Page 10-Sunday, November 19, 1978-The Michigan Daily

The Michigan Daily-Sunday, N

FILM/owen glemberman

Are machines
taking over
the movies?

Kibbiekinship in the new Mecca
(Continued from Page 7) displays a color photo he took of men will congregate in the Arabic voice is amplified and can be heard
blossoms, which covers the chrome a deactivated Israeli bomb which was clubs, from which women are excluded throughout the entire neighborhood.
dinette set in the kitchen. Scattered "as big as me" and another one without question. The Palestinians Nearly 70 per cent of the Arabswwholive
through the living room are framed showing the tanks of United Nations retreat to a box-shaped, cinderblock in the South End are Moslem while the
8x10 photos of Saleh's four children at peace-keeping forces that had rolled building, formerly the Eagle Bar, while rest are, primarily, members of
various stages of their school careers, into his village. But he saddens when he the Yemeni's gather a few blocks away several Christian sects.
and a pale blue parakeet chirps from comes to a picture of the Beirut Holiday behind a set of thick, wooden doors The mosque on Dix, however, is very
within its cage next to the front window. Inn. "It was beautiful building, now which have been painted chartreuse small, and to meet the needs of the
they hide and shoots at it. and lavender in a garish, geometric area's burgeoning Moslem population,
ndT THE WRD being spoken ",One day, you know, I was' walking pattern, the Islamic Center of Detroit was built.
and the smell of exotic spices down the street in Beirut and two girls, Or, they will hobnob and bicker when The Islamic Center is a ten-minute
emantingfrom the kitchendrvfrmteSuhEdadilotd
are foreign. Occupying a prominent about 15 years, in front of me. Then one they meet in one of the small markets drive from the South End and is located
is shot right in the head and she died, that make up the area's business in a shopping plaza where there is
position over the couch is a large plastic right before my eyes. That's no way to district, a three-block stretch along Dix plenty of parking, but no outdoor tent.
picture frame filled with snapshots of live," says Saleh. Road near the Vernor intersection. The On this Saturday the parking lot and
relatives in the old country and shelves which line the stores are the three prayer rooms inside the
newspaper clippings, written in Arabic, N TELEPHONE POLES and crammed with jars of obscure spices,. Islamic Center are packed with
chronicling the graduations, the abandoned buildings in the the essential ingredients in Arabic Moslems who have gathered to
weddings, and the funerals back home. South End, leaflets and posters cooking. On the floor are large bins of celebrate the feast of Id al-adaha, a
Saleh hopes that someday he can have been plastered advertising anti- grain, and still more spices. And near holiday which marks the annual
bring his parents to America even shah demonstrations and Maoist group the back of the store is the fresh-killed pilgrimmage to the holy city of Mecca.
though his father is "so sick now, will meetings to be held in Detroit. But the kosher meat, a large portion of which Over 500 worshippers have come from
die soon." Just as the European notices are in English, not Arabic, and will be ground up, mixed with spices all over the Detroit area, although most
immigrants of the early 1900s formed are clearly the work of outsiders. Other and served raw as kibbie. have lived in Dearborn's South End at
ethnic pockets in certain areas of the than the annual Palestine Day parade, Near the end of the strip is the bakery one point in their lives.
country, today's Arab immigrants have organized political agitation has not which, like the meat market, is a daily Men's shoes are piled outside the door
clustered in Dearborn to be near filtered over to the South End stop. The flat, round pieces of rubbery to the main prayer room, but downthe
friends and relatives who have already community. bread are a mainstay of Arabic culture. hall, towards the back of the prayer
come to the U.S. Chain-migration is Yet on another level, the political In a glass case, covered with sticky room, there is another entrance
what the sociologists call it; Saleh says problems of the Middle East, and the fingerprints are the sweets: surrounded by a pile of women's shoes.
it is "our way." bitter emotions they evoke are evident. baklava, and tiny dry cakes, covered The Sheik stands at the front and chants
But for many new immigrants the The men gather in little clusters on the with flaky sugar that crumble into while the men, and the women behind
financial security of the auto plants is street and argue politics in their quick, dusty chunks with each bite. them, kneel on blue polyester carpeting
merely a secondary consideration. For harsh-sounding dialect. The "Everything is here," says Saleh, which stretches across the floor of the
them, it is more important to avoid community felt a tremendous sense of waving his arms past the rows of glass stark, White prayer room. The somber
being blown up by one of the bombs that betrayal after the signing of the Camp jars filled with spices. "You don't have adults stand, sit, kneel, and touch their
explode regularly in Mideast markets, David agreements and the word to order from New York or old country foreheads to the floor on cue from the
or being picked off in an exchange of 'zionist' is spoken on street corners with anymore. It's all right here." prayers.
sniper fire. A large segment of hatred. The very last building on Dix, set off In the next prayer room, however,
Dearborn's Arabic population is made "But what is there we can db?" from the rest, is the mosque. Outside the scene is less orchestrated. Tiny
up of Lebanese war refugees and exclaims Saleh. "Carter is far away, the mosque is a long, low tent where, pairs of shoes are scattered along the
Palestinians who have fled fighting and what can we do to him? We can just five times each day, the Moslem Arabs edges of the rug which had been
oppression on the West Bank. scream." come to pray. After washing their feet, unrolled by a team of cackling, dark-
"Its crazy, they just shoots at each The men also meet in the many coffee faces, and hands under the spigots that eyed children. At the front of the room,
other and nobody knows why they do," houses where they settle international, stretch across one wall of the mosque, facing Mecca, a young father leads the
says 24-year-old Saleh Hazimi who left, as well as local, affairs while sipping they kneel, facing east toward Mecca, kneeling and bowing. His little
Lebaion mi 972. H went hack : y cpbp K( 'Jkisli, coffee It j just and touch theirhpgispd followers who ell,gf 4rpipic his
his r , ,the. 1,t, t imer °a . Wte'kdl~ i hfenie =.=s b

