We were fortunate this past week in being treated to political science theses from two acclaimed film directors, Milos Forman and Joss Whedon. I am not going to begin this brief critique by criticizing the credentials of these men, because I expect thoughtful and intelligent movies and such a demand necessitates a thoughtful and intelligent director. Nor will I suggest because these men are wealthy they ought not hold such positions, and though it indeed may be irrational or hypocritical for them, it is their ideas and not their characters which are in question.
What political theories have they brought forth? Similar ones, it turns out. Both directors take issue with the oft-repeated claim that President Obama is a socialist or that his policies are socialistic. It must be noted that of their arguments, at least as they have been reported, Forman's is the more complete. He at least acknowledges the question of government authority and the United States' exceptional grounding in liberty. For Whedon whoever disagrees has, "gone off the reservation," a downright embarrassing rhetorical sleight. The directors' arguments, however, are most similar: President Obama's policies are not socialism because they do not contain the essence of socialism, which Forman claims is in fact twofold: totalitarianism and the desire to eliminate social classes. In contrast, President Obama's policies merely seek to ameliorate suffering.
Before continuing, I would like to note that this is a conversation worth having: a discussion of what something is. Public political conversations in particular often focus on administration and policy but seldom on theory.
We first should note that most Americans, left and right and center, want to avoid the term socialism. In varying ways and to varying degrees it is associated with foreign affairs, Marxism, totalitarianism, and not-so-successful revolutions, so everyone wants to ditch it. However it gets remade or renamed, though, we must define its essence. We must also be diligent not to define it arbitrarily or simply define it as something we do not like so we may distance from it ourselves and our own ideas.
Outright we can see that the attempt to define the essence of socialism simply as any policy not for promoting social welfare is a failure insofar as it attempts to define something by what it is not. Unfortunately, Whedon's attempt at definition goes no further, although Forman's does. Forman defines it as totalitarianism or an attempt to create a classless society. We may dispense with his definitions also for they already constitute other ideologies, totalitarianism and egalitarianism.
So what is socialism? One might be tempted now to say, in a more precise wording of Whedon's inchoate and confused statement, that most laws are social because they concern how people relate to one another, even laws prohibiting murder and larceny. Exempted from this definition of social laws might be religious laws such as, for example, laws against blasphemy or laws against saying, having, or doing certain things simply because they are immoral. Yet this definition of "socialism" will help us very little since it would include most laws. Clearly and despite its name, some other principle besides social intercourse is at work. Besides, no one would call a law prohibiting murder a socialistic one. We need to develop a more restricted definition of socialism.
Yet if we exclude social living and appeals to morality, for example, appeals to ideas or to a deity, what remains to discuss? Material things. The question here is now whether the individual may own as much as he wishes or whether, at a certain point, someone or some other body, decides he has made enough. The confiscation of property might be carried out in a monarchy, oligarchy, or tyranny, and for egalitarian, bureaucratic, tyrannical, or non-social moral reasons, yet in all cases the means of production are taken from the individual. Consequently, we may add, the confiscators decide how to spend the confiscated resources and thus plan the economy. In all of these systems it is property which is at stake. It is only a question of who takes it from you, and why.
Recommended Reading
Mises, Ludwig von. Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis. Chapter 15: Particular Forms of Socialism.
or, Yes you can undermine all of your credibility in 140 characters.
Rabble, rabble rabble!
You can feel it in the earth. You can feel it in the water. You can certainly smell it in the air: another presidential election season is upon these United States. Millions of concerned citizens have risen from their slumbers to carry forth the sacred fire of democracy by making room for The Daily Show on their DVRs. Yet with this great power comes great risk: to tweet or not to tweet?
The choice is yours, but as a courtesy I note the following cautions which when unheeded have caused me to think twice about someone's intellect or character.
10. Approval/Disapproval
Don't express approval or disapproval of something without any explanation. Persuade by reason not character, or you'll sound like a pompous fool. Don't assume people agree with you, even about fundamentals. You don't know why they're following you.
9. NOW!
Precious little must needs be done right now. I know you mean that this election is important, but let's reserve the word "now" for referring to "right this very moment" and not "this year."
Also, I know the election is important. I know you care. Don't over do it.
8. How __________ can win.
It is presumptuous to offer unsolicited advice. If you want to help a candidate's campaign, do it. If they don't want to appoint you chief strategist, well, that's tough luck. Offering advice to them publicly and without having been solicited is tantamount to saying, "Here's what they should do if they want to win which they clearly don't because they didn't ask me but I'm going to tell you anyway because I care that much."
Also, no one cares about your strategy of using Fig Newtons to help Candidate X win. If you're doing something, just do it. Tell other people what you are doing by all means, but don't tell them to do it.
7. Invidious References
Let us try and avoid references to communists, fascists, and the chancellor of Germany from 1933-1945.
6. "We"
I'm not necessarily included in "we" unless you mean Americans, and if you do mean Americans just say "Americans." Otherwise, saying "we" makes me feel like you're trying to include me in your group when I didn't ask. Again, you don't know why they're following you so don't alienate them by being presumptuous.
5. Change your avatar.
Nothing says, "I just started paying attention" more than changing your avatar to include a political message.
Also, we know what the candidates look like. Don't put his face on anything, ever, under any circumstances. In fact, don't put anything political on clothing of any kind. Buttons are the only acceptable form of advertising, and you only get to wear one.
