Capsulized Endarkenment

A century-old time capsule has recently been unearthed on the grounds of an Oklahoma church.  It was named the "Century Chest," and it was buried under the basement of Oklahoma's First Lutheran Church in 1913 by the church's Ladies Aide Society.




This is always fascinating.  Perhaps interested parties cannot do this right now because just about everything is digitized and/or expensive (and unlikely to be donated to posterity).  But what will those a century from now think if they were to open a box with: Lady Gaga and Nickelcrap CDs (to demonstrate what has become of that obsolescent format); "flip flops" and other contemporary fashionable women's footwear; People magazine; a Che Guevara T-shirt (and a copy of a Humberto Fontova book to drive home that point); a copy of International Tattoo Art; AARP'S My Generation rag (side-by-side with the lyrics to "My Generation", for, hopefully, individuals in the future will be more attuned to irony); a DVD of The Expendables (and one of Rocky, to drive home how quickly and from how far a man and an entire culture can deteriorate); a Joel Osteen book; Spark Notes for Ulysses;  photographs of the Nobel Prizes of Paul Krugman, Al Gore, and Barack Obama; a printout of Ann Coulter's column apologizing for Romneycare; a picture of Gary Johnson crowd surfing; a recording of Michele Bachmann addressing the House floor; documentation of the latest test scores, reading comprehension, and mathematical aptitude of public school students; and one of those Shepard Fairey "Forward" posters?

If too much of the above is too obsolescent for these technological times, perhaps a wealthy philanthropist (there should be no shortage of wealthy altruistic Christians and leftists in this culture) can donate a few expensive items broadcasting what technology transmits to twenty-first century technology customers: a Kindle reader stuffed with the likes of Thomas Friedman, Peter Singer, Chelsea Handler, Sylvia Browne, and an anonymous wonk braying, "We're freer now than we ever have been," (with a lone Radley Balko corrective to counter that delusion); an iPod replete with the catalogs of Limp Bizkit, Rage Against the Machine, the Beastie Boys, Saliva, Hole, and Biohazard; an iPad with the rumored Hulk Hogan "sex tape" (and sundry salacious scatological goatish pornography); video (and other) documentation of American Glorified Karaoke Idol, America's Got Ballast, and Prancing With the Schmucks (with some supplementary exposition clarifying what kind of "stars" the schmucks really are); and a screen capture of a random local newspaper comment thread, to showcase the impeccable grammar, syntax, spelling, and vocabulary of earnest educated adult discourse in 2013?

As Señor Fontova might say,  competent psychologists (and some exist) could have a metaphorical field day with this culture.

But what will the philosophers and cultural anthropologists of the future think when they contrast the heights of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (of which the Oklahoma Christian time capsule fails to scratch the surface) with the depths (technology aside*, of course) of the twenty-first?

I can hear and read the hypothetical objections.  And I may get to them one of these days (as well as the scant good news).

The greatest news is that there is antidote to all of this (but it is so far beyond the mental radar most that it may as well not exist, these days).

*This topic demands an essay in its own right.

Which School of Art Really Copies Life?: Part IV

[The previous installment]

