Today's Stories

April 3-5, 2009

Kathy Kelly /
Brian Terrall
Getting a Closer Look at the Killer Drones

April 2, 2009

Robert Weissman
What If Obama Had Treated Detroit Like Wall Street?

Eric Toussaint /
Damien Millet
A G20 Meeting for Naught

George Bisharat
Israel's Impunity Must End

Russell Mokhiber
Something is Rotten at PBS

Franklin Lamb
Has Washington Lost Lebanon?

Gareth Porter
Settling Scores in Iraq: Maliki Draws US Troops into Crackdown on Sunni Rivals

David Macaray
Obama and the Ruling Class: "Only the Little People Pay Taxes"

Chris Genovali
B.C.'s Bloody Grizzly Hunt

Sam Smith
The Politics of Adulation

Suzan Mazur
Is Neo-Darwinism Dead?

Website of the Day
Fighting for Change in St. Louis

April 1, 2009

Chris Floyd
Surging Further Into the Afghan Abyss

Stanley Heller
Israeli War Crimes: Thank God, It Was Only Rumors

Mark Brenner, Mischa Gaus and Jane Slaughter Obama's Perilous Plan for Detroit: Restructure the Big 3, But Not With Bankruptcy

Jonathan Cook
The Slow Demise of Ehud Olmert

Eric Walberg
EU in Tatters: Only the Protesters Have Any Vision

Richard Morse
Why Haiti Can't Forget Its Past

Don Fitz
Guess Who Came to Dinner with a Match? Green Mayoral Candidate's Van Firebombed in St. Louis

Laray Polk
Texas and Evolution

Belén Fernández
12 Años de Soledad?

Harvey Wasserman
Cracking the Media Silence on Three Mile Island

Website of the Day
Pentagon Fraud Investigations Fell, While Contracts Soared

March 31, 2009

Uri Avnery
The Deception Tango

Peter Lee
Ghosts in the Machine: the World's Hottest Cyberwar Battlefield

Nicholas Dearden
A New Global Debt Crisis

Dave Lindorff
The Obama Betrayal

Joanne Mariner
"We'll Make You See Death"

Ron Jacobs
Obama's Pakistan Gambit

Wiliam S. Lind
Another Lost War

David Michael Green
Who Says the GOP Doesn't Have a Plan?

Benjamin Dangl
Beyond Elections in the Americas

Johnny Barber
Meditation in Orange

Dedrick Muhammad
Economic Inequality: the Foundation of the Racial Divide

Website of the Day
How the Obama Dems Took Over the Peace Movement

March 30, 2009

Michael Hudson
Financing the Empire: Do US Face G20 Mutiny?

Patrick Cockburn
What Next in Afghanistan?

Henry A. Giroux
Hard Lessons

Mike Whitney
Where's Eliot Spitzer Now That We Need Him?

Ralph Nader
Where's All the Money Coming From?

Paul Craig Roberts
Obama's War on the (Upper) Middle Class

Jeremy Scahill
The Logistical Nightmare in Iraq

Robert Bryce
The Cellulosic Ethanol Delusion

Jonathan Cook
Remembering Land Day in Palestine

Ray McGovern
Obama Bombs

Website of the Day
Hersh: Syria Calling

March 27-29, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Obama's Fall Guy

Arno J. Mayer
Too Big to Fail?

Michael Hudson
How the Scam Works

José Pertierra
Gesture for Gesture: How to Free the Cuban Five

Andy Worthington
A Letter to Obama From a Guantánamo Uighur

Mike Whitney
Geithner's Hog Wallow

Winslow T. Wheeler
What Does an F-22 Cost?

Souad N. Al-Azzawi
Iraq: Let the Numbers Speak for Themselves

Dave Lindorff
A Financial History Lesson

Ian Masters
The Zombie Presidency

Barbara Rose Johnston
Water Culture Wars

Jami Tarn
Smearing Tristan Anderson

Diane Farsetta
The Nuclear Industry Targets Wisconsin

David Ker Thomson Against Democracy

Ramzy Baroud
Netanyahu and the Future of the Peace Process

Rannie Amiri
Saudi Shiites' One-Word Demand

Wajahat Ali
Writer as Fighter: the Genius of Ishmael Reed

Nick Egnatz
Whatever Happened to the Fierce Urgency of Now?