4. Use the actual campaign slogan.
I know what the candidate says. Repeating it does not make you a concerned citizen or a reporter, it makes you a mouthpiece.
3. Blaming X
"Oh if only it weren't for the Democrats/Republicans/Klingons everything would be fine" translates into "If only everyone agreed with me everything would be fine."
2. Polls
I don't care what 45% of ambidextrous people, 55% of long-beaked jackdaws, or "most of" any group thinks. Admittedly, though polls can be relevant to a particular point. Use caution (and reason.) Also, on election day, I don't need a play-by-play account of the tallying of votes. Let's all just wait and find out together, shall we?
1. "Just Vote"
Please don't tell me that you don't care whom I vote for but that you "just want me to vote." You do care and you should, but my dog won't necessarily get to that last leg of the race. If he doesn't, I lose. I might decide to pick the next best candidate and I might not. If not, I lose. Please leave me alone.
Dignity, tenacity, truthfulness, humor, confidence, freedom, joy, courage. The reader may follow with great pleasure and profit any of these threads (Roman virtues all, you say?) through Roger Kimball's new volume The Fortunes of Permanence: Culture and Anarchy in an Age of Amnesia. These "cultural instructions" more than any genealogy or anatomy of culture constitute Kimball's book and their embodiment and exile become the touchstones of Culture and Anarchy. We have not, though, some ivory tower classification, for Kimball does not study these virtues in the vacuum of a philosophical treatise but in the lives of men. In fact while he prefaces each chapter with some choice quotations I think the following from Cicero might suffice for the whole:
In the days beyond our memory the traditional ways attached themselves by their own appeal to the outstanding men of the time; and to the ancient ways and to the institutions of their ancestors men of moral superiority clung fast.
Yet ours is an age of amnesia and the doors to the institutions have been shuttered and the men dragged off, and through the mud. They have been branded nationalists, racists, moralists, and ethno-centrists. They weren't "open-minded." Well, neither Cicero nor Burke, for example, would have tolerated living amongst a variety of scoundrels in the name of diversity, nor praised courage for the purpose of undermining the nation, nor joy over its destruction. Virtues without fixed values are virtues in name only, and after decades of being weaned off the real thing Western civilization is pretty "open." The result has been not the widespread joy and liberty of utopian prognostication but mass ennui. The West is passive in response to challenges to its fundamental traditions, tacit to mockery of its principles, and stultified faced with Islamic fundamentalism. The quiet and ambitious goal of The Fortunes of Permanence is, then, the rehabilitation of the men who vivified traditional Western values. If rehabilitation is the goal, though, energy is the theme and the fire of the West begins with the Greeks.
The heart of The Fortunes of Permanence begins with Pericles' storied Funeral Oration, which the Greek general took up with reluctance at the start of a bloody and costly war, and not because of its elegy for the fallen or even its roots in tradition or praise of the Athenian forefathers, but for the zeal and energy witch which Pericles took up duties of democracy. Kimball sees in Pericles' ancient exhortation the joy of the agonistic spirit and the antipathy toward shame. Most of all he sees a leader confident enough in the justice and beauty of his land and the goodness of his fellow citizens to say without irony or doubt:
. . . as a city we are the school of Hellas, while I doubt if the world can produce a man who, where he has only himself to depend upon, is equal to so many emergencies, and graced by so happy a versatility, as the Athenian.
What is the alternative to such joyous undertaking of civil life and refusal to be lax "in the face of the perils of war?" Shuffling apologies, desultory policies, and dithering responses from politicians alongside the "words, words, words" of the intelligentsia? Kimball concludes Part I, "Does Pericles point the way? The alternative is suicide."
Part II, the heart of The Fortunes of Permanence, is a cheerful series of accounts of intellectuals long rusticated by the urban managerial elite. Now while rustication would have served most of them just fine, we would benefit from knowing a thing or two about, say, John Buchan. What can we learn from the author of The Thirty-Nine Steps? Well, apart from it being a gentlemanly thing to know a bit about a man who can write a good ripping yarn, he was an uncommon man of great energy, and by "great energy" I mean that he wrote Nelson's History of the War at the blistering pace of 5,000 words a day, a fact which when coupled with his simultaneous directorship of the British secret service would make anyone who ever put pen to paper put head in head.
What made Buchan so active? No coddled upbringing but a big old conk on the head when he was but five. He wasn't educated on politically correct pabulum but "schooled to toughness." The defense of his country probably put a fire in him too, although toward the end of his life a different concern gripped him. Barbarism was one threat, yes, but de-civilization, that is, "civilization gone rotten" is perhaps a more terrible sight. Too he feared the normalizing effects of science and the "extinction of eccentricity," a justified fear given how he himself would be ironed out of popular discourse.
Rudyard Kipling might not have been ironed out of the literary world but his didactic purposes have been. Today Kipling is permitted to play host to the exotic East and introduce us to Mowgli and friends but not to teach. I suppose his demotion is due not so much of the rejection of poetry's didactic imperative which dates from Hesiod, but a disagreement with him over his ideas. Kimball one-ups T. S. Eliot's observation that poetry, "is condemned as 'political' when we disagree with the politics" by adding that, "Kipling might have written good poetry, but it wasn't good for poetry to have been written by Kipling." Hence the ironing, sanitizing, et cetera. Kimball's discussion of the poetry is scholarly and his remarks about the oft-trotted criticism of refreshing. Yet more revealing than the obvious fact that "white" in the "white man's burden" refers not to the color of skin but the lawful citizens of civilization is Kipling's idea of civilization as something "laboriously achieved" and "precariously defended." It is this virile belief, in the value and identity of Western civilization, which has prevented Kipling passage into the literary Pantheon.