                It is appropriate that Hooper’s previous film, The King’s Speech, is a romanticist film (and a stellar one at that) based on true events that dramatizes an epic struggle with “larger-than-life” issues (if not quite larger than life human subjects).  And the new Norwegian film Kon-Tiki (nominated for the Academy Award® for Best Foreign Language Film) is yet another true “romantic” story that has a larger-than-life subject who really lived “in real life.”  The King’s Speech and Kon-Tiki are refutations—and would be recognized as such, in an honest culture of people who understand the difference between art and journalism—of naturalism’s and modernism’s duopoly on realism.  The “serious” and “artistic” films of today (see above for examples) depict the most depraved and mindless sadists, cannibals, perverts, and self-flagellators it is possible for the most creatively depraved human to conceive of—yet the literati sardonically snigger at an unusual, mold-breaking depiction of heroism as “unrealistic” or even “impossible.”  Some of the acclaimed films noted above not only flout laws of causality and intelligibility—they flout laws of metaphysics.  (The titular character of The Woman does things with her hands and teeth that human hands and teeth cannot do.  Red, White and Blue seriously and “realistically” depicts a very young, white, middle class, HIV-positive woman in the twenty-first century transmitting her virus to a man in a one-night stand/orgy.  Of course, the man just happens to be donating blood to his mother, which is a more contrived plot twist than any coincidence in Dickens or Hugo.  See the writings of Michael Fumento, author of The Myth of Heterosexual AIDS, for the asininity of such an event.)  Calling these realistic is to esthetics what calling socialism compassionate is to politics: more preposterous than the fame of the Kardashian family.  They could not possibly be based on anything that could happen in the universe, yet they are extolled as realism compared to the “shallow fantasies” of romanticism.  (Contrast such literally impossible scenarios--such as a man waking up as Kafka's cockroach--with the affecting and effective psychological realism of Les Misérables, including but not limited to Javert's suicide.  Did you know that, at least in the United States today, cops are more than twice as likely to commit suicide than the general population and twice as likely to commit suicide as they are to die in the line of duty?  But that is a topic for another day.)  Yet, The King’s Speech and Kon-Tiki—both generally accurate accounts of true events and people—resemble romanticist fiction, not naturalist fiction.

                This should give you a hint as to which film—Les Misérables or Silver Linings Playbook—is more realistic.

                Russell’s film, at least implicitly, denies human volition and depicts virtually all of its characters as ineluctable, unregenerate slaves to ineffable and often destructive passions.  In that sense, it is unrealistic.  Compared to much of its competition, it has few preposterous plot twists.  But it does have at least one.

                It is difficult to summarize this “plot point” succinctly (and it is a “spoiler” of sorts).  The writer(s) Quick and/or Russell needed to the three main characters (Pat, his father, and Tiffany) to converge and unite behind Tiffany’s plan to use Pat as a partner in her upcoming dance competition.  Pat had committed to rehearse with Tiffany the day of a pivotal Eagles game.  Subsequently, his father (whose familiar cellphone era superstition is another Endarkenment indicator) believed that Pat’s physical presence at Eagles games was something of a good luck charm for them.  Pat agreed to break his engagement with Tiffany, infuriating her.  (Recall that his father is banned from Lincoln Financial Field due to fighting, despite the fact that he looks and acts like sexagenarian Robert DeNiro and not Jake LaMotta.  Ergo, the elder man cannot attend himself.)  Pat and his brother attempt to attend the game but get arrested in a pregame brawl in the parking lot.  The New York Giants pulverize the Eagles.  A livid Tiffany barges into Pat’s home and an internecine squabble.  She demands to know why Pat broke his promise with her.  When Pat and his father self-righteously explain the superstitious rationalizations behind Pat’s betrayal, Tiffany the socially adept, “street smart,” twee trollop impresses Pat’s father (who, so far, does not like her) by drily spewing (in a rote and autistic manner) a series of precise scores from precise dates of several Eagles victories on specific days that she and Pat were together.  To underscore the alleged point to the superstitious father, she informs him that Pat’s empowering motto (“Excelsior!”) is the motto of the State of New York, the Giants’ home.  (Actually, they play in East Rutherford, New Jersey, but “Nevermind!” as Frank Zappa would say.)  Anyway, the point is supposed to be that Pat and Tiffany together would have meant victory for the Eagles (or, at least that there is a high correlation between that dual corporeal convergence and Eagles victory) and that Excelsior Man’s physical presence at an Eagles versus Giants game boded an even direr outcome for the Eagles.  When asked how she knew all this, the momentarily autistic nerd reverts to bubbly gal status and states matter-of-factly, “I did my research.”  Suddenly, Dad is no longer enraged at his bellicose son, he likes his son’s friend, he thinks that dancing with Tiffany (and Tiffany herself) is a worthwhile endeavor for his son, and the events that lead to the story’s conclusion commence.

                That contrived twist is more incredible and less realistic than anything I have read or watched in any quality romanticist tale.

                In order to spice up their stories and make them palatable to all but the dullest philosophy professors and literary critics, naturalists must smuggle elements of romanticism into their works.  It might be gratifying if they could do so in a realistic manner.

                Perhaps it is impossible when the aesthetic school itself is not true to life.