DON'T LET anyone tell you They
don't make movies like They
used to. If there's a single craft
They've mastered these days, it's the
art of movie-making. Shot for shot, the
technical sophistication in even the
most run-of-the-mill American films
today so completely surpasses anything
offered by the cinema of yesteryear
that even the most mindless clap-trap
has the look and feel of high-gloss
professionalism.
Movies, in fact, are beginning to
resemble the soulless music that gluts
the airwaves on "progressive rock"
radio stations: artistically vapid,
perhaps, but gift-wrapped in a mass of
slick technology that overpowers the
vacuum within. The synthesizers, voice
distortion machines, and God-knows-
what-else that go into producing
Boston, the Electric Light Orchestra,
Kansas, or Styx, make the Beatles'
celebrated excursions into four-track
overdubbing on Sergeant Pepper look
like the Dark Ages of recorded music.
And as album technology reaches new
heights, human emotion falls by the
wayside. Exposing yourself to large
doses of 70s rock is more than an
unedifying experience; most of the
stuff is so downright cloying that it dulls
the senses, numbs one into a state of
somnambulistic apathy.
It's this sort of musical plasticity that
spawned the majority of New Wave
groups - a revolutionary reaction in-
dicative of the depths some rock had
plummeted to - and movies are
headed in the same direction. They're
drowning in stultifyied overproduction.
How many times have you been told a
certain movie is "beautiful,"' and that
therefore you should see it? Most often,
Owen Gle'iberman is co-editor of
the Daily arts page.

that sort of recommendation turns out
to be an empty one. Julia, 1900, and
Pretty Baby were all touted as
"beautiful" films, even though their
picture-postcard compositions and
platitudinous, sugary photography
have little to do with what they're
about.
Critic Pauline Kael recently launched
a vehement attack on the critics who
damned Sam Peckinpah's Convoy --
arguably one of the worst movies of the
year - on the grounds that Peckinpah's
visual adeptness, his "style," made you
"recover the feelings you had as a child
about the power and size and noise of
trucks, and their bright, distinctive
colors and alarming individuality." Is
this a reasonable basis for liking a
motion picture - the fact that it com-
municates the "power" of diesels? Kael
would have us ignore Convoy's life-
starved characterizations, mindlessly
populist politics, and lurching sense of
drama, because Peckinpah can shoot
motorized vehicles lumbering through
the desert terrain and make it all look
pretty.
Movies such as Convoy, The Boys
From Brazil, Taxi Driver, Capricorn
One, Sorcerer, Bound . for Glory,
Marathon Man, Midnight Express, and
even the seemingly humanistic An Un-
married Woman, all shroud whatever
sensibility is at work in a soothing,
escapist mist of stylistic and technical
assurance. While some of these movies
have merits not restricted to good
photography, all of them tend to slight
their characters for effects achieved
through the. wonderment of modern
cinema. When Jill Clayburgh's husband
confesses his affair in An Unmarried
Woman, director Paul Mazursky cops
out by having her throw up on-screen -
a device that cues an audience in to the
See FILM, Page 12


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