It Could Have Been Worse

A strange quietude sets in during a president's second term. The opposition party falls silent, unable to excel their previous levels of hysteria or effect the desired change, they sit stolid but impotent. The party in power, however, is silent as well. Why could this be? Have they come to terms with their political sins? Are they full of regret? No, no, I say to you, dear optimist. We may enjoy a détente but there is no accord. Today, the vast majority of President Obama's supporters, I hazard, excuse or obfuscate his failings as follows.

The National Debt
How can you blame Obama for the national debt. Bush and Reagan did it too! It was actually Clinton who...

The Benghazi Affair
There's nothing to see here, this is a right wing conspiracy. If anyone was to blame it was Clinton, Kerry, or Rice, not Obama.

IRS Targeting
This is ridiculous. Stop watching Faux News. There were only a few people and the IRS went after democrats too. Ugh.

Drone Warfare, Kill Lists, and Assassinating an American Citizen
This is war. Besides they were obviously guilty and Obama read like philosophy and stuff before making any decisions. 

Invading Libya
But he left right away. And he didn't invade Syria or Iran. Iraq.

Afghanistan Withdrawal
Well there are fewer troops, right? And that was the good war and we won, right?

The Affordable Care Act (Obamacare)
Are you kidding? This is his greatest achievement, like FDR and LBJ and Kennedy. Sure it had technological problems, but it's so complicated anything would have. Besides Canadians made it so it was really their fault. Kathleen Sebelius owned up to it being her fault anyway. It may be inefficient, but as long as it helps some people. It'll get better over time, anyway. 

Quantitative Easings (The Stimuli)
Like all the economists said to do this. Paul Krugman said to do even more.

Solyndra Financing
Come on that was like one company.

"Cash for Clunkers"
Again that was like one program and it wasn't probably even his idea.

Currency Inflation
Things are so expensive because the corporations are making so much money. 

Russo-American Diplomacy
Yeah but they respect Obama because he's so articulate. Bush was such a cowboy.

Operation Fast and Furious
Obviously that was all on Eric Holder.

NSA Spying
Eric Snowden hates America. And the CIA obviously went too far but that has nothing to do with Obama. 

Like come on this isn't Obama's fault. The Republicans don't want to pass laws and they're in the pockets of the corporations. The Supreme Court is full of extremists. Fox news and talk radio are spreading lies about Obama and the Koch brothers are funding all of these fanatical groups. Things might be bad but it would have been so much worse with the other guy. 

It would have been worse. Even when you manage to conjure your inner Cicero and persuade your liberal interlocutor that Obama is to blame for any of the above, it always comes down to that: it could have been worse.

On the one hand such denial is understandable–who wants to confront shattered dreams?–on the other hand we're locked in a cycle of partisanship which seems to be spiraling down to the fulfillment Mencken's prediction that at last the American people would get what they want and deserve in the White House: a complete idiot. Of course the knife on which we perch cuts both ways. If you doubt me just watch the face of a republican recoil at the mention of Al Gore. People feel safe when someone like them is in charge, even if that person is but nominally or apparently similar.

If so many people aren't even willing to reevaluate their support of a politician, what hope is there that a majority are willing to change their mind about actual policies? That sense–that nostalgia for the Bush era when things "just felt better" and the feeling that things aren't so bad just because Obama is running things–that cozy sense people get when "their guy" is in charge, is killing us.

Review: Breaking Bad (Season 1)

spoilers

It may be better to join a party late than never, but how does a show live up to five years of fanfare and notoriety? Moreover, how can it still manage to surprise when so many of its details, bits, and bobs have been revealed piecemeal over several years? Breaking Bad manages to surprise because from its first episode the writers outmaneuver our expectations. Watching the seven episodes of Season 1 it seemed as if every time I thought I knew what was going to happen, some unexpected variation played out. It's not as if we're being tugged in meaningless directions just for the sake of surprise, though, and in fact several episodes begin with their endings. We know how these episodes will end, just as we know how Walter's battle with cancer will ultimately end, but neither Walter nor the show are going to go down an easy or predictable path. Breaking Bad surprises us with the expected.

The premise, for the uninitiated, is that high school chemistry teacher Walter White is diagnosed with Stage III lung cancer. The quiet, even timid man teams up with an old student to turn his chemistry skills into a nest egg for his wife, Skyler, and their children after he's gone, by cooking crystal meth. Yet from the outset Walter's path diverges from our expectation. In the first episode we think their meth-cooking outfit is going to take off and become the center of the show, but it's a complete disaster with such aftermath that it takes two episodes to resolve the mess. So instead of a light-hearted montage in which Walt and Jesse go into business, we find them holed up in a house wondering what to do with a corpse and the tied-up drug kingpin in the basement.

It's not just the plot, though, which subverts our expectations but the characters. For example, we expect Walt to adopt a devil-may-care attitude after his diagnosis, breaking out of his old timid habits. Now he does, but not how or when we expect. Walt doesn't suddenly become a different person after his diagnosis, but acts like Walt having been diagnosed with cancer. So he doesn't launch into a verbal tirade against the boor in the bank, but he does short out the jerk's battery at the gas station. Walt doesn't flip out on the teens mocking his son with cerebral palsy, Walt Jr., in the clothing store, in fact he walks out the back. Regression? No, rather he re-enters the front and using some knowledge of physiology and a lot of attitude, get the bully to retreat.

Likewise we expect Walt's partner and former student, Jesse Pinkman, to be a complete degenerate because of his coarse appearance and habits, and because he's a drug dealer and user, but when he returns home out of desperation, we see him in a new light. How childlike and vulnerable he seems sleeping in his old bed, still folded and clean like mom used to make, in his shabby clothes. When his father seems resolved to kick him out again, he finds Jesse setting the dinner table. He laughs to himself at his old doodles, especially an unflattering one of Mr. White, but then he flips it over to find a test which he failed and on which Mr. White had written, "Ridiculous! Apply yourself!" We're thinking of Walt as the role model and stereotypical inspiring teacher, until we remember that the role model is soliciting the student for drug dealing.