Kimball labors most lovingly on G. K. Chesterton, "Master of Rejuvenation" who perhaps most embodies the vigorous citizen whom this book is meant to praise and inspire. Vital energy abounds in Kimball's descriptions of this man of letters, arguments, and apologetics, of his ruddy health and strenuous genius. How much more joyful Chesterton's "mere excitement of existence" rooted in orthodoxy than the postmodern, post-structuralist, deconstructed, tedium rooted in. . .
If modernity's cultural guardians banish Buchan for his eccentricity, Kipling for his defense of the West, and Chesterton's orthodoxy, what palpitations must they suffer from someone who defended the culture of the Old South! Richard Weaver took up the strenuous, romantic, and perhaps futile challenge of defending the Old South and its virtues of hierarchy, chivalry, gentility, and religion from the North's centralizing mechanical and political machines.
The concluding chapters of Part II on modern art might seem a dour turn from the preceding eclectic stands against the 20th century's encroaching progressivism, relativism, and socialism, but they couldn't provide a finer contrast. Never have the progressive credos seemed like so many bromides. "Art for art's sake" seems more an excuse for not learning your craft and refusing to live up to creative heights of your predecessors than any grand philosophical pronouncement. If art is not subject to strictures of form and purpose, then it devolves, as it has, into esoterica meaningful only to its creator, so who cares about it?
Kimball deftly brings this observation around to architecture in his lively discussion of an exhibition of the architecture of Peter Eisenman and Leon Krier. Why would you want, as Eisenman does, your space to "disrupt" and "intrude?" It is made for man, no? The space may be logical and highly ordered but, to be frank, so what? If a man is to live in a space it must meet his needs and seldom among those needs are being disrupted and intruded upon. Quite simply, nobody wants to live in an ugly building and, to quote Roger Scruton, "Nobody wants to live in it because it's so damn ugly." Yet beauty is a value, and we moderns can't have that can we?
Ugly buildings lack what Kimball, continuing his theme of vitality, calls "the animating leaven of taste." Ugly architecture is dead to us because it is unpleasant and we avoid it as we avoid all unpleasant things. Post-human architecture is anti-human architecture and it will limp along in "sterility and exhaustion" until its purpose turns back to man.
The final branch of The Fortunes of Permanence might be subtitled, "Unmasking the Friends of Humanity." Oh you know the Friends of Humanity: the managerial progressives, the distributers of "social justice," and their many brothers and cousins. All they want is to remake society; is that so much to ask? The reward is universal brotherhood and abundance. Not sold? Well, that was my best pitch. I apologize if I failed to sell you utopia but it is a rather touch sell, is it not? To fall for it I suppose one needs to think human nature infinitely malleable, that one may be educated or trained out of any behavior. Too you would need to thing society and its infinite parts equally pliable. Nothing immovable, nothing permanent stands in the way of progress. Just as modern theories of art pushed God, man's nature, and tradition from the center so have modern political theories, and just as modern art is enervated and listless so is modern politics. Stand up for what?
Marxism and its offshoots, hybrids, and bastards have everywhere degenerated into vacuousness. In politics it has devolved into lawlessness, in academics into relativism, and in art into banality. Who would have thought that the widespread loss of valid intellectual criteria and the politicization and celebration of that loss as "social (fill-in-the-blank)" would lead to degeneration? Just Pericles, Cicero, Burke. . . and if those voices are too distant, Burnham, Kolakowski, and Hayek.
Again I have mentioned the great men. Perhaps now their presence will seem less conspicuous here and more necessary in the world.
In the days beyond our memory the traditional ways attached themselves by their own appeal to the outstanding men of the time; and to the ancient ways and to the institutions of their ancestors men of moral superiority clung fast.
As Kimball has shown us, the rejection of these men had to follow the rejection of their values. Their disappearance is no coincidence for the Marxian intelligentsia knew too, as Alan Bloom wrote, that, "The essence of education is the experience of greatness." The Fortunes of Permanence is such an experience.
The Fortunes of Permanence is also an important book, not just remedy but tocsin. How close to the brink of de-civilization must the West creep before it pulls back?
Alarms aside, but not far, The Fortunes of Permanence is a vigorous book of joyful praise and serrated criticism. Kimball's knowledge and love of the classics are not so much apparent in as infused into the pages. If it contains an abundance of quotations from the greats, from Aristotle to Orwell, well so much the better for a book about culture and permanence. If it is Kimball's great achievement that Classical values and the men who lived them shine so, his portrait of the left is equally admirable. Never has the left, traced finely from the French Revolution through today, seemed so dull: it's politics so many utopian schemes ending in tears, its art so much "outrage by the yard." Yawn.
In contrast, the virile and adventurous spirit of the West, from Pericles to Burke, in Homer and Kipling and yes, even in the Dangerous Book for Boys, endures.
–
If you enjoyed this review, you would probably like our blog in general. Still, a few choice bits:
Hot off the heels of their outstanding 2011 iOS app T. S. Eliot's The Wasteland, Touch Press brings us the even more impressive app of Shakespeare's Sonnets. If you have used their Wasteland app then you you know this is no simple etext presentation of the sonnets but a rich program for studying and enjoying the poems.
