Thursday, May 30, 2013 The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com Thursday, May 30, 2013 The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com 15 It's not enough Equality must go national Franchise stays 'Fast' on lap six Lin brings heart, bravado to storied action series By MATT EASTON Daily Arts Writer "Fast & Furious 6" is family. For young adults, the film series has hung around in the background for the greater part of their conscious life, a comforting (or grating) engine humming over their shoul- ders. These adults might remember the thrill of seeing the first film in theaters, the pure joy of racing; afterwards, they might have sped down neighborhood hills on bikes, issuing guttural revs and yelling "nitro!" at the top of their lungs. The moody teenage years came next, and "Fast & Furious" lin- gered, offering the same thing it always has, yet receiving mockery in place of idolatry. Drifting was mentioned with a sneer, and Vin Diesel suddenly had more in com- mon with a mother trying to relate to her adolescent daughter than with a tough street racer. Our mov- ies needed to be dark or ... impor- tant, and a bunch of meatheads with stick shifts didn't speak to our intellectual beings. Still though, "Fast & Furious," like family, stuck around even when we didn't want it to. Now those kids are all grown up (though they hardly feel that way), and the specious "realness" A of the serious action film, the tor- tured superhero, has lost its luster. Fas Satisfaction can come from circu- Fur lar intellectual exercises, but with the threshold of adulthood closely At I behind them, the kids now recog- Qual nize the importance of hugging mom goodbye, charring burgers nive with friends and racing just for the joy. "Fast & Furious 6" knows this truth, and after a decade of being ;« the punch line, "6" has shown that it's Diesel's ugly mug and Dwayne Johnson's baby oil smell that deserve to dominate the box office over the next decade. ommom And, looking at the franchise, it's hard not to think in terms of "decades." The opening credits depict stylized scenes from the previous five movies, ending in the main characters, in nearly match- ing white shirts and jeans, slo-mo sauntering toward the camera. Drive it like you stole it. Stupid, cheesy? Sure, but it's an act of effortless bravado from director universe. Appoientt Justin Lin ("Fast Five") and Vin Ignoring the gr S. StatestRIM Diesel. The success of "Fast Five" the films, viewing Be&ey has stabilized the series and clari- tially also adds dept KW (ome fied its vision - and the introduc- ("Fast and Furious" tion to "6" reminds us of the rich limited actor, has b history these characters possess ing if only because while simultaneously declaring around. His char Lin and Diesel's belief that they Brian O'Conner, is aren't going anywhere soon. to the film's diet t Operating as an end and a matter if he's bland beginning, "6" satisfies because it invested, we've kn has organically cultivated a world long not to be. Cre 2 which seems to exist outside of for a steady improvi the films themselves. Characters while one wouldn'tc aren't just sitting around while mance stunning, heI the movies aren't happening: matured O'Conner Han (Sung Kang, "Fast Five") and father. The darede' Gisele (Gal Gadot, "Fast Five") before our eyes, and, slurp noodles in China, and their bags under theirs. relationship has developed since Even if O'Conne we've last seen them - they've worn down, the f gone from speeding down the shockingly remaine Autobahn to thinking about set- tage, and Lin proves tling down. Tejo and Rico (in can conceive appai "Fast Five," though not in "6") are ways to smash car mentioned in passing; apparently scenes are standard they are robbing Monte Carlo. flipping go-carts? V For a bombastically unrealistic Grappling hook at franchise, a sense of continuity planes? Lin perfectly and naturalism surrounds this truth enough to keel film, because the writers haven't while never going 9 remained satisfied with giving us maybe he goes too fa the minimum amount needed. The so times, but this is a vines of the story tangle outside Also, Lin layers hisI the frame of the camera, draw- in masterful fashion ing life from some invisible "Fast" he loses us in a blur owth outside them sequen- h. Paul Walker ), an obviously ecome endear- he has stuck acter, ex-cop such a staple hat it doesn't d - we're still own him too dit to Walker ement as well; call his perfor- has effectively into a tired vils are aging we can see the r looks a bit franchise has d freshly vin- that his team rently endless rs. No action d models: Car- Vicious tanks? tacks on air- y stretches the p us interested too far (well, ar like eight or n action film!). kinetic scenes . Occasionally, of movement, but when there are multiple car sequences interlaying with each other, that's hardly a complaint. Yet, it's in leaving the cars behind where "Fast & Furious 6" truly succeeds. Tyrese Gibson ("Fast Five") and Ludacris ("Fast