If I had HBO -- let alone a TV -- I'd spend my evening tonight watching Liz Garbus's acclaimed documentary, Shouting Fire: Stories From the Front Lines of Free Speech.
A hit at this year's Sundance Film Festival and praised by critics for its engaging approach to such a complex subject, the film takes a hard look at just how fragile the First Amendment really is. Garbus considers diverse cases in which Americans voicing unpopular views were kicked out of schools, lost jobs or otherwise censored to the point of undermining one of the central liberties that (we think) defines American life.
Among the film's subjects is Ward Churchill, a former University of Colorado professor who was attacked for an essay he wrote after 9/11 in which he referred to the people who worked in the World Trade Center as "little Eichmanns." Adolf Eichmann was a member of the Nazi party and is often called the "architect of the Holocaust" -- not because he planned it, but because of his organizational prowess and reliability in executing the plans of those who did. Likewise, argued Churchill, the people who worked in the WTC were complicit in engineering the capitalist system the terrorists meant to destroy.
He defended his position, and by speaking he only made matters worse for himself. As did the rest of the film's subjects, such as Tyler Chase Harper, a San Diego high school student who was suspended for wearing a T-shirt that said "Homosexuality is Shameful" during a gay and lesbian awareness event. Subjects like Harper may provide the balance the film needs to make its point to all Americans regardless of political leanings.
Garbus, whose father, Martin Garbus, is a First Amendment attorney, also includes footage of the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York City, at which more than 1,800 people were arrested -- many for no apparent reason. As Gina Belafonte writes in the New York Times, these shots recall those taken much more recently in Iran, suggesting that the suppression we are witnessing in that country is just as present in our own.
As I said, I'll have to wait for Shouting Fire to come out on Netflix, but if you have HBO, take a look -- and drop a comment to let people like me (TVaphobes) know how it is.
The film's HBO schedule can be found here.
[Image: Still from Shouting Fire]