REVIEWSREVIEWS
When Seoul and Pyongyang
declared this year that they’d
like to formally end the Korean
War, many Americans were
surely surprised that the
conflict wasn’t officially over
already. Now that we’re past
the days of ubiquitous M*A*S*H
reruns, some Americans may
have forgotten the war entirely.
But they can rediscover it with
Battleground Korea (Bear
Family Records), a fantastic
four-CD, five-hour anthology
bundled with a 161-page large-
format book. It’s a portal to an
emotionally intense period of
popular culture.
The collection includes sev-
eral newscasts and public ser-
vice announcements, but most
of the sounds here are music:
dozens of blues, country, gos-
pel, and pop songs that react
to life during wartime. The first
few tracks overflow with rah-
rah enthusiasm, but dissatis-
faction soon starts to filter into
the lyrics. There’s a long series
of unhappy numbers about
the draft. There are complaints
about aggravations both small
(k.p. duty) and large (loneli-
ness, death). The set segues
from firmly pro-war music to
less militaristic tracks and back
again, by turns moving, mawk-
ish, and scabrously funny.
It was a bleak time, and the
collection ought to remind
listeners that no sane person
should want a new Korean
War. It also reminds us not
to mistake an apparent step
toward peace with peace
it self. Jimmie Osbourne’s
single “Thank God for Victory
in Korea” reacted to the U.N.’s
bat tlefield triumphs of fall
1 95 0 by essentially declar-
ing the combat over, three
years prematurely. And when
the fighting finally did end,
Don Windle celebrated with
a POW-themed ballad called
“The Iron Curtain Has Parted.”
He was only 36 years early.Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A
Space Odyssey is a movie
about tools and technol-
ogy. The use of tools, both to
advance individual goals and
to aid the survival of the spe-
cies, the movie seems to say, is
what defines humanity, what
separates us from the animals.
Technology—the struggle to
create and control it—is what
makes us distinct.
So it’s a bit ironic that the
best way to see 2001 is in a
format that is now ancient, as
far as cinema is concerned. For
its 50th anniversary, the film
played limited engagements
in a 70 mm print overseen by
Christopher Nolan, the direc-
tor of Inception and the Dark
Knight trilogy.
Nolan is probably the most
prominent proponent of the
notion that movies should be
made and viewed as actual
physical film, and that film-
makers should minimize digital
trickery. He dubbed his res-
toration of 2001 “unrestored”
because it was made using an
entirely analog process derived
from the original photo nega-
tive. Nolan’s restoration makes
for an arresting experience,
more tactile and enveloping
than digital projection. It’s fit-
ting that a movie about man’s
complicated relationship to
technology is so profoundly
enhanced by a presentation
that emphasizes the film’s rela-
tionship to cinematic tech.MUSIC
BATTLEGROUND
KOREAJESSE WALKERFILM2001: A SPACE
ODYSSEYPETER SUDERMANYale sociologist Issa Kohler-
Hausmann’s Misdemeanorland
is a deeply researched and
reported look at the operations
of New York City’s misdemeanor
courts, where thousands of
turnstile hoppers, pot smokers,
and other low-level offenders
churn through every year.
It’s an area ripe for study.
While felonious activity captures
much of the attention of aca-
demia and journalism, focusing
on incarceration “understates
the reach of the criminal justice
system and, in some sense, mis-
represents the modal criminal
justice encounter,” she argues.
What Kohler-Hausmann finds
is shocking. The rate of misde-
meanor convictions in New York
City dropped sharply during the
era of “broken windows” polic-
ing, even as arrests for misde-
meanor offenses spiked.
The reason convictions fell,
she argues, is that the city’s
misdemeanor courts stoppedBOOK
MISDEMEANORLANDC.J. CIARAMELLAperforming their regular func-
tion—establishing facts and
adjudicating guilt. Instead,
they turned into an elaborate
machine that marks, manages,
and monitors offenders. It’s a
system for social control; con-
victions are somewhat beside
the point. The process is the
punishment.
It’s hard to read Misdemean-
orland without thinking of the
case of Eric Garner. As journalist
Matt Taibbi revealed in I Can’t
Breathe, an investigation into
Garner’s 2014 killing at the
hands of police, the New York
Police Department had harassed
Garner for months because
of his chosen career of selling
“loosie” cigarettes on the street
corner. They bothered him even
when he wasn’t selling or violat-
ing any laws.
If Taibbi’s book showed one
man’s fateful encounter with
this pernicious policing practice,
Kohler-Hausmann gives us a
picture of the system at a macro
level. Misdemeanorland has a
sociologist’s love of charts and
statistics, but it’s still required
reading for anyone interested in
the rise of modern policing and
the city that spawned it.68 OCTOBER 2018^ Photo: 2001: A Space Odyssey; 12/Alamy Stock Photo