Even the supporting characters have depth and life. After his churlish display at Walt's 50th birthday party, we expect Walt's brother-in-law to be brutish lout. Hank shows off his gun and swigs beer, freely cursing and cracking crude jokes. In one early scene we think he's yelling at his wife, but it turns out he's calling from work where as a DEA agent he's chewing out some perpetrators. For all of his fratboy manners, Hank turns out to be a sensitive guy, worried about his family and willing to step in and say the honest, difficult things that need to be said. His wife Marie looks like a controlling self-centered nuisance, but she comes out at Walt's intervention to advocate for Walt's right to refuse treatment. Walter Jr. seems as quiet and reserved at his father, but comes out to call him a "fucking pussy" for being willing to lay down and die. Even a one-off character like Walt's old classmate and friend–who made millions while Walt went to teach–turns out not to be corrupted by his opulent lifestyle and is touched by Walt's sentimental gift. Or is he only so because he knows about Walt's condition?

If one thing is predictable in Breaking Bad, it is the domestic life. Perhaps it's not so much predictable as familiar and truthful. We can see when a character is going to say something which he'd kept quiet, try and level with his family, or simply say I love you. We see all the tells because they're authentic. That doesn't mean these scenes are cookie-cutter patterns. Take one which occurs at a family barbecue. We see in Walt's eyes that he's going to reminisce about when he met his wife, and as he does she starts to weep. We think it's sentiment and nostalgia until she loses control and excuses herself, when we realize that Walt has told her about his diagnosis, a revelation which we didn't see. When she gets up the tone and context of the whole scene–preceding, present, and future–changes.

All of this character development is occurring interwoven with Walt's battle with cancer and chemotherapy, his wife's pregnancy with their daughter, and his DEA agent brother-in-law poking around in places which will inevitably lead back to Walt. The plots move rather slowly because the characters stop to reflect, doubt, and be afraid. Walt doesn't want to suffer the treatments, make drugs, break the law, or sneak around, and each step of the way he's evaluating how far he'll go. Hank thinks Walt Jr. is smoking marijuana, Skyler doesn't know where Walt is sneaking off, and all the while Walt is cooking meth in Winnebago and making deals with psychotic drug dealers. The show is so engaging because the characters don't simply react to one another, but often act on information we know to be untrue or incomplete, leading to an array of conflicts which are necessary for other reasons but because they off-base, don't resolve anything. Instead we learn about the characters and their world in ways and times we do not expect.

Overall, Season 1 of Breaking Bad is an rich and prudently varied introduction to a promising show. It spends its time building characters rather than recklessly hurtling the plot forward and cashing in on cheap thrills. Breaking Bad is not at all the hipster-fodder I expected, and it's not interesting because its subjects–drugs and cancer–are taboo, but because we're anxious to go together with these characters down their tortuous paths. Not the light-hearted fare I expected, in fact quite a bit more.

Right Now, You Say?

I grow curious when and why particular news stories achieve popular attention. Most trends, being trends, go on for some time, yet they break into popular consciousness at particular times. Take for example today's concern over the "74 school shootings since Sandy Hook." The issue at large, violence, is no doubt relevant to many, but not much more so at the 74th shooting than the 73rd or 70th and so on. Yet it's only today's cris de coeur. Earlier this week libertarians were buzzing about police militarization and before that Jon Stewart's loyal viewers were especially incensed about SuperPAC corruption. Next week will bring another cause for concern. Why is man so easily stirred, yet so briefly?

Part of the conundrum lies in the fact that virtue is, alas, not habit forming. We are what we do regularly, to paraphrase Aristotle, and for the most part that doesn't paint a flattering picture. Eating, sleeping, working, cleaning, these are the things we carry on with each day. Not the stuff of legend, but I would argue that's quite alright. Daily life, done well, is hard enough.

The other part of our problem is that we think on too large a scale. We don't want to make our neighborhood safe, we want to "stop gun violence." We don't want to help our neighbor's son, we want, "universal pre-school." Yet these are goals unattainable by top-down managing and cannot be achieved in all places at every time. Problems cannot be tackled by programs, but by virtue.

Yet the news keeps coming and tapping into our sense of duty, bringing local news–for all news is local news–to our distant doors. We hear the news, express outrage, and go about our day. Now I don't disparage your average citizen here, for I believe people truly are concerned. Watch people when they take in a news report about a fatal fire or car accident. I'm convinced they're moved. Their dull lives, however, have rendered them vulnerable to that addicting feeling of concern which the news provides.

Watch Fox news for an hour. It's a magnificently proportioned symphony of instigation. Notice how they stitch in minor outrages amidst the major stories, and then pop little cheerful videos into the mix, just for a little variety. It's an emotional ride from scandal to catastrophe to horror, and viewers are addicted to the feeling. And Fox's is but one demographic, the same as MSNBC's only the former network is vastly superior at playing–or pleasing–its viewers. Every show and network has a variation, though. Comedy Central's Stewart-Colbert duo validates the intelligence of its viewers by mocking everyone else. CNN sells a sense of being informed by its bland repetition, apparently for traditionalists who still feel that you have to suffer for your education. In every case the news is just a vehicle for the sensation which its presentation provides.

Network television has finally perfected the paradox of education: that the educated feel good just for knowing, even when they don't do anything.

Book Review: How to Read A Latin Poem

How To Read A Latin Poem: If You Can't Read Latin Yet. 
by William Fitzgerald. 2013.

Figurative language, subtle connotation, obscure references, shifts in word order, omissions–there are plenty of barriers to comprehending poetry. There are more obtuse impediments to enjoying poetry–O mores!–but those are wailings and failings for another day. How do you enjoy a poem though, if you don't know the language in which it is written? More importantly, why would you bother trying to learn? It's not so hard to pick up even a tough book written in your native tongue because the risk is so low: if you don't like it you can put it down with no inconvenience. Yet how do you judge, other than by its hoary reputation, whether you should learn a language just to read its literature?

