September 4, 2000


Features

Never Mind the Bollocks
BY BILL BOISVERT

Here's the new Republican Party

The Battle of Philadelphia
BY DAVE LINDORFF

Working It
BY DAVID MOBERG
Will unions go all out for Gore?

Black Radicals Regroup
BY SALIM MUWAKKIL
Detroit hosts the Black Radical Congress.

Mad Sheep Scare
BY TERRY J. ALLEN
Farmers, scientists and the USDA square off in Vermont.


News

Cleaning Up
BY HANS JOHNSON
Missouri, Oregon consider campaign finance initiatives.

Star Strike
BY BEN WINTERS
Actors demand a better deal.

Renegade or Redeemer?
BY STEVE ELLNER

Hugo Chavez leads Venezuela into a new era.

The New Front
BY KARI LYDERSEN

American anti-abortion groups crusade in Ireland.

Profile
BY TED KLEINE

Johnny Lira is in their corner.


Views

Editorial
BY DAVID MOBERG
Big money problems.

Appall-O-Meter
BY DAVID FUTRELLE

A Terry Laban Cartoon

Dialogue: The Balkans
More Conspiracy Theories?
BY EDWARD S. HERMAN

A Humanitarian Crusade
BY DIANA JOHNSTONE


Culture

A Man for All Seasons
BY HOWARD ZINN
Francis Wheen's Marx: A Life.

Interstate Rambler
BY PHILIP CONNORS
On the road with Larry McMurty.

England's Dreaming
BY JOHN GHAZVINIAN
History falls off the back of a lorry.

Under the Influence
BY JASON SHOLL
Sadie Plant writes on drugs.

Vanishing Act
BY
JOSHUA ROTHKOPF
Paul Verhoeven's Hollow Man.

Presidential Dance Parties
BY GREG SMITHSIMON

 

Vanishing Act
By Joshua Rothkopf

Naughty bits of Bacon harsh Elizabeth Shue's mellow. Credit: Sony Pictures Imageworks.

To Paul Verhoeven's loyal audience of dirty-minded adolescent boys and closet fascists you may now add postmodernist critics. In recognition of a distinguished career showcasing nude ice-picking (Basic Instinct), corporate-sponsored brutality (RoboCop) and jiggling lesbian chic (Showgirls), ArtForum has pronounced Verhoeven a secret satirist. Leave it to them to find the urinal in the gallery and sniff a "mass-market auteur" unappreciated by popular-press "dumbness."

Trash has its own standards, however, and Verhoeven's new feature, Hollow Man, falls considerably short of them. The movie takes a durable subgenre, the invisible man picture, and strips it down to its most puerile hypothesis. Whereas past protagonists of such movies used their invisibility to rehabilitate deflated egos, to overcome their weaknesses, Verhoeven's uses his to ogle perfectly rounded breasts. We're clearly beyond comic book fantasy here, moving on to those back-page ads for x-ray glasses and see-through underwear.

 

 


In These Times © 2000
Vol. 24, No. 20