort.
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. If serving no other purpose, this James Mangold-helmed fifth Indy picture has erased the jaundiced memory of the disastrous fourth installment and given one of Hollywood’s finest action heroes a suitable ending.
King Coal. This documentary tone poem, set in central Appalachia, could have been the natural heir to Barbara Kopple’s brilliant Harlan County, USA, but instead is a politically muddled and incomplete work, lacking the depth more voices from the community could have provided.
Note: The First Lady of DBB and I are seeing Barbie tonight, after several failed efforts to check it out. I’ll have thoughts on it next week.
There will be column writing from me throughout the season, but I am going to relegate most of my work to these game previews. I’m incredibly proud of the consistently excellent work being produced under the Schmitz regime at DBB and I hope I’ll now be able add some of my own flavor to the mix.
Why do I like the Chicago Bears this week?
I.
Always.
Like.
THE.
Chicago.
Bears.
Paul Schrader argues, in his seminal essay on film noir, that the “genre” is unique to America, and specifically to a post-war period (mid 40s to late 50s) that found a generation of heroic men returning from war to an uncertain future, and unsure identity. But as we commemorate the 22nd anniversary of 9/11 on Monday, it is interesting to look at a series of films made in New York City in the years after those attacks as questioning not only what it means to be a man in a post-traumatic environment, but also what it means to be the city unfairly targeted as representative of a national political identity to which it often did not and does not ascribe.
There are four films I would recommend looking at in this regard.
25th Hour (Spike Lee, 2002)
Unfaithful (Adrian Lyne, 2002)
Michael Clayton (Tony Gilroy, 2007)
Before the Devil Know You’re Dead (Sidney Lumet, 2007)
As this is a topic for a broader research project of mine, I will not wallow in the weeds here. But these are four films that I consider four of the best of this century. If you’re interested in the aforementioned discussion, feel free to email me: jeff@dabearsblog.com.
I went to St. Peter’s Prep in Jersey City, New Jersey, a noted football powerhouse. During the years I attended the school, 1996-2000, we were anything but a powerhouse. I don’t remember the records each season but I’m pretty certain we lost more games than we won, and the student body enjoyed the work of our mascots, the Marauder and Henchmen, of which I was a proud member of the latter, more than the play of the athletes on the field.
Nevertheless, during this period, the football players had the run of the school. When they didn’t want to go to class, they didn’t, claiming they required medical attention. When teachers challenged their absences, they were strong-armed by head football coach Rich Hansen and the athletics department. Remember, these guys were not “bigger than life” on campus. They were crappy football players on a crappy football team. Nobody was afraid of them. But that didn’t matter. The fear that existed, if that’s the right word, was of the empowered athletic department.
I thought about St. Peter’s Prep as the stories of hazing at Northwestern became national news, due to the brilliant student journalism at The Daily Northwestern. This is not the space to rehash those heinous allegations, but as the stories now circulate through the whole of the university’s athletics department, one thing is clear: the relationship between academic institutions and athletics has been irrevocably broken by an economic empowerment of those running athletic programs and a cult-like exaltation of the most comically fraudulent label in our culture, the “student-athlete.”
College athletics, and mostly college football, is an abhorrent, repulsive, corrupt business. Universities salivate over the financial windfall provided an elite football (or sometimes basketball) program and relish the increase in application rate that accompanies that success. But the culture of college football is forged on pee wee and high school fields all over the country, every day. Coaches are adorned with an absurd infallibility, as if they’re not just guys who likes whistles and got a discount on dry erase boards down the local Walmart. Parents behave like grotesqueries; surrealist portraits of what it means to be an adult and raise a child. And the children, who are still children even when they’ve enrolled at university, simply don’t know any better. That is why when these allegations surfaced against Northwestern head coach Pat Fitzgerald, his players quickly released a group statement in his support. Not because they believe their behavior as a football team was okay, but because they were never taught to know any better.
But be warned, I’m still going to be writing quite often, including a renewed focus on my game previews in-season.