Shakespeare's Sonnets features all 154 sonnets plus A Lover's Complaint beautifully laid out in grey text over a deckled white background and very easy on the eyes. You can swipe up and down to bring up the next or previous sonnet or you can tap the sonnet number to bring up a menu which presents you with each sonnet's number and incipit.
A bottom menu lets you easily switch with one tap to the corresponding 1) notes from the Arden edition, 2) commentary from Don Paterson, 3) place in the 1609 Quarto, or 4) blank space for your own notes. You can tap the text to see if there are any notes for a particular word or to listen to the passage. That's right, Shakespeare's Sonnets includes audio recordings of all 154 sonnets read by actors such as Patrick Stewart, Fiona Shaw, and Stephen Fry. Moreover, the audio performances are presented with optional video so you can choose to 1) listen to the audio as you view the text, 2) listen to the audio as you view the text and notes or commentary, or 3) view a split screen of the text and video. I have yet to sample all of the readings but they are so far excellent.
The entire app supports AirPlay so you can stream the text, audio, and video to any Apple TV and thus to any TV or projector, a wonderful option for teachers. Those studying the poems will undoubtedly enjoy the searchable index and even more so, the hyperlinked notes. For example, if you are reading Sonnet 32 and encounter a reference to No. 78 in the notes, you can simply click the note and jump to No. 78.
Lastly, Shakespeare's Sonnets includes a section of forty short discussions with a number of scholars including poet, writer, and musician Don Paterson, James Shapiro, Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, and Henry Woudhuysen, Professor of Enslish at UCL. The discussions range from biographical details and Shakespeare's use of the sonnet form to recurring characters, and the order, language, and sound of the sonnets. The brief and lively videos serve as neat introductions to a variety of topics and could be useful points of departure for group discussions.
One note, though: due to the quantity of audio and video and the fact that it is not streamed but downloaded to the iOS device, the app weighs in at a hefty 1.37GB
Overall, this is an outstanding app rich in resources and brilliantly polished. It's also a veritable steal at $13.99. A scant price to pay for having this elegant presentation of Shakespeare's treasures at your fingertips.
How critical can one be of a film exploring the origins of mankind while Adam Sandler's carnival of juvenilia wails on in the adjacent theater? Rather, if its director is Ridley Scott and he had the pretention to call it Prometheus. In fact this latest of Scott's offerings is the most ambitious film in the Alien series he launched in 1979 with the finely crafted gothic horror Alien. His return marks not only a leap forward for the franchise in technical polish and panache from the c-grade schlock of Alien vs. Predator, but a new seriousness of purpose, I can't resist, alien even to the best films in the series like James Cameron's 1986 Aliens and its progenitor.
Like much else in Prometheus the premise is a science fiction staple: whence man? Alas, the premise is the only unconfused element in Prometheus. Almost. The plodding opening is clear enough. One hundred or so years from now scientists discover identical markings in ruins of ancient dwellings from across the world. They all share the image of a man, his hand raised to the heavens pointing to a cluster of five stars. The scientists conclude this is an invitation and a few years later a trillion dollar mission is on its way through the cosmos financed by, well, trillionaire Peter Weyland. On board are a scientist couple, Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) and Charlie Holloway (Logan Marshall-Green), with Captain Janek (Idris Elba), Mission Commander Meredith Vickers (Charlize Theron), and the android, David (Michael Fassbender.)
The Characters
Charlie Holloway, scientist, explaining things to the
audience–I mean crew.
I would hasten to add that, with the exception of Dr. Shaw (Rapace) not one of these characters is especially likable and hardly any of them are well drawn. Holloway, while mostly rude and unpleasant, is rendered uninteresting by the fact that his aggressive interest in the mission never translates into any virtue or vice. In one scene he casually sits on the counter drinking alcohol from a bottle while the other scientists probe an alien head. Is this supposed to be hubris, indifference, arrogance? He has a tattoo of a crucifix on his shoulder which must mean. . . something, I guess.
Captain Janek
Janek would have been tolerable as a gruff captain if he were better at his job, although he comes into his own at the end when he suddenly develops values of use to the plot. The fact that he several times says he "just drives the ship" would make him a good Brechtian everyman if he didn't have that last minute change of heart. Actually, that change in which Janek says his only goal (his new only goal, I guess) is to prevent anything from reaching Earth would be interesting coming from a conservative character, contrasting the scientists, but the writers didn't do that. He also meant aliens and their goo and not ideas, so never mind.
Commander Meredith "Grumpy-Pants" Vickers
Vickers is a frigid shrew throughout and is surprisingly unimportant. Late in the movie she is revealed to be the daughter of the elderly Weyland, the ship's financier, whom we also discover to be on board. So what of the relationship? She seems like she's there to protect him, or to prove something to him since he seems devoid of any paternal love for her, but then she says she didn't want him to go on the mission while she was stuck on Earth. So. . . why is she there and why does she matter? If she doesn't matter then why can't she just be in charge of the mission? Why did Weyland hobble her control over the mission by saying the scientists were "basically in charge?" Hey, wouldn't it have been interesting if maybe she was trying to take control of the mission for her own purposes, like Prometheus, or if she wanted to overthrow her father and take control over his power and dynasty, like Zeus did to his father, Cronos?
