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October 09, 2006

Half Nelson

Three reasons why Half Nelson doesn't deserve its acclaim

By Tram

[Author's note: this is more of a reaction piece, regarding Half Nelson's politics, rather than a comprehensive review.]

1. The Machine as a Fallacious Set-Up

There's a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part, you can't even passively take part, and you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop! And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!
-Mario Savio, 1964

IN THE BEGINNING OF HALF NELSON, Dan Dunne (played by the appealingly slackerish Ryan Gosling) is showing an archival footage of the late Mario Savio on the steps of Berkeley to his middle school class. Within a quick zoom-in, we see Savio in all of his passionate fervor, exclaiming why we need to control the gears of the machine.

I nodded my head, obligingly, in spite of the fact that it seemed a tad bit questionable that writer/director Ryan Fleck was condoning Dan's Hegelian dialectics lessons. (Shouldn't middle school students learn basic civics, first, as opposed to philosophy?)

A few moments later, however, I just couldn't take it anymore, as an ignorant exchange went on between Dan and a fellow female student.

The girl asks Dan, "Aren't you the machine?"

"You're saying I'm the machine?" he asks.

"You're white… and private school."

"Oh yeah, I guess you got me. Alright, so I'm part of the machine. But if I'm part of it, so are you. We all are."

Those last words just gave me the shudders. I couldn't believe that I was hearing.

Just when I thought it couldn't get any worse, Fleck and co-writer Anna Boden had to add this to the conversation, via Dan's mouthpiece: "Let's say it's a metaphor - he's saying this machine is keeping me down. What is that? What's keeping us from being free?"

Within that one moment (the use of "us" — as opposed to "you"), Dan has referred to himself as an equal to his fellow students. That comparison is, quite frankly, wrong on so many levels.

Yes, Dan and his students, technically speaking, are all "under" the machine. But we must remember that Dan and said students did not start at the same initial point. Dan was born to comfortable middle class American parents. The students, in contrast, belong to the underclass, as well as African American race. They lived in different neighborhoods, attended different schools, etc. — the list goes on. It is condescending and outright ignorant to conclude that Dan's freedom is at confined as his students'.

But I suppose these stark realities and differences do not matter to Fleck and Boden. They reductively use Hegel's dialectics (thesis + anithesis => synthetic change) to deceptively infer that middle class white people are just as oppressed as the lower class and/or people of color. Their line of "logic" is that since white liberal guilt-laden Dan is struggling with the antithetical system — just as working class Savio did — that we should, for godknowswhy, perceive both struggles as equally relevant and immediate.

Marshall McLuhan once famously said that "Art is what you can get away with". Judging by the flattering critical reception Half Nelson garnered during its rounds at Sundance and late summer theatrical release, McLuhan may have had a point. Fleck and Boden seems to have gotten away with it — their white liberal guilt rhetoric has become mistakened for sheer logic.

2. A Syndrome That Just Doesn't Wear Off

I KNOW SOME READERS, at this point, are probably wondering, "What the f*ck? What vendetta does this writer have against white liberals?"

I say to you: no, I actually don't hold a grudge against white liberals. I consider myself liberal in such a capitalist setting (I loathe both capitalism and communism, truth be known). It's not liberals or whites that bug me - it's rather the white liberal guilt syndrome itself, which plagues this film's themes. To paraphrase a former professor whose words still resonate with me today: Nothing good nor effective comes out of guilt. Give me productive actions over counterproductive guilt, any day!

Throughout Half Nelson, we are suppose to believe that white liberal guilt is futile and that Dan, the victim of white liberal guilt, has sedated himself with some crack. But for all that I know, Fleck isn't really admonishing white liberal guilt — he uses it as merely a set-up.

Enter Drey (Shareeka Epps), one of the students Dan befriends in class. She has nobody, except for her working mom. Her dad has abandoned her. Her brother is imprisoned. These days, she hangs around with Frank (Anthony Mackie), a drug dealer and friend of her brother.

It would only be a matter of time before the overprotective Dan confronts Frank.

After reading a myriad of fawning reviews, this was the point where a laud to Half Nelson and all of its drawn "complexities" (i.e. drug addict Dan is being hypocritical) were supposed to be in order.

Disappointingly, I found nothing to laud for.

The entire subplot, revolving around Dan's crack addiction, seems to function for two main reasons: first, it would, as mentioned, absolve the film from any claims of white liberal guilt, and second, the audience would have an easier time rooting for Dan to "save" Drey, in light of the fact that he is flawed but nonetheless, good intentioned-at-heart.

3. Redemption in all its Shallow Glory

THERE HAS BEEN MUCH DISCUSSION about Half Nelson's ending and what the entire film is trying to illuminate, in general. Many people who absolve Half Nelson from its white liberal guilt syndrome claim that the ending is ambivalent since we aren't informed as to what shall happen to Dan and Drey beyond those last few frames.

I personally think that Half Nelson, in spite of its "on-the-fence" ending, is anything but ambivalent. It is fair to assume that the central conflicts between Dan and Drey and Dan and Frank are intentionally exemplified - by the filmmakers themselves - as Hegelian dialectics in action. In each pairing, the two players serve as thesis and anti-thesis.

And with Hegel in mind, I ask any Half Nelson defenders: Why have a thesis and anti-thesis in toe, if you are not going to have the two main opposing forces (Dan and Drey) redeem clash and create results? Fleck may play coy, on-camera, for all that he cares, but the rhetorical factors that surround the film are set in play for synthetic change.

The disturbing thing out of this set-up may just be the redemptive component — the recognition that Dan and Drey do, in fact, redeem one another and produce (for all likelihood, positive) change. If we push this mentality further, we can just unearth what is probably the most unsettling contradiction that I can only surmise was not Fleck or Boden's foremost intent: "Dan-as-Drey's-surrogate father" angle is emblematic of the white man's burden, liberal style.

The irony is that I looked forward to Half Nelson, assuming beforehand, that it was going to be the anti-thesis of, say, The Constant Gardener.

I could not have been more wrong.

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