Monday Medley

What we read while getting another reason to avoid Atlanta….

• Revelations that the CIA spied on the US Senate as well as President Obama’s public admission that the agency engaged in torture after 9/11 has some calling for the firing of John Brennan, who was involved in both scandals. But does he have too much leverage to be held accountable?

• On the “crisis” at the American border.

• Is the US denying Muslims citizenship based on unfounded national security claims?

• Every state’s richest person.

• Why running your own fast-food franchise might not be the American dream you’ve envisioned…

• The tragedy in Gaza continued, with America’s continued support of Israel, even as the UN condemns it for attacking shelters.

• How to deal with open carry activists.

• Ira Glass vs. Shakespeare.

• This week in awesome World War I memorials.

Compliance and Personal Responsibility

NOTE: This review contains spoilers for Compliance. Though the film is based on real events, if you are not familiar with the real events or the film, I strongly advise seeing the film before reading this or anything else about the film’s plot.

One of the most resonant scenes in Craig Zobel’s powerful new film, Compliance, comes near the end, when Becky (played by Dreama Walker), the fast-food cashier who has been falsely accused, stripped, imprisoned, and raped, wants someone to pay for her ordeal. She tells a lawyer she wants to sue her boss, Sandra. But that’s not the best course of action, says the lawyer. What’s the use in suing a now-unemployed fast-food manager? It makes much more sense to sue the chain where you worked: It will have much deeper pockets and, besides, wasn’t it really the company’s fault, for not having proper guidelines for this type of situation?

This rationale represents a perfect conclusion to the film, which is largely about how people absolve themselves of responsibility by submitting to authority and, moreover, how society tends to reward and condition this behavior. Compliance opens with a small but revealing scene: Sandra (played by Ann Dowd) has to get an emergency delivery after someone left the freezer door open the night before, but the delivery guy chews her out for not telling her supervisor first. “I thought I would deal with this first,” she explains, “I don’t know what I was thinking.”