The last word of William Fitzgerald's How To Read a Latin Poem: If You Can't Read Latin Yet, suggests confidence in the reader and the literature. At least half of that faith is justified, as is Fitzgerald's implied faith in his powers of persuasion and demonstration. First off, don't let its soft Pre-Raphaelite cover deceive you: this isn't prettified Latin translation dressed up with florid explanations. In fact, the case is the opposite. Fitzgerald strips the Latin of as many barriers as he can so readers can get enough of a sense of the poetry that, hopefully, the Latinless will be inspired to pick up the poems on their own.

Chief among these barriers which Fitzgerald helps the reader sidestep is the system of inflection. He spends some time at the beginning outlining the basics of morphology and case usage, but wisely doesn't explicate the entire system. If you get the idea that the endings change the meaning and can imagine the resulting possibilities for word placement, then Fitzgerald's explanations will carry you through. Despite this apparent evasion, the greatest strength of the book is Fitzgerald's ability to demonstrate the beauty and significance of the Latin word order. Liberated from the need to give full grammatical explanations, Fitzgerald is able simply to point to word relationships and thereby paint a lucid picture without jargon and caveats. Take this selection from his explanation of Horace Ode 2.10:

All the lines in this stanza are enjambed, and the sense tumbles from one line to the next in unpredictable ways. the main verb, 'loves' (diliget), comes, as usual, at the end of its clause, but it is emphatically emjambed to underline the oxymoron of loving middleness, and Horace's word order places love and lack into close proximity (diliget, loves; caret, lacks). (Fitzgerald, 105.)

Clear and precise, but not narrowly grammatical. For this reason in particular Latin students and classical neophytes alike will enjoy Fitzgerald's demonstration that there are dimensions to reading and writing poetry besides mechanics. In this respect How To Read A Latin Poem is a foretaste of the fun parts of reading Latin for those still champing the basics. May he inspire beginners to endure the latter for the former. Toward that end I think Fitzgerald's translations, which are literal but not so obtusely so that they obscure more than they reveal, encourage the reader to work through Latin, if only to match up the parts which Fitzgerald mentions. Likewise the brevity of the selections encourages readers to dive into the Latin rather than gloss over the foreign passages, resigned just to read the book as analysis. Leaning on his translation and with such descriptions, readers can begin to see the cascade of images and constellation of relations.

Yes, he discusses vocabulary, and I'm not sure if there's any more tedious part of teaching classics than running through the endless cognates and derivatives. Fitzgerald is prudent about this, choosing to prop up little umbrellas of meaning over choice words only when needed to explain puns, subtle suggestions, and the many words which fade in facile translation.

The highlight of How to Read a Latin Poem for advanced students and proficient readers, though, will be the commentary. It's rich and varied, with summaries of the basics neatly woven to frame more sophisticated discussions. From Chapter 4 on Vergil:

Yes, Furor is restrained, but he is not pacified, and the restraining power must exercise a savagery worthy of the victim himself. As the culmination of a speech forecasting the glorious future of Rome and the extent of its domination abroad, this picture of barely contained violence 'within' is disturbing to say the least. Is this Furor to be held in reserve, ready to be unleashed on the recalcitrant? (Fitzgerald, 167)

Fitzgerald is at his best, though, on the less famous authors, especially discussing the political science behind the psychologies of Lucan's Pompey, Caesar, and Cato and the furious Atreus of Seneca's Thyestes. On the latter:

...Atreus drives on to complete the second line with a command that expresses the final, impossible aspiration of power: quod nolunt velint. English cannot achieve the compression of the two juxtaposed Latin verbs, nolo (I do not want) and volo (I want); nor can it imitate the elegant chiasmus with which Atreus delivers his devastating theory of power: true praise (A) even falls to the lowly man (B) only to the powerful (B) false (A). (Fitzgerald, 209)

Finally he brings some just attention and affection for perhaps the most overlooked masterpiece, Lucretius' De rerum natura:

The sights and sounds of everyday Roman life have as vivid a presence in Lucretius' epic as the sublime expanses of the universe, but here both come together in a single image. Between the paving stones of a Roman road a vision opens up that reaches both down into the earth and up to the heaven in dizzying succession. (Fitzgerald, 238)

Moderate measures of grammar, history, psychology, comparative literature, and rhetoric make for a handy little book very much like advanced program notes for the opera. It has a lot of rich details to bring out the best of the texts, and just enough crib to carry you through the tough parts. Like a great opera, too this book features a cross-section of life: invective, satire, love, tragedy, myth, and epic.

Hopefully, though, students will approach it less like a cheat than as an invitation to a language and authors which Fitzgerald demonstrates are vital and exciting. How To Read a Latin Poem makes a great companion for high school classes and a valuable supplement to classes whose curriculum or teacher eschews discussions of style. It's an outright boon for independent students of any caliber. For teachers and experts it's a brisk and lively day's read with a colleague of diverse interests, learning, and insight. The presentation is perhaps a bit too consistent and its abrupt conclusion doesn't live up to the diverse and engaging opening which ranged from Catullus to Pope to Kipling to David Niven (in Separate Tables), but this is a great read. Mr. Fitzgerald's students are most fortunate.

Movie Review: Godzilla (2014)

Directed by Gareth Edwards. 2014.

spoilers

The art of the tease is not so different from the art of filmmaking. Each presents us with something enticing yet veiled and both proceed to unwrap their surprises at the perfect pace to maximize our interest and heighten the effect of the final reveal. H. L. Mencken invented for the finer practitioners of this art the word ecdysiast, coming from Greek's ἔκδῠσις for casting off. One wonders whether Mencken was punning the word's other meaning, which is to escape or get out. Nonetheless both meanings apply to filmmaking teases, for the more layers you take off and the more slowly, all the more perfect must be the payoff. Likewise the deeper you get, the harder it can be to keep sight of the payoff amidst all the distraction and buildup. Yet if that buildup and distraction go on for too long, we lose interest and sight of what we came for.