Which School of Art Really Copies Life?: Part III

[The previous installment]

                As a counter-reaction to romanticism’s alleged incredibility and ostensible emotionalism (which is a categorically different phenomenon from emotion, even passionate emotion), naturalism claimed to embody reason in literature.  Naturalist writers eschewed value projection and heroic characters while conflating literature with journalism: an impartial recorder of average people “as they really are in real life.”  At least implicitly, naturalism is predicated on a deterministic metaphysics that downplays human choices in favor of genes, ineffable impulses, and other forces of nature beyond human control.  Naturalist writers (unlike David O. Russell) generally eschewed logically-connected plots with purposeful characters enacting ineluctable events connected by purposeful characters, cause, and effect.  They generally regarded life as random, inexplicable, and acausal (somewhat like their characters) and wrote less connected, more episodic stories, which allegedly depict “life as it really is.”  Since they downgraded (or, more commonly, abandoned) plot, they focused extensively on characterization.  This is their forte (which is pronounced “fort” if you’re reading English, by the way).  The best naturalist writers perceptively and vividly created lifelike “average” people.

                In some ways, Silver Linings Playbook is a difficult work to classify.  Like every other book or script, it has elements of both romanticism and naturalism.  It is certainly not consistently naturalistic.  It has a logical, causal plot structure; its events are demonstratively not messy and random.  Its two lead characters pride themselves on being extraordinary and exceptional.  (“We’re not liars like they are,” Tiffany tells Pat, contrasting them with their friends and relatives.)   However, these two exceptional characters are also, by far, the most erratic, dependent, and abjectly neurotic people in the entire film (and they are likely far more erratic, dependent, and abjectly neurotic than most of the people in the real lives of most of its viewers).  In addition to details recounted above, Pat vandalizes the waiting area of a doctor’s office when he hears his and his wife’s “song” (which happened to be playing when he walked in on his wife and her man in the shower), and Tiffany histrionically sweeps her arm over a table in a diner, destroying dishes, spilling food and drink, and loudly storming out.  It is as if Quick and/or Russell felt guilty for writing what they regarded as archaic, passé, and melodramatic (in the conventional definition) and crafted characters that are destructive, self-destructive, and egregiously  flawed as a form of compensation and/or apology.  (Or, perhaps one or both thought that the only way to get a novel published, and/or a film produced and distributed, in this culture, was to make such concessions.  Since I am not familiar with the novel or the writers, I admit I am speculating.  To an extent.)  Since all works have aspects of both schools, and the complex science of aesthetics is more concerned with overarching fundamentals than with punctilious adherence to every particular “prerequisite,” Silver Linings Playbook is essentially a work of naturalism.  Its two lead characters are quasi-heroes at best, it does not project obvious themes and value judgments, it journalistically reports more-or-less typical people in its own time and place, and its presentation of events, logically connected or not, do not emphasize human volition but often imply a deterministic, pre-ordained conclusion outside of direct human control (the characters—consistent with the subtheme of mental illness--often seem to be following ineffable, unconscious twitches and impulses more than conscious, or even subconscious, choices).
                Silver Linings Playbook is about as good a film as is likely to be produced these days, excepting films based on and/or inspired by superannuated classics like Les Misérables.  Compared to many (most?) other “indie” and “art” films, it is sunlit romanticism.  (For a number of reasons, professional and otherwise, I see a number of revolting new films.  I recommend none of them, but, if you’d like to formulate an idea of what I mean, read synopses of the likes of Red, White and Blue; The Woman; Kill List; Bellflower; Melancholia; and Holy Motors for just a representative sample.  And these are the “serious” films.  Naturalism’s and modernism’s crippling, stultifying duopoly on serious art, literature, and cinema in this culture is to esthetics what the left/conservative dichotomy is to politics, reminding perceptive observers that the Endarkenment has darkened every branch of philosophy.  Plot, causality, comprehensibility, and heroes have been relegated to unserious, mindless entertainment—and even there, the plot, causality, comprehensibility, and heroes are significantly compromised, like much else in the culture.)  Russell’s film, however flawed, shows the viewer (basically) decent people in a comprehensible universe where values are achievable and worth pursuing.  If will probably fare better than Hooper’s film at the awards ceremonies, and it will certainly be regarded by most people in the culture of non sequiturs as “more realistic” than the “escapism” of Les Misérables.  Once again, most people in the culture of non sequiturs are mistaken.
  