Gregory A. Burris
The Insolents Abroad: a Defense of Iceland

Missy Beattie
This Land

Stephen Martin
The Broken Stone of Corporatism

Charles R. Larson
Obama, Smoking and Me

David Yearsley
How They Built Bach's Face (Is the Bard Next?)

Ben Sonnenberg
Won't You Please Get Thee Behind Me? Buñuel's Simon of the Desert

Kim Nicolini
The Mafia Without Moralizing: Garrone's Gomorrah

Lorenzo Wolff
Pat Boone Syndrome

Poets' Basement
Four Poems by Paulann Petersen

Website of the Weekend
Ann Coulter: a Portrait by Ben Tripp

March 26, 2009

Paul Craig Roberts
Is the Bail Out Breeding a Bigger Crisis?

Sharon Smith
Another Blow to Labor ... from the Democrats

Neve Gordon
Avigdor Lieberman, Israel's Shame

Patrick Madden
Why the Geithner Plan Will Fail

Gareth Porter
The Big Con on Iraq

Dave Lindorff
Why Do We Need a Health Insurance Industry?

Hannah Safran
The Israeli Resistance: "Ready to be Traitors"

Keith Newell
Will the Cellphone Please Take the Stand?

Todd Chretien
Behind the Green Collar

Nelson P. Valdés
When It Comes to Cuba and the Media Anything Goes

Website of the Day
G20 Meltdown

March 25, 2009

Robin Blackburn
Media Revolution or Mirage?

Conn Hallinan
Europe in Crisis

David Rosen
Sexting: a First Amendment Challenge for Obama

Jonathan Cook
Turkey's Fallout with Israel Deals Blow to Settlers

Dean Baker
Billions More for Failed Banks

Ron Jacobs
Karzai on a String

Russell Mokhiber
Corporate Liberals vs. Single-Payer

David Macaray
Slice and Dice on Card Check

Dave Lindorff
Geithner's Power Grab

Sarah Knopp
LA Teacher's Sit-In Over Layoffs

Website of the Day
How to Create an Animal Rights "Terrorist"

March 24, 2009

Robert Sandels
Obama and Cuba: Real Change or Minor Tweaks?

Harvey Wasserman
People Died at Three Mile Island

Franklin Lamb
Who Tried to Kill Palestinian Ambassador Abass Zaki and Why?

Michael Donnelly
Obama's Team of Losers

Norman Solomon
Denial and Evasion on Afghanistan

Elizabeth Schulte
The Stark Facts About Violence Against Women

John Goekler
The Most Dangerous Person in the World?

Nicole Colson
Is Justice Finally in Sight for Sami Al-Arian?

Global Balkans
NATO's 78-Day Bombing of Yugoslavia: Ten Years On

William S. Lind
Cat-and-Mouse Off Hainan Island

Website of the Day
Video: IDF Fired on Medics in Gaza

March 23, 2009

M. Shahid Alam
Capitalism From the Standpoint of Its Victims

Uri Avnery
Israel's Most Revolting Law?

Mike Whitney
Zombie Economics: Judgment Day for Geithner

Ralph Nader
Bush the Teacher

Brian Cloughley
Tilting at Afghan Windmills

Dave Lindorff
Toxic Bailouts

Amira Hass
The Rules of Engagement in Gaza: Open Fire on Rescuers

Chris Irwin
When Nonprofit Groups Go Bad

Binoy Kampmark
The Celebrity of Celebrity

Michael Dickinson
Tollbridge Over Troubled Waters

Website of the Day
State of the Birds

March 20-22, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
On the Edge of the Volcano

Paul Craig Roberts
When Things Fall Apart

P. Sainath
Slumdogs vs. Billionaires

Robert Weissman
Lessons From AIG

Saul Landau
Sliding Down in Anger: If We Bail Out the Banks, Why Shouldn't We Own Them?

David Michael Green
Obama and the Altar of Greed

Greg Moses
Winter Soldiers Come to Texas

Ron Jacobs
Pakistan in Turmoil: an Interview with Farooq Tariq

Michael D. Yates
A Nation of Immigrants

John V. Whitbeck
Happy New Year, Iran!