David
David the android watches Lawrence of Arabia and studies humanity, meaningless facts without the context of David's character and androids in general. At one point David watches the opening of Lawrence of Arabia where the colonel puts out a match by pinching it and explains to his fellow officers that the tricks is not minding the pain. This seems significant, is it making some point about accepting pain in life? Does David feel pain? Does he understand what Lawrence means? He doesn't react to it at all and no one else does either even though many other people are present. Is it supposed to be significant that he learns about people by way of movies?
In a fleeting moment of meaning and comprehensibility, David asks Charlie why Charlie made him, which I guess is supposed to mean why mankind made androids. Charlie responds, "because we could." David then asks whether Charlie would not find such an answer from his own creator quite unsatisfactory. Yet what kind of questions is this, and what kind of answer? Wouldn't mankind make androids for particular purposes? Why is this David's response, anyway? I guess he could have said anything because we don't really know anything about his character so no answer would have been out of character. I guess he just said what the writer needed so David could say what the writer wanted. Oh, and why would David ask such a question of Charlie, and not Weyland, the man who considers himself David's father?
It is mentioned that when Weyland stops programming David that he will be free. So at the end when Weyland is dead and David helps Dr. Shaw escape, is this important? Why does he do this? Out of altruism, to get himself off the planet, to make up for lying to her?
Michael Fassbender has fairly been praised for his performance, but David's sympathetic character results simply from his often sad looking face. We in fact do not know enough about his nature or aspirations to have opinions about him. For example, in Star Trek: The Next Generation we know about Data's limitations and aspirations to become human so what he does has context. In Aliens, Lance Henrikson's android character Bishop is clearly there to serve them. In Prometheus, well I just wrote three paragraphs trying to figure out what's going on with this character.
Peter Weyland
Weyland's character makes sense insofar as he says what he wants: to meet his creator and for his creator to save him. Let us think for a moment, though. First, the movie operates under the premise that a race of people created man. No mention is made, however, of the possibility that these creators are immortal, so is Weyland looking for the exact alien that created him? What if that alien is dead? Would another alien know, or care? Do all of these aliens make people? This problem is similar to David's above where the necessary distinction between individual and group is entirely left out. Second, why does Weyland want his creator to save his life? Obviously he doesn't want to die, but does he want to live forever? Does he just want to be cured of something? Is he afraid of death? Does he want to accomplish something? How shallow Weyland's explanation suddenly seems when we actually ask questions. He would be more interesting as a character on a quest for the fountain of youth, or who wanted to ask his maker why he had to die, or to redeem or forgive him, or anything more specific than simply saving his life.
Dr. Elizabeth Shaw
Finally we come to our heroine, Dr. Elizabeth Shaw. She wants to discover the creators of mankind for the sake of knowledge but she also has faith in Christianity. Like her father, she "chooses to believe" and Shaw seems intent on reconciling her faith with what she expects to find on the planet. When her husband asks what she'll believe after finding the aliens Elizabeth replies, "Well who created them?" This faith is symbolized by a cross she wears around her neck and you would think that when David takes it away from her (because it might be contaminated) the moment would be fraught with significance, but it's not. Now because this moment is not significant, when she reclaims it that moment can't mean much either.
The bottom line is that these characters don't work in this context. It made sense for the cast of Alien to be gruff and unprofessional because they were deckhands whose lumpen grind was maintaining a dark, cold interstellar garbage boat. It made sense for the cast of Aliens to be rough and tumble because they were ripping marines. Those groups of people also didn't ask any profound questions: they were there to survive. This cast had to be professional and purposeful because they were on a trillion dollar expedition to discover the origin of humanity.
Now you might be thinking, "Hey, maybe the characters don't matter so much. Maybe the movie is about other ideas." That is indeed a fine notion, but if it is so then far to much time is devoted to them. 2001is not about the characters but it wastes no time with dialogue or any information about them.
It would have been interesting if everyone on the ship had different reasons for being there which could be compared and contrasted, and fulfilled or not fulfilled, or change and not change, et cetera, but the writers didn't do that.
The Plot
The plot contains even more holes and ambiguities than the characters and because it is very popular to praise movies that ask questions or that leave elements unresolved we must probe Prometheus' particular brand of not knowing and see if it holds up.
First we must note it is not as if the answerable but insignificant questions of this crapulent plot hide the fact that the ultimate question is unanswerable, but rather the insignificant questions are unanswerable too. Is this an absurdist, existentialist slap in the face? I'm not sure it's not and I cannot see any other legitimate explanation. Prometheus does not in fact "raise questions" it simply does not work.
Let's make a quick comparison to 2001: A Space Odyssey, which Prometheus recalls in its opening shot. In 2001, we wonder what the monolith is, why it occurs at certain times in history, whether man causes it, or it responds to man. We wonder about the nature of being and knowing, time and change. Prometheus doesn't ask these, or similar or any, questions, rather it simply leaves plot points unresolved. In the same way we couldn't figure out if what the characters were doing was significant to their natures because we didn't know them, we cannot figure out if what they are doing is significant to the plot because we do not have enough facts. The chaps at Red Letter Media have made a characteristically raucous and entertaining litany of questions left by Prometheus. I emphasize: raucous.