[Part IV is forthcoming.]

Which School of Art Really Copies Life?: Part II

[Part I of this essay is here.   This part may contain a few "spoilers" for those who plan to see Silver Linings Playbook.]

                Silver Linings Playbook is a different species of film and story from a different time and culture, with a different view of man.  (Though, interestingly, it uncharacteristically, and to its credit, retains some of the virtues of the time and culture of Les Misérables.)  It was produced by Bruce Cohen and Donna Gigliotti; it was written and directed by David O. Russell, based on the novel The Silver Linings Playbook by MatthewQuick.  It stars Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence, and Robert DeNiro.  It was produced by Mirage Enterprises and financed by The Weinstein Company.  As of February 11, it had earned $90 million at the domestic box office.  Today’s sapient, intellectually independent critics prefer it to Les Misérables; it received 92% positive reviews at Rotten Tomatoes (including 91% from the “top critics”).  89% of the website’s users rated the film 3.5 stars or higher.

                The film is set in the renascent Greater Philadelphia area in the obsolescent present day.  (Unlike Les Misérables, I have not read the novel upon which this film is based.  In a discussion following a screening I attended, Robert DeNiro remarked that Russell made changes.  “It was basically the book, but done in his own way.”)  Pat (Cooper) is a well-meaning but volatile married man released from a mental institution in Baltimore after savagely beating his wife’s lover in front of her.  (As presented in the film, this beating was actually somewhat provoked, somewhat justified, and venial at worst.)  Despite his problems, Pat is an incorrigible optimist whose motto, which he frequently exclaims, is “excelsior” (“onwards and upwards” or "success").  His wife is a public high school English teacher who assaults her poor charges with the overrated, malevolent, twentieth-century naturalism of Ernest Hemingway and William Golding.  (Pat perceptively if somewhat obviously points out that the dolorous novels she teaches are antithetical to his motto.)  She was apparently the “bread winner” as Pat returns to his parents’ house in Upper Darby, the semi-urban “township” that abuts Philadelphia.  Pat brings a surfeit of psychiatric pills that have long been part of his chemical regimen.  (He, who appears to be around forty, certainly has no current source of income.  At one point, he petulantly asks his parents when he will “get” a cellular phone.)  Impulsive, mindless violence must run in the family; Pat’s father (DeNiro) is a Philadelphia Eagles fanatic who is barred from attending games at Lincoln Financial Field because he started too many fracases at too many games and was responsible for too much violence.  (The venue opened in 2003, so the notion of a man with the size, build, and age of Robert DeNiro circa 2003 engaging in enough baneful fights to be permanently banned from the stadium already strains more credulity than any aspect of the “fantastic” and “impossible” Les Misérables.)  The callow Pat hopes to save his marriage despite the fact that he unexpectedly walked in on his wife in the shower with her lover, who told him, “You’d better go.”  He meets a much younger woman named Tiffany (Lawrence) who is the widow of a police officer and has moved back in with her own parents (or at least, in the style of Chris Elliott on Get a Life, in an apartment on her parents’ property).  She has a reputation for being a slut and was terminated from her job for making Shakespeare’s beast with two backs with most of her former coworkers (including at least one woman, which would have made a rather oddly-shaped beast).  When arguing about her past promiscuity with her new friend, she asserts, “I was a slut. There will always be a part of me that is dirty and sloppy, but I like that, just like all the other parts of myself.”  (Tiffany is also a veteran of psychiatric pill regimens.  At one point in the film, the inchoate couple laughs about the sundry side effects they experienced from the myriad drugs they previously ingested.)

