The Trial of the Chicago 7

Aaron Sorkin

Aaron Sorkin on the set

Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin

The Chicago 7 minus David Dellinger

Abbie Hoffman

Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE TRIAL OF THE CHICAGO 7             B-                                                                              USA  Great Britain  India     (129 mi)  2020 ‘Scope  d:  Aaron Sorkin

A look back at a moment in history, at the height of the anti-war and Civil Rights movements, when the United States government tried to put a list of prominent outspoken activists who barely knew each other on trial for conspiring to initiate violent riots in Chicago during an eventful summer of 1968 simultaneous to the election of the Democratic candidate for President, Hubert Humphrey, who vowed to continue the war and was subsequently annihilated by Richard Nixon in the election (while the popular vote was close, Nixon won by over 100 Electoral votes), bringing in a new wave of repressive tactics, with the intention of removing the leftist guard, namely Black Panther Bobby Seale (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II), eventually dropped from the case in a mistrial, Tom Hayden (Eddie Redmayne), who comes across clean as a boy scout, Rennie Davis (Alex Sharp), a nebulous, shadowy character, David Dellinger (John Carroll Lynch), the ever peaceful conscientious objector who slugs a federal marshal in court, crossing into absurdity, as that’s something he would never have done, Abbie Hoffman (Sacha Baron Cohen), ever confrontational, given a Lenny Bruce style stand-up comedic role, touring college campuses during the trial to raise money for the defense, Jerry Rubin (Jeremy Strong), second banana to Hoffman, always stoned, John Froines, and Lee Weiner, two add-ons who were eventually acquitted, who were all viewed as a threat to the government.  While they organized protest marches and rock concerts at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, clashes broke out between protesters and the police turning into a full-scale riot, complete with tear gas and police beatings.  The press, already there to cover the Democratic convention, captured the overreaction by police and Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley’s handling of the situation.  Due to the embarrassment brought to the city for its own outrageous behavior, eight men and two defense counselors were blamed as scapegoats.  The trial itself lasted 10-months, received heightened press coverage, becoming something of a public spectacle, where the 60’s counterculture movement was really on trial, so they brought in various artists to testify by performing anti-war songs, including Phil Ochs, Judy Collins, Arlo Guthrie, and Country Joe McDonald, also writers Norman Mailer and Allen Ginsberg testified, as well as Timothy Leary and Jesse Jackson.  The trial itself was nothing short of a fiasco, filled with disruptions, outbursts, histrionics, and accusations, where the film version is a rather homogenized and cleaned-up version of what actually happened, as any trial that carried on as long as this one did, scrutinized by daily press briefings, was actually much more ostentatiously out of control than is suggested here, with many more threats from the bench from constant interruptions, routinely handing out a total of 159 contempt citations, citing lead attorney William Kunstler with four years in prison for addressing him as “Mr. Hoffman” instead of “Your Honor,” Abbie Hoffman received 8 months for laughing in court, Tom Hayden one year for protesting the gag and shackle treatment of defendant Bobby Seale, and Lee Weiner two months for refusing to stand when Judge Julius Hoffman (Frank Langella) entered the courtroom, a judge who had previously ruled in the Lenny Bruce censorship trials.  Perhaps the most egregious judicial offense was ordering barbers of the Cook County Jail to cut the long hair of the defendants and defense attorneys that he found so offensive.  The film didn’t get into the senility of the judge, age 74, a concern many had at the time.  In fact there were so many judicial errors committed during the trial that all convictions and numerous contempt citations were quickly overturned on appeal, with no new charges filed, finding the judge had exhibited a “deprecatory and often antagonistic attitude toward the defense,” making the whole trial a mockery of justice.  This was clearly evident to the public and the press even as the trial was dragging on, not so much to viewers of this film, which isn’t in the same league as Haskell Wexler’s Medium Cool (1969) and compares poorly to Brett Morgen’s animated CHICAGO 10 (2007) which uses actual trial transcripts, as opposed to Sorkin straining credulity through artistic license by offering a more polite and conciliatory rewrite of history that diffuses the hard corps radicalism of the times with an invented bipartisan utopia, where he just never gets the tone right, veering into the ridiculous and the absurd.    

