by Allan Fish
(USA 2008 152m) DVD1/2
The agent of chaos
p Christopher Nolan, Charles Roven, Emma Thomas d Christopher Nolan w Jonathan Nolan, Christopher Nolan ph Wally Pfister ed Lee Smith m James Newton Howard, Hans Zimmer art Nathan Crowley cos Lindy Hemming
Christian Bale (Bruce Wayne/Batman), Heath Ledger (The Joker), Aaron Eckhart (Harvey Dent/Two-Face), Michael Caine (Alfred Pennyworth), Maggie Gyllenhaal (Rachel Dawes), Morgan Freeman (Lucius Fox), Cillian Murphy (The Scarecrow), Gary Oldman (Lt.James Gordon), Eric Roberts (Salvatore Maroni),
In 2005 Christopher Nolan raised the bar of superhero movies. His Batman Begins was, by some distance, the best superhero movie yet made. You can take all your Spider-Man movies and those execrable Superman movies with poor Christopher Reeve suffering beyond the call of duty and flush them down the khasi in comparison. What I didn’t expect to be saying a mere 36 months down the line was that another film, its sequel no less, does to Batman Begins what that film did all its predecessors. It rewrote the rule book, which is all the more ironic when one considers the caped crusader’s chief nemesis in the film is his most famous adversary, the one who doesn’t play by any form of rules.
As the fade-out to the first film indicated, Batman has to come to terms with the arrival of a new foe, The Joker. In addition, he’s trying to help Lt.Gordon fight the organised crime of the mob, while at the same time the new D.A., Harvey Dent, is fighting his own crusade against the forces of the underworld. For a brief moment, Bruce Wayne comes to think he may no longer be required, that Harvey Dent can be the new face of the people of Gotham City. He doesn’t take into account the levels to which The Joker’s twisted dream of absolute chaos will turn his hopes on their heads.
This is a cruel, violent world enveloped in a perpetual darkness of the soul. Batman is even more the antihero, resorting to increasingly dubious methods to try and stay one step ahead of his enemies. The moral complexities are well-explored, and not just in the usual ‘villain spouting garbage that makes a lot of sense’ kind of way. Each character is fully aware of the consequences of their actions, and is prepared for them, but Nolan ensures that he is always one trick ahead of his audience and his characters. We believe one character is dead, only for them to turn up alive in the next act. We have that age old quandary of one of two people to survive, and he saves the one we didn’t expect. There are a lot of age-old metaphors in there, but they are strung together so expertly by the Nolan brothers that one can forgive the occasional contrivance.
Visually, the film cannot be faulted, and Nolan is to be applauded for managing to do things without CGI that most directors can’t manage with. His use of camera angles, editing and lighting, perfectly in tandem with the excellent work of regular collaborator Pfister, creates a poem to darkness written in darkest, arterial blood. He’s also helped by a truly magnificent cast. Bale really comes into his own in the lead, not only comfortable with the pools of deepest black into which he regularly plummets, but also continuing his string of fine work for Nolan. Caine – likewise appearing in his third straight Nolan film – is as welcome as ever, while Oldman grows ever more enjoyable as the honest cop. Then there’s the two new boys, and kudos to Eckhart, who manages to make his transformation from shining knight to vengeful maniac believable, and doesn’t seem merely the side salad he did for Tommy Lee Jones. The last word, however, to the late Heath Ledger, who gives not so much a performance as a haunting, every tic, inflection, quirk and mannerism a joy to behold. Not many people could reinterpret a role played by Jack Nicholson and make him look like a rank amateur, but Ledger does this and more. (Credit also to Nolan, for really let him roll with the part and trusting in his unique, sadly short-lived talent.) The Dark Knight may not be great cinema, but as Hitch might have said, “it’s only a movie.” And it is a great movie, and the summer season hasn’t provided too many of them in recent times.
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Allan, there may be bits and pieces that are ok, but this film for me is at best mediocre. More a confusing noisy comic writ large on a wide screen, that is sorely in need of balloons to capture the dialog, which is otherwise unintelligible. Ledger does something with his role, but to no greater purpose. Bale is predictably banal, and the rest of the cast borderline only. The plot is entirely derivative and the supposed count-down climax a veritable yawn. The mayhem in the closing action sequence is so closely framed and poorly edited that you don’t know what the hell is going on. There is something wrong when so many otherwise intelligent people can invest this tripe as some deep and meaningful metaphor for our troubled times.
Good review. I’m one of those who, though falling short of loving this film, actually really like it. Granted, it is a bit noisy. But TDK takes the superhero genre into areas I’ve not seen before.
The script — while not perfect — has enough meat on its bones to merit the word “cinema” when talking about the film. The performances, as well, for the most part give TDK more heft.
I won’t get silly and go overboard with analyses of metaphor and all that stuff. Suffice it to say that this film is quite well done and a great viewing experience.
Oh Tony, we’ll agree to disagree. I’m not saying The Dark Knight will make best films of the decade polls – it doesn’t quite get the top marks after all, but of its derivative type, it’s as good as we’ll get. We all have our guilty pleasures.
Pierre, agreed, this is not a film for metaphor, just for pure entertainment. However, if asked to pick Nolan’s best film, The Prestige and Memento would rank ahead of it.
“I’m not saying The Dark Knight will make best films of the decade polls”
Irony alert!
No, just kidding – I know this was supposed to be a top 50 countdown originally. But still. 😉
I do think that this is an excellent film for what it is. It will NOT be making my ten-best list, however.
Both Tony and Pierre have entered superlative contributions here.
I WOULD BE SURPRISED IF HEATH LEDGER DIDN’T WIN THE OSCAR FOR THIS.
………..yeah Ledger is a shoe-in Russell, but a bigger question is whether the film will snare a Best Picture nom. Excellent review by the way……….
This review is a bit late, but it’s quite good, and I agree with the rating too.
Ah, David, but I don’t review new films, that’s Sam’s job. I just deal with oldies…this one’s only 6 months old, but an oldie nonetheless.
IS ‘THE DARK KNIGHT’ the most extreme far-right movie since D.W. Griffith’s ‘The Birth of a Nation’ (1915) made heroes of the Klue Klax Klan?
ALL FILMS ARE ART but seriously I doubt if ‘The Dark Knight’ is ‘great’ art. It had the smell of ‘The Godfather 3′ with troops of moviegoers going in and hoping against the odds that it would be good. I certainly went in with an open mind….
Katie Holmes, who was so good in the original has been replaced by a pasty looking Roz lookalike from “Frasier”. She lacks screen preseance and lethally – any sexual, romantic or even intellectual chemistry between her and her two beaus.
I found the whole film dispiriting, tiresome, boringly long, ploddingly pretentious. It lacked the concise structure of ‘Batman Begins’, and for a film that so full of ‘intelligent’ ideas – it doesn’t trust it’s audience whatsoever. Everything is stated, speechified, talked about – rather than expressed through narrative. Talk can be magnificent and make the visuals even more profound, if you’re Billy Wilder. And it goes on and on and on, rather like other big empty blockbusters (Spiderman 3, anyone).
It’s Dirty Harry with a mask on, only when the masked is removed it turns out to be Dick Cheney – the man who is power behind Bush.
It’s political propaganda. It dramatises the “ticking bomb” scenario used to justify torture prisoners by the Neo-Cons. If you want to get a certain answer – FRAME the question. The bomb is ticking away and thousands if not millions will die if you don’t get the information out of the suspect. So, would you torture?
The problem, as civil rights activists have pointed out, is that no such scenario has ever occurred or is ever likely to. And the problem is not that sometimes, as the film portrays, the information may be wrong – but that in the major, crux, pivitol scene – he does get the right address. It’s the FRAME thats set up to answer the question that’s so dishonest.
Here are some other abuses of power.
1/ EXTRAORDINARY RENDITION: The Bat Man is after a Hong Kong citizen who holds all of the mob’s ill-earned cash and has fled to the security of his home territory. So the Bat goes after him, infiltrates the sky-scraper complex HQ and using all his technology, whisks him away in a blaze of glory to US justice. No rights, no trial – just a little bit of ol’ psychological pressure, as he is promised a trip to ‘county’ jail where he would more than likely not last the night.
And about PHONE TAPPING – the New York Times recently revealed that Bush and his cohorts had US citizens under illegal survalliance 6 months BEFORE 9/11. But as we have seen – with the Bush Regime we have seen President Nixon’s claim that “it’s not illegal if the President does it”
Interesting how phone tapping always seems to lead to political foes being tapped up.
The Bat uses survalliance, tapping into others phone lines.
3/ The denial of Habeas Corpus, you are innocent unless proven guilty, unless your Bush – then the citizen is guilty unless proven innocent.
for those with open minds, I suggest you watch the brilliant 3 part Documentary ‘The Power of Nightmares’ and ‘9/11 Demolitions’ on goggle video. Vastly superior to any anything you’ll see in your Corporately controlled tv screens. Then have a read of ex-Replician Dr. Paul Craig Roberts (’the father of Reaganomics’ http://www.vdare.com/roberts/all_columns.htm
And finally, though the Joker is chaos and madness and death personified – representing the savagery of terrorism, the so called good guy – Batman is no more than the distilled embodiment of Dick Cheney and the other Neo-Cons…..the closest the America has got to the Nazis or (as described by the words of Senator Barry Goldwater the father of modern conservatism) a “bunch of kooks”….
Good Night and Good Luck,. bobby
PS: Zero stars, though Heath Ledger is superb.
Bobby, I must say though I loved your comparison to Roz on FRASIER (I seriously laughed out loud and almost spit a little coffee), this was my favorite part of your post:
“It’s political propaganda. It dramatises the “ticking bomb” scenario used to justify torture prisoners by the Neo-Cons. If you want to get a certain answer – FRAME the question. The bomb is ticking away and thousands if not millions will die if you don’t get the information out of the suspect. So, would you torture?
The problem, as civil rights activists have pointed out, is that no such scenario has ever occurred or is ever likely to. And the problem is not that sometimes, as the film portrays, the information may be wrong – but that in the major, crux, pivitol scene – he does get the right address. It’s the FRAME thats set up to answer the question that’s so dishonest.”
absolutely brilliant– and spot on. So many fanboys and critics missed these obvious neo-con messages (though many did see them). I remember seeing the film with a friend who had already seen it 2 or 3 times, as we left the theater he asked, ‘So? What did you think?’ To which I replied, ‘It’s a little to politically conservative for my taste’, and his response–keep in mind he’s seen it three to four times now– ‘what do you mean’? This is the worst thing one can say about a film: it got so many people to swallow a political ideology that they don’t agree with… not only is that extremely dangerous it’s just downright bad.
Oh well… one can always watch the best BATMAN film, the liberal, feminist BATMAN RETURNS of 1992 or so.
Interesting statements here: a) do you think the audiences really swallowed the political agenda or just ignored it in pursuit of entertainment? b) what’s interesting is that the movie focuses on neo-con issues (support of surveillance, torture, rendition, etc.) but has a very non-neocon sensibility (unlike, say, Iron Man which is neocon to the core, though I understand it will be subverting that approach somewhat with the sequel). c) doesn’t it get a little bit boring and staid to have only films whose political message you agree with? I disagree with the majority of Bush’s policies, yet I found Dark Knight compelling because it made a case few of the blockbusters wanted to (most, like X-Men, took the more standard Hollywood line on 9/11-era policies which of course was presented in no less, sometimes more, facile a fashion than in DK which – perhaps due to a self-consciousness about its views, fudged the waters a little bit resulting in a more compelling ambiguity).
Interesting point about Batman Returns. I was going to challenge the “liberal” line but I remembered the Max Schreck character is an evil industrailist, which may have been what you had in mind. Still, I think the terms “liberal” and “radical” get conflated way too much – not least by conservatives; might Batman Returns be more radical (i.e. ready to use violence for the cause, preferring subversion of law to utilization of it, eschewing conventional morality) – or more to the point might it posit a liberal Batman against a radical Catwoman, with Penguin perhaps a fascist? (This is fun!) I guess in that case it would be liberal, since Batman comes out on top but he’s probably the least interesting character in the film, so on the other hand… 😉
A liberal standpoint? Neo-Con propaganda?
Characters that may espouse or enact beliefs in line with these broad ideologies? Sure.
It’s like saying the world is liberal if a murderer isn’t caught in real life. That’s meaningless.
If there is meant to be a message here it is this: the makers of the Dark Knight have read a lot of newspapers and spewed it out onto the screen, using topical issues as vehicles to propel their freak v freak story. We tick off the references to real life and credit them with political nous where there is none.
There’s nothing more to it, as far as I’m concerned. Ain’t no Iguana.
Batman Returns is really good, actually. Pfeiffer’s Catwoman must be the best portrayal of a comic-book character I’ve seen.
Shame the film is so anti-big business (!)
I guess it comes down to if you feel the film is trying to sell you something.
Nolan may want to push a certain line. He may not. If it comes across that way, it may be distracting. I personally rarely see any agenda in a film – it’s always more likely people are following conventions and pushing buttons.
First and foremost I see the characters. I get a little fed up of reviews constantly abstracting – i.e. every film with a tragic death in it becomes “a study of grief” rather than “a film about someone who is grieving”.
One raindrop need not mean a storm-cloud is overhead. Confucius Say.
I did find it funny how weak Lucius’s moral stand was. “I abhor what you are doing…but…I’ll use it just this once…”. Conscience salved!
Stephen, I don’t entirely disagree with what you’re saying here, but you make it too extreme. In real life, peole are operating under a myriad of motivations and causes. In a movie, the world is CREATED, a fact you continually seem to disregard. Every decision was made by someone – you can be an agnostic, atheist, or Deist when it comes to the universe but not a work of art.
Again, that does not mean that every single thing onscreen was pre-determined, nor that every reaction one has to the film is going to be what the director intended. Indeed, what makes art so rich is the comingling between output and input, between intention and result, between reality molded towards a certain end (at least in live-action, albeit less so in recent years) and reality which exists independently – and the imagination which interacts with all of this. By placing the film entirely within the spectator’s head you are eliding a juicy, tasty part of the experience.
We can easily look at a film and guess – or conclude – what the director intended. It seems quite clear that Nolan wanted to address issues which arose in the recent war on terror. Maybe, as you say, he did not do so in a compelling or judgemental fashion – maybe it’s just opportunistic headline-grabbing that does not actually entail a moral point of view on the matter. Others have made that point. But the point is, it’s still a point of view!
“c) doesn’t it get a little bit boring and staid to have only films whose political message you agree with? I disagree with the majority of Bush’s policies, yet I found Dark Knight compelling because it made a case few of the blockbusters wanted to (most, like X-Men, took the more standard Hollywood line on 9/11-era policies which of course was presented in no less, sometimes more, facile a fashion than in DK which – perhaps due to a self-consciousness about its views, fudged the waters a little bit resulting in a more compelling ambiguity).”
Movieman come on… NO, it does not get boring (well actually my first thought is how someone who is a Godard fan can make a statement like that). As I said elsewhere politics for me aren’t an intellectual game. Politics (and political ideologies) effect people’s lives in real ways. So all these action films and blockbusters promoting a pro-conservative message subverts how the masses feel about these issues. Suddenly complex issues are being decided on things like macho-posturing etc… people suddenly think about issue directly opposite to what would actually benefit their life (see my fan boy reaction). Look at how a vast majority of people now view unions (i.e. organizations intended to assist the voiceless worker), it’s all media PR spin.