Alas, this otherwise competent and effective reboot of the beloved Godzilla franchise, has such an enervating flaw. The first forty-five minutes, though, are expert buildup. Yes, the opening credits remind us too much of Roland Emmerich's 1998 monstrosity, but how many ways are there to explain lizard mutation and atomic bombs? We meet a family with whom we empathize because the parents are Bryan Cranston and Juliette Binoche, and we're led on a little mystery hunt trying to find out what really caused a nuclear plant failure. This is all just right and gets us just enough invested in the characters and backstory without getting bogged down in complexity or bored by banality. About an hour in, though, we've only seen a few fleeing glimpses of him via ancient skeletal remains and grainy footage from the 1950s. We're teased just enough and we are ready for Godzilla.

So when the giant monsters start terrorizing the globe–such creatures and happenstances are part-and-parcel of the Godzilla series, if you don't know–we are really ready for Godzilla. Then when Godzilla finally arrives howling his trademark atomic roar and the camera immediately cuts away, we're dying to see Godzilla do something. Then, when Godzilla and the other monster are finally in the same place and having slowly approached each other start to grapple, and the camera cuts away again, I start to get annoyed. After they'd pulled that stunt another two times, I began to lose interest.

At that point, relentlessly cutting away from Godzilla and without Bryan Cranston, the only interesting character left, the movie got bogged down in following Cranston's son, who was alternately trying to get to his family in San Francisco and carry out the military's inevitably flawed plan to stop the monsters. The subsequent scenes held my attention surprisingly well considering my frustration at not seeing Godzilla and my indifference to people who aren't Bryan Cranston, but they can't carry the movie when that movie is Godzilla. I wouldn't have had a problem with seeing less Godzilla if the other parts had been more interesting, and the director and producer are wise to restrain themselves not to burn out the franchise in the first installment, but the movie is lacking something. Godzilla needed a more sophisticated science fiction plot, more character development, more monster battles, or it needed to be shorter. They declined the first two choices because people don't care about science fiction or characters anymore, the third not to burn out the franchise, and the last because people would feel cheated of their pricy ticket.

Instead they teased us some more, which could have worked if the tease had been justifiable, like waiting for all the monsters to be in the same place, but once they're cutting away from battling monsters for rubbish side plots and cardboard characters they're just wasting our time.

There's a lot to like here, though, including a weighty opening, charismatic leads–gone too soon, but charismatic nonetheless–and a simple, intelligible plot that eschews the incomprehensible, scatterbrained complexity which sinks so many sci-fi and monster movies. We even enjoy a few subtle, affectionate references to Jaws, Kubrick, and Jurassic Park. Best of all, though, Godzilla himself is a smashing success. He looks, sounds, and moves as he ought to and so he feels like the old Godzilla even sans the rubber suit. As a result, the final battle retains the style and charm of the original monster brawls. Here Godzilla fights two monsters double-teaming him and they whack each other around until Godzilla whips out his atomic breath. This is as it should be.

At first I was disappointed that the King of the Monsters seemed shrunken to a cameo in his own movie, but now I appreciate more the director's restraint. We see a lot of destruction, but there is always a reasonable and consistent sense of scale, and we see almost enough of Godzilla. With a little trimming and retooling what we got would have been enough, but as the movie stands, we're lacking a bit. I think in an age less desensitized to action and more admiring of economy and tension, though, this movie will be regarded higher among its peers today and in the Godzilla franchise.

Overall, this is a solid Godzilla movie. Director Gareth Edwards delivers a restrained monster picture with affection for the franchise's not-quite-kingly origins–Jet Jaguar anyone?–at a time Hollywood is left and right resurrecting and exploiting franchises with no regard for quality. With that and our attention-deficient age in mind, Godzilla is commendable and entertaining.

Things I Don't Get #1: Applause

Concluding that we need a new series around the blog and that it should be of a kind which can go on indefinitely, I hereby inaugurate this series, Things I Don't Get.

–

I dislike applause, a dislike magnified not only by the popularity of the practice today, but also by the esteem which the custom has held seemingly everywhere and at all times. Imagine the sadness of your humble blogger not finding a single invidious reference to this hideous practice. There is no greater show of approbation, it seems, than to plaudere, to clap. We may cry O tempora! at foul times but may we say in sufficient despair when it is every age which knows such plight?

First off, through all its variations the sound of applause is cacophonous. Sometimes the clappers smack, sometimes they pop, they even wallop, a diversity owing to individual preference for clapping palm-to-palm, fingers-to-palm, and that rare spectacle, clapping fingers to the top of the hand. The thwackers are the worst though, emitting that infamous high-pitched crack which slices the air through to the ear. Ouch!

If the sheer sound is not enough to torment, though, why is the duration of applause always at the discretion of the crowd and not an objective standard or tradition? Applause, if it must go on, should go on for a specific duration like any reasonable approbation. Excessive praise with words is said to be servile, obsequious, and such, so likewise should we consider excessive applause in poor taste. I propose a tiered system of three, five, seven, and at most ten claps. Aside from accommodating a reasonable hierarchy and minimizing noise, this system would be easy to quantify. I can see it now:

Phil: How do you think the audience liked the speech, Fred?

Fred: Well, Phil, it sounds like he got about seven claps tonight which is three more than last time and two more than his competitor tonight. I'd call this a big win.

None of the usual unrestrained discord is ever enough, though. How often do we hear, most frequently at the insufferable spectacles of pep rallies–the horror!–the invocation to "make some noise!" We're told that we need to show support by making noise. You see, noise is support. Don't feel bad for having missed that apparent truth, for it eluded me too. Don't write a reasonable, even passionate, response after reflecting, or anything so characteristically humane, just make some noise of approval right away. Homo sapiens yields to homo plaudens.

Worst, though, is the contradiction between what and how we celebrate. Why should we celebrate an articulate speech with rabbling applause, a practiced, controlled display of art or sport with unrestrained noise?

No, it's not reasonable to expect everyone to go home and reflect in thoughtful prose about every occasion, but neither is applause is not the answer. If a noisy rabble befits beasts, then the gesture which most eludes man and requires the most practice should be with what he expresses honor and approbation, and that gesture is silence. 