Andy Worthington
The Case of Ahmed Zuhair

Linn Washington Jr.
Supreme Test: the Latest Twist in the Mumia Case

David Ker Thomson
Actions: Things to Do Instead of Hailing the Chief

Laurent Jacque
Is the Euro Doomed?

Rannie Amiri
The Middle East's Jittery Monarchies

Reiko Redmonde /
Larry Everest
The Cold-Blooded Murder of Oscar Grant

David Macaray
The Myth of the Powerful Teachers' Union

Kenneth Couesbouc
Where has the Consumption Gone?

Martha Rosenberg
Meltdown in the Drug Industry

Alan Farago
The Recession, the Developers and Baseball

Missy Beattie
Still Waiting for Change

Richard Rhames
Invisible But Not Completely Insolvent

Stephen Martin
Barack and the Jets

Charles R. Larson
Impeach Obama!

David Yearsley
On Bach's Birthday

Lorenzo Wolff
Manic Levity

Poets' Basement
Three Poems by Gary Corseri

Website of the Weekend
Teachers for CEO Merit Pay!

March 19, 2009

Dave Marsh
Sir Bono: the Knight Who Fled From His Own Debate

Paul Craig Roberts
Was the Bailout Itself a Scam?

Mike Whitney
Why Business is Hysterical About Card Check (And Why America Needs It)

Sam Smith
The Economy in Two Eras of Democrats

Harvey Wasserman
The Crash of France's Nuclear Poster Child

Binoy Kampmark
Back Into NATO: the End of French Exceptionalism

Kathy Sanborn
Broken Culture: the Desecration of Iraq's Art Treasures

Christopher Brauchli
Taxing Problems

George Wuerthner
Permanent Damage From Temporary Logging Roads

Diann Rust-Tierney
New Mexico Abolishes the Death Penalty

Website of the Day
Bailout Plan: "Cross Your Fingers and Hope"

March 18, 2009

Michael Hudson
The Real AIG Conspiracy

Paul Craig Roberts
Israel's American Chattel

Nelson P. Valdés
Why Obama's New Cuba Rules Violate the Constitution

Jonathan Cook
Bedouin Villages Left in the Dark Ages

John Ross
The Death of the American Newspaper

Yifat Susskind
Where Are We Leaving Iraqi Women?

Dave Lindorff
Who's Calling the Shots Now?

Frances Moore Lappé
The City That Ended Hunger

Richard Grossman
Beware the Madoff Diversion!

Rev. William E. Alberts
On Being Whole Not Holy

Website of the Day
Three Weeks in Cuba: a Painter's Perspective

March 17, 2009

Michael Hudson
Mr. Bernanke Spreads the Fire

James G. Abourezk
Show Business: AIG and the Posturing Democrats

Harry Browne
Ireland's Blast From the Past

Joanne Mariner
U.S. Human Rights Abuses in the War on Terror

Alan Farago
The National Ponzi Scheme

Dean Baker
Getting Lehman Bros. Wrong ... Again

Peter Morici
Cuts for Autoworkers, Bonuses for Derivatives Traders

Bill and Kathleen Christison
Obama and the Empire

Richard Gott
Victory for the Left in El Salvador

Walter Brasch
Dog Mutilations vs. Cosmetics

Website of the Day
Single-Payer Action

March 16, 2009

Pam Martens
Has a Comedian Just Saved America?

Uri Avnery
The Rape of Washington

Mike Whitney
Bernanke's Witness Protection Program

Ralph Nader
Americans Want Justice for Wall Street Crooks

Nikolas Kozloff
Down But Not Out: the Latin American Right

John Walsh
Redbaiting on the Left

Ron Jacobs
A Call for Common Sense

Binoy Kampmark
The Case of Tim K

Stephen Fleischman
Coxey's Army Will March Again!

Christian Christensen
A 25-Year Misunderstanding: Springsteen's "Born in the USA"

Scott Handleman
Shooting Tristan Anderson

Website of the Day
Clean, Green, Sustainable

March 13 / 15, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
The Parable of the Shopping Mall

Peter Lee
What the Chas Freeman Fight Was Really About

Diana Johnstone
NATO's Global Mission Creep

David Harvey
Is This Really the End of Neoliberalism?

Petrino DiLeo
Inside Obama's Housing Plan: Will Millions be Left Out in the Cold

David Ker Thomson
Tender to the Earth

Eric Ruder
Massacre in Slow Motion: an Interview with Haider Eid on Gaza

Fred Gardner
Cannabidiol Now!

