Decent Men

Overview

Decent Men, created over a period of almost forty years, is a video collage built around Ramos' powerful extended monologue on his eighteen months in federal prison for resisting the draft during the Vietnam War. As Ramos, a compelling raconteur, tells the story of his interactions with prisoners and guards as a 23-year-old draft resister, his charged performance narrative is interrupted with vintage cartoons that feature grotesque racial stereotypes. Ramos' stories of prison life are overlaid with footage from the artist's early performances and his 1977 video About Media, which addressed the media's coverage of President Carter's amnesty for draft resisters. The result is an extraordinary first-hand narrative of Ramos' prison experiences within the cultural, racial and political climate of America in the late 1960s.