The Sacrifice: Ten Frames

It's unusual that in reviewing a movie to select my favorite shots that I discover something wholly unexpected. What one usually notices in Tarkovsky is his dreamlike tone and somnambulant sense of motion. In watching The Sacrifice again, though, I noticed how often the characters are looking away from us and each other. The movie is about the sense of the sacred, and its characters look beyond their immediate surroundings for something more. Again and again they look beyond the empirical for something incomprehensible yet within, sometimes, sense. By their search they encourage us to do the same, looking beyond the film's plot to its sense of life.

Please pardon the quality of the shots, which are darker than the excellent Blu-Ray print I watched. I also missed a few choice shots, such as that of Alexander and Maria floating, because of my arcane capture process. Finally, please note that there are many pictures on the page after the jump. I got a little carried away.

click to enlarge images

1. Apart from any symbols and suggestions contained therein, this is a deceptively simple shot full of implicit motion. As we've seen elsewhere, here we find activity along three axes of the shot: the path down the center brings us into the shot, the shape of the sea's inlet gives us horizontal motion, and Alexander raising his tree is contrasting longitudinal activity. All of this motion, though, unlike the afore-referenced Hitchcock, is quite subtle. Here the inlet is in the distance, faintly ebbing, Alexander raises the tree slowly, and the path, along which nothing moves, curves just a bit.

How natural too is this sight of land, sea, and air, with man amidst raising up his faith in the future.

This shot continues unbroken from the first, with the mercurial Otto and his cycling replacing the z-axis motion of the path. Is there perhaps a subtle suggestion in that deviation too, perhaps that Otto knows something outside the usual?

2. Roger Ebert once referred to one of Janusz Kaminski's shots in Steven Spielberg's Minority Report, as, "bafflingly simple," and I think the phrase applies here. A man sits with his son. Yet there is contrast of both texture and color from the woody stems to the pointy blades of grass to the mists in the background. There is again contrast of direction, with Little Man sitting across Alexander's lap. Finally, doesn't Alexander somehow look like one of the trees, shooting up from the earth?

3. From one of Tarkovksy's famous dream sequences, this desaturated shot steals our attention by fading out life's apparent vividness and pulling from our senses and connotations of the visual elements to create tone and suggest a different kind of sight. Something about the naturalness of the rippling water over the harsh manmade landscape discomfits us, as does the unnatural presence of this chair. It surely does not belong yet the sight of it calls to mind some kind of presence simply because we associate people sitting with the sight of chairs. But does it represent presence, absence, neglect?

Put Down that Missal

Sin and vice may be, well, sin and vice, but they can still be educative and bear an occasional sweet fruit. Take, for example, the sloth which led me to leave my missal at home when attending mass. In my meager defense I bus 45 minutes down to Holy Innocents in NYC and thus would carry the small but weighty tome with me throughout the mass and remainder of the day. Not exactly Spartan severity, I know, but enough to inspire such confidence in my memory and Latin that I'd consider ditching my cheat sheet.

That's what it is, isn't it? A crib, a crutch. The English is a crib of the Latin, in some cases of which the Latin is crib of the Greek, itself often a crib of the Hebrew. More significant, though, the book is a crib of the mass, it's a theft from your mind, a theft of the experience of knowing. It is good to know, thrilling to make the words intimates and enlightening to know them so well that you can bring them forth, and have them unexpectedly brought to mind, in the manifold twists and turns of life.

The alternative to remembering words, as far as the mass is concerned, is a contradiction. When we are forgetful of words we let their printed form work for us, referring back to us the meaning which we don't grasp. In the Phaedrus (275A) Plato called words ὑπομνήσεως φάρμακον, a drug or remedy of remembering, not of memory.We've discussed this turn of thought before, but memory takes on a special role in the mass. The spoken words of the liturgy, the words in time not the words in print, are the mass. The missal is not the mass. To know the mass, then, you need to know the mass and be able to share in its unfolding.

The alternative is what we see most often, and surely do as well, and that is simply keeping pace with the mass. We follow, yes, insofar as we move in the same direction, but because the words are not ours we are cogitating as we go and thus not focusing our feeling. Now there is nothing at all reprehensible about such slight following, but it is not wholly satisfying. The exhortation of Pius X to "follow all that happens at the Altar" is well known, but its context is important:

You have to associate your heart with the holy feelings which are contained in these words and in this manner you ought to follow all that happens at the Altar.

The essential word there is associate, to make an ally of, and as such, to bind up with. We must be so bound up with the words that during the mass they may flow freely through us. The more we must out of necessity read and think, the less we feel in the moment.

The situation is not so different from aesthetic experience. We learn a great deal from analyzing scores and reading plays and to understand difficult ones we often read as we listen to a performance, but how much more vital is the experience when we've internalized the words and may simply experience them unfolding. Contrary to expectations, the mystery of their effect does not disappear by familiarization, but deepens. So many degrees beyond goes our experience of the mass.

Some common sense will illuminate the matter as well. Consider how often we discuss the memorial of the mass and the commemoration of the sacrifice, and making a memory of Christ, all with our heads ducked down into crinkly pages. Perhaps to make a memory we should keep one. How often in the Extraordinary Form of the mass do we look into our books as the priest says Ecce qui tollit peccata mundi. Even at a Novus Ordo mass in English people look to the page out of habit, or perhaps just to avoid eye contact with awkward celebrants and lectors.

In any event we cheat ourselves of more intimately praying the mass from heart and mind when we rely on external aids. It's not hard to memorize, even Latin. The Ordinary remains the same week after week, and even without study the patterns of even the canon find their way into the mind. The propers of course vary, but should we not remember of all things these stories and lessons, if not verbatim then at least with some detail? Finally, so much beautiful music shapes the whole mass into the most memorable whole that we couldn't ask for something which more commends itself to the intimacy of memory.

The alternative seems to me a constrained experience, limited by busyness and thought. My missal remains an indispensable book for preparation, but during the mass one ought to carry as much as possible only oneself in fullness. This is surely an ideal toward which we can strive, and I'm not suggesting everyone drop their missals and try to wing a sudden and perfect active participation from memory. Rather we ought to read and prepare in private, follow at mass with a missal as much as we need, but prepare to put it down and remember.