                Silver Linings Playbook, like the better exemplars of naturalism (the literary school that supplanted romanticism), is a notably accurate and perceptive recreation of the time and place it depicts, from the depressed economy (DeNiro’s character turns to bookmaking after losing his own job); to the depressed dialogue depicting child-like adults and their language (including but not limited to the misuse and overuse of “awesome” and asinine phrases like “in the house”); to the overabundance of adult children living with their parents, which has more to do with the economy but can often (not always) be partly attributed to child-like adults; to the ubiquity of over-diagnosed mental health disorders and over-prescribed mental health medications; to the realism of Tiffany’s husband’s death.  (Like most actual cop deaths—and they are much less than you have been led to believe—he died in an automobile accident.  His accident occurred when he was off duty.)  But, like all of the exemplars of naturalism, from Sinclair Lewis all the way down to Upton Sinclair, its projection of human nature is far more flawed than its characters.

[Stay tuned for part III.]

Which School of Art Really Copies Life?: Part I

Last year, two successful, critically acclaimed films were released.  (One was somewhat less critically acclaimed but more successful financially despite a relatively lengthy running time that still managed to be truncated.)  As I write this, both films are still playing in theaters.  They have each been nominated for several prestigious awards (including Oscar®s).  Each is based on a novel.  Each is representative of two contrasting approaches to literature (including cinema).  Concomitantly, each is representative of two different cultures and two different centuries.

                Before I proceed, I must warn any reader that I must (in future parts) spoil significant elements of the plot of each film.  (Each film has one, including, uncharacteristically, the representative of post-nineteenth-century naturalism.  Contrary to one of the many widespread cultural confusions of our definition-denigrating times, a plot is not just any storyline.)  And they are both highly recommended and worth seeing.  If one is not familiar with the plots of both, one has plans to see either (or both), and one does not want details, one should return to this post after seeing one or both.

                The first film is Les Misérables.  It is based on a popular 1985 stage musical, which itself is based on an enduringly popular 1862 novel that is considered a classic.  (That link is to the late-nineteenth-century Isabel F. Hapgood translation; I cannot find the original 1862 English translation by Hugo's friend Charles Wilbour online at present.)  It was produced by Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner, Debra Hayward, and Cameron Mackintosh; written by William Nicholson and Alain Boublil & Claude-Michel Schönberg and Herbert Kretzmer, based on the stage musical by Boublil & Schönberg and the novel by Victor Hugo; and directed by Tom Hooper.  It stars Hugh Jackman, Russell Crowe, and Anne Hathaway.  It was produced by Working Circle Films and distributed by Universal Pictures.  As of February 11, 2013, it had earned $144 million at the domestic (United States) box office.  The website Rottentomatoes.com, which aggregates the reviews of professional critics and amateur theatergoers, deemed that 70% of professional critics reviewed the film positively (interestingly, only 59% of the prestigious critics that the website’s editors have designated “top critics” reviewed it positively, by the editors’ estimations).  82% of the website’s users scored the film 3.5 stars or higher (on a five-star scale).  The editors summarized the criticalconsensus thusly: “Impeccably mounted but occasionally bombastic, Les Misérables largely succeeds thanks to bravura performances from its distinguished cast.”  The review excerpts for the film that appear on the Rotten Tomatoes website are liberally sprinkled with words like “bombastic,” “simplistic,” “bloated,” “convoluted,” “overblown,” etc.  These are common reactions to the story and characters in all formats and iterations, from modern, trendy, irrationalist, and/or modern critics steeped in aesthetic naturalism and modernism.  They are common reactions to any work representative of the aesthetic school of romanticism, from the nineteenth century to much rarer, more recent works, in any format or iteration.

                Consistently enough in an era when intellectuals disdain definitions and explicit identification, there is no consistently accepted definition of romanticism.  The best I have encountered was Ayn Rand’s (she stressed the importance of definitions and explicit identification); she defined romanticism as the school of art that operated on the premise that man possesses the faculty of volition.  Typically, romanticism tended to be defined in emotional terms: as the embodiment of color, melodrama (in the conventional quasi-definition of that term), and emotion, or even emotionalism, in literature.  It is true that, after centuries of medievalism and classicism, romantic literature was comparatively colorful and emotional (though not histrionic).  However, contrary to many of today’s intellectuals, who regard emotions and emotionalism as primaries, feelings actually presuppose values, which presuppose an individual’s choice of them.  Romanticist works emphasize human choices, and they emphasize them over and over again.

