life’s battering ram

Sun 10.29.23,

“Capturing the Friedmans” is a documentary about a family . . . Thanksgiving weekend, the Friedman family has gathered for the holiday.  Mother, her three young adult sons, and dad are seated at the dinner table when a battering ram comes crashing through their front door.  Complete mayhem as police and FBI rummage through their home, confiscating computers, papers, magazines, CDs, DVDs.

Dad, perfect, old shoe, comfortable, a teacher loved by his students, a decent piano player, admired by colleagues, respected, is a pedophile.  The Friedmans themselves filmed most of the ongoing struggle.  Mom is depressed, has been for years, a mousy woman, she is unforgiving of her husband Arnold.  He’s been caught through postal services, having subscribed to child porn magazines.  The police find more in his home.

The boys, David, Josh, and Jesse, (Josh wants to keep his privacy and takes no part in the filming project) are infuriated with their mother who will not stand by her husband in his time of crisis, but she is obdurate.  The family is seen falling apart, screaming at each other.  David, the film’s most voluble son, years later, still does not speak to his mother.  He is the film’s instigator.  Was approached by a director making a documentary about New York clowns, which David is, one of  NY’s best.  

After the director finds out what’s happening in David’s life, he changes course and becomes involved in filming the Friedman’s saga.  Arnold retired, teaches computer classes in his home, youngest son Jesse helps him out.  Turns out Jesse too is a pedophile; Things happen in the computer classes, kids tell police.  

The case against Arnold is weak.  No kid has ever complained before the Friedman arrest and the leading police questions.  Everyone thinks Arnold’s a great guy, and he denies that anything ever happened.  He’s going to plead innocent.  True, he hasn’t molested any of the kids that come to his classes, but there was a time in another city of two separate instances when he was with adolescent boys.  And that is why his wife will not forgive him; she assumes he is guilty.  

Jesse gets caught in the web because he helps his father with the classes where all this perversion supposedly takes place.  Kids, prodded by adults with their own perverted needs are nudged into saying things, making Jesse the aggressive bad guy in their alleged sex games.  I’ve seen this type of hysteria in action and condoned by the mental health community (I was once asked when I worked in the field to report an 8 year old boy to the authorities for having shown himself to a little girl who also showed him her genitals.  I refused.)  It’s easy to create false memories.

Dad pleads guilty on the false assumption that it will help Jesse’s cause in court. It does not.  His wife talked him into it, compared him to a rock tied by rope to Jesse’s boat and as he sinks he’s pulling Jesse down with him.  In jail for life he puts his insurance in Jesse’s name and then he kills himself.

Jesse goes to jail.  He also pled guilty prodded by mom, on the false assumption that he’d get a lighter sentence, he does not, telling the judge that his father molested him as a child (not true) in hopes of gaining a little sympathy for himself.  8 or 10 years later, overwhelmed, wearing a sad, lost expression, he reenters society.   He’s OK now, living on the Upper East Side in a nice apartment bought with dad’s insurance money no doubt, got a girlfriend, back in college, enjoying himself.

A hell of a story.  I remember reading the reviews a few years ago; Some said the Friedmans were a dysfunctional family, a bunch of kooks.  I find the opposite, the Friedmans are not dysfunctional.  They are your typical average, middle class American family where mom and dad, no longer the focus of each others attention, make a loving home for themselves and their children.  And the Friedmans, except for mom, are loving.  Sad to say, but even Arnold’s perversion is fairly common, I’d be willing to bet that of those reading this post a good one forth were molested as kids.  In a world where most are powerless, perversion with its power dynamics flourishes.

The director spoke about living that life 24/7 for three years of filming, and losing himself in the story.  Life takes you over and you have no choice, a battering ram is at the front door and there’s no turning away from it.

  
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MANHATTAN SEERESS NOW ON EBOOKS

Eight o'clock Sunday morning, the police arrive at her apartment in Greenwich Village, "How long have you been living here?" The roommate Elizabeth, after having accepted her half of the deposit money and rent for their new apartment, has called the police. 

New York City doesn’t open its arms to welcome her, but she’s arrived and the adventure of her life is about to unfold.  She’s come from Maine with an invitation from Sarah Lawrence College to participate in the graduate writing program.

How one becomes a seeress is what this memoir explores. Stories have been specifically selected to illustrate, from the sublime to the practical, a spiritual journey introduced in each chapter by an atout, the Tarot’s major archetypes.   From the Fool, to The World, our human journey with its risk and folly unfolds. There is also an artist here alive to her new world seeking inspiration among artists on the Lower East side, learning the ways and foods of her Chinese neighbors, falling in love.