Also if all films were left leaning they wouldn’t get ‘boring’ as politically the left spectrum is fast. Compare Godard with Michael Moore (Godard doesn’t even like him), but they are both generically ‘left’ in label. ‘Left’ means many different things in every language, country, era, medium, etc. ‘Boring’ would never even come into play.
If we got a largely liberal bias in films and media (to the point that most people viewed issues in this manner) the world would be better for millions (though probably billions of people) and for the planet itself.
“Interesting point about Batman Returns. I was going to challenge the “liberal” line but I remembered the Max Schreck character is an evil industrailist, which may have been what you had in mind. Still, I think the terms “liberal” and “radical” get conflated way too much – not least by conservatives; might Batman Returns be more radical (i.e. ready to use violence for the cause, preferring subversion of law to utilization of it, eschewing conventional morality) – or more to the point might it posit a liberal Batman against a radical Catwoman, with Penguin perhaps a fascist? (This is fun!) I guess in that case it would be liberal, since Batman comes out on top but he’s probably the least interesting character in the film, so on the other hand…”
please watch the film again if it’s been a while. Catwoman is portrayed as feminism incarnate (probably of ‘S.C.U.M. Manifesto’ variety, but it’s way more challenging then anything I’ve ever seen in a comic book movie), and the Penguin is a political front for the industrialist you speak of. Watch it again (also keep in mind the first born baby OT references), you’ll thank me.
Well, your response here really surprises me. I thought you’d back off a bit.
First of all, the notion that only the right plays on emotions is nonsense. There’s just as much sentimentalization and generalization on the left as there is on the right. It’s a trait common to all ideologues, who streamline and pummel reality to fit into their narrow frame of reference. Art and entertainment are primarily appeals to the emotion. Aesthetics is about what appeals to us on a deep, almost primal level – not about what is “good” for society. (And vice versa – public policy, as you seem to agree, should not be imposed based on what feels good but what actually is good.) Ethics and aesthetics should be kept, for the most part, separate.
The great works of art transcend their political trappings – Godard may have tried to be a humorless agitprop (I’m not so sure he ever did) but he did not succeed – even his most didactic films hold a fascination and the fascination has much more to do with their aesthetic properties than their ideological ones – or rather how their ideological trappings are transformed and represented through aesthetic means (politics become just one more element of the art, not vice versa). What in the world is your surprise that a Godard fan could embrace films of all political stripes supposed to mean? That anyone who likes a leftist filmmaker must be a narrow-minded bigot?
Btw, you don’t seem to know much about Godard’s actual political views. He was largely apolitical, who hovered more in a right-wing, even fascist, milieu and disdained the leftist anti-Hollywood intellectuals, until the mid-60s – even Le Petit Soldat, which is fascinated with the Algerian resistance, cannot really embrace their cause yet – except as an aesthetic principle. Arguably, this treatment of politics as aesthetics – seduction to the left by its image and culture more than its ethos – never left Godard (though he was not without doubts, at least initially – see the ambivalent treatment of the revolutionaries in La Chinoise). His Maoism seems to have more about the attraction to their culture of fanaticism (see an early piece he wrote celebrating the sheer effusiveness of Soviet AND Nazi youths in propaganda films) and a personal rebellion against his bourgeois background than a sincere affinity for the working classes.
But I’ll be back with more later; unfortunately, duty calls.
I think Godard was a left filmmaker. See ‘Le Gai Savoir’, ‘Tout Va Bien’, ‘Weekend’, ‘Germany in the Year 90 Nine Zero’, ‘Notre musique’ etc. Godard was a marxist/left filmmaker make no mistake about it. I think he’s a glorious mixing of Mills’ ‘On Liberty’, Brecht, Marx, and Debord’s ‘Society of the Spectacle.
and no, I don’t think that anyone who likes Godard should be a ‘simple-minded bigot’ (nice turn of phrase, is this directed at me since I want only left leaning films? wanting films that better mankind does not make me a ‘bigot’ quite the opposite) but rather someone who likes Godard would see the seriousness with which politics should be handled and the danger in throwing around pro-torture and pro-civil rights infringing (see TDK) themes.
“Btw, you don’t seem to know much about Godard’s actual political views.”
hmm. Yet Godard said himself he didn’t make a political film till after 66-67 (really May ’68), and several of the films you state showing his politics are before this.
Oh well.
this is a good read, even though it still only shows his views up to ’72.
http://www.ejumpcut.org/archive/onlinessays/JC28folder/GodardGorinPolitics.html
“is this directed at me since I want only left leaning films?”
In theory, perhaps, but luckily for both of us, in practice your taste is much more ecumenical than your judgement. 😉 (Seriously, this is why I was so surprised to see you say you wanted only left leaning films; your tiffs with Bobby J and general delight in subversive, very un-PC stuff is quite far from what people USUALLY mean when they say things like this. It seems, like Stephen on other matters, your bark is worse than your bite here. I mean, Inglourious Basterds may be a number of things but it’s hardly leftist – most of its strongest critics were on the left.)
In all seriousness, I think we can have a great conversation about politics & movies (actually, I’m more interested in the discussion about “pure” politics to be honest – it’s one I’ve been conducing in several locations online but usually my opponents are right-wing so this should make an interesting variance). I do hope though that you can suspend some of the rushing to judgement (and to the extent I’m guilty of the same, I’ll try to do as much as well). For example, let me summarize our Batman Returns exchange above:
YOU: “Batman Returns is a liberal movie.”
ME: “I dunno, Catwoman’s more a radical than a liberal.”
YOU: “How can you say it’s not liberal! Catwoman is a radical.” [SCUM is about as clear a distinction of “radical” from “liberal” as you can get.]
ME: “Um, what? Isn’t that what I was just saying?”
Sometimes you seem to assume because I’m taking issue with what you’re saying, I’m taking issue with it from a certain angle. But my primary point with the Batman Returns comment was that liberal and radical are not the same thing, and if you were using Catwoman as a reason that Batman Returns was a “liberal” movie (as I correctly suspected you were) than you were confusing the terms. You seemed to miss this entirely in the assumption that if I was taking issue with your characterization of the film, it must be to argue that the movie is apolitical or conservative.
Also, I wrote “I was GOING to take issue with your characterization” and then conceded that the Schreck characterization did indeed give the movie a (broadly) liberal bent. You responded by telling me to watch the movie again if I didn’t believe you, despite the fact that I had basically just conceded the point.
Likewise with Godard; you said that Godard was definitely a “left” filmmaker but what I was taking issue with was not that he was on the left, but that this exclusively defined his output and his political viewpoint. And, since we were talking about the distinction between liberalism and radicalism, I’d say from my perspective Godard is about as far from a Mill as you can get (and still reside in the same general area on the ideological spectrum). But actually I’d be interested to hear your reasons for why you see him that way. It’s been a while since I read Mill so maybe I’m missing a connection here.
I don’t mean to nitpick, but this happens a lot in our conversations (as I said once, it reminds me of debates I’ve had with a friend of mine where, to our surprise we somehow circle one another like the Marx brothers in the mirror and find ourselves arguing the opposite of what we started out arguing). Anyway, I’ll be back in a few to try and set some terms of the debate. I hope you’ll partake – our back-and-forths tend to die on the vine, but I’d like to see this one proceed to some sort of, if not conclusion exactly, at least better understanding of where we’re coming from, where the lines are drawn.
And in the interest of fairness, my stating of the Godard thing was rather bumbling since I opened with “he was apolitical” meaning he was apolitical BEFORE he was on the left but I didn’t make that clear (though if you read the whole passage, it kind of makes sense). Sorry about that.
“YOU: “Batman Returns is a liberal movie.”
ME: “I dunno, Catwoman’s more a radical than a liberal.”
YOU: “How can you say it’s not liberal! Catwoman is a radical.” [SCUM is about as clear a distinction of “radical” from “liberal” as you can get.]
ME: “Um, what? Isn’t that what I was just saying?””
this is true, but I mean it was, or she was (Catwoman I mean) a radical liberal. She’s both at once.
My prodding to watch BATMAN RETURNS again wasn’t a slap in the face I was just trying to get you to watch it again if it’s been awhile with the mind set that it’s a ‘political/liberal film’, it will really surprise you. And I think you’d really enjoy the experience, nothing more.
I just watched it with friends about 4 months ago and gave them that idea going it and we had a great film night.
I’m game for the discussion, but maybe we should do it over email, as many of our conversations die (for me) because this wordpress gets unmanageable after a while. That and, as you say we agree on much more then we think, there are just slight variations in our world-views–meaning it gets rather repetitive after a while and we’re both busy people. plus this way we can exchange larger number of variables to express points (songs, pieces of scripts I’m working on etc.) and we can take days between responses if necessary. perhaps at the end we can post here.
I’m open.
No, I definitely see where you’re coming from in characterizing Batman Returns as having a left-of-center viewpoint – but I still think that radicalism and liberalism are antagonistic in some senses (not entirely, as they have certainly fed off of one another over the years) and that she falls squarely on the radical side in every instance where they butt heads. Or do you mean that in her “human” form she’s a liberal whereas in her feline personification she’s a radical? That’s an interesting concept; I don’t quite remember what her (post-falling out of window) human identity was like, except that she romanced Bruce Wayne – but I like the idea. (Interestingly, of course, it aligns with the paranoid right-wing view that liberals are radicals in sheeps’ clothing!)
My impression of Batman Returns has generally been that aesthetically it’s the most impressive of all the Batman films – at least in terms of its set design – but that narratively it’s not very satisfying. Impressive ambitions, but dissatisfying execution. Of course that could change on a re-viewing…
Jamie, the e-mail idea is a good one – it occurred to me too – but I’d like to see if we could at least start it on this thread. Partly because I feed off the energy circulating in the Wonders arena, partly because I think a “public” debate would be interesting (I don’t mind other people joining in, though hopefully it doesn’t get too distracting). And partly I guess because I like to keep these threads alive – part of the vitality I value in this site.
So why don’t we start here and then move it elsewhere if it eventually becomes too unwiedly?
I’ll give it a fresh start at the very bottom of this thread, since activity other than our conversation seems to have died down somewhat. See you below…
Not sure if the costume is the signifier, but rather her near death (or actual death of former self) she emerges a new person.
This is what I find so uneasy about the wording(s) though… she’s clearly a ‘radical’ (as we’ve already agreed on a sort of SCUM Manifesto) feminist as Catwoman; as this is where I squirm, as ‘radical’ denotes offensive, or just someone that operates on the fringes, ect– i.e. someone that you wouldn’t want to be with or around, a negative trait. But to me a woman like this is both desired and preferred in social situations, I see it as a positive. I think much of our confusion in our dialogue(s) stems from this fundamental difference.
As my definition below makes clear, I tend to use “radical” in a descriptive sense rather than a pejorative one. Not that I don’t have my own doubts or problems with radicalism (though occasionally I find it more amicable to my sensibilities than liberalism) but my use of the term should not be taken to indicate this.
Think of it in terms of someone like Howard Zinn, who called himself a “radical” proudly. It’s a distinction that needs to be made, I think, as the gulf between establishment liberalism and revolutionary radicalisn in the 60s (the inheritors of the New Deal, which incorporated and mainstreamed elements of the Old Left vs. the largely youthful, more anarchistic New Left as yet almost entirely untouched by conventional power) was so wide – in some senses, wider than that between liberals and conservatives of the time. Since then the two strands have merged somewhat, but also become fairly separated again since at least the time of Clinton’s election.
Incidentally, the increasingly popular term “progressive” kind of fudges the dividing line between these two strands, as it also did in the 40s when Henry Wallace and the fellow travelers attempted to blur the lines between liberal Democrats, the anti-Stalinist left, and the Communist Party (obviously they failed but their quixotic crusade was in the spirit of the antifascist Popular Front mentality of the late 30s). It could also be argued – and this is probably much closer to the conscious reason for its re-emergence – that it’s meant to fudge the line between mainstream American reformers, i.e. Progressives (from the turn-of-the century) and the more maligned quote-unquote “anti-Americans” of today’s left: calling liberals “progressives” was an attempted re-branding to try and recover some of the glory of the past – though I wonder if those who made the rhetorical switch were also aware of the more dubious Wallace legacy they were perhaps unwittingly foisting on their own back…
But I digress…
We;ll agree to disagree, bobby, and Maggie Gyllenhaal who was superb in Secretary, Sherrybaby and various others, has far more presence and ability than Mrs Tom Cruise – who looked like she wasn’t old enough to graduate from university let alone be so high up in the legal profession – was the weak link in Batman Begins.
Mind you, I do agree on neo-fascist Bush, whose riddance is good for the planet.
I find it interesting how reviewers, both here and elsewhere throughout the blog-o-sphere, dismiss this film as nothing more than a right-wing, pro-neo-con piece of propaganda. If anything, I find it is quite the opposite if you look deep into the sub-text of the film (and, in some cases, you don’t even have to look that deep at all). Whether that was Mr. Nolan’s intent or not, I can not know. But let’s review a few points to illustrate the possibility that the director, by showing us an extreme as contrast, was actually indicting the excesses and abuses of the right-wing neo-cons.
1) Batman, Gordon, and Dent – representing the vigilante or force that acts outside of or in disregard of the law (alternately, Black Ops, Special Forces, CIA agents, etc.), the “established” law that is not above making deals with the corrupt to achieve their own end, and the idealized moral paragon hiding a darker side – all have their own agendas. They cooperate at times (often reluctantly) but still keep each other in the dark as to some of their plans. The phrase, “I’m playing this one close to the chest.” or “I’m keeping this one close to the chest.” (indicating keeping a secret from someone or at the very least not divulging or sharing all of what you know with them) is used at least twice in the film by my count. Had they been more trusting and forthright with one another regarding the information each one was privy too, perhaps much of the suffering and destruction in the film could have been avoided. I’m reminded of something I read in which a Guantanamo Bay prisoner – after having been grilled with the same questions over and over by agents from the NYPD, the CIA, the FBI, the military, and others – incredulously remarked, “Don’t any of you speak to each other?”.
2) The issue of corruption within government. Dent takes Gordon (the ostensibly “honest” cop) to task for knowingly tolerating corrupt cops within his unit.
3) The issue of expediency/end-justifying-the-means. Gordon counters Dent’s criticism by using the excuse that if he didn’t tolerate corrupt cops, he’d be working alone. Also, Gordon is keeping the corrupt cops close to him so he can monitor them to get some idea of what the mob plans to do next. Gordon doing his “deal with the devil” as described by Dent near the end of the film.