Like other Sorkin movies, including David Fincher’s The Social Network (2010), the opening sequence is usually the most riveting moment in the film, which is the case here as well.  Shocking viewers at the outset is the Kafkaesque moment when a politically motivated Attorney General John Mitchell (John Doman) sends for U.S. Attorney Thomas Foran (J.C. MacKenzie) and his leading federal prosecutor Richard Schultz (straight arrow Joseph Gordon-Levitt), basically assigning them the case, using the untested Rap Brown Law, which had been tagged onto the Civil Rights Bill earlier that year by conservative southern Senators making it illegal to cross state lines in order to incite a riot, a blatant attempt to suppress black activism.  What stands out, however, is the rabidly zealous nature of Mitchell who is hellbent on sending these leftist radicals to jail, viewing the trial as a kind of payback.  But it’s a contrast in cultural attitudes and understandings, where under the scrutiny of Ramsey Clark (Michael Keaton, a wild card) as Attorney General under President Lyndon Johnson, they believed no crimes were committed, and that any evidence of riots were instigated by the Chicago police.  Yet under Nixon as President, his new Attorney General John Mitchell was livid about finding wrongdoing even when there was none to be found, with history suggesting they were the actual wrongdoers, as 48 top government officials were eventually convicted of crimes in the coverup of Watergate, including John Mitchell, who was found guilty of conspiracy, obstruction of justice, and perjury while sentenced to two and a half to eight years in prison, with the President resigning in disgrace before an inevitable impeachment.  While this sequence does beg the question, who starts riots on the streets, police or the protesters, the question is still relevant today, with Trump’s Attorney General William Barr threatening to revive this same Rap Brown Law against George Floyd protesters, believing crossing state lines to incite violence is a federal crime, but stopped short when it was discovered right-wing extremists actually infiltrated the peaceful Black Lives Matter protests to commit violent acts in order to undermine their public standing.  Clearly this is governmental overreach, setting boundaries on first amendment rights by suppressing the rights of dissent, mirroring Trump’s own Presidential declaration in 2017 that the press was the enemy of the people, speaking the typical jargon of autocrats and dictators.  With this opening conversation, however, the tone is set, subsequently introducing the major players, who appear without much of a build-up, where the idea of a 60’s counterculture may be foreign to viewing audiences half a century later.  Battle lines were tested in the summer of 1968, still struggling with enforcing Civil Rights legislation, dazed by the riotous aftermath of political assassinations, wearied by an unpopular war in Vietnam causing more than a thousand deaths per month, stunned by a rejection of women’s rights and female empowerment in the workplace, while bigotry and age-old prejudices were being challenged by a younger generation that rejected those demeaning practices outright, even as they continued to be practiced throughout mainstream society and in all middle-class homes.  Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin were household names to anyone growing up, as they advocated a different kind of freedom than the conservatism of the 50’s, with Hoffman publishing Steal This Book, which may as well be an irreverent counterculture guide to activism, while Rubin’s DO IT!: Scenarios of the Revolution was less popular, yet still culturally impactive, leading two decades later to Nike’s massive advertising campaign, “Just do it.”  Drugs and rock music were the real cultural signposts, along with Timothy Leary’s psychedelic manta, “Turn on, tune in, drop out,” all of which advocated a new type of thinking.  This background is streamlined out of the film, yet it explains why ten thousand strangers would travel to Chicago to camp out in the city parks without permission during the Democratic convention, facing a police-orchestrated riot as anti-war protesters tried to demonstrate for a candidate that would advocate an end to the Vietnam War.  Little did they know they would get their heads bashed in. 