Mini-Review: Thank You For Arguing

Thank You For Arguing. by Jay Heinrichs. Ch. 26

I don't know quite what to say about a chapter which begins with a leading quote that translates, "Quid multa? clamores," as "I brought the house down." The Latin is a self-satisfied remark from Cicero to his intimate friend Atticus (letter I.14) in February of 61 BC about a particularly quick comment the orator tossed off. The tendentiously-related English is from Ch. 26 of Jay Heinrich's Thank You for Arguing, in which Heinrichs purports to demonstrate the brilliance and utility of President Obama's rhetorical prowess. The gap between the English and Latin, though, speaks volumes. Namely, it says that the author is not serious about scholarship or precision, but is content to repackage serious work for lazy readers. I'll charitably assume this is the case rather than considering if the author hasn't done his homework or that the author of a book on rhetoric doesn't know Latin and Greek.

To cut to the chase, though, it's the title of the chapter, not the book, which held my interest in the store: Capture Your Audience: The Obama Identity: Steal the tricks of a first-class orator. Dear reader, that's one wacca away from full blown incredibility. Let's break this down.

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Skipping over the introduction in which the author relives the glory of Obama's ascendency, the sloppiness starts. First we get the turn of phrase that "Aristotle wanted political speeches to be deliberative," which makes anyone who has read Book I of the Rhetoric cringe at the kitschy summarization of Aristotle's detailed taxonomy. Then, Heinrichs uses the word demonstrative, which doesn't explain to the reader what epideictic means in a formal, specific, Aristotelian sense. All political or demonstrative or forensic oratory be demonstrative in some loose sense? In fact Heinrichs goes out of his way not to use this word, saying on p. 30 that only academics use it because "they're just being demonstrative," which is his periphrastic way of saying people who use this word are assholes. I wonder what he thinks of people who write it in Greek! Third, he writes that "in a speech that seeks to bring people together, you want to get demonstrative" with no explanation. He's not wrong at all, but that statement tells us almost as little as his next, which reads, "Get to know demonstrative rhetoric better...you'll become a better orator yourself." Manum de tabula, discipuli, the master has arrived!

Worst perhaps is his tag that, "This is rhetoric the way the ancients taught it." Well, I know what he means, which is that this is authentic ancient style, but besides the fact that it's not, he's using a modern example of use to prove how ancient rhetoric was taught. We don't have to get into the history of rhetorical manuals and progymnasmata, but this is sloppy.

Next he breaks then-Senator Obama's 2004 keynote address at  the Democratic National Convention into five parts: Introduction, Narration, Division, Proof, Refutation, Conclusion.

In the introduction, he praises Obama for "establishing his character" at the beginning of the speech by citing Obama's phrase, "My presence on this stage is pretty unlikely." How does acknowledging your presence on a stage establish character? It was obvious he was standing there. Those words don't describe, explain, depict, or evoke anything.

In his demonstration of Obama's narratio he explains that "a moral" links Obama's character with the American way. A moral what? He has three choices:

1. the moral teaching or practical lesson contained in a fable, tale, experience, etc.
2. the embodiment or type of something. 
3. morals, principles or habits with respect to right or wrong conduct.

I can't find what "moral" could mean in the speech.

Next he writes that "the good orator uses the division to represent both sides." The division of what? What is "the division?" Does he mean the division of the speech in to introduction, facts and details, proof, and conclusion? Is the division a part of the speech? He says to "use the division to sound like you're more reasonable than the other side," which is so vague and incomplete that you have to question whether he knows  what he's talking about. At any rate, it's impossible for such an explanation to be of use to anyone, let alone a layman.

Even if we assume that by division of the speech he means its organization into exordium, narratio, probatio, and peroratio, how could one say as he does that, "the good orator uses the division to represent both sides," an exceedingly general statement.

Then he cites the use of a catalogue as "proof," in place of, say, direct evidence like witnesses and contracts, argumentation from evidence or example, or even an emotional appeal. A list constitutes proof. Wow.

After this he cites the following as evidence of the entire refutatio:

Now even as we speak, there are those who are preparing to divide us, the spin masters and negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of anything goes. Well, I say to them tonight, there's not a liberal America and a conservative America; there's the United States of America.

That's not bad, but it's not at all enough by itself to constitute a full-blown refutatio.

As far as conclusions go, fine, let's say the speech has one, if only so we can admit it's over.

Finally, it's very telling that Heinrichs sees this speech as being successful because it's all about Obama, even though it was supposed to get John Kerry elected. This is a clever way of avoiding the fact that the speech failed. Of course many great speeches, even the best, have failed to produce the outcome their authors had hoped, but to call either set of Philippics, say, failures is not the same as to call this speech a failure. Cicero and Demosthenes might have chosen poor tacks of persuasion, hypothetically, but they didn't fail by having the ulterior motive of aggrandizing themselves. So either Obama wrote a bad speech or he deliberately threw Kerry under the bus to promote himself, a fact about which "Cicero would be proud." Don't let that tack-on about Cicero being proud pass, though. Heinrichs uses his presumption of Ciceronian approval to justify an ulterior motive which he imputes to Obama, all to avoid the fact that the speech failed. Now that is some rhetoric.

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Now Heinrichs turns his attention to some of Obama's other speeches, citing and praising a line from President Obama's 2009 Inaugural Address in which Heinrichs finds an instance of prosopopoeia. Literally "to put on a face," this device most properly involves adopting a persona through which one speaks, especially the guise of a deceased. More loosely some categorize under the umbrella of prosopopoeia the use of the historic present and the introduction as speaking of any absent party. Cicero's usages are perhaps the most famous, especially the instance in the Pro Caelio (s.34) in which Cicero, adopting the character of Appius Claudius Caecus, excoriates the infamous Clodia, his wicked distant progeny. As notable is the use in the First Catilinarian (s. I.7) in which he pleads with Catiline in the voice of the Roman people.