David Yearsley
Music Torture

Saul Landau
How Israel Gives Jews a Bad Name

Laura Carlsen
Drug War Doublespeak

Robert Weissman
We Told You So

John Goekler /
Merle Lefkoff
The Struggle in Saffron

Tom Barry
Imprisoning Immigrants for Profit

Kathy Sanborn
Money Out of Thin Air

Chris Mobley / Leela Yellesetty
Criminalizing Poverty: the Jail Seattle Doesn't Need

David Michael Green
The Perils of Being Right and Wrong

Alan Maass /
Lee Sustar
A Socialist Moment?

Christopher Brauchli
Pity, the Poor Tax Collectors

Richard Morse
Clinton in Haiti

Lorenzo Wolff
Taking It From the Streets: From Springsteen to the Wu-Tang Clan

Poets' Basement
Springate and Johnston

Website of the Weekend
Hear the Buffalo

March 12 , 2009

Sharon Smith
Bottom Feeders at the Trough

Christopher Ketcham
Full Spectrum Penetration: Israeli Spying in the United States

Mike Whitney
Haircut Time for Bondholders

Ray McGovern
Obama Caves to the Lobby

Eric Toussaint /
Damien Millet
The Doublespeak of a Discredited IMF

John Ross
The War is Not Over

M. Reza Pirbhai
Men in Black: Another View of Pakistan

Chris Floyd
Lost Liberty Blues: Prisons, Profits and the Banality of Evil

Steve Early
Why Labor Doesn't Need a "House of Lords"

Quentin Gee
Hiding the Costs of Coal

Website of the Day
Amadee Coral Reef: a Spherical Panorama

March 11 , 2009

Mike Roselle
From Birmingham to Coal River: Why is the Environmental Movement So Timid?

Paul Craig Roberts
The Criminal Injustice System

Henry A. Giroux
Academic Labor in Dark Times

Nikolas Kozloff
The Death Cries of the Salvadoran Right

Norm Kent
I am Patient Number 380206011

Mitu Sengupta
Reforming the World Bank: Different Image, Same Tune?

Ludwig Watzal
The Structure of Israel's Occupation

David Macaray
The Battle Over EFCA Has Begun

William S. Lind
Rounding Up the Usual Suspects

Martha Rosenberg
A Merger From the Folks Who Brought You Vytorin

Website of the Day
American Indicator: One in Fifty Kids are Homeless

March 10 , 2009

Franklin Spinney
What Israeli Peace Process?

Vijay Prashad
What Did Hillary Clinton Do?

Stan Cox
There's No Free Lunch on Your Browser: the Internet's Energy Drain

Zoltan Grossman
Coffee Strong: Listening to the G.I. Voice at Fort Lewis

Reuven Kaminer
Pure and Unadulterated Racism

Jonathan Cook
Memoricide in the West Bank

Dave Lindorff
Business Rules

Brian McKenna
How Anthropology Disparages Journalism

Harvey Wasserman
Is This the End of the Age of the Automobile?

Corey Pein
He Told You So

Website of the Day
AIG and Systemic Failure: $1.6 Trillion in Insured Deriviatives

March 9 , 2009

Pam Martens
Madoff and the Sorkin Affair

Ralph Nader
Too Big...Period

Peter Lee
Meet Gulbuddin Hekmatyar: the US's Worst/Best Hope for Afghanistan?

Mike Whitney
Geithner's Charade

Peter Morici
Fixing the Banks: Treasury's Doomed Strategy

Dean Baker
Why Do We Need a Private Health Insurance Industry, Anyway?

Steve Ault
Kiss Thailand's Tolerance for Gays Goodbye

Stephen Lendman
Guantánamo Under Obama

Farooq Sulehria
Tennis Without Spectators

Belén Fernández
Chávez, a Cockfight and the Caracazo

Website of the Day
How Lincoln Learned to Read

March 6-8 , 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Harlots High and Low

Chris Floyd
Tangled Up in Karl

Uri Avnery
Remember Ophira?