4) The issue of dishonesty and the betrayal of the Public’s trust. While in the hospital, Dent demands Gordon tell him the name the cops had for Dent while he was working in Internal Affairs (full-well knowing what his nickname was already, of course). It is “Two Face”. In the comic, Dent is known as “Two Face” largely because of the sharp contrast of his scarred face. Yes, more recent Batman comics have delved deeper into Dent’s split personality but early on this was not the case; he was simply “Two Face” because he had, literally, two sharply divided sides to his face – it wasn’t any deeper than that. But in the film he is nicknamed “Two Face” by cops while he was working at Internal Affairs; long before his horrible facial burns and scarring. Someone doesn’t earn the title “Two Face” unless there is something to justify it; such as being publicly moral and upstanding, but privately dishonest, a hypocrite, a liar, or double-crossing. Though the film doesn’t go into it in detail, Dent couldn’t have earned the name “Two Face” without just cause. We’re even shown Dent’s dissembling streak and hubris in the form of his “lucky” coin. He puts people in positions (even the woman he loves) in which a decision is made on a coin toss; a toss he knows he’ll win because the coin is rigged. Going even further with the analogy, this is not unlike fabricating “evidence” to support a desired outcome. The perpetrator of the deception knows what outcome they want to achieve and then fabricates “evidence” to support a course of action which will lead to that outcome. Sound familiar?
5) The issue of torture. I don’t believe the movie was supporting torture. Quite the contrary. The attempted torture failed and miserably so. The “information” elicited by Batman’s torture of the Joker was dis-information designed to benefit the Joker. It accomplished the task of removing Batman and many of the cops from the police precinct so he could get to Lau while putting Batman in a moral predicament of having to choose who to save; Dent or Rachel. Even then, because it WAS dis-information which Batman trusted as “real” information, he made the wrong choice based on what he had elicited from the Joker during the torture session (he rescued Dent when he thought he was heading to where Rachel was held captive). Not unlike how experts have told us all along (and I’m going way back before Guantanamo; we’re talking at least the last 150 years or more) that torture does not provide useful, quality information or intelligence. The tortured simply tell you what you want to hear, what they think you want to hear, or, as in the case of the Joker, what THEY want you hear to serve their own ends. As the Joker says, “You have nothing to threaten me with, nothing to do with all your strength.”
6) Schemes, within schemes, within schemes. They all failed. Batman’s extraordinary rendition of Lau ; failed. Everyone plays right into the Joker’s hands and the Joker walks away with Lau . Gordon’s “deal with the devil” by tolerating corrupt cops on the force. Corrupt cops who tip off the mob about the intended seizure of their funds and ultimately hand Dent and Rachel over to the Joker/Joker’s henchmen. Dent believing his own “white knight” image by removing 500+ criminals from the streets through the use of psychological pressure on Lau and then thinking he could continue on in his role as DA without consequence (or worse, not considering the consequences to the woman he loved). There are many other examples of failed plans throughout the film; those were just a few.
7) Alfred’s days in Burma. This wasn’t just some random little speech to act as filler and give Michael Caine some screen time. Listen to the monologue again and consider the impact of his words. While working in Burma (likely as an agent of the British crown doing god-knows-what covert undermining of yet another 3rd world nation), he and his pals burn down an entire forest to get to one bandit. I’ll repeat that; they BURNED DOWN AN ENTIRE FOREST TO GET ONE BANDIT! How many local Burmese peasants relied on that forest as a source of food, raw materials for building shelter and tools, clean water? How many trees were lost? How many animals killed or displaced? All so they could get one man who was stealing rubies that Alfred and his pals were using to bribe local tribesmen with in the first place. Kind of an indictment of the scorched earth/end-justifying-the-means policy if you ask me.
8) Wire Tapping/Phone Tapping. At first, it appears the movie has nothing bad to say about this practice (within the context of the film). It helps Batman locate the Joker and save the hostages. They even bring in saintly Morgan Freeman to bluntly and sanctimoniously state “This is wrong” and “Unethical” to wash the movie’s hands of any perceived condoning of the practice while simultaneously using it to spy on 30 million people. But there is a point in the film in which it strikes me that this is perhaps satire. Lucius Fox – upstanding, moral, ethical – still is willing to stoop to using it even if only, “Just this one time.” Perhaps indicting a society that presents itself to the world as the beacon of morality, freedom, and justice but is then willing to use covert, underhanded, and illegal means to achieve its end when faced with a threat. Also, when the Joker attacks Batman at the top of the building, he entangles him in a net. Batman kicks him away, stands up, frees himself from the net and…he’s still using the sonar (as indicated by the blue, flashing eyes of the Batman’s hood). The Joker can’t be more than what, 10-15 feet away at the most? Yet here’s Batman, trying to find him with the sonar goggles, and, failing to see him until the last second because of the distorted, choppy sonar image, gets attacked and pinned by the Joker. He probably would have stood a better chance of finding the Joker if he had turned the sonar goggles off. Note, too, that there is short space in which the screen goes black and there are some static crackling noises in the background just after Batman has been netted. Perhaps indicating a “reset” of the sonar goggles after having taken a few blows from the Joker; effectively blinding him. Could this be an indictment of the wire tapping/phone tapping? That using it blinds you to the real threats? Pouring so many people, resources, time, effort, and money into spying on the average Joe that you don’t see the real threat coming until it’s too late? Maybe even a statement on over-reliance on technology in the military.
9) The hostage situation. After the Joker takes hostages from the hospital, he dresses them as clowns while putting his own henchmen in the doctors jackets to confuse the SWAT teams. Gordon even thinks out loud why the henchmen (clowns) would be standing so out in the open. Yet the SWAT teams are ready to open fire without questioning why the situation may not be what it seems. There is even a walkie-talkie voice over of a SWAT team member talking through the attack plan in which he calmly states the expectation of “only” 2 or 3 casualties. In other words, getting 2 or 3 innocent people killed during the SWAT team assault is perfectly acceptable to the faceless voice. And this isn’t far from reality. A city I lived in had a hostage situation at a Circuit City store. Two or three of the hostages were killed during the SWAT siege. It was later revealed that the deaths were caused by SWAT team members, not the hostage takers.
10) Coleman Reiss. When Joker essentially puts a bounty on Reiss’ head, look how quickly all the good citizens of Gotham (and even a cop) are ready to kill an innocent man.
11) The ferry crisis. The decision of whether or not to blow up a boatful of other human beings is put to a vote. Never mind that the ones in jeopardy are criminals; the life or death of dozens of human beings (or more) are hanging on the ridiculousness of…a vote. Also never mind that not everyone on the other ferry are criminals; some are ferry boat workers and others are cops (innocent people). I look upon this scene as an indictment of people who sheepishly go along with the crowd rather than standing up for what is right; even if it flies in the face of so-called “democracy”. Democracy – or at least those who cry it as their slogan – lose all of their moral authority when it’s used as an excuse to hide behind to justify heinous acts. “Hey, we took a vote, so that must make it right, right?”
12) At the end, with Batman pinned by the Joker, his technology and fighting prowess failing him, the passengers on the ferries at the Joker’s mercy, what happens? Everyone re-affirms their true values. The citizen passengers can’t bring themselves to blow up the other ferry despite it being full of criminals, the criminals (at least one of them, anyway) show they, too, are still human by throwing the detonator out the window (bet a lot of people in the audience didn’t see that one coming), and Batman saves the Joker’s life by grappling him before he falls to his death. When everything is at it’s lowest point and the Joker appears to have won by bringing everyone down to his level, and they are all defeated, broken, disheartened, scared, what do they do? They show that they value life; even the lives of those they would not normally be inclined to value. The citizens/criminals for one another and the Batman for the Joker. And it is this that defeats the Joker. He becomes crestfallen when he realizes that his plan isn’t going to work and that he is all alone. When people actively choose to not be threatened, scared, or terrorized anymore is when “terrorism” is defeated; not by bombs, and tanks, and torture. It doesn’t mean something bad can’t still happen to you; it just means you will no longer allow the fear and anticipation of something bad happening to you control your emotions and your actions. Terrorism is a state of mind; not a person or a thing or an act (no matter how much we’ve been sold on the very opposite notion). It ends when you decide to end it in your own head. And that’s what happens in that scene; everyone chooses to stop being terrorized.
13) Early in the film while Batman and Gordon are inspecting the bank vault after the Joker’s heist, they discuss their next steps. The movie makes it very clear from the very beginning that the Joker is a serious threat; he’s willing to knock over a mob bank (his 5th as revealed a little later by Gordon), kill his own henchmen, and is not afraid to openly show his face. Yet Batman states to Gordon something to the effect of, “Go after the mob or just one man?” (indicating that he clearly wants to go after the mob over the Joker). A case of being blind to the real threat. Also, the mob is a group; large, broadly disseminated, amorphous, faceless – not exactly a specific target. Yet Batman wants to go after the mob rather than a specific individual (the Joker) whom Gordon has clear bank surveillance camera footage of and other evidence of his crimes. Perhaps the analogy to draw here is the folly of attacking an entire country for somewhat vague reasons over going after the one man or one group directly responsible for a crime for which you have hard evidence.
I think Mr. Nolan made the movie that he did and in the way that he did because there was no other way he could make it and still get his message across in the Bush era (assuming I’m even correct about his intentions). To get the funding for a film of this scale and the approval of corporate Hollywood, he had to make a film which, on its surface, was just another Summer blockbuster. The fact that he could pull it off in the guise of a pro-right-wing-neo-con film while subtly and subversively indicting everything that political view stands for and still make it an entertaining Summer blockbuster to boot is pure genius. The only way I can think of that he can top this is, in the third film, to have Batman die to save all of Gotham.
I know the sound is such that it makes some of the dialog hard to follow. But, through the magic of DVD, the pause and rewind buttons, and subtitles, you can catch every word (though it may take a few viewings). Who knows; even that may have been intentional. The most damning dialog of the film is some of the hardest to follow and I missed much of it in the theatre. It’s not until you play and re-play it at home on your DVD that you’ll be able to catch it all. So maybe Mr. Nolan let the explosions and crashes and bullets come through loud and clear in the theatre to cover over the dialog that was simultaneously taking to task everything the right-wing-neo-cons stand for.
Watch the film again with some of what I’ve written about in mind and see if you don’t see the film in a new light. If nothing else, keep foremost the concept that runs throughout the film – and which is put so succinctly by the Joker in his monologue to Dent in the hospital – that all the best laid plans of all the schemers fail over and over and over; and not entirely because the Joker foils the plans but because the plans (and even the planners themselves) were flawed to begin with.
I have been arguing the finer points of this great film with the group damn near since its release. This is a stunning commentary above, one which I agree with in full support. It was my favorite film of the year and not because of the thrill ride most people mistaken it to be ONLY. I don’t think I have ever seen you comment here, Mr. CCBn but your thoughts and analysis are most appreciated. Please, by all means, make yourself at home and WELCOME!!!!! Dennis
An excellent comment, CCB. I agree that the film is ambiguous – but not that it’s anti-Bush. I do think it is largely conservative, but it’s conservatism is dark, pessimisstic, traditional, even iconoclastic, which is more palatable than smug have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too neoconservatism (or, for that matter, Hollywood’s usual holier-than-thou knee-jerk liberalism).
MovieMan,
It may use real-life for ideas, but how can you possibly judge if this film, or its makers, are ‘anti-bush’, conservative or non-conservative?
Characters act in a certain way and are treated in a certain way by individuals. It’s just a vision of a world – not an indictment or an exoneration.
Well, first of all let’s make a distinction between the specificity of “anti-Bush” and the broader contours of “conservative”. It may be too much to say that the film is anti-Bush when Bush himself never appears in the movie, but to say that its overarching ethos reflects an underlying conservatism is no leap of the imagination.
As both Bobby and CCB point out above, the film does not merely “present” a world; it frames it a certain way. It does this ambiguously, leaving room for interpretation, but a “vision” as you describe it implies a “viewpoint” which in itself can contain elements – or the entirety – of an indictment or exoneration.
Now, overall, are you saying that we cannot speculate on the motivations or beliefs present in a film? By this reasoning Birth of a Nation is not pro-Ku Klux Klan, it merely presents a story in which they come off positively.
“…but a “vision” as you describe it implies a “viewpoint” which in itself can contain elements – or the entirety – of an indictment or exoneration.”
A vision does not imply a viewpoint. A dream is like a vision but it doesn’t imply any conscious involvement of my thoughts and feelings.
“By this reasoning Birth of a Nation is not pro-Ku Klux Klan, it merely presents a story in which they come off positively.”
Well, in a way that’s all we can be sure of. Of course, that doesn’t mean that such images do not, potentially, make an impact on an unknowing audience. It could just be a provocation. Either way, it’s hateful regardless of what is meant by it because I don’t want to see Evil people triumph as heroes.
Sorry, Stephen, you’re all over the place here. The “KKK triumphing” would not be objected to by any reasonable person if it was presented as a negative occurence. It’s the film’s “framing” of it as positive which engenders the response. “Involvement of your thoughts and feelings” don’t have to be conscious. Are you really suggesting that dreams don’t reflect anything other than the images that dance before your eyes? That one takes away nothing from them but this? Generations of psychologists would like to have a word with you.
Your borderline nihilistic agnosticism about films – whether or not they have any meaning, whether we can say anything conclusive about them – is ultimately just a form of sophistry. Films are made with intent, and everything you see onscreen was put there by someone for a reason. That doesn’t mean that aspects of the work don’t escape its makers’ hands or that the work doesn’t have an independent life of its own, but to act as if we can interpret nothing about what the work means because “who knows” is absurd. Your approach to films and criticism is far too passive and mystifying for me (in theory anyway, in practice we all know your approach is somewhat different). Just because we may be wrong or misguided in our interpretation doesn’t mean we can’t look at the evidence and conclude what a film is trying to say.
Really, I feel the points you’re making here are rather silly and guided less by any sort of common sense than a kind of compulsion to maintain a “line” about critics being unable to say anything conclusive about movies. I don’t think you’re being purposefully disingenuous, mind you, just that you’re being rather obtuse because of adherence to a (superficially anti-ideological) ideology – a relativism which is more absolutist than that it tries to fight. You also don’t seem to understand or appreciate much about the filmmaking process – the fact these are not magical objects which appear before us, but – among other things – organized materials presented for a purpose. And then below, yet again you write “They are just pithy statements aiming to give the film some gravitas.” which is exactly the sort of judgement or speculation you tell me not to make. This is what ultimately irks about your mystifying, slippery ethos about film criticism – you don’t follow it yourself.
Sorry if I sound a little peevish here but I’m kind of exasperated by this line of reasoning. It’s an interesting conversation to have nonetheless but truth be told I’d rather not be tempted to the computer screen again! At Bob’s prodding, I’m finally re-watching the Star Wars saga and I’ve several more titles to go before the end of the day – don’t distract me, Stephen! I’m warning you! Seriously, though, it is an interesting conversation, but if you wait till tomorrow to respond (lest I can’t help but check in between screenings) I’d be mighty obliged…
Ambiguous, yes, but call me crazy, I think that Nolan dropped the ball as far as storytelling goes here, which makes it especially tricky to tell where the film sides, politically. Gordon, Wayne and Dent might be playing things close to the chest in terms of their schemes, but so is Nolan, when it comes to his editing. He breezes by a lot of information far too quickly, which makes it difficult to tell at times exactly what everybody’s plots are, in the long run– seriously, does Gordon’s faking-his-own-death really make any sense whatsoever? The fact that after the movie many people still weren’t sure if Dent was actually dead shows just how sloppy Nolan allowed things to get. And let’s not even mention how much it screws up the fight scenes, something you’d think would be of a higher prioirity in an action film, no matter how lofty its intentions.
