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In chaotic situations, certain people rise to the top, and that is certainly the case for Mohammed al-Hariri, a former air conditioning repairman who commands enormous deference on the windblown streets of Zaatari refugee camp.

In less than a year, the Zaatari camp in Jordan has grown into an instant city, with 120,000 residents who have fled the war in Syria, sheltered in trailers and tents. Officially, aid workers manage the camp. But Hariri is the de facto boss, a mafia don to Syrian refugees who seek his help.

At 48, he keeps his gray beard trimmed, and his steely hair, which stands high on his head, appears blow-dried. His shoes are clean and polished, remarkable on the dusty streets. He is deceptively small, almost delicate, but there is nothing gentle about the way he has built an empire in the camp, living in relative luxury.

"This is the kitchen," he says, as he gives a tour of his living compound. "It's a humble kitchen as you can see."

The well-stocked pantry is hardly humble by refugee standards. Hariri has a private water tank and bathroom. Artificial turf in his courtyard gives relief from the sand and rocks. His children watch cartoons in a separate air-conditioned trailer. Another trailer is a storage room filled with blankets and food. Three small refrigerators hum in the storeroom.

Hariri freely admits tapping into electricity from an Italian hospital nearby and helps others get free power, too.

"Look, everyone does it," he says, jabbing a cigarette in the air as his temper rises. "But know this," he continues, "we are in the 21st century, even animals in a barn have electricity."

Hariri can deliver more than electricity to upgrade the refugee trailers that line the dirty streets. He offers a tour of his section of the camp: His workmen have created decorative fountains out of concrete and stone in shaded courtyards behind corrugated metal front gates. The clear pools and bubbling water cools the desert air.

"A cup of coffee by the fountain in the evening, it's an extraordinary thing," he says, juggling calls from two Nokia cells phones, "and you enjoy the wonderful weather of Zaatari."

Friction With Aid Workers

Hariri makes no apologies for running what aid officials consider a criminal racket. He insists he serves his people. He gets them what they want. He rages against the aid worker he considers stingy and heartless.

"They are thieves and robbers and they are corrupt," he says, though he offers no specifics.

Before he became the boss here, he says he taught air-conditioner repair in a technical school in the Syrian town of Dera'a. When the protests started against President Bashar Assad, he immediately joined a rebel brigade and became commander of a special unit in the Falcons of the Tribe of Mohammed. Hariri says he specialized in mines.

In August of last year, he fled to Jordan and saw how he could be another kind of leader. His first lesson came on the day he arrived, the 60th refugee in Zaatari. He asked for extra blankets. An aid worker told him he would need a special coupon. His response: "Give me the stuff now or I will separate your head from your body."

He got the blankets, and then began building his empire. Ask how he does it, and he won't give a straight answer. There are rumors in Zaarati that he can have people killed. "I could, if I wanted to," he says, dismissively, "but I would never let it get to that point."

He claims he can solve problems in the camp, stop the riots that have resulted in injuries to Jordanian security police.

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"Why don't you take the train out there? That way you guys can drink, and hang out, and not have to worry about anything."

And we slip into Greek tragedy.

Fruitvale Station isn't really a surprising film, except insofar as it's rare to see such a warmly emotional big-screen portrait of black family life. The director, who grew up just north of Oakland and is about the age Oscar would be today, has said that for him there was a jarring that-could-have-been-me aspect to the story.

He's given it an immediacy and resonance on screen that reflects that — with help from a striking performance by Jordan, who's mostly had supporting roles before this on TV's Parenthood and Friday Night Lights. Together, star and director get you to look at, and think about, a flawed young man you might not give a second thought if you saw him on the street.

And also to look at, and think about, that reaction — and other knee-jerk reactions, and the consequences they can have. Fruitvale Station doesn't have anything shattering to say about the case, or the man, really. But it may well leave you shattered by his story. (Recommended)

Crystal Fairy

Director: Sebastian Silva

Genre: Adventure, Comedy

Running Time: 98 minutes

With: Michael Cera, Gaby Hoffmann, Juan Andres Silva

As is a pretty common happening on the internet now, there's a new BuzzFeed article going around. The headline is a random and arbitrary number followed by some nouns, and the article itself is a numbered list of pictures, animated GIFs, and perhaps as many as 100 words or so.

This week's entry: Joseph Bernstein's July 9 screed, 28 'Favorite' Books That Are Huge Red Flags.

It begins with the ominous intonation, "These books are harmless. Until a friend or loved one tells you that one of them is their favorite." It then presents a list of books that, in Bernstein's words, "have significant merits" but "are also indicative of deep and abiding potential character flaws in you and your loved ones."

Here's what's wrong with it.

Literally the entire article is made up of shameless stereotyping based on the assumption that there's only one reading of any book. There is, in fact, no capital-R Reading of a book that says, "This is what this book means and this is why," no matter how much Bernstein takes for granted that there is. I like Harry Potter now for very different reasons than BuzzFeed's "5-year-old" reader who doesn't "know where Afghanistan is" does. I just read Perks of Being a Wallflower a month ago, and I liked it for very different reasons than BuzzFeed's "sensitive teenager" does. I disliked The Catcher in the Rye, but I can appreciate The Catcher in the Rye, all for very different reasons than BuzzFeed's "no one understands" reader does.

The piece amounts, in the end, to little more than a long list of potshots at people who like popular books. Because these are all popular books. And as any hipster will tell you, it's easy to hate things that are popular. More specifically, it's easy to judge someone you perceive to like something "too much."

Let's take the Beatles song "Hey Jude" as an example. It's an undeniably great song. It's also a very popular song. Let's say that you meet someone who just loves this song. Someone who just goes bananas over "Hey Jude" and is the only person screaming "naaa naaa naaa nanananaaaa" when it comes on in the bar. It's easy to think, "Whoa ... you might like 'Hey Jude' a little too much." But that alone isn't actually indicative of the quality of the work or the person.

And frankly, the list is wrong even when it's right. I dislike Fight Club for the same reasons BuzzFeed does — that it carries for so many the message that "it's so haaaaard to be a white-collar man." But once again, this is not a problem with the book itself. What BuzzFeed is really taking issue with is people who respond in specific ways to these books, the "nananana"-style superfans who so annoy those who feel that despite (or perhaps with the help of) their enthusiasm, they're misreading the book. Bernstein is turning those bad feelings on the book itself, even though what rankles is a wrongheaded reading of the book. It's the formalist argument that the meaning of the text is in the text, except it's BuzzFeed and it's easy to make numbered lists of tired jokes. Bernstein chides "grown-ups" for liking The Giver on the basis that facial hair means you're a grown-up, but I can say The Giver was a good book whether or not I have facial hair. Facial hair will come and go as people read The Giver, independently of The Giver.

Interestingly, BuzzFeed recently ran a similarly titled graph of the 27 Broiest Books That Bros Like To Read, which also gets the entirety of its humor from stereotypes. The important difference between these two pieces, though, is that the "bro" list distinguished between making jokes about books and making jokes about segments of a book's audience, pointing out, "Many of these are great books worth enjoying 100%, despite their sometimes pedantic audience." It's a small point, but a critical one that the "red flag" piece misses entirely. It's not enough to say the books "all have significant merits." The point is that there's nothing wrong with loving these books at all unless you love them in the bro-y way the list is trying to address.

There's no one way to read a book, so there's no one way to know whether your friend's "favorite book" is a red flag without knowing why. Perhaps the real red flag is judging the reader, and not the book, by its cover.