Pro Commerce

John Law and Christina Harbridge

The photo on the right is of three hundred people who have just walked across the Golden Gate Bridge, starting at 5:30am. The gathering on this fishing dock is for the marriage of John Law and Christina Harbridge. The reception banquet was at the Empress of China for a few hundred more people. It lasted well into the afternoon.

The only reason to report this bit of San Francisciana is that John Law is an institution. John is the true leader and founder of the global urban guerilla movement. John gives credit for founding the movement to Gary Warne who founded the Suicide Club and died a few years after its founding. John and I were both friends of Gary.

All living members of the Suicide Club were brought to the front of the wedding reception and honored. I was in the group but only remembered a few of the others. Why? We did so many things together but the friendship quality was low.

I loved the whole event. Iconoclasts in this environment are fun, kind, warm, gregarious and really enjoyable. I found about half-dozen old friends at the event. It suggests that camaraderie among genuine outlaws can be very real and bonding.

New building downtown

The photo on the right is the current status of the new Bloomingdale Mall, which will be one of the largest indoor malls in downtown America. The central dome of the old Emporium is being preserved.

San Francisco is now the shopping capital of the, correctly termed, San Jose Bay Area. San Francisco has a future of imaginative retail shopping, entertainment and downtown offices for small to moderate size businesses. Most of San Fracisco's future businesses will be either retail related service jobs, managerial or technical professionals.

Passion and movies

The results are in: 17 million versus zero. Seventeen million Americans saw the Gibson JewHate sado-maso movie in the past five days and the average of ten anti-Semitic attacks per week did not measurably increase. The ten acts per week of anti-Semitic graffiti and attacks on synagogues are not easy to measure and variations aren’t easy to detect. But after 17 million Americans saw the movie and nothing measurable happened, I have to reconsider the whole matter.

Europeans may respond differently. Moslems, European and otherwise, are unlikely to see the movie in large numbers.

I blogged on this subject a few days ago; fearing reaction to the movie. I don’t retract my analysis of the movie content. It remains obvious to me that Mel Gibson could not have made this movie unless he firmly and deeply agreed with his father that the Holocaust never happened. Otherwise he would have had some sensitivity to the issue, which he doesn’t.

But I was completely wrong to expect physical action outcomes. Writing a hit piece (as Greg Easterbrook did), or giving a nasty sermon, (as a Pentecostal preacher in Colorado reportedly intended to do), are not traditional frightening anti-Semitism.

I have let my tribal fears overcome my own personal experience. I was wrong about public reaction to the Gibson film.

My personal experience is that movies don’t move people to action. Movies don’t do it now --- movies never did. Movies are cathartic. Movies should be called Catharties; they don’t move people to action.

The strongest experience I had was shortly after the movie Gandhi, with Ben Kingsley, was released. It was January 1983 and I had been demonstrating against opening the new nuclear power plant at San Luis Obispo. I watched California Highway Patrolmen beat peaceful protesters over the head and jab them with specially designed kidney-killer sticks.

I went to the Gandhi, movie and afterwards, with friends, handed out fliers to the people coming out of the movie (in two locations, one at the former Northpoint theater and at the old Van Ness-Sutter theater). The movie shows peaceful Indians protesting the British salt tax and being hit over the head and knocked in a ditch, one by one.

Our flier pointed out the similarity of the CHP to the British soldiers in the movie and urged people to sign protests, phone our protest phone number and sign-up for action in San Luis Obispo.

It was a great, emotional and powerful movie. It was a good flier. Outcome: nothing.

The Academy Awards somewhat supports my Catharties thesis. Every year we have some award winners give a vehement anti-establishment speech, hand sign or remark. Hollywood is also notorious for big donations to lost political causes. I think this is because the Hollywood community understands that their work is entertainment and the most they can do in the world is cathartic.

There are other explanations for the 17 million to zero outcome. Anti-Semitism in America is mostly gone. Lefty anti-Semites didn’t go to the movie. Lefty anti-Semites are mostly inflamed by Israel not Jews, as they claim. And, the movie is not anti-Semitic.

I’ll take the explanation that movies don’t move people to action --- movies are cathartic.