“The Dark Knight” is an entertaining, quality film, no doubt. But I don’t find much purpose in worrying over which wing it’s flapping from. At the end of the day, I’m not even sure that Nolan knows, much less cares.
I think you may be right, Bob – I’m not sure Nolan set out to make a right-wing or left-wing film, but if it’s confusion on his part, the film benefits from it. At any rate, The Dark Knight was certainly one of the most compelling blockbusters of recent years (not that I’ve seen a whole bunch of them) but it’s strengths were mostly in its screenplay; the direction was not very distinguished (not bad, though at times it was certainly sloppy, just not distinguished).
After seeing how he handles the IMAX screen ratio, I think one thing’s pretty clear– Nolan has no idea how to stage anything other than conversations for 2.35:1. With the more squarish, 1.66:1 ratio that IMAX really is (though with much greater resolution), he has a lot more vertical space to play with, which greatly helps him during his action sequences. In the future, I think he should stay away from the ‘Scope filmmaking, and stick with standard Academy-35 when he doesn’t have the Everest of cameras at his disposal. He’s demonstrated a clear, appreciable competency with the smaller aspect-ratios that he does not have with the wide-screen, at least when shooting something more visually ambitious than “Memento”.
He’s a great writer. But visually, he’s not a great director. The sooner he realizes that, however, the closer he is to becoming something much more important– a great filmmaker.
Bob, do you have any posts discussing aspect ratios which use screen-caps. I’d be very interested to check them out; and if not, you should considering creating some. The reason is twofold: 1) I can’t think of any other writer who focuses more on directors’ uses of different frames and 2) sometimes – not here – your formulations seem a bit vague; visual demonstrations would help a great deal to get your point across. The subject is a fascinating one, and is rarely dealt with, even in formalist circles it tends to get only cursory treatment (at least in the critical sense – celebrations of widescreen and/or Academy ratio are somewhat easier to come by).
Man, my article on “The Phantom Menace” over at The Aspect Ratio probably went into the greatest depth in terms of framing-method, so far, though I’ve also raised it in my pieces there on “Inglorious Basterds”, Lang and (don’t laugh) “G.I. Joe” (okay, laugh). It’s a long article, though, so if you don’t want to read the whole thing, just scan down to Part 3, which covers the visuals.
http://www.theaspectratio.net/phantommenace.htm
Obviously, it’s not an in-depth discussions of aspect ratios in general, which is definitely a worthy topic for discussion. You’ve given me some good food for thought.
Actually, I have read (and enjoyed) that one, but I’m thinking more posts specifically on aspect ratios, demonstrating how you feel a director works better in certain aspect ratios than others, preferably using screen caps. Just an idea, but I think you’d be the man to do it.
Ah, that’s what I was afraid of. It is an interesting idea. It would probably be easiest to do it on a single-director basis– examine guys who have worked in multiple aspect-ratios and compare how different their methods are from screen to screen. People like Godard, Lynch, Ray, etc. Maybe Lang (he did one film I know of, “Moonfleet”, in 2.35:1). Like I said, food for thought.
Both what you say and also comparing director-to-director though I agree the latter is more straightforward and, probably, more interesting.
Dennis, thank you for the welcome and for the forum.
MovieMan0283, I’ll have to agree to disagree. Though I will agree with you that it is not specifically anti-Bush; more anti-conservative in a more global way (and, thus, of greater impact to my mind than if it had taken to task just one representative individual).
Every attempt by the characters in the film to plan, scheme, and control the “situation” by extra-legal means blow up (sometimes literally) in their faces. In other words, the pessimistic, traditional, inconoclastic conservatism approach/tactics failed. Yes, there were small successes; Batman does successfully capture Lau, Gordon does get inside information by dealing with corrupt cops, Dent does remove 500+ criminals from the streets. But in the larger scheme of things, each of these acts (and the methods used to execute them) carries a consequence that undoes whatever benefit may have come from them.
Batman capturing Lau is the impetus for the mob turning to the Joker to eliminate Lau before he can testify in court. Gordon tolerating dirty cops allows the mob to be tipped off to his plans before they’re executed and, ultimately, for Dent and Rachel to be captured by the Joker. Dent using the not-so-subtle threat against Lau being sent to County and put in general lock-up (where the mob would have him assassinated) to force his testimony also ties in with the mob feeling threatened and turning to the Joker for help. And these were just the high level plans that failed. There are others throughout the film.
In every case, when the series of cause-and-effect consequences of these acts are carried out to their logical end, they fail. In not one case that I can recall is their a “happy ending” to any of the schemes in which the plan was a success and no one suffers a consequence; there are consequences galore. And, more importantly, avoidable consequences had the planners thought things through a little more thoroughly before compromising their morals and disregarding the laws they had sworn to uphold and protect.
It’s as if the director, by way of contrast, is holding all of this up as an example of what NOT to do. In essence saying, “See? When you compromise and give up on doing things the right way/the legal way/the moral way and sink to the level of your enemies, THIS (the horrible consequences they all suffered) is what happens to you.”
If the film were in support of pessimistic, traditional, inconoclastic conservatism, then the protagonists should have been rewarded for their actions. They weren’t; they all, each in their own way, suffered greatly for having compromised and taken the path of expediency. The reward (the end of the Joker’s reign of terror) didn’t come until everyone finally gave up on the pessimistic, traditional, inconclastic, end-justifies-the-means, victory-at-any-price, better-you-than-me conservatism and accepted physical defeat instead of accepting moral defeat and the loss of everything they believe in and hold dear just to placate the Joker. They may still have been blown up, but they were no longer going to allow themselves to fear the Joker and allow that fear to dictate their actions and the abandonment of what they believe in just to stop him. Interestingly, while everyone was compromising their morals to try to stop the Joker is when the Joker’s plans were working (the only ones that were throughout most of the film). It’s only when they stopped compromising that the Joker finally failed.
Understand I’m not trying to advance a political agenda here. I don’t subscribe to either conservatism nor liberalism; I think both are flawed. My issue is simply how, in my view, the film has been so grossly misinterpreted by some and wanting to point out features of the film that may give its detractors (or even some of its supporters) an opportunity to view it in a different light.
Thank you for the opportunity of a discussion.
Fair enough; but in stating the conservatism was “pessimistic” I meant to suggest the film sees no utopian solutions, only least-worst options. Hence, the examples you cite signify ambivalence rather than negation. The important question is: does the film offer any viable alternative to Batman’s admittedly messy, extralegal methods? With the big exception of the boat scene (in which the public finally show themselves to be trustworthy), no. We are presented with a world in which the masses are panicky and untrustworthy, in which organized and authorized political force leads to corruption and violence, and the only “good” figure – Harvey Dent – is easily led astray.
It’s possible that the boat situation – a climax of sorts – is meant to negate the rest of the movie’s suggestions, but if so it’s small potatoes. I don’t doubt that many of Batman’s actions are ineffective or even counter-productive, and that the film recognizes it, but I don’t see anything onscreen to suggest a better alternative. As you note, many of the extralegal schemes work, albeit in limited and sometimes damaging ways – but that’s still more than you can say for just about anyone else’s approach in the movie.
At any rate, we both seem to agree that Batman is fundamentally a conservative – whether or not the film endorses his ideology (and I’d say it tacitly and reluctantly does so while acknowleding all the drawbacks).
CCB-please come back to WONDERS IN THE DARK again. We’re a tight knit community that welcomes all opinions and theories. It’s nice to welcome new minds!
To think of this film as anything other than championing ultra-neo conservative (read that as modern fascism) thinking and methodology is, I think, pushing the bounds of reading this film way beyond anything that Nolan intended.
You points are detailed but muddied by giving an interpretatations to character motives way beyond anything that was intended, in my opinion, be the film-makers.
Lau, a criminal was captured using ‘extraordinary rendition’.
The ‘Bat’ does use and succeed in geting illegal phone-tapping to work for him, for his immediate purposes.
Tortue and ‘the ticking timebomb’ scenario so beloved of right-wing, CIA lauding shows like ’24’, are shown to work. Had Batman ended up in an empty warehouse, that would have been different. But FOR melodramatic movie plotting reasons, he ends up having to make a choice between two people that he cares for (something that is unlikely, to say the least, to happen in the real world). So his torture methods did work. Just because the Joker sent him the wrong way, doesn’t negate it one bit.
In all the instances where he follows President Dick Chenay’s (let’s be real about who ran that operation) lead, he ends up in some way – succeeding.
Your interpretation that Batman, Gordon’s and Dent’s attempts to keep things close to themselves in order to flush out the enemy, has a closer correlation to Bush Attorny General Gonzale’s sacking of US Attorneys who would not do the administration’s bidding in prosecuting political cases.
Even when it tries a Capra moment, with the people making a choice that can be trusted, or tries to evoke ‘Shane’ as Batman rides into the sunset, it comes off as shameless and embrassing.
At least I have ‘Batman Begins’.
I was going to write up a full comment talking about how much I dislike the Swiss Cheese plot holes and piss-poor visual style of the film, but it looks like I already said my piece on this overrated movie a few months ago. Thanks to recycling, I won’t have to repeat myself.
Though I will say this, as a new point– In the opening bank robbery, the Joker brings 5 guys– a wire-man, a safe-cracker, two crowd-controllers, and one bus-driver. Each in turn is supposed to kill one of the others– the safe-cracker kills the wire-man, the first crowd-controller kills the safe-cracker, the bus-driver (accidentally) kills the first crowd-controller and the Joker kills the bus-driver. The second crowd-controller winds up getting killed by the mobster bank-manager (AKA the guy from “Prison Break”), which always struck me as something of a loose strand. Did the Joker just bring an extra goon along in case of a shoot-out? If not, who was supposed to kill him? Better yet, who was he supposed to kill? I’d like to think his intended target was the Joker himself, just because such an insane plan would be right up the Crown Prince of Crime’s alley. But still…
Eh. The movie’s fun, but the actual logic of its plot makes about as much sense as the time-travel in “Back to the Future”– in other words, zilch.
The nay-sayers need to look with better eyes here. I defend Allan’s right to list these films in any order he feels necessary, but this is WAY TOO LOW. In fact, THE DARK KNIGHT is the single best socio-political endictment in 30 odd years. Like a mirror being held up against our own trying times, Nolan neatly wrapped his agenda in the glossy, gritty guise of Frank Millers revisionist tales of Batman and the corruption of Gotham City. As a comic-book film, only Richard Donner’s loving biopic of the Man Of Steel, SUPERMAN (1978) bests it. Entertaining, Brilliant, Bold and Intellectually Resonant, this was, for me, top 20-10 material in a heart-beat. Didn’t hurt that you also had one of the ten best performances of the decade in it as a show-stopper as well (Ledger-now the DEFINATIVE Joker). I’m sorry, I can’t agree with those that scoff this one off. IMO
Dennis – agreed, man! 100%
This film is a document of the “times” just like Lang’s M and The Testament of Dr. Mabuse were documents of Germany during the build up towards WWII.
Nice! Equating Lang’s films with this one. So are we to take it that neocons Cheney/Bush are the new Hitler?
“single best socio-political endictment in 30 odd years”
I think this is just flat out incorrect.
Agreed. Especially in terms of stateside mainstream-ish genre entertainment of the past several decades, it just doesn’t stack up. So many sci-fi/action-adventure works in film and television best it– the anti-corporate “Alien” series; Cameron’s anti-militarist sentiments in “The Abyss” and occasionally in the “Terminator” movies (though he has his cake and eats it too, there); the government cover-up/conspiracy theory mythology of “The X-Files”; Verhoven’s shit-eating-grin sporting satire in “RoboCop” and “Starship Troopers”… The list goes on.
Yes, then there is the more serious leaning stuff like Stone’s JFK and TALK RADIO, Spielberg’s MUNICH (my favorite film of his–maybe the only one I really like), and don’t get me started on what we can find in the horror genre.
I mean shit, 30 years has seen LOTS of films.
Re: Horror– Personally I think a lot of the best in that genre techinically would better fall in the camp of science-fiction (Cronenberg, Romero, Carpenter). Though granted, there have been a lot of very high-minded scare-fests out there which deserve recognition before TDK. Hell, even “Freddy Vs. Jason” had something interesting in its showdown of diametrically opposed boogeymen– Krueger, the child abuser, and Voorhees, the abused child– and the dystopian way parents treated kids by doping them up with dream repressing drugs (though granted, that was inherited from Craven’s original and “The Dream Warriors”).
I think The Dark Knight tried to be intelligent. The problem with many film-makers is that they have to be SEEN to be clever. They will not credit the audience with intelligence in understanding the moral / political fabric of the film and so each character must VOCALISE the themes in the clumsiest way possible.
They are constantly saying what defines them and what defines their place in the world. I think Nolan should have concentrated on the story and forgotten about making banal points about society. Why can’t a fiction be a fiction? We can draw ideas from films that do not attempt to reach overarching conclusions about our world but wish to investigate the intricacies of the parallel fictional world.
The action lacks any dynamism. The acting is poor. The style is flat. It is one of the few films I have ever seen from which I got nothing.
In paring Gotham down to a modern run-of-the-mill metropolis all you end up doing is making your superheroes and villains look ludicrous. Batman is impotent and The Joker is random. They, and the film, are held back by their unwillingness to kill the other.
This seems to contradict what you said below. Here it seems you ARE reading Nolan’s contribution – and thus, the film itself – as “making banal points about society.”
Yes, making points. That doesn’t mean those are the beliefs of the makers, or that they are leaning a certain way. They are just pithy statements aiming to give the film some gravitas.
When Harvey says: “You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become a villain” it’s incredibly clumsy. It’s not natural. It’s not ‘him’ saying that. The film shows Batman live long enough to become a villain. Why have someone say it too?
Incidentally, I’m not sure where I said the beliefs are Nolan’s. But they do belong to the movie he made (and here I’m not talking about things that are said so much as what is shown and how the film shows it).
Ok, see you tomorrow. I swear! The Sith call…
“The problem with many film-makers is that they have to be SEEN to be clever.”
It’s an oft-quoted political quandry, one that’s raised all the time on “Law & Order”, especially when Fred Dalton Tompson was the DA– it’s not enough to do good, you have to be SEEN doing good. What makes TDK so awkward at times is the fact of how politically minded it is, itself. It ups the ante on the action and histionic script so much in the interests of making the political content obvious to even the laziest of minds that it winds up sabotaging the very real-world credibility it’s so desperate to earn. Its larger-than-life theatrics don’t stand up to the very scrutiny its true-to-life minituae invites. Thanks to all the earnest philosophical ramblings and handwringing that goes on in the movie, a little like the “Matrix” movies did with all its speechifying rants from human beings and computer programs. Only the Wachowskis had artificiality on their side– it was okay for characters like Neo or Agent Smith to sound fake, because that’s exactly what so many of them were. Nolan’s desperate for a kind of realism that just doesn’t gel with the story he’s trying to tell, and at times actually hurts it. It invites us to look a little too closely at all the hackneyed plot-devices and action-sequences that could all be excused were it not for the heavy reliance on weighty drama.