These questions are not interesting in and of themselves. They are questions not about philosophical ideas but about the plot, and who cares about the plot apart from the ideas it provokes? Because I don't know something about David's nature his character and what he does cannot provoke questions about. . . well, anything. The ending, however, makes a more definite statement. Shaw's decision to continue searching for the alien home world to find out why they decided, after they made man, to destroy us, demonstrates how deep rooted this question is in man's nature. Even after all of the death and destruction of the mission she wants to keep searching. Or does she just want to prevent them from actually destroying earth? Bah. . .
Overall, Prometheus doesn't generate questions about life but rather only generates questions about itself.
Technical Aspects
Sir Not-Appearing-in-this-film.
Besides the wettish, lapidary visages of the aliens I did not find much of Prometheus' visuals appealing. The sets are confined to the hallways aboard the two ships, neither of which are particularly memorable or beautiful. The foley effects in the opening act are terribly matched and synchronized. Without anything vested in the characters and without any understanding of the plot I found the pacing languorous, a problem compounded by the leaden dialogue. Since Prometheus has been praised as suspenseful, I ask: How can it be suspenseful if you don't empathize with any of the characters, have any idea about why they're doing what they're doing, or what the possible results of their actions are?
Prometheus features a musical motive which sounds whenever something is discovered. While I very much like the idea of a "discovery" leitmotif, it didn't really work after its initial use, largely because we never really discover anything.
Overall I cannot count Prometheus as a success and the exceptionally untied plot nips at the credibility of the writers to the point where I cannot even call Prometheus an honest endeavor, at least as far as the writing goes. It owes what unity it has to the technical work and talent of its director who must have labored enormously to tie together the film with visual language. For him and his considerable work and talent I wish a much better script.
A Note on the Poster
I much like the movie poster to the right, unfortunately it doesn't make any sense. First, if the planet was a military installation and the black goo in the jars was hazardous biological breeding gel, why are they stacked like that around a giant face, especially when the jars are stacked on shelves elsewhere in the facility? Second, the aliens were apparently planning on coming to wipe us out (I forget how we reached that conclusion, but I'll take it), but there was an accident on the planet that killed them and prevented them. So were they they only ones planning on killing us? Were there no other aliens who checked up on them? Did they die to? Were the surviving aliens still coming?
Complex and comprehensive moral philosophies like those of Plato, Aristotle, and Aquinas get the lion's share of credit when we praise works which offer a path of self cultivation. Indeed, they ought to. Yet if you tried to live solely in emulation of Socrates or the great-souled man I wonder how your life would transpire. How well along would you go as a querulous instigator or a detached contemplator? Very for yourself, in many ways, but certainly something would be lacking in one's relations with others. A certain and subtle smoothing of relations amongst individuals is necessary for social intercourse, manners if you will. Edmund Burke wisely justified manners on the grounds that they work by constant action and that they precede complex moral and legal thinking. Manners are not consciously acted or adopted. As habit they contribute with great force to the character of the individual and as inherited wisdom they contribute to the character of families, communities, and so forth.
For the same reasons they are difficult to bring into being ex nihilo. First, one is hard pressed to introduce manners to an adult accustomed reflexively to acting on his whims and inclinations. Habits resist change and manners, dealing as they do with the minutiae of social intercourse, can seem trite and even fatuous when explained. Second, it is no mean feat to establish a tradition. To cultivate oneself into a genteel individual, especially among barbarians and fools, is daily work; to create in yourself an example worthy of emulation is extraordinary; to pass on your ways is both beautiful and good fortune.
Colonial Americans, then, reached far when they sought to take up the manners of the British nobility. The young George Washington took up this endeavor when in his early teens he copied out 110 maxims from an English volume on manners and courtesy. This volume was in fact a translation of a French book which itself was a copy of an Italian one. They might be titled, "How to get along without dishonoring yourself or offending others," and are not such ends laudable?
Many are obvious, some matters of hygiene, and others strictly concern respect for the formal hierarchy of aristocratic life. I would like to look at a few of the more curious and those I think especially overlooked.
4th In the Presence of Others Sing not to yourself with a humming Noise, nor Drum with your Fingers or Feet.
Repetitive motion and noise is distracting and annoying, especially for people suffering from misophonia.
18th Read no Letters, Books, or Papers in Company but when there is a Necessity for the doing of it you must ask leave. . .
This is one of many ways to send the insulting signal to your company that they are not important.
38th In visiting the Sick, do not Presently play the Physicion if you be not Knowing therein.
When someone is sick they don't care what you just read online. They don't care how you got better, or what your doctor said, what you saw on Dr. Oz, and unless you are at a conference of the American Medical Association, they don't care about any new studies. They're sick: leave them alone.
5th If You Cough, Sneeze, Sigh, or Yawn, do it not Loud but Privately; and Speak not in your Yawning, but put Your handkercheif or Hand before your face and turn aside.
Contrary to common practice, you do not have to engage your vocal chords to sneeze. There is in fact no "ahhh" even though there is a "choo."
40th Strive not with your Superiers in argument, but always Submit your Judgment to others with Modesty.
68th Go not thither, where you know not, whether you Shall be Welcome or not. Give not Advice without being Ask'd and when desired do it briefly.
You don't have to offer your opinion, even if a matter is being discussed in your presence. If asked, you don't have to go into detail. When explaining yourself there is much to take into consideration, including who might feel bad because he does not understand, who might be offended at the content, who is in fact an expert on the subject, and so forth. Sometimes it is simply best to express concern or doubt, or if necessary lest you be thought tacitly to disagree, a "lack of persuasion."