The difference in Obama's usage is that there is no layer of mimesis, no moment in which he puts on the mask of another. He is actually speaking for the people. Also, Obama uses we 32 times throughout this short speech, and as such no given moment nor the whole is prosopopoeia.

After a some preposterous praise not worth our attention, Heinrichs characterizes the following passage as "pure enargeia," Greek for vividness:

One march was interrupted by police gunfire and tear gas, and when the smoke cleared, 280 had been arrested, 60 were wounded, and one 16-year-old boy lay dead.

That's vivid? A sentence with no imagery, told in the present tense, with no amplification by structure, and no characters? Heinrichs is at pains to paint this scene as vivid, pointing out how the unfolding story seems to "zoom in" on the details as it progresses. But the narration is bland chronological, that is to say, normal. How is this order "cinematic" and "pure enargeia?"

Compare it to Cicero's vivid narration of the night raid in which the lackeys of Verres, a corrupt governor of Sicily, attempt to steal statues from the square at Agrigentum. We may identify in this passage against Verres (In Verrem II.IV), devices such as the vivid present, pleonasm, characterization, impersonal verbs (emphasizing action), diminutives, sarcasm, the charge of sacrilege, humor, imagery, assonance, emphatic placement, and climax, which constitute enargeia. There is no enargeia in Obama's sentence in which he tells a story with no details or characters in a past tense.

Heinrichs is aware of Obama's tense problem, though, for admitting the story is in the past tense he hurries to say that "it's in the service of demonstrative rhetoric" and that its "secret" lies in that alleged cinematic narration. Since demonstrative rhetoric is concerned with praising or censuring someone and is concerned with the present state, it's hard to reconcile this sentence to the speech. Heinrichs seems by demonstrative to mean simply anything that has a point.

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The remaining examples which Heinrichs points out are not misnamed as rhetoric but simply bland and unremarkable instances. Calling attention to them, let alone lauding them, is akin to praising Transformers for adhering to Aristotelian tragic theory because its action takes place in one day. Yet Heinrichs seems to know his praise of Obama's rhetoric is not on the firmest  ground, conceding in his closing paragraph that, "Soon after taking office, Obama toned down his demonstrative rhetoric, choosing to deal with pragmatic policies between campaigns." First, the time "between campaigns" is usually referred to as a presidency. Second, Obama spoke ad infinitum and ad nauseam during his first term. He also spoke poorly, but just as poorly as he ever did. It's not surprising that liberals want to remember a perfect honeymoon, though.

Their desire to agree agree with and elevate their idol has clouded their judgment and this chapter of Heinrichs' Thank You For Arguing demonstrates what I've written elsewhere about reactions to Obama's rhetoric: if you already agree, you'll love it. Unfortunately, that's not the stuff of great rhetoric. Likewise, sloppy uses of terminology, sketchy examples, encomiastic editorializing, and imprecise explanations are not the stuff of great books. If you're looking for a sophomoric justification of Obama's greatness, though, this will surely float your boat. Thanks, but no thanks.

Movie Review: The Sacrifice

Written and Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky. 1986.

In some way the power of a great work of the cinema becomes part of you. Amadeus introduces you to an unforgettable character, 2001 immerses you in the vastitude of time and space, and Lawrence of Arabia sweeps you up in the sprawl of history. A simple movie like Mr. Hulot's Holiday can etch a tiny beach into your memory and a silly romp like Raiders of the Lost Ark can kindle your inner child. A satire or documentary can change the way you think, and a drama how you feel. I've never known, until The Sacrifice, a movie to change what you see. I don't mean see, though, as a metonymy for think (cogitate) or prehend (grasp) or discern (separate) but I mean literally to observe, to watch and keep. Tarkovsky's final movie, dedicated from the dying director to his son, is not about the world of calculation, but of the perfect, total sacrifice of love, and such love is not predicated on any recognition but the observation (seeing and keeping) that God is love, and the fullest love is the fullest sacrifice.

Yet modern man is closed to this sacrifice, and thus God and love, because he limits himself to the empirical, the perceptible, and the material. In faith, though, hope remains. The opening shot sets the stage of man's disillusion and promise: Alexander walks home from the shore with his son and friend. With his son he has planted a tree, and told his "Little Man" the story of a monk who on faith climbed a summit each day to water a tree which did one day blossom. To his friend Alexander confesses his feeling that he has waited his whole life for a reality which has not arrived. It's a rhapsodic unfurling of the story with Alexander walking along, Little Man loosely in tow playing with his lasso, and Otto his part-time postman friend cycling to and fro around them. When Otto dismounts, the men reflect in some frank philosophical speculation about demiurges, Nietzsche's dwarf, and the eternal return. This unbroken scene, over nine minutes, is also a microcosm of Alexander's life–ambling, interested, pale–and as such the cute prank which Little Man plays on Otto is fraught with portent: while the men talk the boy lassos the bicycle to a nearby tree, and after Otto starts to cycle away the bike halts and Otto goes flying off. A not so subtle suggestion: have we overlooked something in our search for happiness?

Alexander of course loves his Little Man and speaks volumes to the boy, himself mute after a recent surgery, about life and meaning. The father carries the son on his shoulders, walks with him, and holds him with tender arms. In the second scene, pictured on the poster above, Little Man sits on his father's lap and as a breeze blows through their shady grove Alexander tells his son how they came to find the nearby house in which Little Man was born: he saw it and fell in love. No calculation or benefit-analysis, just a sense of rightness. His son wanders off a bit, crawling around the roots of trees as Alexander wanders onto less happy topics, like the technical progress which has brought both comfort and standardization, but not satisfaction or spiritual health. Science, Alexander says, is in the service of evil, since sin that which is unnecessary. This would seem but ennui and speculation were it not for the beautiful sight of father and son under the breezy trees which persuades us that anything else is indeed unnecessary. He goes on and on until at last in disgust he says like Hamlet to Polonius, "Words, words, words." Mere words are no substitute for doing something significant.