What inevitably happens with Hollywood rewrites of history is that they bear so little in common with actual history, and Sorkin fails to deliver, toning down the rhetoric and flippant comments, removing the radical element, attributing less offensive words at the trial that were never spoken, bringing a Black Panther presence into the courtroom when none existed, even suggesting Fred Hampton sitting behind him acted as Bobby Seale’s attorney, which is completely fabricated, then altering the timeline of Fred Hampton’s murder, The Murder of Fred Hampton (1971).  While there’s some element of truth to Bobby Seale’s comportment in the courtroom, continually interrupting, demanding to act in his own defense because his own lawyer is sick in the hospital, a motion continually refused by the judge, who wrongly links him to William Kunstler (Mark Rylance), whose calm, laid-back demeanor couldn’t be farther from the flamboyance of Kunstler, the attorney for the other 7 defendants, despite Kunstler’s repeated insistence that he does not represent Seale, who is eventually led out of the chambers where he is brutally beaten, shackled, and gagged, and brought back into the courtroom, where the prosecution requests a mistrial.  In truth this pattern continued for several days, with Seale continually making muffled sounds under his gag, before a mistrial was declared and Seale was removed from the case, but he was immediately imprisoned to serve four years for 16 counts of contempt of court.  It was a month after the mistrial when Fred Hampton was murdered.  Certainly one of the eye-openers of the trial was the degree that each defendant was undermined by an undercover cop assigned directly to them, befriending them, recording them, turning their words against them in the courtroom, which was also the case with Fred Hampton, as it led to his death.  This courtroom testimony revealed the presence of undercover FBI programs known as COINTELPRO, a secret spy operation against American citizens, used to target and smear Martin Luther King and other civil rights leaders as well.  Despite this disinformation campaign designed to destroy reputations, Sorkin finds humor, inventing a situation where Jerry Rubin falls madly in love with his female undercover cop, still thinking wistfully about her even after she’s gone.  Similarly, Sorkin concocts an absurd scenario where Rubin and Hoffman accidentally run into Richard Schultz with his two young daughters, where Hoffman allegedly tells the girls “Your dad’s a good guy,” then telling Schultz, “We don’t have any beef with you.  We know you’re doing your job and you don’t think we’re criminals.”  Nothing could be further from the truth, as they were declared enemies, but in the liberal world of Hollywood, no divide is too large, as all fractured relationships can be healed.  Mirroring events of today, all the defendants of the trial would rage against the unethical practices of the FBI and systemic police brutality, decrying systemic racism in the criminal legal system, yet in Sorkin’s world it’s just a case of a few bad apples creating the appearance of rot, suggesting everything can be fixed.  It’s a cheap catharsis for naïve viewers.  One would have to ask, why did the government insist on burying the reports that confirmed most of the damage done in the 1968 Democratic convention disruptions was the result of excessive police violence, not the behavior of the protestors?  Or how could the blatant mistreatment of Bobby Seale happen in an American courtroom?  The hard truth is the system works as it was intended, repressing the existence of anyone who poses a threat to existing norms of wealth, property rights, and white advantages, where white supremacy has been entrenched into the status quo long before the Civil War.  Does anyone really think a few reforms can alter what hundreds of years have established as precedent?   Radicals in that era advocated a complete overthrow of the system.  Referring to the United States as Amerika, compiling detailed instructions on how to lead an armed struggle against the police, calling them “pigs,” Abbie Hoffman writes in his book, “We are not interested in the greening of Amerika, except for the grass that will cover its grave.”      

Conspiracy in the Streets: The Extraordinary Trial of the ...  Afterword by Tom Hayden, from Conspiracy in the Streets: The Extraordinary Trial of the Chicago Seven, edited by Jon Wiener, 2006 (pdf)

Captain Fantastic

CAPTAIN FANTASTIC         C+                

USA  (118 mi)  2016  ‘Scope  d:  Matt Ross              Official site

You never change things by fighting the existing reality.  To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.
—Buckminster Fuller