Dave Lindorff
Kiss the Banks Goodbye

Mark Weisbrot
The Crisis vs. the Dogma

David Ker Thomson
Against Work

Phil Aliff
Soldier Suicides

Rebekah Ward
Georgia Injustice: Another Young Life Wrecked

Tracey Briggs
How Capitalism Feels in the Head

Dean Baker
Depression Nostalgia?

Daniel P. Wirt, M.D.
Remove the Handle From the Health Insurance Misery and Death Pump

Carl Finamore
The Recovery Plan: Save Us From Those Who Would Save Us

Wajahat Ali
The Pakistani Monster

David Michael Green
Smart is the New Stupid

David Macaray
The Minimum Wage Revisited

Michael Dickinson
On Financial Fools Day

Susie Day
Line in the Sand

Bob Sommer
Echoes of the Townhouse Explosion

Ben Sonnenberg
No Forgiveness for the Bourgeoisie: Buñuel's "The Exterminating Angel"

David Yearsley
Sonic Fakery in "Slumdog" From the Mozart of Chennai

DC Larson
They're Writing Those Depression Songs, Again

Lorenzo Wolff
Live Truth: Music Sans Headphones

Poets' Basement
Dominquez, MacNeil and Buknatski

Website of the Weekend
The Environment & Obama: a Conversation with Jeffrey St. Clair

March 5 , 2009

James G. Abourezk
This Time It's Mrs. Clinton's Turn

Kathleen and Bill Christison
U.S. Military Aid to Israel

Robert Weissman
Wall Street's Best Investment: Paying for Public Policy

Patrick Cockburn
My Day at the Terror "Charity"

William Blum
Being Serious About Torture...Or Not

Robert Fantina
From Iraq to Afghanistan: Augmentation All Over Again

Saul Landau
The Unseen Crisis

Benjamin Dangl
Striking a Blow Against the Beer Cartel: a Grassroots Victory in Utah

Christopher Brauchli
The New Leaders of the GOP

Website of the Day
The Angola 3: 36 Years of Solitude

March 4, 2009

Marjorie Cohn
Blueprints for a Police State

Mike Whitney
Blowing Up the Economy: How Securitization Lit the Fuse

Ron Jacobs
The Banality of Occupation: the Rand Papers

Ashley Smith
War by Another Name

Joanne Mariner
Obama's War on Terror

Dan Bacher
The California Water Wars: Why It's Not a Conflict Between Fish and People

Mark Engler
Will the Winds of Change Reach El Salvador?

Franklin Lamb
"What's Hezbollah Done for Us Lately?"

Cal Winslow
Slugging It Out in California

David Mandelzys
Apartheid Week

Website of the Day
Guantánamo: the Definitive Prisoner List

March 3, 2009

Conn Hallinan
Ethnic Cleansing and Israel

Fawzia Afzal-Khan
The Long, Dark Night of Pakistan

Brian M. Downing
The Changing Game in Afghanistan

Robert Larson
External Damnation: Companies are Designed for Destruction

Daniel P. Wirt, MD
Single-Payer Health Reform

Russell Mokhiber
Burn Your Health Insurance Bill!

William Loren Katz
Obama, One Ape and Two Newspapers

Kathy Sanborn
The Lazy Man's Guide to the Economic Crisis

Pauline Imbach
A New Start for the World Social Forum?

Christopher Ketcham
The Best Journalism You'll Write is Priceless

Website of the Day
The Surveillance Self-Defense Project

March 2, 2009

Andrea Peacock
A Poisoned Town's Shot at Justice

Paul Craig Roberts
Obama's Budget

Peter Lee
Pakistan Lurches Toward the Abyss

John Blair
Locking Down Big Coal

Peter Morici
Treasury's Flawed Plan for Citigroup

Uri Avnery
10 Ways to Kill Fatah

Michael Donnelly
Resistance to the War on the Wild

Fred Gardner
The Judge Who Ruled Marijuana is Medicine

Sonia Nettnin
Middle East Medical Mission Heroes

Andrew Lehman
A New Deal for the Web

Website of the Day
Pentagon Papers II?

