Who am I (Kein System ist sicher, 2014)

Who am I? A nobody. A nobody superhero whose secret power is to be invisible.  Baran bo Odar's latest film had two screenings recently at TiFF 2014. I only had the chance to make it to the second one and the director was conspicuously absent. He gave "missing his daughter" as an excuse. It's hard to be disagreeable with such an excuse and really I didn't have too many questions.

I haven't seen his first film Silence yet and now it has made it onto my list of to be seen. Not because his latest is particularily brilliant, but rather that it is a solid piece of rather unusual filmmaking from Germany. Instead of the often slow and contemplative pieces coming from the Berlin School like The State I am In. Odar's Who am I? has more in common with Run Lola Run, Tom Tykwer's 1998 film about a disenfranchised rebellious daughter, and the neat tricks you can play with time and film. Like Tykwer's film, Obar explores the Berlin landscape in a fast pace of filmmaking more in tune with the Berlin electronic dance music scene than with emo.

Obar's film latches on to the theme of young alienated masculinity with power and parallels the hardship of the protagonist, Benjamin, with his comic book heros, who all inevitably lose their parents to a violent death. Obar however casts a wide social net beyond the question of "belonging" that touches on the effects of alzheimer's, suicide, the absent father figure, social alienation, racism, consipiracy theories and also love.



The film is centered on genius hacker Benjamin who belongs to a small group of activist hackers known as CLAY. They escalate their pranks, seeking recognition (and ultimately a sense of belonging) from the "big players" until they come up against a group involved with the Russian mafia. This could have been another movie on an almost worn out trope, but its playfulness and the fast pace keeps it going, even tricking the audience at the end into believing the authenticity of the reveal.



One of the curious turns of the film involves its emphasis on reality. The internet, the dark net and so on are all composed eventually of real people sitting in real coffee shops. Forgetting that this reality exists is portrayed of the potential problems of the immersive virtual world we are in the midst of creating. No system is safe because no person is infallible. But also because each virtual system is interwoven with a dynamic and changing reality. At the heart of this film is the recognition that the immaterial and the material cannot be separated.

Gender Trap Part 1 - CBC Ideas

This is a refreshing radio program from CBC debunking swell of voices who insist once again on the inate differences between men and women (and of course how women and men are better suited to different societal roles). What's new about this latest affront to gender equality is its supposed grounding in science and therefore its claim to neutrality. CBC lays out the arguments for innate gender differences and against. Yet, overwhelming (at least at the end of part 1) the evidence shows that our young girls and boys may appear to have different neural structures and consequently different abilities, but there's no strong evidence to support that these are biological rather than shaped by the enviroment.

For example, one study, quoted in the program, revealed that mothers talk differently to their little girls than to their little boys. To their girls, they not only used more complex language but also geared their language to expressing emotion. Boys were spoken to in relatively simply phrases that often resembled short commands. Why then would the boys show less verbal ability than girls?

This program should lead to a healthy skeptiscm regarding any findings coming from the natural sciences. When the medical norm is that there are no gender differences, so negative studies won't be published, what's published is the few studies that do show some kind of difference. Any sort of found gender difference in a data set is also an opportunity to publish another article. Publish or perish. The social demands of the science community influence the type of results that make it to the public realm. In contrast to the natural sciences, social psychology studies increasingly show that gender is reinforced by expectation. Our gendered identity is perhaps intrapolated by society more than we care to admit.

 These are just some gems from a solid program at a particularly parched moment for the fields of feminism.

It would be helpful to any feminist to remember that the great institutions we have built to enrich the knowledge of ourselves such as the natural sciences consist also of people. Why are there less women in politics? Why do women consistently earn less than men? We may not choose to stay at home and take care of kids because we are biologically programmed to do so, but rather because we do not have the social support. All women need a man with us like Margaret Thatcher's husband. It is they who will love us enough to see us stand at the full height of our ability. We will all be richer for it.