Take Lau’s “extreme rendition”– in your typical action movie, I wouldn’t ask questions about how much sense it makes for Batman to abduct a Chinese citizen and dump him at the doorstep of the Gotham police. But thanks to TDK’s strident appeal for realism, all I can do is wonder why there aren’t reports on the news networks about how countless Federal and international laws have been broken by the Caped Crusader. The movie doesn’t follow up on its own internal logic– instead of being thought provoking, it’s merely provocative in a very empty way. I contrast this to “Casino Royale”, where at least there are legitimate consequences (however fleeting) to Bond’s “shooting up an embassy”.
Eh. TDK is a politically precocious film, but intellectually it’s dead in the water. So many action/adventure movies of this decade were far smarter– not just the obvious ones like the works of Lucas, the Wachowskis, Campbell or Spielberg, but hell, even something as seemingly emptyheaded as Favreau’s “Iron Man”. At least that film understood the line between its own bullshit and Tony Stark’s.
Bob, finally, forgetting the preponderence for the SW films, but really, the Wachowskis 2000s output were all excremental.
Yes, but as any of my pot-head friends like to say, there’s a difference between “good shit” and “bad shit”.
COULD SOMEBODY PLEASE TELL ME WHY THE FUCK THE ORIGINAL BLOG ROLE TO ALLANS REVIEW IS POSTED HERE?????????
I kept it there, Dennis, as I do sometimes, to dissuade repetition.
Batman Begins was far better, I think. Wayne had more about him and Gotham had life.
I disagree here – I don’t think Gotham had life in either Batman Begins or Dark Knight (I like Dark Knight for other reasons). I liked this movie, btw, but I have no problem understanding or appreciating your line of criticism about it. I share many of the objections myself but ultimately feel that, in balance, I’m more intrigued by what the movie’s going for that its shortcomings in going for that. (My disagreement with you on this board and, ultimately, pretty much everywhere tend to be less about the specific content of your ideas than about your meta-criticisms.)
I agree here on Gotham’s atmosphere in BB. It’s realistic, but has more texture and density than TDK, where it seems the streets are kept clean and pristine mainly so that a bigger mess gets left when the Joker starts blowing shit up.
Nearly two years later, The Dark Knight’s flaws seem much more conspicuous to me. However, I come to praise Caesar. I appreciate Allan giving a nod to TDK, in defiance of those who heap scorn on it in a manner far out of proportion to its negatives.
I truly do not understand the frequent accusation that TDK (and all of Nolan’s films, for that matter) is poorly or confusingly edited. One of the joys of this film, from a pure cinema perspective, is its editing, which, more than anything, *creates* the dizzying, sweeping, anxious aura that sustains it.
Ledger’s much-praised performance aside, for me the beginning and end of why TDK works is the Nolans’ screenplay, which beautifully layers in the best elements of Loeb and Sale’s “The Long Halloween” on top of a ingenious foundation: a melding of noir “Nightmare Town” fear and real-world post-9/11 terrorism fear. They create a pitch-perfect Gotham for our time. For all of its operatic grandness, the film’s most potent scene is Batman’s interrogation of the Joker in the police station. The way Ledger delivers that line–“You have nothing to threaten me with.”–and the look of absolute horror on Bale’s face (even underneath the mask) as his impotence hits him like a cold bucket of water, it’s a vision of post-Atomic Age nihilism as potent as anything I’ve seen on film.
I love these lines, Allan:
The Dark Knight may not be great cinema, but as Hitch might have said, “it’s only a movie.” And it is a great movie, and the summer season hasn’t provided too many of them in recent times.
And I love Nolan’s opening shot homage to Hitch’s PSYCHO.
And I still can’t believe no one has drawn the comparisons between this and Fritz Lang’s THE TESTAMENT OF DR. MABUSE — especially when comparing the Joker to Mabuse. I swear some of Ledger’s lines were exorcised almost word for word from Lang’s masterpiece.
Here were my thoughts back in the Summer of ’08 where I claimed Nolan had tapped into a cultural zeitgeist:
http://davethenovelist.wordpress.com/2008/07/23/a-review-of-christopher-nolans-the-dark-knight/
Good review and excellent position at #86. I do think this movie is slightly overrated and I personally liked Batman Begins better. Some movies get better the more you watch them, BB is one of them and TDK is not. The first time, I was blown away like everyone else but the more you watch it and the more it loses its luster, and worse, it just starts to feel really overlong and slow!
I’ve posted this before, because I loved it so, but it occures to me that this is the correct thread for it.
http://zeroforconduct.com/2008/07/26/throwing-down.aspx
here it is in complete:
“Throwing Down
Posted by Michael Atkinson at 7/26/2008 1:27 PM
Categories: Dark Knight,Comic Book Movies
It’s time, I’m afraid, to let loose the dogs of apocalyptic cultural complaint, this time upon the throat of The Dark Knight, which I was coerced into finally seeing despite my official moratorium on voluntarily watching superhero movies, or any film in which someone puts on a mask or has “special powers,” the latter of which is all by itself a dead giveaway, as a narrative device, to the film-culture mess we find ourselves in. Superheroes are, essentially by definition, idiotic confections intended for children, and the fact that I can’t escape them as an adult so far this millennium makes my blood boil. I did my time as a kid loving X-Men and Spider-Man and The Avengers and Jack Kirby specials (and E.C. reprints and even Warren mags like Creepy and Eerie), and heaven knows I do not begrudge the American early-adolescent his or her time in the shade with comic books, or their afternoons in matinees watching Batman or Iron Man or whatever. But it’s gotten to the point that superheroes comprise the substantial percentage of movie options we have now, in one form or another, and to avoid them as a grown-up you’d have to avoid cinema. What’s more, adults are flocking, adults reviewers are treating the movies seriously, the filmmakers themselves apparently believe they’re making coherent and profound statements. Meanwhile, the digital whooshing and ultrasurroundsound noise are getting so assaultive it seems we’re not that far away from a movie somehow reaching out during an action scene and just hitting you in the head with three-pound piece of flying shrapnel, just to “make you feel” the chaos.
But that’s my beef in general; The Dark Knight epitomizes the problem specifically not by simply being a Caped Crusader trifle masquerading as Paradise Lost, but because it failed to do the simplest things movies have always done: tell a fucking story. The film is quite literally one violent set-piece followed by a 20-second snatch of exposition, to explain what significance the set-piece is supposed to have, repeated again and again and again, for over 2.5 interminable hours. Stories require character and incidents that happen to those characters and decisions those characters have to make, and us watching them make those decisions, and then the tragic/triumphant/ironic result of those decisions. The Dark Knight runs along literally like a series of disconnected cabaret acts, with what passes for narrative happening off-screen most of the time, and the ample screentime remaining filled up with chases and fights so haphazardly shot and cut you can’t tell where anybody is or what’s going on. We hardly see Bruce Wayne, the Joker (yes, Heath Ledger was fascinating) has no backstory or motivation, plot holes loomed like event horizons (sure, you evacuated that hospital), dialogue scenes never lasted more than a few seconds – in other words, anything that might substantiate the film as dramatic material fit for adults was almost completely elided. I’ll tell you the two moments I appreciated, both missable in the melee: Christian Bale’s dry, almost imperceptible chuckle at Michael Caine’s I-told-you-so mini-punchline as they walked away from the camera, and the way the hulking gangbanging convict played by Tommy Lister went back to his seat after tossing the detonator overboard, brooding over perhaps having sealed his own death by doing the right thing. You can see why: these tiny instances involved humans, reacting and revealing their history. That’s about it for the whole film.
We wouldn’t be having this conversation if the audience were only kids, however large that audience might be. Somehow the entirety of American culture, young and middle-yeared and old, is embracing the childish universe of superheroes – which is structured around the easily-distracted worldview of kids, not around the reasoned, complex worldview we would hope children would grow into. Does America need that badly a post-post-9/11 big Daddy to vanquish danger so we can slumber in our cradles? The much-lamented infantilization of the mass populace continues, and at what cost? How much public effort and energy and time is spent consuming this attenuated nonsense – watching it, watching PR stuff about it, ‘Net-surfing for it, blogging about it, texting about it, pursuing gossip about it, rewatching it, YouTubing it, ad infinitum – and not attending instead to a government that eats tax monies like a Moloch and kills people by the thousands? Movies can be art, and can connect us with human verities and empathies and experiences that might help us deal with the real world. That’s what stories have always been for. But instead we’re using film as the walls of a bubble we’re constructing around ourselves like the disturbed children of abusive parents. Old Hollywood movies have always had their fair share of bullshit, but they were about people, always (or until Star Wars). Not anymore.”
I read that one before when you posted, it’s interesting and well-articulated and I agree with 95% of it. But ‘Star Wars’ was just a space opera and to lay the blame at it’s door, is ill-judged, when the writer fails to pick up that most westerns from the ’30s, ’40s and ’50s and many western heroes they celebrated from history were just fictions meant for children and undiscerning adults; the likes of Davy Crockett and Wyatt Earp were the Batmans and Supermans of their generation.
Yes, Bobby, you point to a bit of hypocrisy on the part of many boomer critics who are willing to forgive/look the other way on entertainment of their youth, but not the subsequent generation’s. Granted, there are differences – but there are certainly similarities as well (obvious in the case of Star Wars which borrowed so liberally – albeit inventively – from what Lucas himself grew up with).
Actually, truth be told, I’m thankful for this hypocrisy. While I’d rather see them give Star Wars & Jaws a break, at least they’re willing to give a break to older films without lecturing us (for the most part) about Hitchcock’s sexism or Ford’s bigotry rather than studying the nuances and appreciating the art. In film, as in few other fields, there’s a genuine enthusiasm which tends to override moralistic and/or coldly social-science readings of the work on hand. Probably less true today than it was 40 years ago, but I think cinema remains the remarkable exception in many respects.
I don’t excuse hypocrisy from Atkinson and the like, for no other reason than it’s just fundamentally wrong to decry the faults of a younger generation while overlooking the sins of the former. Exactly what makes “bullshit cinema” excusable as long as it’s about people? If anything, frankly, that just makes it worse. Again, it’s strange– I agree with many of Atkinson’s observations, but I find his conclusions to be more or less crap, the same kind of self-serving, hypocritical whining that Pauline Kael engaged in. And I don’t care for it, frankly.
If you are talking about Kael’s perceptions of “trash” then I don’t agree; she may have put trash “in its place” but she celebrated it as well and I find her way of dealing with the whole I enjoyed it/it was good tangle still refreshing and resonant. Or did you have something else in mind?
In Atkinson’s defense, I think what he’s complaining about is not the appearance or popularity of comic-book movies or simple-minded blockbusters but their elevation in cultural status to the level of “serious” art. I sympathize to a certain extent with his concerns, though I think he’s too extreme and yes, a bit too “whiny”, in their expression.
But the confusion about what marks popular art as equivalent to high art has been ongoing, at least since Warhol, and it is an issue that needs to be addressed – with subtlety and sensitivity to the variously contested claims. Same goes for the strong undercurrent of anti-humanism which has characterized the blockbusters for at least 10 years (before that, characters were larger-than-life but they still usually had a flesh-and-blood quality about them).
Re: Kael– that’s actually EXACTLY my grievance with her. Yes, she championed “trash cinema” at times, but only the stuff that appealed to her, reserving just as much venom for the rest of it (the same way she lauded a few New Wave movies while also decrying the “sick soul of Europe”). That’s the self-serving part of it, to my eyes, a kind of critical having your cake and eating it, too.
Re: Low as High Art– It doesn’t bother me, as that’s what’s ALWAYS happened with art. To stick with Ford and Hitch for a second– does anybody really consider them to be practitioners of an art that’s any “higher” or more sophisticated than, say, Lucas & Spielberg? Ford, I’m willing to offer the benefit of the doubt, as he’s more or less responsible for the foundation of a lot of cinematic language, a true pioneering spirit in the verbiage of long-shots and set-pieces.
Hitchcock, though, is little more than a sadistic freak. The principle joys of his films are pure animal sensations of murderous adrenaline and fight-or-flight heartpounding. They’re all based on instinct rather than intellect, aiming to make the audience feel either the same dread and fear of one of the director’s on-screen victims or the same exhileration and release as one of his killers. There’s a word for this type of movie, and it might not be art, but I know it when I see it.
Seriously, though, there’s just as much empty thrills and straight-to-the-gutter sentiment in a lot of the old Hollywood classics, many or most considered “high” art by default, as there is in modern stuff. I don’t mind the pining for genuine cinema of substance, but I can’t sit still through this kind of double standard, either. A lot of modern blockbusters really can be called “high art” in my opinion, and even the lesser items aren’t really any worse than many “classics”. To quote a wise man– “The good old days weren’t always good, and tomorrow’s not as bad as it seems”.
Bob, I’ll pass all your other comments and just say this. If Hitchcock’s work isn’t high art, nothing else is.
I’m surprised that you place him alongside the likes of Spielberg. He’s one of the world’s most – politically, philosophically, cinematically and personally – incisive and probing filmmakers ever. Even on a cinematic level, he’s spawned so many generations of filmmakers – Truffaut, Lynch, Polanski, De Palma, Tarantino and then a few hundreds.
Hey, I’m not saying Hitch can’t be called “high art”. I’m just saying that if he is, you have to leave the door open for other, less critically celebrated practitioners of popular cinema– very much like Lucas & Spielberg– as their work proves to be just as sophisticated and influential to future generations. But at the end of the day, I do frankly suspect that Hitchcock primarily liked making movies as an outlet for certain “tendencies”. If he’d been born a hundred years before the dawn of cinema, he very well might’ve found his way into the history books as Jack the Ripper himself, instead of merely making a movie about him.
But Bob, you’re missing the point if that’s your grievance. She championed trash AS TRASH not trying to pass it off as great art; hence in the scheme of things it hardly matters whether she likes her trash better than the next viewers’. In the process she missed out on some films which DID have greatness in them, but her larger point stands – she wasn’t making excuses (at least not in the essay under discussion) but trying to rationally explain why audiences often appreciate trash, and how this relates to movies’ potential for art.
We need to remind ourselves of a little context for Hitch. First of all, he initially WAS seen only as a “mere” entertainer; so, yes, in a sense including him in the “canon” DOES leave the door open for others like Lucas and Spielberg. Personally, I’ve no problem with this since I would gladly consider the best work of both auteurs alongside the Hollywood genre masters of the 40s and 50s.
But Bob, you’re being a bit unfair to Hitch. First of all, autobiography’s autobiography, and while some nasty revelations have come out recently it’s hardly pertinent to his standing as a master of the form – on which ground he’s virtually uncriticizible. It’s hard enough to make a movie that works, that functions as sophisticated articulate whole, but to do so – as Hitch did – with such impeccable craftsmanship, astonishing preconception, and exquisite sophistication is a real achievement. Yes, we all tend to judge movies by a gut check, how they “hit” us and it seems like you’re not so keen on Hitchcock. But taking a step back, regarding the man’s work objectively he sets the template for brilliant filmmaking and that deserves a definite tip of the hat.
Of course I think there are plenty of other reasons to revere him as well, but that in itself deserves mention I think.