Five") exchange more laugh-out- loud dialogue than you'd find in an average comedy, and the hand-to- hand fight scenes are amazingly original for a movie that shouldn't even need to have them. "6" sur- passes the classic brawl (Samoan Thor v. Riddick would sell mil- lions of tickets) between Johnson and Diesel in "Five" - three times. Twice in a London Tube scene (which features the best female fight this side of "Kill Bill"), and once near the end, in an airplane (of course). "Fast & Furious 6" excels at everything it attempts. Funnier than most comedies, better than any action film since "Fast Five," convincing enough in its char- acterizations and surprisingly tragic (knowing how Han's story must end adds to its emotion), "6" swaggers past the finish line. After a decade of tinkering with the engine, Lin and Diesel have cre- ated a dominating, heartfelt vehi- cle, which should carry this (dare I say) storied world into the next decade - here's to that. Every so often my aggregation of Tumblr blogs - my "dash- board" or "dash" - fills with death, thanks to a blogger who calls himself The Revolting Syr- ian. As I scroll through his blog, it takes everything I have not to look away. It's filled ERIC with pictures and FERGUSON YouTube video thumbnails of Syrian men, women and children in varying states of distress and dis- figurement. They're the victims of what was once a revolution and is now a long, bloody civil war, fought between the government forces of Bashar al-Assad and a loosely orga- nized group of rebels. The first few times those images popped up I was almost sick. How could anyone not be? I saw and con- tinue to see Syrian opposition to Assad as thoroughly legitimate and I hope his rule ends - by whatever means. However, I never expected pictures of maimed and dismem- bered children to show up on my dash. They seem grotesquely out of place alongside images of the Earth taken from the International Space Station, brief, hilarious exchanges of text and teasers for articles in vari- ous publications, but I feel obligated to keep following that blog. Doing so has served as a daily reminder that the peace I enjoy as a student in beautiful Ann Arbor is more precious than I've ever realized. His blog has done more for me than that, though. It has helped me to realize that the only way to stop a conflict like the one in Syria - apart from one side's surrender or anni- hilation - is a state's application of geopolitical power. No amount of blogging or sharing of gruesome pic- tures will matter if some government or another doesn't think ending the conflict is in the national interest. This is a departure from the ideal that generations of Americans have been taught - that each individual's voice matters. My own generation has expressed our voices online for much of our lives and sharing the content we create or speaking out about what we find there is second nature to us. In turn, these acts seem to carry with them the expectation that someone should be paying attention to what we say - that somehow, the mere act of expression deserves attention. It's apparent how untrue this is in how we've used the Internet far more effectively for getting free music, net- working and Kickstarting our favorite projects than for stopping civil wars and other conflict. The Internet and its community of users just don't have the power to affect the outcome of the Syrian conflict. Even if we tried, there's little chance that any peti- tion or email sent to the White House regarding the conflict would get beyond some secretary's inbox. They would probably give the message a cursory once-over, shoving it in the virtual trash alongside messages from 9/11 truthers and people who think they'll be taken more seriously if their entire email is in CAPS LOCK. I never expected this to show up on my dash. Granted, the reasons for this dis- missal are obvious. With its vast intelligence infrastructure, the government should be far better informed about the situation in Syria than any single person. Like all other pieces of national policy, there isn't going to be a referendum on whether or not the U.S. should arm the rebels. And unless the conflict spills over the Syrian border into U.S.-allied Iraq, Israel or Turkey and a U.S. troop deployment becomes possible, expecting the American people to respond en masse to a distant coun- try's suffering is depressingly unreal- istic. Who wants to think about some conflict halfway across the world when you could hop on Netflix and watch the new season of Arrested Development instead? Trust me - Netflix will keep for a while. For now, go find The Revolt- ing Syrian online. Remind yourself that there are important problems in the world that deserve our atten- tion, perhaps even more so than the ones that plague this country. And if you think I'm wrong - if your faith in the power of the Internet knows no bounds - realize that there's a whole host of problems that online interac- tion cannot address. It can mesh the voices of