Eric Holder and the Whitewashing of Racism

Tom Barry
Napolitano's Hard Line

Harvey Wasserman
Obama's Excellent Atomic Omission

Adam Turl
The Enemies of Unions and the Lies They Tell

David Macaray
When People are Fired Illegally

James McEnteer
Rush to the Rescue: Limbaugh's Secret Plan to Save the Economy

Website of the Day
The Carbon Casino

Weekend Edition
April 3-5, 2009

Last House on the Left

Vigilantes of the Bourgeoisie

By KIM NICOLINI

Why would I go see a violent horror film like The Last House on the Left? Mostly because it’s not so much a horror film as it is a revenge narrative, and it’s always interesting to see what the vigilantes are up to in American cinema. Of course, for the first hour or so you’d never know that The Last House on the Left is a revenge film since it is entirely focused on a young virginal white girl (appropriately named Mari) who has a run in with some “very bad people” who eventually beat and rape her for us to witness. As in the original Wes Craven film (1972), the 2009 version is not just any revenge narrative, but a rape revenge narrative in which a cultured bourgeois white family’s (the Collingwoods) sense of order and peace is disrupted by the brutal rape of their virgin daughter. The Collingwoods’ codes of civility rapidly disintegrate when the mother and father find the beaten and violated body of their daughter on the vacation home porch, and the rest of the film follows Mom and Dad as they take matters into their own hands and reap revenge on the bad guys. Where exactly this movie stands on the political scale is certainly questionable, but it is always interesting to consider these kinds of brutally primitive cinematic allegories and what they are saying about the current state of things.

Judging by the State of Things in this movie, I’d say that the highly cultured bourgeoisie with their summer homes and their leisurely vacations feels presently under siege by the rough trade lower classes lurking outside their door and reminding them that that veneer of civility can all come down in a flash given the right (or wrong) set of circumstances. Doctorate degrees and fancy wine glasses aside, when the Collingwoods discover their daughter has been violated, they become as relentlessly violent as the assailants who brutalized her. In fact, they use the very symbols of their domestic stability to perform some extremely gruesome acts of revenge. As the blood is shed, the sham of their civility is reduced to a gory wreck of carnage and viscera.

When the Very Bad Guys first enter the Collingwoods’ home, Sadie (the Bad Girl component of the Bad Guys) comments about how nice and “clean” and “perfect” the kitchen is. Indeed, the kitchen is the locus of the Collingwood’s domesticity. The clean perfect kitchen is the ultimate symbol of comfort and stability. This is where food comes from, where families bond through ritual meals, where bourgeois comforts coalesce in the conglomeration of household appliances and fine foods. In fact, while their daughter Mari is being brutally beaten and raped in the woods across the lake, her parents are enjoying a fine meal prepared in their perfectly clean kitchen. They sip wine, toss salad, and make toasts, while Mary’s body is being shoved into the dirt and befouled by the Rough Trade who aren’t supposed to exist in the Collingwood’s insulated world of bourgeois comfort.  But the Collingwood’s pristine domestic space soon disintegrates as it becomes an abattoir of gore when they seek revenge on Bad.

It’s actually kind of fun watching the transformation of Emma Collingwood (Mari’s mother) as she changes from well-mannered woman in white into blood-soaked maniacal vengeance demon. Standing in her kitchen (the center of domesticity and maternity), Emma uses the very tools of her bourgeois comfort as weapons to attack her daughter’s white trash assailants.  She literally whacks the beer-guzzling Giles with her White Wine Culture when she smacks him in the back of the head with a wine bottle. She then shoves his head in the kitchen sink, attempting to drown his filthy head in her clean soapy water. When that doesn’t work she flips on the garbage disposal and tries to kill him by chopping him up and disposing of him like the “trash” that he is. Yes indeed, it is the Bourgeoisie against the White Trash battling in Mary’s pristine kitchen which at this point is covered with blood, gore, broken glass, and a lot of spilt wine. When Giles still fails to die, Ellen picks up the tools of the working class to do the final job. She plants a hammer in the back of his head, and now you can add brain matter to rest of the mess in the kitchen. Yes, Emma could not kill Giles until she stripped herself of her class comforts completely and assaulted him with a simple hand tool. The camera lingers on this scene with Emma standing in the middle of the kitchen. Her once white blouse is covered with Giles’ blood, and her pure domestic space is soaked with the gore of primal violence.  Goodbye sham of bourgeois stability.