You write, “The principle joys of his films are pure animal sensations of murderous adrenaline and fight-or-flight heartpounding.” Hitchcock’s art of course amounts to much more than this, but it’s fair to call this aspect its beating heart (at least much of the time). But his artistry is in how he achieves these effects, and how they hold up beyond the ephemeral sensations of the moment (which is not true of most thrillers). In terms of craftsmanship, structure, execution, his films are intellectual marvels as well as sensoral touchstones so I think the implicit comparison with pornography is unfair.
Considering how picky and occasionally contradictory Kael’s own definitions of what cinematic “art” is (not to mention whether or not the very notion of “art” as it regards to Western culture is a good or bad thing– one of the reasons she embraced the “trash” label was partly as an assault against the ivory tower), I’m going to keep things simple with this broad, probably wrongheaded statement– the more time a critic spends their time writing about a creative work, either good or bad, the more they elevate it as a piece of “art”. Kael might’ve delivered somewhat backhanded compliments to stuff like “Bonnie & Clyde” and “The Manchurian Candidate” as “trash cinema”, but she still wrote about them more frequently and recommended them far more enthusiastically than so many of the “art films” of their day. The applied the kind of critical scrutiny that invites both popular curiosity and academic approval, effectively kickstarting those films’ campaigns for admission into the canon, whether she knew it or not. What bothers me still about her and her school of thought is how blindly subjective it is– it really is a “have your cake and eat it too” approach to criticism.
As for Hitchcock– had he been making films in the freer cinematic conventions and looser social morays of today, I don’t think we’d see quite as much of his slick, teasing filmmaking style, which more than anything was borne of his efforts to skirt the edge of acceptability and various production/studio codes of content. If he were working today, his work would be a lot closer to modern-day “torture porn”– as it stands, I really do think that’s what his work boils down to, a kind of erotic delivery device for fans of cinematic cold-blooded murder. That oft-quoted maxim of his, to “shoot your love scenes as murders and murders as love scenes” more or less confirms this. Granted, I’m not saying that this is necessarily a bad thing in and of itself– Samuel Fuller said that if a script didn’t give you a hard-on in the first few minutes you should just throw it away, and there’s a strange sort of wisdom in that logic.
Anyway, my take is obviously subjective– Hitch is nothing but a rank provocateur, in my opinion, compared to Lang. But the “master of suspense”‘s art was born, as much as it was, mostly from his efforts to think around the creative restrictions of more conservative eras. Without those limitations, I really don’t think he would’ve been able to rise the way he did. He was not a filmmaker who created a picture of the times (that was Lang), but rather one who knew how best to live within the time he found himself in.
I had in mind Kael’s essay on art and trash more than her reviews of Manchurian Candidate or Bonnie and Clyde (I don’t think she thought the latter film was a work of trash but rather a legitimate work of art, btw). Her notions there have much in common with Manny Farber’s notion of “termite art.” As for her subjectivity, I agree that it hindered her criticism. Oddly enough, I wouldn’t have her any other way no matter how often I disagree with her. Ultimately, I judge her work more like I judge art than criticism – maybe that’s what it’s best valued as, ultimately (albeit art which performs a critical function – helping us to think and perceive in new ways).
As for Hitchcock, you’re still not giving credit where credit’s due. What do the sweeping camera movement towards the key in Notorious or the long “following” scene in Vertigo have to do with skirting censorship? Yes, the latter is erotic but I’m not convinced that Hitchcock would have replaced it with a hardcore sex scene were he working today. Even if he would have, theoretically, how does that change the films he actually made? Here I think your pictorial bias may be blinding you to Hitchcock’s structural and kinetic qualities – few filmmakers had his ability to fuse concrete, perfectly realized elements into a big picture charged with a meaning greater than the sum of its parts (which were powerful enough in themselves). When I talk Hitch’s art, I’m talking mise en scene, editing, pacing, story structure, shot selection, juxtaposition of various cinematic elements, not just clever thematic or narrative devices. The guy was a maestro.
Again, with the percieved “pictorial bias”. I’m thinking at least chiefly as to how his technique changed in “Frenzy”, where thanks to a number of things (the somewhat more progressive time it was made, the change in venue from conservative Hollywood to a somewhat looser UK production), he could be much freer and more frank in his presentation of sex and violence. No longer does he have to sidestep his way around nudity, blood or the more gruseome aspects of his cinema. Instead, he can and does resort to far blunter instruments of filmic language, and as a result, the film is much colder, harder and more honestly brutal than anything else he’d done to date. But it also, quite honestly, isn’t really all that good. It’s not quite, but close to the cheap thrills and lurid spills of latter-day shockmeisters like Eli Roth and the practitioners of the “Saw” series. Maybe in this age he would’ve provided a tastier blend of horror filmmaking, a smart and savy blend of slasher cinema on par with the best of Craven or Carpenter, but in the end I genuinely think his best output arrived at the behest of his contemporary creative restrictions. If the leash weren’t as short as it was, he wouldn’t have had to fight nearly as hard to escape its grip.
Yes, there is something special in the ways that Hitchcock balanced his mis-en-scene throughout his classic periods, juggling camera-movements and editing to convey ample amounts of suspense and clarity while skirting the edge of acceptable content while portraying a whole range of violent and disturbing criminal behavior. But to be perfectly honest, there’s such a terrible superficiality in his cinema that I can’t abide, not when a contemporary like Fritz Lang was able to cover much of the same exact fucking territory without sacrificing an ounce of intellectual weight. Hitch’s movies are more emotionally resonant, yes, more palpable in the plucking of their characters’ heartstrings and anxious nerve-endings, but for what? For a whole lot of empty vessels and vacuous MacGuffins, nothing but bland plot-devices so contrived and artificial they all but seem to shriek at the thought of any accidental perceptions of relevance. They’re films with plenty to say about people, but next to nothing about the world they live in– for all his grand, magnificent spy-thrillers, murder mysteries and tragic love stories, there’s really very little that touches upon any kind of political or societal musings, save for all the WWII and Cold War games of espionage and propaganda that serve to prop up all the scale and spectacle of adventures that can’t be supported from mere acts of jealousy, obsession and whatever the hell is going on in “The Birds”. Each of his movies exists in a dramatic snowglobe that I find increasingly dull and claustrophobic, rendering all the frantic running about over government secrets or lovers’ quarrels rather moot.
Mind you, this isn’t just a grievance that I have on the grounds of personal aesthetic taste. There’s a genuine, practical function to be found in the socially-minded filmmaker, or artist of any ilk– it allows for an audience to engage with the story without necessarily identifying with its characters. Granted, this doesn’t necessarily have to stand in the way of versatile, intimite characterisations, but it does broaden the horizon for those who are going to take an interest in a work’s affairs. There are very few characters in Lang’s filmography that I can genuinely claim to understand or identify with on a one-to-one basis– with few exceptions they’re basically all a rogue’s gallery of comic-book heroes and villains, dogged detectives and criminal masterminds, femme fatales and damsels in distress, gold-hearted crooks and cold-blooded killers. But the parts they all play in their stories, the functions they serve, moving about like chess pieces on a board, remains fascinating to me as a kind of political and philosophical dialectic unfolding in dramatic form. All the cliff-hangers, edge of your seat set-pieces and nail-biting moments of cold-sweat suspense work for me in a way that Hitch’s pale approximations can’t come close to because they serve to express something valid about the crazy world we live in beyond all the mere hillsides of beans that most Hollywood movies take the scenic-route through. I can identify with the machinations of the narrative in ways that hit me deeper than anything involving the ciphers in the screen.
Granted, ideally a filmmaker should be concerned with satisfying both dramatic obligations, both micro and macroscopic. But honestly, I do think that big-picture storytelling is of far greater weight and importance than all the little-people intimacy and nuance that films from the likes of Hitch and most cinematic “artists” spend their time with. It can move us to tears and give us all lots of nice warm and fuzzy feelings, sure, but at the end of the day in a broken down world of economic, political and religious creeds all causing untold amounts of damage in their death throes, what good does it do us? Hitchcock was a lot of things, and a “maestro” may be one of them, but one thing he most certainly was not is a socially-minded filmmaker, and for that I really lose just about any and all potential interest in his work, shortsighted as it is. There’s no real “worldview” to be found beyond the local neighborhood of roadside motels, winding stairwells and national landmarks. Events play out flatly against famous locations and easily digestible us-versus-them dogma of Nazis, Commies and unfaithful lovers, but it’s all just a whole lot of empty staging. Hitchcock is a great director only in the same way that “Gone With the Wind” is a great film– far be it for me to call seemingly every educated person on Earth a liar, but what can I say? I fucking hate both, plain and simple.
By the way, the director who I believe just might represent the best pairing of the Langian big-picture with the Hitchcockian little-picture, oddly enough? Akira Kurosawa. No idea why, just throwing that out there.
“They’re films with plenty to say about people, but next to nothing about the world they live in– for all his grand, magnificent spy-thrillers, murder mysteries and tragic love stories, there’s really very little that touches upon any kind of political or societal musings”
Come on, Bob. Hitchcock has been the most critical fo all Hollywood directors about the oppressiveness of patriarchal structures,, inherent fascist tendencies, our fetishism with respect to on-screen violence and the illusion of “order” that politics creates. I’d say he’s one of the most socially responsible filmmakers ever. A subverter par execllence.
Unless your namedrop of “Hitchcock” there was a typo for “Lang”, what you just said makes absolutely no sense. He’s not critical towards on-screen fetishism– he’s just plain fetishistic, plain and simple. And where you see an indictment of patriarchal structures, I can see nothing but naked misogyny. He doesn’t subvert a damn thing. He is the very figure of dictatorial, male-dominating power and order that must be rebelled against, quite frankly. At least Lang had his eyes open enough to know when he identified with Mabuse.
Well, there’s too much to deal with here in a short response, and I’m not up to a long one at the moment, but I’ll make a few quick points. I thought you might have Frenzy in mind – a film I’ve seen part of, but never the entirety – but why judge a director by his almost-last film instead of the body of his work? I realize your assumption is that it represents an “unshackled” Hitchcock but a) who cares – he existed in his own historical context and should be judged within it and b) just because he could play with more gore and sexuality, and chose to exploit the opportunity once, doesn’t mean he would have done it every time.
I never claimed social relevancy for Hitchcock, so I guess that part of your response is directed at JAFB. Oddly enough, I did not think you were much concerned about a film’s social value – I seem to be increasingly outnumbered on this topic here at Wonders – but since you are, let me voice my antipathy. I love digging in to what a film says about society, how it reflects, refracts or filters a larger social and political context. But ultimately, that’s a sort of game-playing, fun and fruitful, but seldom the crux of the issue. Social generalizations can become a bit arid, and the rich minefield of personal psychology is far richer – and has produced far more great movies (even the great “social” pictures are usually great in large part because they contain this individual, humanist element).
I like Gone With the Wind a great deal, but it’s not great in the same sense Hitchcock’s work is. Hitchcock was triumphant on formal grounds – yet even when you celebrate his editing and camerawork you do so in relation to the censorship he’s skirting and the impulses he’s playing with. You fail to engage with the rewards of such an aesthetic on its own terms – the pleasures provided by a work well-composed. This is ironic inasmuch as you’ve decried purely narrative cinema in the past. Gone With the Wind is a sweeping summation of a nearly subliminal aesthetic – Victor Fleming and David Selznick were not really auteurs but rather enactors of a general style; whereas Hitchcock expressed his own vision first and foremost, while demonstrating a highly inventive and accomplished level of craftsmanship. His films can be studied in a way that Gone With the Wind can’t – as summits of what can be achieved in cinema.
Incidentally, I feel about Lang – at least the bulk of his German work – the way you feel about Hitchcock, I admire it but it leaves me cold. Yet I wouldn’t think of dismissing him the way you dismiss Hitch!
Bob, as to your last comment (unseen by me before I posted my, ahem, “short” response) is it really your contention that Vertigo contains no critique of its character’s controlling misogyny (a critique that goes far beyond supposedly sub-Langian hypocrisy, since the film openly both embodies and exposes Scotty’s gaze)? Really? We must not have been watching the same movie.
Man– Like I said, ideally a socially-minded film needs some kind of focus on the personal if for no other reason than to anchor the audience’s attention, but I prefer a deep-focus to merely a close one. And granted, the biggest part of why I don’t engage with Hitch’s style doesn’t necessarily have to do with my myriad of issues with its contemporary prompts or its lack of social relevance. Mostly, I just plain don’t like the way his movies look, move or feel, and that’s all there is to it. They feel gauzy, frivolous and just plain insubstantial to me, the cinematic equivalent of a supermodel on the cover of a magazine, dolled-up, air-brushed, nipped and tucked to perfection. Attractive, yes, but miles away from real. Watching Hitchcock’s movies, I feel far more of the “uncanny valley” effect than I ever do from witnessing any amount of CGI. I know better than to believe in what they’re trying to sell.
As for my relationship with narrative filmmaking– strangely, the more I watch truly abstract, avant garde stuff, the more I wind up believing in the viability of traditional, square storytelling. When experimental filmmaking is truly successful in its bizarre, fringe science of aesthetics, it actually provides a strange sense of live and vitality into the norm, provides a boost of energy to inject into the mainline of the mainstream. Sometimes it’s as simple as Soderbergh direcing “Schizopolis” and “Gray’s Anatomy” before he picks up the reigns of “Out of Sight”. If you want to preach to the masses, first you have to spend some time in the desert.
Re: Vertigo– Hitch almost gets there, no doubt, but he royally fucks everything up when he lamely breaks the fourth-wall to loudly show the audience what “REALLY” happened up in the bell-tower. It’s far too abrupt a shift, robbing us of the slower, more genuine sense of betrayal and tragedy we would’ve gotten had we been able to discover the truth on our own. It takes what might’ve been a deep twist of the knife, a truly solid motivation for regret and guilt, and instead replaces it with nothing but a rather cheap and tawdry telegraphing of overly dramatic “IRONY”. The shift in perspective you mention is exactly what ruins the movie, and takes away any real sense of social power it might’ve had. By spoiling the plot and taking the movie away from Scottie, Hitchcock does nothing but screw the pooch.
Re: “Rear Window”– this is the closest Hitchcock gets to a real statement on the voyeuristic and fetishistic manner in which movies portray and audiences recieve thrillers like his. But in the end, it’s really more self-revalatory than expressing anything about the nature of cinema or human nature in general. The film is a “mea culpa”, not an indictment or act of subversive thrillmaking. It almost has something to say, but never quite gets there. It invites a lot of interpretation, a lot of reading into, yes, but most people are just bringing their own baggage to the table. Like all of Hitch’s best works, it’s merely a prompt for bigger, better things.
I agree with JAFB’s reading of the plot twist in Vertigo. It complicates our relationship to the characters – both of them (since we now know that Judy has pulled the wool over Scottie’s eyes; yet at the same time the pain of “reprising” her role becomes all the more clear, and Scottie’s fanaticism seems all the more ).
I like Rear Window a whole lot, but it’s never had the emotional resonance for me that Vertigo has. It’s one of his “fun” films and I’ve always slightly preferred the dark ones, though Rear Window is fun nonetheless.
