Ayoub El-Khazzani(Ray Corsani) could have been an ordinary guy from Morocco, just another anonymous passenger from Brussels boarding a train bound for Paris. El-Khaddani had a backpack, a rolling backpack. So it was heavy. He headed straight to the bathroom. Fifteen minutes passed. So he had an issue unrelated to his bladder and bowels. An old married couple, seatmates on a train, converse about the exorbitant amount of time that the occupant is taking. They're not panic-stricken, or display even the slightest hint of anxiety; they're just curious as to what the delay could possibly be. Both know the man comes from the Middle East; his face would have been visible since the locality of their seats is en route to the lavatory. Without any urgency, without nary a clue about the forthcoming melee, Mark Moogalian leaves his wife Isabelle, and forms a two-man line. The only indication that El-Khazzani gets dealt with differently, as being the "other" rather than a fellow compatriot, is the space he's given. Potential terrorist never gets voiced aloud from either man's lips, but perhaps it crosses their minds, since it's customary, a situational norm to knock on the door to check up on a person's welfare. Statistically speaking, the stomach flu or drug use involving paraphernalia are the more likely explanation for the fifteen-minute wait. The elephant in the room, the point the filmmaker makes, is that nobody wants to be accused of racial profiling. Nearby, Spencer Stone, Alex Skarlatos, and Anthony Sadler, in Clint Eastwood's "The 15:17 to Paris", adapted from the Jeffrey E. Stern autobiography "The 15:17 to Paris: The True Story of a Terrorist, and Three American Heroes", are on stand-by for their date with destiny. In "The Mule", Earl Stone(same surname as Spencer), a 91-year-old drug runner for an international drug cartel, complains to the FBI agent and then, a motel occupant banging on the vending machine, that their generation spend half their lives staring into a tiny screen. Call it divine intervention, or a technological glitch, but Spencer's need for cell phone reception becomes the grounds for their serendipitous move to the first-class section, where passengers have access to hi-fi.
The narrator, in "Homeland Elegies", a bildungsroman by Ayad Akhad, a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, recounts his life as an American; the many challenges that it poses when your outward appearance diverges from the platonic ideal. The narrator, a second-generation Pakistani, summons the ghosts of NYC, the course of his day on 9/11, when Asha, an off-and-on girlfriend, discovers her bed partner's cross when she accidentally knocks it off from the top of his medicine cabinet. The narrator, a Muslim like Asha, but non-practicing, had stolen the crucifix from a pastor who runs the Salvation Army thrift shop. No different than any New Yorker, concern over a loved one, a nephew attending NYU, draws the narrator to the periphery of ground zero. Sealed off by law enforcement, in the interim, the narrator falls in line for an impromptu blood drive, where a watchful man, an angry man behind him, starts an interrogation about his background, which results in the usual racial epithets. The pocketed cross never leaves the narrator's neck in the intervening months, he explains to Asha. His father, a well-respected heart specialist, once treated the former president for a condition called Brugada arrhythmia, and ends up being an unlikely supporter during his ex-patient's candidacy. Like father, like son; donning the most American of signifiers is no heretical act to the assimilated Pakistani-American, who needs the cross to stave off the collective animosity that sometimes made itself exquisitely explicit to the narrator, despite his appetite for capitalism and secular lifestyle. Ayad Akhad doesn't want "Homeland Elegies" to be agitprop, a screed, but readers can suss out for themselves how the narrator's faux-Christianity perfectly mirrors his father's hero's enigmatic spirituality. Neither man, wanting access to the toilet, sooner rather than later, in "The 15:17 Train to Paris", wants to be that guy, a xenophobe who makes the unfounded judgement that all Muslims are terrorists, or terrorist sympathizers. The Thayls train attacker could have been the narrator in "Homeland Elegies", just another guy, whose only crime is having a different complexion from you and me.
Fundamentalism is ubiquitous to all major religions. It's inevitable that faith will produce the occasional zealot, regardless of geography of denomination. Spencer Stone and Alex Skarlatos were next-door neighbors; they attended the same suburban Christian middle school. Their moms were best friends. The third musketeer, Anthony Sadler, the alleged troublemaker they meet in the principal's office, is of African-American descent. Instead of the bad egg school officials purport Anthony to be, most likely his multiple stints with detention is a result of the lone black kid's retaliation against school bullies. Spencer invites Anthony home where he meets Joyce(Judy Greer), his mother, a single parent like Heidi Skarlatos(Jenna Fischer), Alex's mom, who both have no objections toward their sons' predilection for prop guns. Anthony is allowed to keep a rifle, albeit unloaded and no father to hunt with, in his room. Instead of shooting hoops or playing video games on an Xbox console, they simulate war, man-to-man combat, in the woods. Where firearms are concerned, these boys could have channeled their preoccupation with weaponry into the real world with dire consequences. Quite pointedly, Spencer's nightly prayer starts like this: "Lord make me an instrument of your peace." Peace is a homonym. In Gus Van Sant's "Elephant", the worst case scenario materializes. Even though Joyce, Spencer's mom, says things like: "My god is bigger than your statistics," when a schoolteacher suggests that boys with single moms experience pronounced emotional problems later in life, her son, as well as Alex, are well-adjusted boys who turn out to be men of exemplary character, due in no small part to their serious, but not rigid religious upbringing. With great subtlety, the filmmaker suggest shadow selves of both men. When Spencer tells Anthony that he's going to enlist and save lives as an Air Force paratrooper, the college undergrad scoffs at the notion, pointing out a suggested checkered past; his high school reputation as a quitter in athletics, and quite possibly, in scholastics, too. Lack of depth perception disqualifies him from being a Pararescueman. A lesser person could have become disgruntled, go wayward; go to war with society. Be in the attacker's shoes. On the train, after the American tourists subdue the Moroccan terrorist, Alex picks up the man's automatic assault rifle and goes searching for potential accomplices. He gives the passenger a fright, mistaking Alex for the shooter, which is the whole point of "The 15:17 to Paris", if you're looking for a subtext. "He's one of the good guys," a woman calls out, recognizing him as the man who helped her elderly father board. Sometimes the Americans are the good guys. Spencer Stone, Alex Scarlatos, and Anthony Sadler became international heroes in France, decorated each with the Legion of Honor medal for incomparable bravery.