There really is nothing more primal than a mother avenging the hurt of her young. This brings us to the virgin Mari. What about Mari? The film opens with Mari swimming in a pool, her lithe young body slipping effortlessly through water (the clean, the pure, the feminine). The camera then lingers on Mari’s body in all its many guises: Mari pulling on some shorts and slowly zipping them up, Mari putting on a bra, Mari removing her clothes and diving into the lake in her underwear, Mari bending over and revealing the long stretch of her legs connecting to her ass. From the outset of the film, Mari is presented to us as the object of desire. She is eroticized for her purity, and the camera forces us to participate in her eroticization. It fills the screen with her breasts pushing out from under her bra, the smooth flesh of her belly as her nimble fingers work the zipper on her shorts. She is self-consciously presented to us for our consumption, and we consume her hungrily.

The camera’s continued focus on Mari’s body as a kind of sacrificial erotic object makes the brutal rape of her even more disturbing and uncomfortable. We’ve gobbled up her flesh with our eyes. We’ve watched her dress and undress. We’ve witnessed the pristine glean of her virginal skin. So when we participate in its corruption, we feel as dirty as Mari becomes by the crime committed on the screen. When the Very Bad Guy Krug tries to force his son Justin to rape Mari, it mirrors the camera’s role in forcing the audience to be complicit in the act, and ultimately cinema’s role in raping women (literally or metaphorically) for the audience’s pleasure. The scene where Mari and her friend Paige are brutalized by the gang of Bad Guys completely exploits all the exploitation of women in cinema throughout history. It is egregiously overt as the camera hones in on close-ups of their suffering. Their faces are punched, their guts kicked, their bodies shot like so much wild game. This truly is horrific. Their tormented faces fill the screen and look out at us, asking us why we are watching this. When Mari is eventually raped, the camera closes in on her face staring straight out into the audience. Her eyes bore in on us and demand we question our role in this act of violence. After the rape, Mari sits up and fills the entire screen with her violated, dirt and blood-streaked body, and she quietly stares out at us in still silence. The camera extends its focus on that still image of the violated female body long enough to make the audience uncomfortable.

So we endure this extremely violent scene, and we have to ask ourselves to what end does something like this exist? How can you justify the existence of a 45 minute cinematic brutalization of the female body? The Last House on the Left follows what is called a Rape Revenge Narrative, and after experiencing the brutality of the crime, we should be relieved of our complicity by then taking part in revenge against the violators. Traditionally, Rape Revenge Narratives involve the eventual castration of the rapist. In the original The Last House on the Left, Mari is killed by her rapist, and the parents seek revenge. In the notorious castration scene, Mari’s mother offers to give the rapist a blow-job and then bites of his penis in the ultimate act of revenge. In I Spit on Your Grave (1978), the main character Jennife seduces one of her perpetrators into taking a bath with her and then cuts off his penis with a carving knife. The castration scene is critical to justifying the rape revenge narrative. We have to witness and experience the crime and then eradicate the crime by excising the possibility of it occurring again and the potential for us to participate in such egregious violence. By castrating the rapists in these films, we are also castrating the cinematic conventions that participate in the violent pornographic exploitation of the female body. The castration scene validates these films’ existence.

There is one huge problem with the 2009 remake of The Last House on the Left. There is no castration scene. Sure the film follows the classic home invasion and horror revenge narrative in which bourgeois comforts are violated by outside forces which must be avenged (e.g. Cape Fear and Funny Games). But if a horror revenge narrative centers on a rape as the symbol of violation, then the rape needs to be avenged on its own terms. Sure, the Collingwoods perform all the right functions in regards to using the tools of their domestic stability to bring down their daughter’s violators, but they never actually avenge the rape itself.  In fact, by the end of the movie, the story becomes a man-on-man, father-on-father battle as the Bad Dad Krug and the Good Dad John are pitted against each other. Mari’s body is left off screen while the mother fumbles around the house for keys. So does the father-on-father battle become the replacement castration scene? When the Good Dad John uses a microwave oven to kill Bad Dad Krug, does that become the substitute castration scene? Does it take a father to use a symbol of domestic comfort (a household appliance) to “break the cycle” of violence by killing the Bad Dad who encourages his son to participate in the rape of an innocent girl? Is the film ultimately saying that men have to be responsible for their own castration? It would be nice to read it that way, but I think that’s pushing it. I think that the filmmaker Dennis Illiadis didn’t understand the importance of the castration scene. 