                Romanticism briefly flourished as an esthetic school, but, due to a metamorphosing intellectual milieu, it was soon supplanted by another (which I will attend to below).

                Tom Hooper’s film is necessarily condensed and essentialized (and, at 138 minutes, is significantly shorter than the stage musical on which it’s based), but it is a faithful recasting of Hugo’s plot.  (It is apparently more faithful to Hugo’s novel than the stage musical; screenwriter Nicholson reportedly reverted to the original in a few places where Boublil and Schönberg diverted from it.  The source of this information is the Wikipedia entry for the film; I have never seen the musical or any other adaptation of Les Misérables.)

                Hugo’s hero (they had them in serious literature back then), Jean Valjean (Jackman), is imprisoned for stealing a loaf of bread to feed his sister’s starving family amidst the squalor of nineteenth-century France.  He is sentenced to nearly two decades of hard labor on a chain gang (time was added due to brief prison escapes).  He is finally released by the police martinet Javert (Crowe).  Embittered, disillusioned, and alienated, Valjean seeks refuge in the home of an accommodating, hospitable bishop in a small town.  In the middle of the night, still famished, penurious, and ostensibly alienated, he pilfers two silver candlesticks and absconds with them.  He is captured by gendarmes, who present the temporarily misguided thief and the stolen property to the Bishop.  The Bishop, more accommodating and gracious than earlier, assures the authorities that they made a mistake and that the candlesticks were gifts.  He adds, “You forgot your other gift,” proffering another valuable item.  The bemused authorities leave.  The Bishop earnestly addresses the fallen hero, telling him that all he asks in return for his forgiveness and generosity is that Valjean become an honest man.

                He does.  Overcome with incredulous gratitude that a fellow human being (a stranger, no less) finally showed him the love and respect he craved after nearly nineteen years of strenuous, harrowing prison labor and ostracism from venal society (a universal redundancy, in the author’s view), Valjean chooses to become an honest man.  He devotes himself to the Bishop’s unorthodox (some would say heterodox), singular approach to religion (a kind of ecumenical, quasi-deistic religious humanism).  In this retelling, he breaks his parole (in effect, becoming a fugitive again) and moves to a small town.  The ingenious, industrious Valjean starts a business and produces wealth and value, bringing prosperity to the town.  One of his employees, Fantine (Hathaway), must send money to support her daughter, Cosette, who is living elsewhere with the Thenardiers, a married couple of despicable innkeepers who overwork and neglect her.  When one of Valjean’s foremen fires her (unbeknownst to Valjean), she becomes a whore.  When she attacks an abusive john, the relentless, ruthless cop Javert (who is also searching for the fugitive Valjean) arrests her.  Valjean intervenes and commits her to a hospital.  He then learns that an innocent dolt has been falsely accused of being himself, the notorious fugitive.  In a poignant, plangent scene, the noble gentleman deliberates agonizingly in front of the bishop’s candlesticks, realizing that coming forward would lead to the close of his factory and the economic collapse of the town.  It would also preclude him from caring for Cosette (Fantine is now dying, leaving her daughter at the mercy of the Thenardiers).  At first, he muses that the imprisoning of one slow-witted drone who could not lead much of a life anyway is a small price to pay for the suffering that would follow if he came forward.  Then he corrects himself, reaffirms his commit to justice and individualism, and chooses to save the innocent man.  Before Javert can arrest him, he flees furtively and defiantly to save Cosette and continue life as a venerable fugitive.

                So intensifies a logically-interconnected plot structure with purposeful, goal-oriented characters, (whose motivation is strikingly concretized, enacting causal events that ineluctably lead to a suspenseful climax.  The protagonist is an extraordinary man (physically and mentally) who embodies (to use an overused, and rarely correctly used, word) awesome human potential but that nonetheless does not flout metaphysical reality and its laws.  Even the antagonist (to whom I will return later) is a misguided but basically good man of considerable stature and genuine dignity.  Les Misérables subsumes broad abstractions and fundamental issues on a grand scale with singular, sui generis, demonstratively volitional, colorful characters and a passionate theme about institutionalized suffering in overbearing organized society.  It is romanticism.  With rare exceptions, in the last several decades, virtually all such films have been adaptations of nineteenth century novels.