[Peace] Fw: SHU TV Note: "The Phenix City Story" (7/17)

[David Green]

----- Forwarded Message ----
From: David Shasha <david.shasha.shu at gmail.com>
To: davidshasha at googlegroups.com
Sent: Tue, July 13, 2010 8:30:53 AM
Subject: SHU TV Note: "The Phenix City Story" (7/17)


“The Phenix CityStory” will be screened on Turner Classic Movies, Saturday, July 
17th at 2:00 PM
 
 
On Fighting Lost Causes
 
"The Phenix CityStory" (Phil Karlson, 1955)
 
Many people staunchly avoid getting involved in what would be considered lost 
causes.  A lost cause is one that is noble, but is laden with challenges that we 
would much prefer to sidestep in order to ensure our personal comfort.  While we 
often question the role of God in the world, many of the ills that we face are 
those that we as human beings have created.  Human suffering can often be due to 
causes beyond human control, but as we have seen in the Hurricane Katrina 
tragedy, natural disaster can be mitigated - or conversely made worse - by the 
things that human beings do.
 
A shameful episode in recent American history - an episode that is completely 
unknown to us today, is the story of mob rule in a town called Phenix Cityon the 
border of Alabamaand Georgia.
 
The story of Phenix City, which captured national headlines in the 1950s, is a 
tragic yet simple one: Across the river from Columbus, Georgia, home to 
FortBenning, Phenix City's criminal element saw vast commercial opportunities in 
the creation of a network of gambling establishments to cater to the army 
personnel in their recreational hours.  A leadership cadre of crime bosses 
bought the local officials and law enforcement agencies who served as a 
protection racket to secure the vice industry in Phenix City.  Along a patch of 
14th Street, gambling establishments took root and gripped the town in a 
vise-like stranglehold.
 
A group of local citizens banded together, against all odds, to try and turn 
back this scourge in their home town.
 
In his Film Noir classic - a film that, for inexplicable reasons, is unavailable 
on either DVD or videotape - Phil Karlson has reconstructed the events in Phenix 
Citywhich led to the eventual ouster of the syndicate by a lawyer named Albert 
Patterson who successfully ran for the office of Alabama's Attorney General.  
The story of Phenix Cityis a prime example of the ways in which ordinary human 
beings can rise up and take back their lives from those who would have them 
prisoner to corruption, greed and evil.
 
Karlson tells this story in a way that is surely familiar to those Noir buffs 
who understand and appreciate the ways in which that genre represents reality.  
Beginning oddly with an actual real-life report by the journalist Clete Roberts, 
we see for a few minutes the main real-life protagonists in the story - people 
whose lives were endangered by their heroic struggle against the criminal 
elements who had run the town.  These people are soft-spoken and quite ordinary 
- there is little to overtly suggest that they are of a heroic character.
 
After the short but chilling prologue, the actual film begins.  We quickly see 
in the documentary style that was so much a part of the Noir style of the 1950s 
how it was that Phenix Citybecame what it did.  With the use of sex, liquor and 
gambling, the town was forced to accept a degraded and corrupt system that was 
run with ruthless efficiency.
 
As the story develops we see the corrupt ways in which the syndicate operates.  
They will kill and maim at will - in the most shocking scene in the film, a very 
young black girl is murdered and thrown onto the lawn of the lawyer Albert 
Patterson in a grotesque display of brutality and as a warning to those who 
might choose to do battle with the syndicate.
 
The more that people band together to fight the mob, the more violence the mob 
perpetuates against them.  But rather than give in, those who have taken on this 
lost cause of fighting the powers-that-be intensify their commitment and become 
fearless crusaders against evil.
 
The lynchpin in this process is Patterson's son John, just returned from his 
tour of army service as a lawyer at the Nurembergtrials, who exhorts his father 
- and a wife who is ready to leave him if he takes the cause on - to lead the 
fight.  It is the elevation of the respected lawyer Albert Patterson who turns 
the cause into one that can be won.  After spending fruitless years trying to 
band together to turn back the corruption, the group now has a leader who has 
the cachet to take the cause on and win it.
 
The road to victory is not easy, nor is it without tragedy.  Dozens are injured 
and intimidated and some are killed by the mob whose ruthlessness harshly tests 
the resolve of those who want their town back.  Any break in their commitment 
and the mob would have won.  But understanding that there are causes that need 
to be fought in the name of justice and of simple human decency, those citizens 
of Phenix City who took on the evildoers, those who profited from the criminal 
activity and those too weak to stand up to them, fulfilled their responsibility 
to make their world a better place and did so at very great personal risk to 
their own safety and well-being and to the safety and well-being of their 
families and loved ones.
 
This is a moral theme that is as rare as it is noble and precious: Like the 
Biblical prophets of old who were asked by God to go to their countrymen and 
speak words of truth however hard they were to swallow, those in our day and age 
who rise up from the stupor that rules our narcoleptic society, a place where 
looking after number one is the priority and helping others is seen as a matter 
of lesser importance, are the ones who promote God's vision for humanity.
 
While we see the selfishness, apathy and isolationist ignorance that permeates 
all levels of our society and its debased culture, we must remain completely 
aware that those who do the work of social repair often live in the shadows of 
society - alone, ignored, brutalized, often humiliated and made a mockery of - 
and left to sit in their isolation unsure if anyone gives a damn about their 
cause and the harrowing difficulties they face in human terms.
 
In this sense, we can point to the endless litany of the nameless heroes of the 
human past who have stood up to evil and have been forced to pay for their 
activism with their lives or with their own personal security.  We are able to 
live decent and secure lives because of the sacrifice of those who have made the 
decision not to live in security and luxury.  While we are constantly made aware 
of the rich and the famous - those parasites who offer us very little of true 
substance in the quality of life - the whistleblowers and do-gooders are often 
left out of our purview.  Frequently, those who take on the lost cause do so at 
great personal risk.
 
But without those who anonymously and selflessly work to better our society to 
root out corruption and dishonesty, we would live in a world of darkness and 
evil.
 
"The Phenix City Story" is a film that I was made aware of by one of its biggest 
fans, the director and film scholar Martin Scorsese.  The film is not available, 
as I said, for purchase and is rarely screened on television.  I had the 
privilege of recently seeing it on one of the Cinemax channels and a recent 
search on their website indicates that the film will not be screened in the near 
future.
 
But if at all possible, keep a close eye out for the next screening of the film 
- it is one of the most stirring examples of an American art that speaks to the 
most elevated morality of our culture.  It is a cry for people to look around 
them and fight the evils in their midst.  It is a passionate argument against 
mindless apathy and nihilistic cynicism - the very things that have made our 
civilization one of the most selfish and uncaring in the history of the world.  
We fear taking on the lost cause because we are afraid to make the personal 
sacrifices that are necessary to win the battle.  But if we do not take on 
the fight, as this landmark film argues, we are left living in a world that is 
polluted by the greed and evil of the corrupt.
 
 
 
David Shasha 
 
 
 
From SHU 178-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Sephardic Heritage Update" group.
To post to this group, send email to Davidshasha at googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to 
Davidshasha+unsubscribe at googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit this group at 
http://groups.google.com/group/Davidshasha?hl=en.



      
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.chambana.net/pipermail/peace/attachments/20100713/785787ba/attachment.html>