Welcome to the 60’s counterculture, or at least the leftover remnants of what was once a thriving cultural phenomena, an anti-establishment movement of young idealists that thought they could change the world by making better decisions in their generation by challenging existing norms, broadening their base to include women and minorities, reestablishing new priorities that included ending the war in Vietnam and breaking the stranglehold on power that led to an elite and privileged white class that made all the important decisions of the country.  People actually thought education would be the key, as given a differing set of narratives, stay the course or embark anew, it would be in everyone’s best interest to establish a new criteria of success, where the societal divisions that wealth and privilege produced were no longer the desired dream, but personal happiness, which would include holding the nation to higher standards.  To that end, there was an extreme amount of social progress made in that decade and beyond, but rather than continue on an agenda of social change, the country instead skidded to an abrupt stop with the accumulated effects of the assassinations of notable leaders that included President Kennedy, followed in short order by Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, and Bobby Kennedy, the last of which led to the bloodied demonstrators at the hands of the Chicago police during the 1968 Democratic Convention, which ultimately split the party and doomed their chances, leading to the election of Richard Nixon, the law and order, status quo candidate who all but guaranteed an end to any hope of progress.  All that was half a century ago and is considered yesterday’s dreams.  New generations have come and gone, while the real splash in generating societal changes has been the advent of the computer and the Internet, where in the palm of your hand you now have 24-hour instant access to just about anything you can think of, where all you have to do is click on a few links and you’re free to pursue any interest under the sun.  While it’s still questionable whether this has actually increased personal happiness or made people’s lives better, there is no question that being connected is more convenient, as it has certainly made people’s lives easier.  Perhaps the bigger question is whether it has added to the overall tension and anxiety that exists in the world, which certainly appears more divided than ever before, less tolerant, less open to discussion, where the Internet seems to have contributed to the formation of communities of like-minded followers, “where a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.”  Rather than bring people together, the lines of division have never been stronger.  To that end, this film is not likely to open anyone’s minds to the ideas being offered, as most of it is lost in a satirical attempt to poke fun at the participants.  Those that dare to be different are, in fact, mocked in this film, where there’s not much sympathy when there’s so little effort to actually understand what they’re trying to do, instead it’s easy to exclude those that were always outsiders anyway, which is a troubling aspect of the film, as if these kids deserve to be scorned because they are obviously different, labeled freaks or outcasts, where to many the word “cult” might come to mind, sending a resoundingly negative message about those who are different, so by the end it all feels so mournfully short-sighted, like the empty feeling that develops in the pit of your stomach following a funeral.    

The film surprisingly won the Best Directing prize of Un Certain Regard at Cannes 2016, probably thinking it had more to say about addressing superficialities in American culture, chosen by a largely European jury headed by Swiss actress Marthe Keller, but also including Swedish director Ruben Östlund, French actress Céline Sallette, Austrian director Jessica Hausner, and Mexican actor Diego Luna.  Set in the wilderness of the Pacific Northwest, Viggo Mortensen as Ben Cash is the Dad and spiritual leader of his family of six kids ranging from 8 to 18, each one smart, athletic, and highly individualistic, while encouraged to be so.  The mom has been away at a hospital for several months, yet life goes on without her, as Ben rallies the troops each and every day, waking them to a reveille by bagpipes before leading them in group activities that includes calisthenics, running up mountain trails, performing vigorous outdoor activities like rock or mountain climbing, while also including moments of serenity, like yoga exercises overlooking a mountain overlook.  The family is also involved in hunting their own food, including killing animals by bow and arrow or a sharp knife, and then skinning them, while also preparing daily meals, much of which is organically home grown.  Each one is challenged to read and think critically, facing a series of probing questions about how it makes them feel and what they find most significant.  While they enjoy playing musical instruments and singing songs together, there seems to be a balance of group time and individual time, existing in the wild without technology, making the most of their primitive situation of communing with nature.  While Ben makes occasional trips to town to restock necessary items, where the kids are more starstruck than engaged with the regular population, their social skills may resemble that of the Amish, as they’ve remained isolated and kept away from towns by choice, where the kid’s interactions that take place are like visitors from another planet, often generating plenty of stares by other kids in town.  The kid’s personalities, however, once you spend time with them, couldn’t be more charming and adorable, as their unique views and activities include Black Panther slogans from the 60’s, like “Stick it to the man” or “Power to the people.”  The juxtaposition of their innocence with some radical ideology feels hilarious, like the scenes in ANNIE HALL (1977) where kids are staring at the camera while telling the audience what they become when they grow up, Alvey's School Days and Ours .. - YouTube (1:36), as there’s something totally incongruous about their ages and the subject matter.  One of the most effective concerns the youngest child of eight, Charlie Shotwell as Nai, either seen wearing a lynx fur over his head or a gas mask, who has created his own private space in a treehouse, including photos of Cambodian mass murderer Pol Pot along with an assemblage of animal skulls and skins, a dire warning of the coming apocalypse.  It’s all played for laughs, including the celebration of Noam Chomsky Day instead of Christmas, where there’s a leftist slant to the ideology the children have been taught.  When they learn their mother died, and more significantly that she took her own life, suffering from a mental disorder that included bipolar mood swings, Ben doesn’t sugar coat what happened to the children, explaining honestly and openly, where the family apparently holds no secrets, which includes a warning from her father to stay away from the funeral, as he’ll have Ben arrested on sight.   

