Bedevil Antifain

Personal distancing requires continual judgements and heightened vigilance, neither of which occur when noses are stuck in smartphones. Besides obvious derelicts, panhandlers, slobs dressed in rags with stains, stumbling drunks, and those without masks fully covering mouths and noses, you'd be right to shun pet owners who play all day with feces and smokers swinging hand to face on a sneeze trapeze. At least you’re already avoiding coworkers who value paychecks over your wellbeing, family members, and other people’s kids. Do you even have to mention sick patients in doctors' offices? Together they probably account for most episodes of contagion. Virus may even exceed 2 meter perimeter by floating on smoke particles, but morons hanging a lit cigarette out a window in a crowded parking lot are not likely to be arrested for a hate crime or terrorist act. Most crime goes unchecked, unreported even. An informal count tallied half of people not wearing masks or taking them off unless right next to those infected, by then too late. You don't know when some careless "covidiot" is going to come around a corner or overtake you from behind. On Labann’s favorite holiday, those in total pandemic denial will gather for Independence Day festivities and line parade routes. Watch next week for the post holiday spike.

Meanwhile, it's well known that human bodies consist of a surprisingly sizable portion, cell count up to 57%, of extra-human microorganisms, including gut biota, outnumbering human cells 10:1, though, since microscopic, only 1 to 4% of body mass. This fact becomes the point of departure for short All These Creatures (Charles Williams, dir., 2018). Award winning actor Yared Scott narrates fictional story of his dad’s bedevilment by them and subsequent suicide. Teen peers and Yared invade empty houses and speculate how these squirming bugs will displace their identities and leave empty husks devoid of selves, their bikes without riders. Where do bugs begin and you end? Most folks can handle germs as long as their brains aren’t affected and immune systems still function. But repeated use of antibacterial cleansers and antibiotic medicines is bound to backlash, expose you to even more lethal disease, such as pneumonia and tuberculosis, and make novel influenza seem a minor inconvenience by comparison.

Human interest stories abound among billions of viewpoints upon which tens of thousands of films are based. Few are as poignant as what history’s quintessential sociopath, Adolph Hitler, did to Christians, Jews and Russians before defeated by global decency in 1945. The list of atrocities is too heartbreaking to enumerate, but his malignant tyranny extended to the smallest details of one’s life. “Our freedom was severely restricted by a series of anti-Jewish decrees: Jews were required to wear a yellow star... to turn in their bicycles... forbidden to use streetcars [and] ride in cars, even their own... I long to ride a bike, dance, whistle, look at the world, feel young and know that I’m free, and yet I can’t let it show.” Such simple pleasures were dreams for hopeful teen Anne Frank in 1943, before being interned in a concentration camp then dying in a typhus epidemic just a month before allied liberation at end of WWII. Toronto artist Jenn Woodall’s ANTIFAin image from zine Girls suggests that the freedom machine is today’s weapon to fight fascists and whoever else is intolerably mean.

Before starring in blockbuster hits like Jurassic Park, Sam Neill was the protagonist in New Zealand drama Sleeping Dogs (Roger Donaldson, dir.,1977). Nestled into a peaceful life on a small Maori island, he’s falsely accused and detained by fascist regime when local tensions flare up. After he escapes and finds a love interest, who he rides around on his bicycle, relentless monsters catch up with him. What else is new? Why all these repressions unless to preserve possessions and properties of those who already own too much? “It is a sin to be rich. You know that it's a low down shame to be poor. You know a rich man ain't got a chance to go to heaven, and a poor man got a hard way to go.” Samuel Lightnin’ Hopkins, written 50 years ago, recorded in 1972, tells it straight how it’s an endless struggle balancing on a tightrope, fulfilling moderate need without succumbing to greed.

“Do you have the time?” asks Jennifer Love Hewitt in If Only (Gil Junger, dir., 2004). It’s never how much time you’re given, but what you do with it. Magically given a second chance to cherish and relive his remaining day with her, Paul Nicholls makes them count. Motor accidents claim millions of lives. Both characters would have been better off riding one of the newly introduced mountain bikes they see on London streets two decades ago. Any Google search will show doe-eyed Client List star Hewitt on a pink lady bike with a basket. Wikipedia, however, lists less than 4 dozen bicycling related films, most of which B&C previously catalogued, but none of which are among 6 dozen Labann described in last several posts. As always with superficial research, can’t just count titles that refer, because you’ll miss other connections a hundredfold. B&C is all about bicycling’s ubiquity, proven through thousands of pages, yet 30 years later, still wondering where’s the love and why bicyclists still aren’t accommodated on streets.

Beto (César Troncoso) builds The Pope’s Toilet (Enrique Fernandez, dir., 2007) on cash stolen from his daughter’s college fund, because he’s anticipating charging use fees for tens of thousands of visitors expected for John Paul II’s stop in Melo, Uruguay, a poverty stricken northeast border town. Plot focuses on several transporters who subsist by arduously bringing goods from Brazil by bike with hopes of avoiding duties levied by corrupt customs officer Meleyo (Nelson Lence). Despite crossing frontier off road and wading though swamps, they frequently get caught and suffer losses. Meleyo later confiscates Beto’s bike, but that barely has any impact on this financial fiasco. Many townsfolk had same idea and invested in market booths, but few visitors show up and none buy anything, which leaves entire region worse off. Dramatized upon actual event, results demonstrate downside of proactive planning around power wielded capriciously.

Vivian Bang plays a naturalized Korean performance artist in White Rabbit (Daryl Wein, dir., 2018). She bicycles throughout contemporary Los Angeles, plants herself in parks and supermarkets, and spouts amplified monologues on Asian-Black tensions during 1992 riots, which had resulted in massive losses stoked by exaggerated news. Her sister asks, “Is it self indulgent to be, like, ‘Okay, I can be an artist today,’ when world’s, like, going crazy?” She replies, “I have to make stuff. If I don’t find a way to express myself, like, I’ll go insane.” Art expression becomes life experience when black fashion model Nana Ghana locks her bike to Vivian’s and messes up important business. They later meet under better circumstances and spend several days together. Vivian lets her lesbian lust for Nana get the better of her before learning to let go.

Judith Davis, who directs and stars in this 2018 French comedy, asks Whatever Happened to My Revolution? Her radical character fights for space to ride a socialist Vélib’ on busy Paris cobblestones to work, but goes by bus after being sacked by her merely liberal bosses. “We have no right to judge people. It’s uninteresting and counterproductive...” Storyline addresses millennial angst and moral judo, but she settles, like everyone these days, for a love interest that fulfills basic needs. Revolution begins and ends as an inner quest. 

Set in 1985 Columbia, Rolling Elvis (Gustavo Torres Gil, dir., 2020), pudgy preteen Julián Andres Salcedo Rodriguez, awakes hoping to skip school and view Tour de France on television, dreams of becoming a professional racer like countryman Luis “El jardinerito” Herrera, sneaks into video room instead of attending assigned class, but suffers embarrassment of combative paternal chastisements and punitive maternal inducements to participate in a talent show. Parents fighting over his fate, he dashes off on his BMX, gets Elvis costume caught, and goes head over heels, winding up a paraplegic. In hospital at least he can watch Tour coverage. Mom (Maria Dalmazzo), a big fan of The King, has entertainer aspirations for son, and hots for a handyman installing a handicap ramp. Portrayal of dad’s homophobia and hypocrisy seem to be handled ham-handedly for a PG-rated after school special. Helped by local kids, who build him an ad hoc hand-cycle, he rides until he can again use his legs a year later.