hundreds of people from dozens of countries into a virtual choir and provide free college-level courses to the masses, but for some things - like ending a civil war - the Internet is not enough. Eric Ferguson can be reached at ericff@umich.edu. n the U.S. today, the tide is turning in support of both marriage equality and improved rights for the LGBT community. However - as always - a minority of the country is resisting JAMES progress and BRENNAN hampering the attainment of equality for all Americans. In the last two years, the number of states that allow or will soon allow gay marriage has doubled, with 12 states and the District of Columbia having passed marriage equality statutes or amendments. As a recent New York Times blog pointed out, this number is expected to increase, but only for a short time. Historically, some states have been extremely resistant to social change, meaning that even decades after the vast majority of states legalize gay marriage, there will still be parts of the country where all men and women are not recognized equally under the law. The same situation played out in the middle of the 20th century, as civil rights for African Americans passed in the vast majority of states, but remained untouched in most of the South. Federal court rulings helped to end a great deal of discrimination at the local and state level, but federal statutes and a constitutional amendment had to be passed to stop some of the most egregious violations of equal protection under the law. Though it may not be possible to say with utter certainty that Southern states would have continued discriminatory practices without federal intervention, there are a plethora of examples in which former Confederate states attempted to subvert and challenge federal civil rights laws that are now almost universally accepted. It wasn't until 1987 that the state of Mississippi repealed its law banning interracial marriage, and until 1995 that it ratified the 13th Amendment, banning slavery. Even in 2012 - nearly 50 years after the Loving v. Virginia case officially made anti-miscegenation laws like that in Mississippi illegal - one in five Alabama Republicans and more than one in four Mississippi Republicans believed interracial marriage should be against the law. This data doesn't even include the multiple court cases and legislative battles in the south against federal anti- discrimination laws. Many parallels have been drawn between the civil rights movement and current fights for LGBT equality, but the need for federal intervention in both situations is one of the most apt of these comparisons. Though early in a movement, a state-by- state strategy is key in building support, eventuallythe tide must turn nationally. The current Supreme Court cases dealing with marriage equality - U.S. v. Windsor and Hollingsworth v. Perry - will likely be two of the biggest first steps in a national conversation about gay rights, but litigation cannot be the only aspect of this fight. Federal legislation addressing not only gay marriage, but also discrimination in the workplace, housing and other areas of life must be proposed and eventually passed in Congress. When it comes to divisive social issues like racial equality and gay marriage, the U.S. has a history of seeing certain groups linger in the past as the rest of the country moves forward. Arguments against equal rights for blacks would be heard as simply another point of view, even as recently as 30 years ago. But in today's society, racism is unacceptable and has no legitimate place in the national conversation. In a matter of decades, the same will be true for arguing against gay marriage and LGBT equality. Some parts of the country will continue to be stuck in the past on LGBT rights, but the vast majority of Some states have resisted social change. states will move forward. The U.S. cannot maintain itself as a true democracy when certain citizens have full rights in some places but not in others. Even in my short lifetime, I've spoken with black friends who talk about being treated differently in certain cities and states because of their race. Some have encountered people who are simply rude, while others have experienced full-on hatred and a determination to continue old ways in whatever manner possible. No one could say for sure, but it's highly likely that most of the South - as well as other parts of the country -would have continied with Jim Crow were it not for federal legislation forcing progress. Obviously, governments cannot fully legislate morality and equal treatment. However, important action can be taken to stop discrimination, and it's our duty as citizens in a free country to continue down the road of progress - even if that means dragging parts of the country with us, kicking and screaming the whole way, James Brennan can be reached at jmbthree(&umich.edu. WANT TO GET INVOLVED WITH OPINION? Check out The Michigan Daily's editorial board meetings. 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