GUEST BLOGS
Editor's Note
As an editor and filmmaker, working on Murder by Proxy presented a unique set of mental and emotional challenges. Emil had set out to realize a indelible vision, to craft a message that expressed a set of core values he held. And I would find out later, to add his voice to an ongoing struggle we still face. Many conventional documentaries we see today are governed by an impersonal, traditional objectivity which fail to account for the subjectivity of the maker and in so doing present an authorial, almost condescending tone. Emil was decidedly, and refreshingly, uninterested in creating another didactic, tired documentary. Instead, he had a complex message, fueled by a passion that I found closely matched my own. During our collaboration, I came to realise this passion was actually compassion, the motive that drove the whole project.
The film endeavors to link the ordinarily discrete social phenomenon of mass shootings to broader, intertwined cultural structures, using provocative style. Importantly, the film aims to reinterpret the status quo of previous incidents by examining the whole picture of inputs--a gestalt approach. Since we often get caught up on polarizing pre-categorized issues which obscure the larger view, for me, this film set out with the willingness to look deeper into the myriad intricate web of causes, to extend that insight and ultimately that compassion to those who were once branded "crazy" or "defective" by our knee jerk, sound-bite culture. The process of realizing the film--Emil's vision--also opened my eyes to an unseen world of unrepresented, marginalized workers, and gave me new appreciation for the great service and enrichment the provide. And that we oft take for granted.
In other perhaps more "primitive" cultures, an ill person in a village was considered a blessing, for that person manifest or made visible what the community had overlooked or was unable to see. If we apply that thinking to our institutions, say, if the American worker is an indicator of the health of our community, then all signs point that we as a society are in intensive care. In any healthy culture, the activity we call "work" is at best a sacred expression of an individual's unique purpose, and ideally, in a healthy culture, institutions are designed to cultivate this precious living resource. Given that is an ideal, where do we find ourselves? Currently we find human beings treated as inanimate cogs, replaceable parts, serfs in a Gilded Age where the capital heights of profit and ownership make subservient all other commons values. This sounds like a third-world nation problem, and it is. But it happens right here in the US.
No better is this unhealthy prognosis plain to see than in the abusive treatment of the employees in the United States Postal Service. Like other strained businesses, these workers are under siege from within. Their symptoms present chronically, acutely and contagiously, and like a virus, if left untreated, the illness threatens the well-being of the whole body. When resources are curtailed in the name of efficiency, when jobs face unrelenting threat from profit benchmarks, and where an ethic of the ends justifying the means pervades, the first line item with which business will dispense is human dignity. We know dignity as it's expressed in other terms: virtue, respect, self-respect, autonomy, human rights, and enlightened reason. Here, in materialist, consumerist America, the richest society with the greatest disparities of wealth, a job is one's identity and for most of us our sole means of survival. Yet the irony of capitalism constantly presents itself: the disenfranchisement of the modern worker for the benefit of gain. Protection of that sacred activity, of work, is an idea dating back to the earliest laws and doctrines of civilization. America was founded on the concept of a commonwealth--lest we forget "common wealth"--where institutions were to protect shared resources and an individual's inviolable rights. Some institutions have forgotten this creed.
Culture is the only quality that separates a savage from a civil being. And with rampant disregard for the worker, our culture is in upheaval, impoverished. And we know that every effect has an underlying cause. Culture is not exempt from this diagnosis. Some of our medicines only treat the surface symptoms, leaving causes to persist. And if we choose to ignore causes, usually they worsen until we attend to them. We can keep our head in the sand, waiting for the inflammation to pass. Alternatively, we can view adversity as an opportunity to change. In this way, the repeated explosions of violence which stem from the USPS are a recurring blessing; the wound asks for the compassionate physician.
David Alexander Davidson, Film Editor
