If you have Netflix or Amazon Prime or some other source of streaming or downloading movies, try "Barbara," directed by Christian Petzold, from 2012.
It has that same gritty feel of "The Spy Who Came in From the Cold" with the chipped walls, paint peeling, women walking about in frayed dresses without stockings; even the white lab coats are mangy and worn.
The story is simple enough: An East German woman physician applies to leave East Germany for the West, is arrested, and exiled to a boondocks clinic on the Baltic, where, with the aide of her lover, a West German, she plots her escape. In the clinic, however, she finds meaning in her work with several patients, and she comes to admire the work done by a colleague, another exile from the prestigious urban hospital system, who is making something out of his small town practice. He is the authentic doctor, with virtues of actually sympathizing with his patients, caring about their suffering.
But, even as the woman is drawn to her new colleague, she has a powerful push to consummate her escape: The Stasi keep dropping by her squalid apartment and strip searching her, with a woman agent who probes her vagina every time. This is the ultimate in Orwellian oppression: the state authorities strip you naked and stick fingers up your vagina, with the excuse they are searching for dangerous or incriminating contraband, but everyone knows this is simple intimidation flavored with a little kinky titillation on the part of the sociopaths who populate police forces from small town America to East German villages.
Which brings the Phantom back to America, our Supreme Court which has endorsed vaginal probing as a reasonable self defense technique in the service of the safety of prison jailers and prisoners alike. "It's for everyone's own good," the Justices say, as they contemplate vaginal probing dressed up in police uniforms.
So, here we have a bleak portrait of the ultimate in a menacing, soul crushing police state, a film made in German, about Germany's dark underbelly--that sordid history of a nasty police state, and what is the vehicle of that oppression: Why, that good, All American sport of strip searching.
And why, the Phantom must inquire, are we living our doggy lives, every day, not outraged at what is happening daily across this great land of ours--the state sponsored finger raping in our jails? Because the Supreme Court has spoken and we are all good little girls and boys.
Qui tacit, constentit.
Phantom,
ReplyDeleteThanks for suggesting this-I has read a review of it awhile back and thought it looked interesting, but then had forgotten about it. As bleak as much of it was, it does at least end on a note of triumph of the individual over the state-I guess as happy an ending as one could expect given the circumstances. The strip searching and vaginal "inspections" performed in the film, done as a means of humiliation and dominance, one might expect from a police state, so it's all the more outrageous that SCOTUS has sanctioned that same form of abuse in the name of safety, oh and let's not forget "health reasons". I'll concede there may be rare times when such a procedure is necessary to make certain drugs, weapons or materials to make weapons are not being concealed, but the vast majority of the time this is just a power play and therefore state sanctioned sexual assault. Do police really think the 20 year old driving down the street speeding or drunk also has weapons concealed in her vagina? Yah right. And how many times does the same inmate need to be inspected for contraband? There's no public outcry because people don't care what happens to inmates and they don't realize that they or their daughters are at risk of a strip search and "inspection". If more women who have suffered through this came forward that might change, but that would require them to go public with the fact that they were not only arrested but also forced to go through this degrading procedure. One can see why many would be reluctant...
Maud
Maud,
ReplyDeleteState sanctioned sexual assault. No other way to view it.
What really appalls me is how this is swept under the carpet.
It should be such an easy rallying cry, and yet, nobody really wants to think about it.
The head of the NRA and his frothing paranoid brethren speak of their need to have an arsenal at home and to carry their weapons to protect their families against home invasion, rapists, murderers, axe murderers, chain saw massacres and all manner of mayhem and depravity, but they sit back in their recliners, supremely indifferent to what happens to women at the hands of the people with badges at the police stations.
How do we fathom the apathy on this issue, even among people who are reliably pathologically frenzied over most issues?
Phantom