Death doesn’t take a holiday in this film, as the spirit is prominently featured throughout, where the dilemma becomes what to do about seeing their mother one last time and giving her a proper farewell.  Their ideas about what to do includes singing and a life celebration, where she expressly wished to be cremated in accordance with her Buddhist philosophy, while the rest of the family prefers a church service followed by a burial in a casket.  While their initial inclination was that power prevails, as that’s the message in a capitalistic society, and “you just have to accept it,” or, on second thought, “Stick it to the man,” their rallying cry where they are hellbent to see their mother.  Driving halfway across the country in an old school bus, the film resorts to sight gags and pop references to make light of their situation, stopping at a diner were they’ve never seen any of the items on the menu before, with Dad describing coca cola as “poison water” before raiding a grocery store with Dad feigning a heart attack as a diversion while the kids steal the store blind with needed provisions.  While it’s easy to make light of this, as if it’s all in good fun, it’s clear humor takes precedence over any of the actual ideas, which is the prevailing message throughout.  While there are solemn moments, or sequences of seriously staged drama, none of this has anything to do with living off the land, as most of it is all window dressing for the comedy, turning this more into a lighthearted romp than a film that expounds profound ideas.  Of course there is a culture shock when this unorthodox family intrudes into a suburban Arizona neighborhood to mingle with a sister-in-law (Kathryn Hahn) and her husband (Steve Zahn), where the meeting of the minds is a disaster, as child-rearing practices are decidedly different.  Of course, the same thing occurs when they march into the funeral services, late, making something of a spectacle of themselves in the entrance before Ben tries unsuccessfully to take over the service but makes such a fuss that he’s kicked out of the church, banned by his wife’s staunchly conservative father Jack (Frank Langella) who threatens to have him arrested.  “Grandpa can’t oppress us!” Nai exclaims, but they don’t want to lose their father so soon after losing their mother.  What follows is a mutiny by one of the children, Nicholas Hamilton as Rellian, joining forces with the dark side, confessing all to his grandfather about his supposed continual mistreatment at the hands of his father.  Calls for abuse and neglect charges greet Ben as he’s being shown the door, without his kids, reduced in a heap of utter exasperation, feeling for the first time that perhaps he’s failed as a father, getting a real comeuppance in this film, where many, depending on which side of the political spectrum you come from, will believe he fully deserves it.  For a while, Ben believes it, leaving his brood behind in the hands of his arch nemesis, driving away as a solitary figure in an empty bus where the world has lost all meaning.  The director is not afraid of emotional manipulation or overkill, where scenes are intentionally designed for tears, yet there’s an unmistaken understanding that no one loves these kids more than their father, who is forced to compromise his principles and acknowledge perhaps he overdid it.  It’s an unfortunate turn, as some good ideas get lost in the debacle, where all parents wonder if they’re doing the right thing, making this much less interesting than it could have been.          