Sometimes the Muslim is a writer, just another law-abiding citizen categorically associated, unfairly, with the men who flew a plane into the World Trade Center. Sometimes the Muslim comes at you with a knife, pistol, assault rifle, and 300 rounds of ammunition.
Protagonists and antagonists, in regard to race or creed, are interchangeable.
Anybody can be a hero.
Anybody can be a villain.
The narrator, in "Homeland Elegies", a bildungsroman by Ayad Akhad, a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, recounts his life as an American; the many challenges that it poses when your outward appearance diverges from the platonic ideal. The narrator, a second-generation Pakistani, summons the ghosts of NYC, the course of his day on 9/11, when Asha, an off-and-on girlfriend, discovers her bed partner's cross when she accidentally knocks it off from the top of his medicine cabinet. The narrator, a Muslim like Asha, but non-practicing, had stolen the crucifix from a pastor who runs the Salvation Army thrift shop. No different than any New Yorker, concern over a loved one, a nephew attending NYU, draws the narrator to the periphery of ground zero. Sealed off by law enforcement, in the interim, the narrator falls in line for an impromptu blood drive, where a watchful man, an angry man behind him, starts an interrogation about his background, which results in the usual racial epithets. The pocketed cross never leaves the narrator's neck in the intervening months, he explains to Asha. His father, a well-respected heart specialist, once treated the former president for a condition called Brugada arrhythmia, and ends up being an unlikely supporter during his ex-patient's candidacy. Like father, like son; donning the most American of signifiers is no heretical act to the assimilated Pakistani-American, who needs the cross to stave off the collective animosity that sometimes made itself exquisitely explicit to the narrator, despite his appetite for capitalism and secular lifestyle. Ayad Akhad doesn't want "Homeland Elegies" to be agitprop, a screed, but readers can suss out for themselves how the narrator's faux-Christianity perfectly mirrors his father's hero's enigmatic spirituality. Neither man, wanting access to the toilet, sooner rather than later, in "The 15:17 Train to Paris", wants to be that guy, a xenophobe who makes the unfounded judgement that all Muslims are terrorists, or terrorist sympathizers. The Thayls train attacker could have been the narrator in "Homeland Elegies", just another guy, whose only crime is having a different complexion from you and me.
Fundamentalism is ubiquitous to all major religions. It's inevitable that faith will produce the occasional zealot, regardless of geography of denomination. Spencer Stone and Alex Skarlatos were next-door neighbors; they attended the same suburban Christian middle school. Their moms were best friends. The third musketeer, Anthony Sadler, the alleged troublemaker they meet in the principal's office, is of African-American descent. Instead of the bad egg school officials purport Anthony to be, most likely his multiple stints with detention is a result of the lone black kid's retaliation against school bullies. Spencer invites Anthony home where he meets Joyce(Judy Greer), his mother, a single parent like Heidi Skarlatos(Jenna Fischer), Alex's mom, who both have no objections toward their sons' predilection for prop guns. Anthony is allowed to keep a rifle, albeit unloaded and no father to hunt with, in his room. Instead of shooting hoops or playing video games on an Xbox console, they simulate war, man-to-man combat, in the woods. Where firearms are concerned, these boys could have channeled their preoccupation with weaponry into the real world with dire consequences. Quite pointedly, Spencer's nightly prayer starts like this: "Lord make me an instrument of your peace." Peace is a homonym. In Gus Van Sant's "Elephant", the worst case scenario materializes. Even though Joyce, Spencer's mom, says things like: "My god is bigger than your statistics," when a schoolteacher suggests that boys with single moms experience pronounced emotional problems later in life, her son, as well as Alex, are well-adjusted boys who turn out to be men of exemplary character, due in no small part to their serious, but not rigid religious upbringing. With great subtlety, the filmmaker suggest shadow selves of both men. When Spencer tells Anthony that he's going to enlist and save lives as an Air Force paratrooper, the college undergrad scoffs at the notion, pointing out a suggested checkered past; his high school reputation as a quitter in athletics, and quite possibly, in scholastics, too. Lack of depth perception disqualifies him from being a Pararescueman. A lesser person could have become disgruntled, go wayward; go to war with society. Be in the attacker's shoes. On the train, after the American tourists subdue the Moroccan terrorist, Alex picks up the man's automatic assault rifle and goes searching for potential accomplices. He gives the passenger a fright, mistaking Alex for the shooter, which is the whole point of "The 15:17 to Paris", if you're looking for a subtext. "He's one of the good guys," a woman calls out, recognizing him as the man who helped her elderly father board. Sometimes the Americans are the good guys. Spencer Stone, Alex Scarlatos, and Anthony Sadler became international heroes in France, decorated each with the Legion of Honor medal for incomparable bravery.
Sometimes the Muslim is a writer, just another law-abiding citizen categorically associated, unfairly, with the men who flew a plane into the World Trade Center. Sometimes the Muslim comes at you with a knife, pistol, assault rifle, and 300 rounds of ammunition.
Protagonists and antagonists, in regard to race or creed, are interchangeable.
Anybody can be a hero.
Anybody can be a villain.
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