In his preoccupation Alexander has lost track of his son, who sneaks up on him. Crashing into his father, the boy bloodies his nose and when Alexander sees what has happened, he collapses, just barely wheezing out, "Dear God what's wrong with me?" After he falls the camera cuts to a dream, black and white, of a destroyed urban square. No people, just gurgling water, and as the shot fades out we see the edge of what looks to be a spatter of blood. Whose?

The camera cuts back to Alexander thumbing through his birthday present, a book of prints depicting Christ. As we take in together with Alexander how the colorful paintings and images of Christ contrast the dream, or the reality, Alexander says, "Fantastic. What refinement." These are such choice words that we wonder, even of Tarkovsky and even in this masterpiece, whether they're wholly deliberate. A fantasia is not simply something which you see, but from Greek's φανταζω is something which appears to you as if presented to your consciousness, less cognitively than directly. Likewise in refined we find per-ficio, that is, finished, perfected.

Alexander goes on to say that the images are childlike yet meaningful and knowing yet virginal. How do these pictures seem to know and yet remain uncorrupted by the world? Alexander concludes that it's all been lost: we can no longer pray. Shortly later, he examines a map from the 14th century, reflecting how wonderful it must have been to have seen Europe like this. To him this old Europe looks like Mars, a lie if it's supposed to be Earth. Alexander longs to see with different eyes, to see the truth, but Otto cautions him with the image of a cockroach running around the plate, who runs that ritual, perhaps in vain, in the faith that "He could," but not seeking something so protean and chimerical as some "truth" which he can understand and master.

Tarkovsky would go on to write in Sculpting in Time (228), that,

Contemporary man is unable to hope for the unexpected, for anomalous events that don't correspond with 'normal' logic; still less is he prepared to allow even the thought of unprogrammed phenomena, let along believe in their supernatural significance. The spiritual emptiness that results should be enough to give him pause for thought."

The only alternative to faith and hope is the tortured pursuit of the truth without the ability to see it. All the while the two men carry the painting through the house, as if... as if what? As if they determine the truth, the choice, the path? As if they think they do?

After the roars of bombers interrupt the birthday celebration we learn that they were the attacks of a nuclear war. Slowly the family members lose their sanity and as they do Alexander sees the inevitable descent. Finishing the Lord's Prayer, Alexander asks for the deliverance not only of his family but also those who do not believe because they have not suffered, and those who have lost hope and the opportunity to surrender to God's will. Kneeling to God on the floor in his home, he promises to renounce and even destroy his earthly attachments for the sake of this petition. He will become silent, so that his son may speak. When Alexander stumbles back to the couch after his prayer, a coin falls from his pocket and rattles noisily along the floor. A symbol of his sacrifice, of its singularity or its smallness? Is it a gesture of banality after the heightened tone of the prayer?

In his subsequent dream, a pile of coins shaped like an arrow points the way to Little Man, but as the camera pans up (the opposite of the downward motion of the previous dream) we glimpse but his feet before he runs off. Then we hear the onrush of the jets whose breeze then blows open a pair of doors, revealing a path still sealed by bricks. The imagery here is vague but fruitfully so. It is vague not for the sake of speculation or nihilism–that is, endless legitimate interpretations–but for the sake of making the film an invitation to the audience to look and wonder where the sacred, where the significant, lies. Perhaps the coins are the sacrifice, Little Man the end, and the blocked door the alternative. Perhaps the coins are Alexander's life and Little Man is a path away from the inevitable blocked door of death. Perhaps coins represent calculation and point toward the door which technology reveals to be blocked anyway.

In cryptic, elliptical words Otto tells Alexander how to save his family: he must lay with the witch, who happens to be Alexander's unusual maid, Maria. We can accept this command as magical realism or we can understand the curious characters of Otto and Maria as possessing the sight which eludes Alexander and modern man. As Tarkovsky writes, "They move in a world of imagination," (Sculpting in Time, 227) not of empiricism, a world to which we see hints in Maria's eyes, deep with sensitivity, and Otto's fainting spells and secret knowledge of spiritual matters.

Trusting in Otto, Alexander sneaks out of the house to find Maria. When he finds her, though, he finds the need for more words, this time a story from his youth. The house in which he lived with his mother had a garden which was overrun with weeds. His mother would sit beside the window and look out into the garden, until she became ill and bedridden. At that time Alexander sought to cultivate the garden to his own taste and with his own hands and then show it to his mother to please her. When he was done, though, he looked upon his work and was disgusted by the ugliness he had wrought. He had done violence to the land and destroyed its natural beauty.

When he lays with Maria they rise above the bed, draped in sheets, liberated from pragmatism by the gift from God that was Maria's love.

When he awakes, the sun is for the first time bright and warming. Colors are rich and vibrant. Alexander picks up the receiver of the telephone, which had been ringing unanswered throughout the movie, and calls his editor. The boss is busy, the secretary says, but they're glad to have Alexander back. Is the boss more than just Alexander's editor?

Finding the world seemingly returned to normal, Alexander makes good on his promise to forsake his worldly belongings and attachments. In another long unbroken shot he burns down his beloved house and seems to go mad, but it is not the madness of frenzy but of elation, of the Holy Fool who has forsaken the world in sacrifice, for love, for God. As the house burns in the background Alexander runs back and forth, eluding the ambulance and paramedics who try to take him away. As he is finally driven off in the ambulance, Maria cycles away as well, pausing to see Little Man faithfully watering the tree as the monk did. The Little Man has inherited the ritual, the faith, and he may save himself and others as his father's sacrifice saved him.

The film ends with its beginning, with Bach's Erbarme dich from the Matthew Passion uniting the cycle of sacrifice and redemption. There is but one sacrifice, gift, and love–the full gift of oneself–and it is the fullness of this gift which transforms our sense of that harmony which is "born only of sacrifice" and which transforms the world around it (Sculpting in Time, 217.)  In so sculpting moments and meaning into this "poetic parable," this film itself becomes the glass through which we see not so darkly, but with a hint of the special sight which sees the beauty of the sacrifice.