41st Undertake not to Teach your equal in the art himself Proffesses; it Savours of arrogancy.
Some of us are blessed with many gifts, but such people need not display them all, to all people, or at the same time. Likewise, in any given group of friends every individual has a skill at which he is expert within that group. It is usually best to let them keep their roles.
55th Eat not in the Streets, nor in the House, out of Season.
People look disgusting eating out of paper and foil containers as they hustle around.
91st Make no Shew of taking great Delight in your Victuals, Feed not with Greediness; cut your Bread with a Knife, lean not on the Table neither find fault with what you Eat.
I would add, with humility, not to find fault with other people eat.
75th In the midst of Discourse ask not of what one treateth but if you Perceive any Stop because of your coming you may well intreat him gently to Proceed: If a Person of Quality comes in while your Conversing it's handsome to Repeat what was said before.
When someone enters a room it is polite to clue them in on the content and direction of the conversation.
77th Treat with men at fit Times about Business & Whisper not in the Company of Others.
No one wants to hear about your business arrangements, especially what you are spending or saving on.
78th Make no Comparisons and if any of the Company be Commended for any brave act of Vertue, commend not another for the Same.
Do not set up comparisons amongst people present, it's a recipe for much awkwardness. Likewise, it is not necessary to spread the complements around. If someone complements Peter's photography and you know Gerhard is an accomplished photographer, find some other time and way to complement Gerhard.
"The modern world meant for [Tolkien] essentially the machine. . . He used ["machine"] very compendiously to mean. . . almost any alternative solution to the development of the innate and inherent powers and talents of human beings. The machine means, for him. . . the wrong solution: the attempt to actualize our desires, like our desire to fly. It meant coercion, domination, for him the great enemy. Coercion of other minds and other wills. This is tyranny. But he also saw the characteristic activity of the modern world is the coercion, the tyrannous reformation of the earth, our place." – Christopher Tolkien
These thoughts from Christopher Tolkien on his father's work touch on one of the more fascinating yet tantalizing inchoate strains within J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle Earth, that of a philosophy of nature. He draws primarily from a letter Tolkien wrote in the early fifties clarifying the underlying themes of The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion and readers are encouraged to seek this enlightening letter of some 10,000 words in the Houghton Mifflin volume, The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien.
Let us start by considering Tolkien's broad and unconventional definition of "machine" as "almost an alternative solution to the development of the innate and inherent powers and talents of human beings." We must assume he means not simple machines such as levers and wheels but rather complex machines. Simple machines simply balances the loads and direct the energy applied by man. The lever puts his energy where it is most effective, the wheel balances a load so it may be pulled and so forth for simple machines. How do simple tools, "develop the innate and inherent powers and talents of human beings?"
A hammer and chisel develops a man's coordination between his hands and his eyes and develops his visual sense of proportion and the rightness of what he cuts, such as the stone of a sculpture. The same is true for a brush which requires him uniformly to cover a material such as a canvass. Knives and scythes require him to know where and how much and how to cut, such as the stem of a flower. A whip requires him to know where and how and how hard to swing, such as in spurring a horse. Shaping the sheets with the lines on a sailboat requires careful attention to the geometry of the sail and the direction and strength of the wind. Even almost passive simple tools like lenses help man focus his attention on acute details.
All of such simple tools have in common two things. First, they develop a specific, unique individual faculty. Second, the demand a specific, unique, and firsthand knowledge of the materials with which you are working, such as the density of a piece of wood or the strength of a piece of stone.
In contrast machines alienate the user from the material. They do not require the use of cultivating any talents for interacting with nature, only for interacting with the machine. (This may not be quite so true for the inventor of the machine but it certainly is to the disinterested user.) The motor on a boat allows you to sail with disregard for currents and winds. Jackhammers and spinning saws cut without asking him to know how strong it is what he hopes to break. A glider falling gains speed and thus lift by its wings where as a a powered plane forces air across the wings. An unpowered mower requires you to know what you are cutting and thus how fast to go, how hard to push, and how high to set the blades. A powered mower simply cuts down everything in its path.
Machines have in common distancing the user from knowing by his senses what is the nature of the material he disturbs and purports to use and this prevents him from knowing the processes by which to use them. He learns only to use the machine. Complex machines, like the process of skill specialization, of course do liberate man from certain tasks and free him to perform others. They also allow him more liberty to manipulate nature. According to Tolkien's definition, though, despite this gain we see man does lose something.
Notice it is here not only concerned with nature itself but the effect of machines on man. In the Silmarillion, Tolkien, discussing the Ents, the shepherds of the trees, writes that while the Ents will guard the trees, "there will be need of wood." Tolkien is, I think more than is obvious in the Silmarillion which does not seem to revolve around man, concerned also with man and that he harms himself in coercing nature instead of cultivating himself. As his son Christopher points out in the above documentary the One Ring is the machine mythologized. The Ring allows the individual to bypass the means and simply and immediately actualize his will. It is this distance from, or blindness of, the means which, in part, dooms any attempt to use the ring, whether for good or ill.
Yet Tolkien does express disapproval of wantonly changing, "bulldozing" he says, the real world. Yet the theory we just discussed is mostly centered on man. By what principle ought man change his world?