Reviving the 60’s concept of getting “back to the garden,” a return-to-nature mantra expressed in the Joni Mitchell counterculture anthem “Woodstock,” Joni Mitchell ~ Woodstock - YouTube (4:35), many took this philosophy to heart and literally dropped out of society, where it’s particularly prevalent on the West Coast, but also Vermont, where in 1970 hippies constituted one-third of the entire state population, where there were as many as 75 communes thriving just in that one state alone.  Many still thrive decades later, rejecting the consumer-oriented, traditional way of life that measures success by material wealth, yet at the time, with Whole Earth Catalogs and Mother Earth News magazines in hand, it was an opportunity for hundreds of thousands of young idealists to change the American Dream and leave the congestion of the urban areas and live a more peaceful and harmonious life co-existing with nature.  In many respects, this led to the birth of the organic farming movement, as there was a progressive movement that turned away from a reliance on industrial farming and processed foods, railing against toxic pesticide use and the growing disconnect between Americans and their food supply.  Others headed into the forests and countrysides of Northern California to become marijuana growers, developing unique horticultural techniques that produced the most potent cannabis in the country, aided by an American government decision in the late 70’s to spray toxic chemicals on the Mexican marijuana crops which at the time accounted for 90 percent of the marijuana smoked in the United States.  This provided an opening for a home-grown product that was actually superior in every respect, as the trick was to remove male plants before pollination, producing seedless female flowers known as sinsemilla that produce much more resin, a sticky substance known for enhancing the potency, where now Humboldt County in California has become America’s marijuana capital.  But let’s not be naïve, as the Mexican narco traffickers have also moved into similar regions, where marijuana patches guarded by men with Uzis have also sprung up in the national parks and forests, often viewed as trigger-happy competitors, where farming pot in the U.S. is much more profitable than smuggling it across the border.  Their methods are more toxic, however, growing plants laced with illegal pesticides, leaving behind dead animals, loads of trash, while polluting the natural water supplies, making the narco traffickers the very antithesis of Thoreau’s utopian vision of Walden, which is largely seen as a quest for spiritual transcendence through self-reliance.  It’s curious that both sides cohabitate the same space, as their aims are diametrically opposed to one another.  This is similar, however, to the political divisions of the 60’s, where there were radical elements that resorted to violence and others that were strictly peace abiding.  Both shared similar ideals but veered dramatically in different directions when it came to achieving those goals.  This film attempts to raise similar questions about unorthodox methods used to raise children, including home-schooling methods that often include strict religious or philosophical principles whose pre-determined dogmatic adherence resembles parental brainwashing, suggesting it’s impossible to provide a perfect childhood upbringing by overcontrolling their environment, that it’s more about unconditional love and instilling moral values.   

This is where Hollywood goes wrong, however, as even though this is a smaller indie format with good intentions, claiming to be made in the same likeable spirit as LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE (2006), a darling of independent film festivals that comically straddled the line between the grotesque, the tasteless, and the hilarious, they still fuck up the neighborhood, as despite a cast of Viggo Mortensen surrounded by six adorable children, like the von Trapp family living off the grid somewhere out in the middle of the Pacific Northwest woods, the film takes great pains to show the rigor and discipline of their subsistence living lifestyle, as they have a daily exercise regimen while learning survival skills, with each child seriously brain-challenged by a dedicated home-schooling program, where these kids are sharp as a tack.  And that is where this film falls off the rails, as Hollywood stereotypes always depict outsider groups as having to be smarter than the norm, like Stanley Kramer’s unintentionally offensive GUESS WHO’S COMING TO DINNER (1967), where Sidney Poitier as a black man had to be universally recognized as having the same brains and moral values as whites, but in the movies, it’s always exaggerated so they are also the smartest person in the room, leaving no doubt, or so the film suggests, that blacks share the same humanity as whites.  Of course, in making this message, they dumb down the message so that “all whites” will sympathize, so while supposedly promoting racial equality, blacks actually have to be “superior” to whites, so their humanity credentials simply can’t be questioned.  However, in promoting a liberal cause, they actually made it harder for ordinary blacks to succeed in similar situations as whites, as Hollywood rarely focuses on real personal struggles, but instead promoted blacks as “supermen.”  Another example is the huge success of the documentary MARCH OF THE PENGUINS (2005), making penguins cute and cuddly, giving them human characteristics of being “lovable,” where the adoration of this film only made it that much harder for other serious documentaries to offer a complex message, as in order to succeed, or so the thinking goes in Hollywood, the product has to be wrapped in cute and cuddly to succeed.  Count the animated penguin movies that have followed, starting with MADAGASCAR (2005) and the many follow-ups, or cute ocean critters in FINDING NEMO (2003) and now FINDING DORY (2016), or going back as far as the ICE AGE (2002), with its many sequels, as theaters have been playing to this formula ever since, as it sends customers through the turnstyles.  The same thing happens here in this movie, where if you see something that’s too good to be true, it’s likely not real.  As much as people like this movie, and it’s perfectly enjoyable on the surface, there’s little doubt that it follows the same business model for success.  Why does Hollywood always have to mythologize humanity in order to tell their stories, exaggerating beauty or intelligence in order to make characters more interesting?  Because that’s the crowd pleasing business template for selling a Hollywood product, where one need look no further than any decent commercial advertisement that wants you to willingly buy their product.  So do not be fooled, as this is sheer fabrication, a glossy surface covering up damaged goods.