Oddly enough, my favorites filmmakers tend more towards the naturalistic ones – certainly directors less hostile towards actors in most cases. Yet Hitchcock remains one of my favorites, transcending personal prejudices about spontaneity and openness. So no, I just can’t relate to your antipathy but fair enough – we’ve all got ’em. I’d just reiterate that for anyone trying to get at what makes films tick, there’s hardly any better place to go. He’s good for much more than that, but that alone is enough to justify his reputation.
I like to see narratives incorporate the avant-garde but I also like to see the avant-garde thrive on its own, or take narratives outside of their comfort zone (not just dress them up in bells and whistles, but actually turn them into bacilluses – bacilli? – for subversive thrills).
Though it’s probably obvious, that last bit has nothing to do with the rest of my post and is just a rumination on something else you brought up…
I’m the same way with experimental filmmaking, mostly. Regarding narrative though, what I mean is– only the more avant-garde elements really make me believe that storytelling has a future. The best endorsement for conventional filmmaking, ironically, is the quality of the unconventional.
As for the twist in “Vertigo”– for me, it makes both characters disposable. Judy, because she’s a lying con-artist/co-conspirator in murder, and who cares if she feels bad about the wool she pulled over his eyes (to say nothing of the MURDER she helped cover up); Scottie, because now his obsession to recreate his “lost love” (Which I never really bought to begin with, frankly– he falls in love with this spacey chick for what reasons? Because she’s blonde?) isn’t just fanatic and dictatorial. After we find out the truth, it’s just plain PATHETIC. At the end, when he confronts her with the truth, I don’t feel afraid for her sake, or vindicated for his. All I can say is, “Well, at least he’s not afraid of heights anymore.”
Movieman, I don’t see any problems with Ford or Hitchcock’s cinema, the bigotray of Ford can be understood as him being a mite clueless.
My point is that as a young nation, America had already created it’s own white-washed, national superheroes as Western heroes from the turn of the century onwards, from pulps through the movies and tv. Kind of like the difference between the myth and the reality as depicted in ‘Unforgiven’. The Germans had theirs in Siegfried, the England had King Arthur, Robin Hood, Ivanhoe. These “historical” characters are usually replaced by litrary ones over time (Sherlock Holmes, Batman, ect, ect.). The article fails on this part and then just rubbishes ‘Star Wars’ because it was the film to open the seams to youth-orientated movies.
Bobby, Ivanhoe wasn’t myth, that was literature, pure Walter Scott…Robin Hood, that was probably myth based loosely on a real man.
Well. Robin Wood’s written a whole fat book on the topics I mentioned.
Take VERTIGO for example, the example that many would consider for question of “dominance” and misogyny. By actually giving away the plot midway during the film, Hitch severs subjectivity and transfers identification away from Scottie. The joke’s on Scottie now. Hitch makes us identify with this insecure, dominating patriarch and then makes us regret that identification. Likewise in his other films. And REAR WINDOW is a scathing statement on the impotence and complacency of pop-film audience. One could go on.
I see MovieMan ahs said the same thing just now…
I think Wood may be a bit of an apologist in this regard – at least from the samples I’ve seen (I haven’t read the book). He took a sharp left turn around the 80s but was already committed to Hitchcock and had to reconcile the two positions. Although his notion of Hitchcock’s ambivalence was, I think, a fair one – better than those who see him as either a feminist or an unapologetic misogynist (at least cinematically). But I’d characterize his ambiguity as more personal than political.
Really guys? As a Batman comic book fan, I enjoyed the fact that the character and his milieu were taken and presented seriously. But as a cinephile, I must say I liked this movie better when it was called HEAT. They even cast HEAT’s William Fichtner in a brief cameo so the derivation could pass for homage.
The editing is what really brings this ambitious film down, since the screenplay, performances, and direction are above average. The third act night-vision sequence is the worst example of this flaw. It’s a mess with the hyperactive action choreography confusing the geography of the scene in such a way that makes Greengrass’ films look sedate. Read Jim Emerson’s ongoing analysis of the film to really uncover its weaknesses.
When Fichtner is shot in HEAT while hilariously watching an NHL game, is the greatest use of ‘chair-through-the-window’ I’ve yet seen in cinema history.
It may also be my favorite part of HEAT.
Ok… So, then, it all comes down to personal perspective and taste. From what I’ve been reading on this thread the viewers seem split. Some cite flawsd at every turn and think the parables for socio-political statement fail or aren’t even in existence here. Others see deep meaning or, at least, big parallels in what’s been happening in our world today. Well, to those who dismiss this film as merely just a bad comic book film, I ask then, that, if this is truly the case, then why are so many people analyzing something you naysayers say isn’t eveb there? I too am a long-time lover of the books (Sam will attest to this), in every form and reinvention and I, when first seeing this film, couldn’t believe just how intricate and observant the agenda was. How many of today’s summer-blockbusters do that? This is an interpretation of what has gone before. What makes us ANALYZE it is what has been infused INTO what has gone before. No, No, NO. This film is far more brilliant than the nay-sayers say.
Right Dennis, but because someone analyzes it doesn’t mean it’s deep in the slightest, it just means someone likes it enough to analyze it. This is obviously going to happen when you pick something with a large enough fan base as Batman has. You know film can you honestly say this is a deep film next to other deep films? I’d say you wouldn’t as you give it the cop out that it’s deeper then today’s blockbusters. So what? Because something is deeper then GI JOE: THE RISE OF COBRA doesn’t make it deep. It just means it’s a few centimeters deeper then the average kiddie pool.
Watch even BATMAN RETURNS, THE DARK KNIGHT isn’t even as deep as that. (I watched REVOLUTIONARY ROAD the other night, and no way this film is better then that, or any of the recent Asian art house or BRIEF CROSSING Allan has highlighted the past week or so).
JAMIE-I understand your point. I agree this isn’t as deep as some other films. However, where I will part from you is that I DO think its deeper than others give it credit for, that its far deeper than any other comic book film featuring a star character (films like ROAD TO PERDITION don’t count), and, dammit, its got the balls to aim higher thans these films, traditionally do. No, I dont think BATMAN RETURNS is deeper. If you must know, and – do like this film a lot, I think it was Bruce Timm’s animated series from the early 90’s that only ever got the whole BATMAN thing right. That said, I think you gotta give high grades for a film that tries. I think it succeeds. You do not. So, we’ll have a beer and agree to disagree.
Amen, Jesus it’s only no 86, FFS!
Right, but it’s just come before some pretty great films.
I’ve been a comic book fan on and off since about 1980 and the Batman books have been among my favorites. From that perspective, I’m still torn between Dark Knight and Batman Returns as the best of the six modern films. The thing that impressed me the most about Nolan’s second outing, more than Ledger’s great performance or the social commentary, was its presentation of Bruce Wayne as a tragic hero whose main motive in the picture, to transfer the mantle of heroism onto more legitimate shoulders, is equally civic-minded and selfish. He wants to turn Harvey Dent into a politically-correct hero so he can get Dent’s girl. He never really recognizes the selfish part of this and remains self-deluding about his chances to the bitter end. The scene in which Alfred burns Rachel’s letter rather than let Bruce know the truth is one of the film’s most moving moments. In a way, Bruce intuits the truth, or so we may infer if we see his acceptance of the heavier burden of public enmity as a penance for his role in Rachel and Harvey’s fates. While many reviewers take for granted that Ledger stole the film from Bale, I found it the most ambitious probing of Bruce Wayne’s personality on film to date, and I thought Bale lived up to the challenge. I don’t think it’s necessarily a superior conception to that of Tim Burton, Micheal Keaton and their writers, but it’s an approach for which Bale and the Nolans don’t get enough credit.
Stupendous comment here Samuel, as I’m sure Allan and the rest will find out soon enough.
Regarding all the accusations of right-wing politics, I actually agree that Batman represents Bush/Cheney/what have you. Where I disagree is that the movie really doesn’t paint him as the consummate hero. It’s Dent, the man that even Wayne recognizes as the path to legitimate (and legal) order, who represents Gotham’s best shot at reform, while Batman endangers the public trust to protect himself and resorts to even more illegal methods to defeat the Joker. Admittedly, this interpretation runs into problems, but so does any reading of the film because its themes are messy enough to keep it out of the upper echelon of my own list despite how many more times I’ve seen it than any other film this decade (I practically lived at the theater while it was playing).
Jamie,
Here’s what I’m most interested in discussing (and let me know if there’s anything else you want to bring up as well).
First, political definitions and what they entail – our varying interpretations of the political discourse and the value of different voices within it.
Second, and perhaps we should wait a bit on this and get some of the definitions out of the way first, how should art interact with politics? What constitutes a film’s ideology? How should we “receive” this? In what sense, should aesthetics be subservient to ethics, or vice-versa? Also, trying to take on a broader, Godardian sense of ethics and aesthetics (my favorite statement of him being something to the effect of “a tracking shot is a question of morality”) – can formalism be construed in “left-wing”/”right-wing” terms, if so are these forms analogous to their thematic analogues, is it a separate issue, how do the two interact, etc?
But as I said, I think all of that should wait until we get definitions out of the way. First then…
Yes, we will need to tread slowly and carefully to begin this, the second question is down the road.
First, political definitions and what they entail – our varying interpretations of the political discourse and the value of different voices within it.
This is tough, and probably has much to do with our continual ‘Marx Brothers circling’. I’m not sure how to answer this. Political definitions… Left in France in the late 60’s, or Left in America in 2000’s, philosophically left (power of the individual), or economic left (centrally located socialism), and on and on and on, etc. Just taking one slice, say American leftism in the current environment, are we discussing the ‘left’ of say a more corporate centrist like Obama, versus say the left of a more social democrat like Kucinich? This is quite a can of worms, or do you just what my political stances (of course which opens even more different arenas, from art, to economics, to social concerns etc.)
Sorry, I should have noted I would kick it off. As you can gather from my own definitions, some more successful than others, I’m looking for baseline, bottom-line to the extent possible, characterizations of these terms. A structure that is flexible yet firm enough to give us a kind of fixed guideline for our continued discussion. And definitely focused on political matters rather than aesthetic. Proceed with your definitions and we’ll see where we match up/don’t match up and try to find enough common ground – not necessarily in our opinions, but in our understanding of each other’s definitions – to proceed.
As for the Obama/Kucinich dichotemy as you can gather from below, I’d place them both on the left, though Kucinich further to the left (though not quite my definition of a “radical” albeit pretty close).
For the sake of sanity, I’d say offer your own definitions beneath in the thread beneath mine below.
How do you define the following terms?
The Left
The Right
Liberal
Radical
Conservative
Neoconservative
Fascist
I’ll go first, but before I do let me acknowledge the semantic ambiguity of all these terms. To what extent do we value original meanings vs. common usage? To what extent does popular perception or personal prejudice have to cede ground to strict a priori definitions? I’ll try to grapple with these issues in my own interpretations.
I will also copy & paste the relevant dictionary.com definition and then attempt to refine it if necessary.
THE LEFT & THE RIGHT. One could of course suggest that the terms actually have no meaning at all – that the conditions have changed so much over the years (I believe the terminology was coined during the French Revolution) that what was once left is now right, and vice-versa, etc. But I think whatever changes have taken place must have occurred for some reason, and that the reason must have to do with underlying values.
I am also trying to take into consideration how movements have defined themselves – often to their supposed ideological kin’s dismay. Fascism made its home – by and large, by its own claims and those of its opponents – on the right; hence neither laissez faire economics nor individual liberty can be the irreducible cornerstones of the Right which they often claim for themselves (of course, one could argue – pace Jonah Goldberg – that fascism isn’t right-wing at all; a view I disagree with, but we’ll save that discussion for a little later). Meanwhile, anarchism has historically claimed and been claimed by the Left – so statism can’t really be a defining trait of the left.
Here’s what I think then, and keep in mind these are cursory thoughts, that will no doubt shift and transform over time:
THE LEFT – I think the common currency of the left, the overriding value since its conception (and let me point out here are am discussing ALL of these terms as they arose in the West which is, after all, their historical home – and I am considering them all in the context of the French Revolution & later) has been equality. Not liberty, which is also claimed by the right (and has often been sacrificed by both sides), not the claim that each person should be left alone, but the notion that there is something fundamentally unfair in the distribution of resources and consequent advantages in society and that some way or another, this must be rectified. Leftists may disagree on the means (using the state to enforce quality, dismantling the state & property laws in order to allow it to flourish) or the degree of their aims (those who want reform which leaves a market economy in place but widens opportunities, those who want to dispose of private property protections altogether) but they all share this fundamental point of view: one way or another, to the extent humanly possible, we need to seek out a society in which no person is unduly artificially advantaged over another.
dictionary.com –
“the complex of individuals or organized groups advocating liberal reform or revolutionary change in the social, political, or economic order. ” For the most part yes, but in a socialist state that has never experienced a market economy, would a group suggesting the transition to a market economy be of “the Left”? I’m not sure I’m comfortable with this definition.
THE RIGHT – The right, on the other hand – and here’s where it gets tricky because there are some very divergent strands here, I think is clustered around the concept of order. Even the libertarians are defined distinctly from the anarchists because they want to preserve property laws – which are a form of imposed order. Now by saying that the Right prefers order I do not mean to suggest that they prefer the State. But their criticisms of the government tend to focus as much on its inefficiency as its oppressiveness. Most on the right would, I think, suggest that a society in which the government is not overbearing is actually the more orderly civilization.
Now, I think liberty is the floater between these two worldviews – or perhaps it represents a third worldview with some overlap between these other values. Perhaps die-hard libertarians exist more fully in this sphere than on the Right where they make their political home – after all, the more eccentric and individualistic of them don’t seem to care one whit for “order” – or else they take it for granted but it certainly doesn’t seem to be what fuels their political passion. So I’m willing to humor the notion that liberterians (and I’m not just talking about “small government” conservatives here) don’t belong to the right at all, but to some third, unnamed entity which allies itself to left and right over time – more often to right in America simply because their values coincide for different reasons.
I’m sure someone else has stated this more succinctly and cogently than I have, and indeed I’m sure I am unconsciously borrowing from others’ definitions I’ve read over time, but at any rate there we are.
dictionary.com – “the complex of individuals or organized groups opposing change in a liberal direction and usually advocating maintenance of the established social, political, or economic order, sometimes by authoritarian means.” This definition seems weak – it doesn’t really cover fascism though the last phrase seems thrown in to just that. Fascism was reactionary but it was also modernist and at bottom it was less about preserving a society than creating a new one in at least a partial image of old ideals. As a fascinating documentary once posited, it may have been – at least in Germany – more an aesthetic movement than a political. To the extent it’s political I think it belongs on the Right. More on that below.
Also, libertarians would posit themselves as less committed to preserving the established order (unless it’s favorable to them) than in preserving a principle; so would many others on the Right.