This brings me to the class component of the film. Rape revenge narratives traditionally rely on class divisions to create tension. They become a sort of “us” against “them” narrative in which the educated cultured bourgeoisie is violated by the most primal act of violation (rape) by lower uneducated “trash.” This plays out in films like I Spit On Your Grave (1978), where a writer is raped by rural trash, and Deliverance (1972), where a young educated white guy is raped by “hillbilly” trash. At their best, these films break down the division between classes by showing that both sides can be reduced to their primal nature and be equally brutal and “animalistic” given the right set of circumstances. Playing the bourgeoisie against the trash reveals the ultimate trash at the core of the bourgeoisie. In a way, they’re pretty bleak narratives that show humanity as a kind of Darwinian Wild Animal Kingdom where, when we strip ourselves from the veneer of material comforts, we become nothing more than blood thirsty animals with a hunger for violence and revenge and who will do anything to protect what’s “theirs.” At their best, these kinds of films can interrogate class structures that create derogatory divisions like “white trash.” At their worst, they can perpetuate the vilification of poor white people. Even though they expose the cultured class for being as capable of primal violence as anyone else, ultimately the “bad guys” remain the lower classes. It takes a hell of a lot of conscious thinking to move beyond the surface class narrative of a film like The Last House on the Left, and quite honestly I don’t think the average person is thinking about class nuances when they’re watching a movie like this. It’s also important to note that in both the 1972 and 2009 version of The Last House on the Left, it is the lower class friend of Mari who leads the girls to the bad guys by trying to score some weed. Mari is lured into danger and defiled by her relationship with the lower class.

The other thing that is questionable in the rape revenge narrative is the role of homosexuality. Why is it always the homosexual sex act that is seen as the most debasing and as the main signifier of the "sick criminal mind"? In the original The Last House on the Left, the bad guys force the two girls to have sex together as the ultimate act of violation. In the remake, the bad girl Sadie is signified as “really bad” by her homosexual impulses. She is shown fondling Mari as an act of torment, and she participates in the rape by holding Mari’s legs down and goading Kruge.  In Deliverance, the homosexual rape scene is the ultimate deviant crime. It’s also interesting how these films group the “lower class” with “homosexual deviance” as if homosexuality itself is a class signifier that puts people on the bottom rung of the class ladder.

I like to watch movies like The Last House on the Left because I’m interested in what kinds of messages they are delivering on a broad social scale. Movies function as Ideology Delivery Systems.  People watch movies. They affect the audience. I watched this movie, and I asked myself what it is saying with its completely brutal portrayal of white America.  Because the film operates in a kind of cinematic anarchy, it forces us to ask questions. The film is set in the wilderness, outside of all social order. The police are killed early on, so there is no law. The bad guys come from nowhere with no environmental signifiers. So the movie is reduced to a set of generic elements that battle each other. It’s a kind of Good Family versus Bad Family narrative that shows a savage world where there is no room for illusions like “domestic stability” and “happy family.” There is no good, no bad, just a fight for survival. Is this film addressing the increased American anxiety about “losing everything” and being reduced to brute animals to survive (e.g. becoming poor white killers)? Does it interrogate the fallacy of the domestic space? Or does it just offer some temporary relief where we can whack a hammer in the head of the bad guys who are threatening to invade our homes?

I think the film does a little of all these things, but I also think that the filmmaker didn’t understand the gender and class nuances of the genre in which he was operating, so they don’t really effectively gel into a cohesive position. It’s like he knew what the pieces of the puzzle were to make a home invasion/rape revenge horror film, but he didn’t understand how to make those pieces reflect on each other in a way that provides some kind of salient critique of the systems its pandering in. The original film was self-reflexive and even parodied itself and the stereotypes that it was engaging with. The remake has no self-reflexivity. It just shows the actions, and all the self-reflexivity is left with the audience. I’m just wondering how the audience is ultimately reflecting on its participation in the brutal rape of a young girl and her family’s revenge against her violators.  My guess is that most are not doing much reflecting but just watching and experiencing, for what that’s worth.

Kim Nicolini is an artist, poet and cultural critic. She lives in Tucson, Arizona with her daughter and a menagerie of beasts. She works a day job to support her art and culture habits. She is currently finishing a book-length essayistic memoir about being a teenage runaway in 1970s San Francisco. She can be reached at: knicolini@gmail.com.

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