Tolkien contrasts mechanical "re-creation" with artistic "sub-creation." Whereas mechanical re-creation seeks to make without regard for means, that is to say with no limiting principle, artistic sub-creation is content to create a secondary world which does not infringe on the primary world. The world of a symphony or painting reflects some truth of the primary world but does not replace it, moreover it derives its significance from it. Recall that the great jewels, the Silmarils, are not merely works of art but composed of the light of the Two Trees of Valinor. They are in a sense containers or distillations of the best of nature while they are the unique fruits of their artistic creator. In contrast, philosopher Roger Scruton has observed, "The ugliest of modern art and architecture does not show reality but takes revenge on it." We may conclude then that beauty is the principle by which man's actions as creator and crafter are governed. His highest pursuit is not after the useful, which becomes a tyranny over nature and himself, but "useless" beauty. Man cultivates the beautiful in himself by himself cultivating the beauty of nature.
I can't say I'm persuaded, and not just because of the superabundance of quotes which the authors seem to think fill in the gaps of the argument, or the fact that this is a pale retread of select Plato and Aristotle without the context of their ethics, or the passive swipes at easy targets. Rather their inattention to the essential matter of definition is shockingly sloppy.
First, the authors define "leisure" as "activity without extrinsic end" and then as "spontaneous activity," and I pass over the latter on account of its senselessness (as written.) By "extrinsic" one could mean either "inessential" or "external." Now since they imply leisure is very important I suppose they mean "external," which, let us be honest, they should have written even though it does not sound fancy. (Or they should have qualified what the task was extrinsic to, since it is not extrinsic to the individual.)
Anyway, the authors go on to give examples of a teacher, a musician, and a scientist which are all inappropriate because as you say, sort of, it is the purpose (or lack thereof) that makes a leisure activity. They may be paid, the authors say, but because such people don't do it for the money, it is leisure. They chose these particular crafts because they are respectable and you essentially argue that such activities are by nature leisure activities (although they don't say why.) What they should have said was "anything chosen for its own sake" is a leisure activity, but that doesn't pander to the likely Chronicle readers, I suppose. Too, it could apply to any activity.
Fine, then, we have our definition of leisure. Why is it important? Frankly, that's what the article should have been about. Instead we get a lot of quotes to make us feel smart and elite. Oh, and who fits such a caricature of someone who values money in itself? Scrooge McDuck? Don't most people with money spend it on things? Why not argue that those things are wasteful? Because the authors don't want to offend their target audience by telling them that they should not spend on iPods and trips to the Caribbean and should instead take "stoic vacations" in their minds? Isn't such a rebuke sort of implied by their "limits" on money, since limiting money would limit people to what you think are the essential goods?
Second, the authors define capitalism (kinda sorta) as desiring wealth. Why? I know they want to demean mindless acquisitiveness but why call such "capitalism?" Capitalism has as often been defined as simply or essentially, "absolute property rights."
Speaking of rights, I would mention their "[il]liberality." They write that liberalism is not neutrality but specific values. Fair enough. They also implied (sneaky!) that, like Keynes, Berlin, and Trilling, that the state ought to "uphold civilization" otherwise the people with money will control public taste. Since they let this cat out of the bag. . . a few questions.
They use the word "guardians of capital" to set (just whom anyway?) as the "guardians of culture." Platonic guardians, I take it? So the elite should control, via the state, what is promoted? Or the people, because they elect the state? Would they argue that democracy chooses the good, or defines it? Better than oligarchy? Does money control taste? Does it change or promote it? Has it? Does it more than other means? Why? If so, doesn't that spell doom for a liberal society and property rights?
But wait the authors don't want to ban money, it's just that "the game should be subject to rules and limitations." So I guess they will indeed be the guardians. So just what brand of "liberalism" are they advocating? "State-guided liberty?"
Lastly, don't you think advocating the good life and living it joyfully will promote it better than ivory tower finger-wagging? Or developing a philosophy based on values? No, better to write a quasi-scholarly parade of quotations to sell your book in the hope that it competes with Michael Sandel's equally flatulent book which just beat theirs to press.
I'm willing to believe their book is better than this, but who would buy it after such a poor precis? I would rather re-read Josef Pieper's, "Leisure: The Basis of Culture," which beat their book to press by 64 years and deals systematically with actual concepts and philosophy.
The man of firm and righteous will,
No rabble clamorous for the wrong,
No tyrant's brow, whose frown may kill,
Can shake the strength that makes him strong.
". . . The idea of the genius begins from the paterfamilias who in begetting children becomes the head of a family. His essential character is isolated and given a separate spirit-existence; he carries on the family which owes to him its continuance and looks to him for protection. Thus, as a member in that mysterious sequence son–father–son–father, the individual gains a new significance; he is set against a background which, instead of being a continuous surface, is broken up, and the pieces are shaped, and one of them is shaped like himself.His genius, therefore, is that which puts him in a special relationship to his family which went before him, and has perished, and to his family which is yet to be born of his sons.A chain of mysterious power links the family from generation to generation; it is because of his genius that he, a man of flesh and blood, can be a link in that unseen chain.
"Here we may recall the custom, indeed the right, by which noble families set up in a recess of the central hall of their houses, at first, wax-masks and, later, busts of their ancestors who had deserved well of their family or of the state. In the most solemn domestic rites of the household these busts were made to associate. There was no question of ancestor-worship or appeasement of the departed; rather, it was a demonstration that they and all for which they stood still lived on and that they supplied the spiritual life to the family."
Posts