LIBERAL – By liberal I usually mean a member of the left who is more moderate than a radical, closer to the center, but also defined in part by an affinity with the establishment, particularly in America. Most of the battles the radicals have picked over time, particularly in the 60s, have actually been with the liberals, not the conservatives. Liberalism tends to embody a belief in progress, rationalism, and reform. As the cliche has it, they are for “change” and this is true, but such a term is relative and to a radical they would seem to be advocating the status quo (to a reactionary as well, though we’ll leave that term alone for now).
dictionary.com – “favorable to or in accord with concepts of maximum individual freedom possible, esp. as guaranteed by law and secured by governmental protection of civil liberties” (please note, I am choosing the definitions which are the most detailed and don’t merely refer you back to other hard-to-define terms.) My problem with this definition is that there are conflicting notions of freedom – freedom of property conflicts with freedom of opportunity, freedom of speech conflicts with freedom from harrassment. Liberals have to pick and choose the freedoms they prefer. I think, as members of the left, they do so with an emphasis on equality.
RADICAL – I suppose any ideology which proposes an revolutionary realignment of power could be considered “radical” – though of course the revolution could be violent or nonviolent, it is usually militant. At the point when radicals start to embrace reform, they begin to morph into liberals. Fundamental to the radical mindset is the resistance to existing power (not to power in theory – what happens to a radical in power is an interesting question; could one really call Stalin a “radical” or has he become something else entirely? Another category is probably desired here, but I’ll move on…). Incidentally, my use of this term should be considered distinct from the more broadly-defined “radical” (most often used as an adjective) which could be applied to any dramatic figure, political or otherwise. I tend to use it in a more specific ideological sense.
dictionary.com – “a person who advocates fundamental political, economic, and social reforms by direct and often uncompromising methods. ”
Fair enough – though for our purposes, we can probably agree to focus on reforms that seek the overall aim of the left (which I have already argued is equality).
CONSERVATIVE – A tough term to define. Does it mean preserving the status quo, whatever that status quo would be? In a sense, yes. But this sense (which would define Democrats at the onset of the Reagan era as “conservative”) is not very helpful for the type of conservatism we would be discussing. I see conservatism as transcending the status quo of the moment and seeking to preserve traditions and boundaries. We can align this term even more easily than “the Right” with the notion of “order.” Like liberal, it’s a much-abused term. While I’ve said I try to take people’s self-definitions into consideration at a certain point it’s hard to see how a liberal advocates terrorism or a conservative radical change (which is what an extreme libertarian would do). Both “liberal” and “conservative” are terms I do not think synonymous with “Left” and “Right” but rather are subsets within them, “liberal” with “Left” of course and “conservative” with “Right.”
dictionary.com – “disposed to preserve existing conditions, institutions, etc., or to restore traditional ones, and to limit change. ” Close – though I’d hesitantly say what those existing conditions are is important in the narrower sense we’re concerned with the term (that’s why the “or to restore traditional ones” is helpful). Not sure about the last part, which could contradict “restore traditional ones.”
Neoconservatism – A peculiar animal. A much-abused term, of course, but its origins are the most telling factors. Originally, it was used to describe Leftists (actually more radical than liberal, I think, or at least liberals with an origin in radicalism) who migrated to the Right. Hence, it’s kind of a mutant hybrid – containing the brash confidence and desire for change of an activist liberalism or radicalism, but harnessing these sensibilities to historically traditional and/or libertarian aims. To what extent neoconservatism is even a phenomenon of the Right is perhaps debatable. That its commitment to action seems stronger than its commitment to firm ideals suggests that maybe it’s a vehicle rather than a passenger.
Hmmm. I’m not very satisfied with this definition! I’ll have to return to it.
dictionary.com – “moderate political conservatism espoused or advocated by former liberals or socialists. ” Perhaps once upon a time, but not at all what we’re talking about here. “An intellectual and political movement in favor of political, economic, and social conservatism that arose in opposition to the perceived liberalism of the 1960s” Not really this either – this would refer to the “New Right” of the 80s which was only partly neoconservative. I think neoconservatism tends to favor patriotism over all other values (as a kind of substitute for class solidarity or devotion to the Marxist ideal) and its economic values are squishy at best – the kind of “well, let’s keep a free-market system but utilize it (er, through government) so that we’re embodying Judeo-Christian values of charity at the governmental level” that led to half-baked “compassionate conservatism.” Don’t get me wrong; neoconservatism is fully in bed with big business, but its heart lies in other matters: namely big, ambitious ventures that somehow try to simultaneously sidestep “big government” (these notions were known as “national greatness” conservatism before 9/11).
Heck, this is a whole separate post so we’ll return to the point later if it needs returning to.
Ok, your turn…
Oops, I left out fascist. Conveniently, perhaps, as it’s one of the trickier ideological phenomena out there. I’ll refrain from defining it for the time being but offer the compelling passage I mentioned earlier, from the 1989 documentary The Architecture of Doom (keep in mind, of course, that this is in reference to National Socialism only, which is not to be taken as 100% analogous with Italian Fascism):
“Defining Nazism in traditional political terms is difficult, mainly because its dynamic was fueled by something quite different from what we usually call politics. This driving force was, to a great degree, esthetic; its ambition was to beautify the world through violence. From the first murders of mental patients to the mass-murders of Jews, there is no real political motive. It was not enemies who were liquidated, nor opponents of the regime, but innocent people whose very existence was in conflict with the Nazi dream.”
I think much of this is cogent but as Nazism did have its political manifestation, and inasmuch as this coincided with fascism (which it should be noted, did not at least initially fundamentally share the same racial anxieties as Hitler’s Germany, though it was as xenophobic as the worst of them), I think both phenomena can be placed on the right. The primary concern is with the formation of order – this is what Hitler wanted to “beautify” Europe towards. Certainly, even within the utopian Aryan race, equality was never really an aim – hierarchy was the norm, sops to “socialism” aside.
The Jonah Goldbergs of the world, who define the right purely in terms of its attachment to liberty (at least when convenient; in other forums Goldberg has had a much more ambivalent, nuanced approach towards this supposedly central value – see his apologia for Pinochet) refuse fascism any position on the right on this ground. But I think this ignores the fact that, particularly in Europe, for 150 years, until the postwar era, the Right was defined by its attachment to traditions which were fundamentally authoritarian and hierarchical. Liberty entered slowly into their ethos, from my understanding, only inasmuch as it coincided with a protection from “enforced” equality.
OK, finally.
I’ll both answer your questions, provide ‘definitions’, and try my best to point out where I agree (or disagree) strongly. I will try my best to act like I am going first, but I have to balance that and your already posited past. I will also contain my answers in the contemporary (mostly American) viewpoint, because as you say “that the conditions have changed so much over the years (I believe the terminology was coined during the French Revolution) that what was once left is now right, and vice-versa, etc.” I’ll also try and be as nonpartisan as I can, but I will admit that I am a lefties leftist so that will inevitably influence my opinions (I’ll also steer clear of quacks–and their opinions–i.e. the Glenn Beck’s and Jonah Goldberg’s of the world) . Here goes.
THE LEFT- I’d agree will pretty much all that you state here, specifically on equality. But I feel liberalism (or left ideology) is based specifically on Liberty (really what you say about equality is about the same, isn’t preserving equality for all, protecting the liberty of the individual). I do not consider the current Right in America to be interested in Liberty at all, no matter how many times they scream that they are. The Liberty at the heart of Leftism is the liberty of the individual over all. Large central states does not change this, as the general thought today is to equate a large state with totalitarianism. A large left state would protect the individual at all costs. From regulation of a financial market (at the expense of the large conglomerate), to protecting social concerns for the individual (this is why today’s left is outspoken on gay rights and is pro-choice, just as in the 60’s it was pro-civil rights). Also, many Leftists (including me) believe one’s liberties end where another’s begin. I consider Mill’s ‘On Liberty’ to be a central text in Left ideology/thinking, as I’ve said before.
THE RIGHT- I again agree with what you say here, especially what you say about libertarians, which are a group that should be in a third category. They swing from right to left based on social concerns. I also think the current Right in America pandering to this group (as in the Tea Bag movement) is more about the toxic quality of a post-Bush Republican brand, then anything to do with a belief in small governments/personal liberty. The Right, as always, only hate government when it isn’t them controlling it (wait was that too partisan? No because, the Left never ‘hate’ the government, even when not in control. At that time they just attempt to correct it even more). Most Right or Conservative ideology can be explained, I believe by just looking at the word ‘conserve’. They want to maintain a status quo, which unfortunately in America with our history equates to some pretty awful beliefs. The irony of course is that the country keeps moving so they are conserving things that are becoming more liberal by default. A central-left politician of 1960 is a moderate Conservative now (this is about the only thing I find optimistic in life btw). In recent times the Right has also become increasingly pro-Corporation; and will protect Corporate interests over the individual (this is the clearest way a Right-Left line can be drawn), and also a Theocratic bent too. But this is just a further strand. You’d probably love reading the book, ‘The Theocons: Secular America Under Siege’ by Damon Linker. But I don’t want to get to much into the various strands of these movements (yet), like Neocons, or Theocons.
I agree the definition of Right is weak, it defines the word by saying it’s opposite its antonym. Which is a ‘no shit’ type of thing.
LIBERAL- I agree with what you say here, so I’ll add little. As you’ve seen I’ve already used the term when describing someone who is of a left mindset. I suppose moving forward when a more or less left liberal is necessary we’ll just have to specify.
RADICAL- Again I agree with you here. I’ll repeat what I said earlier that I hate when the term ‘radical’ is used as a derogatory term, to me it’s a term/position to aspire to (in virtually every context). I don’t detect a whiff of negative in how you use the term so we’ll just move on. I think Radical can mean many different things that we’ll just have to define it as needed. A Radical on one topic is different then a Radical on another topic. This would lead to the easiest definition of it: A Person with an opinion that runs counter to the mass held belief. So based on topic it could mean quite a bit, we’ll tackle that when he cross (or approach) that bridge.
The definition of this term isn’t as large as I’ve gone–it mostly just tackles violent revolutionaries in a political sphere. Though on second reading maybe it is enough.
CONSERVATIVE-Similar to Liberal as being the human embodiment of the Left, this is a person to the Right (and I touched on this quite a bit in the about RIGHT definition).
To answer something you asked, I think Reagan (and his ilk) were Conservative, but we’d have to get into specifics for this. An aggressive foreign policy was one thing, neglecting of education for all is another. How he got so many democrats to vote for him is a head scratcher to me (and I must go on what my parents tell me as I was a boy), it just shows how artificial the common voter is (in all countries)– the ability to deliver a speech is more important then the content of said speech. ‘A book again I’d think you’d love on the topic (that influences my thoughts on Reagan heavily) is ‘Tear Down This Myth: How the Reagan Legacy Has Distorted Our Politics and Haunts OUr Future’ by Will Bunch.
On a personal note, I’ll add I’ve never met a conservative that wasn’t either a huge square, a huge tight ass, or a huge tool (or a combo platter of any or all of these). Damn, was that too partisan again?
NEO-CONSERVATICISM- This is Conservatism in a more modern setting. It has added Religion (both socially and, strangely, economically), aggressive/intrusive foreign policy, corporate interests, police state, etc. to the Conservative brand. It has also dropped much of the fiscal responsible nature that old school Conservative used to cherish.
In a sentence it could be defined as such: ‘A NeoCon is a Conservative that has gotten Mommy and Daddies credit card with no (real) limits with the only provision that the shopping spree needs to cease the two hours on Sunday when you’re needed in Church.’ This works, no?
I also agree with your statement about it’s rampant use of flag waving/phony patriotism.
As you can tell I have a rather low opinion of this one.
FASCISM- I actually think this is an easy one. Or easier then you seem to have had with it. I’d define it as such: ‘A Central Authority (state, faith or individual) that assumes or usurps liberty/authority over another.’ It’s really that simple. It could get hairier when we start looking at certain specific things (protection, education, sexuality, economy, etc.), as it’s the only one that is an adjective as much as it’s an ideology. All the others are an adjective second an ideology first. But I think we can discuss this when it’s on topic (Such as Nazi’s who were on the right for all the things you mention and weren’t really socialist like the Jonah Goldberg/Glenn Becks of the world would have you believe. They operated in state run capitalism, which is about as unfair to the individual as you could get–something the socialist model attempts to assist. It’s also worth noting that the communist and socialist parties assisted in the campaign against Nazism pre-WWII, then during WWII they both were active in the underground France liberation movement. There is a French History class post 1871–in 24 lectures– on iTunes from Yale taught by John Merriman that is free, fantastic, and highly informative that I can’t recommend higher to you).
Finally, my sincerest apologies for the delay, and any rogue typos contained herein.
Welcome back to the fight, Jamie. This time I know our side will win.
Wait, what side are we on?
Ok, in all seriousness, thanks for bringing your thoughts to the table. Now that we’ve laid out definitions, I guess we can see where any differences lie and then move forward to the next step (which I defined originally as “value of different voices in in [the political discourse”). Just to warn you, this is a long post but hopefully it’s not turgid. I love to tease out different ideas as I discuss, to ruminate, and hopefully you find these ruminations add to the topic rather than distract from it or bog it down.
We definitely have some areas of overlap, especially in the initial categories, though there are probably some divergences that need to be finessed. Our overlap on neoconservatism is hit-and-miss and on fascism I think we have a disagreement, but I’ll get to that in moment (I’m not sure that last term is actually completely relevant to the overall discussion, though I threw it in there and it’s certainly an interesting one to discuss).
Left: Like I said, I’m trying to simplify as much as possible. Reason is that values, even the most basic, core ones are going to clash. When they clash, which one wins out? You note some overlap between liberty and equality, and I agree, but the fact that they are separate terms indicates that their properties are not one and the same. As with any different qualities these can harmonize, but they can also butt heads.
First of all, how do we define each term? Again, I’ll offer my own observation, followed by an “official” dictionary definition. Liberty: To me, and – importantly – to most people I suspect, this describes the freedom of the individual. From power, which can emanate from the state but from other sources as well, it is essentially defined negatively: freedom “from” outside forces. Incidentally, I read Mill years ago, or at least part of On Liberty in a Poli-Sci class which was the only academic immersion I’ve ever had in politics or philosophy (the rest came autodidactically and, I’ll concede, rather eclecticly and incompletely – just to get ahead of the game, I have not read the other books you mention; when it comes to politics, I am more of a short-reader – columns, articles, the like – than a book-reader, but I digress.). Dictionary.com on “liberty” (the relevant ones anyway): “1. freedom from arbitrary or despotic government or control; 2. freedom from external or foreign rule; independence; 3. freedom from control, interference, obligation, restriction, hampering conditions, etc.; power or right of doing, thinking, speaking, etc., according to choice.”
Equality: Now, this is a bit trickier. It’s a very relative and contextual term, dictionary.com is not of much help, so I’ll have to set out on my own. Politically, I believe the desire for equality is a desire for fairness. (Since setting up these definitions a few weeks ago, it occurred to me that “justice” is perhaps a better value for the left, particularly today’s left, but since I think its notions of justice ultimately stem from a basis in or desire for equality, we’ll stick with “equality” for now.) What this fairness means is up for debate, and is one of the reasons conservative skepticism has been recurringly potent and intra-left squabbles have been so frequent. It could mean assuming that people are all blessed with different abilities, but that to the extent possible society should not add new hindrances or privileges to the scale. Or it could determine that this isn’t enough and that society should actively work to guarantee an equality of outcome, since differing abilities are not the individual’s “fault.” In this sense a concern for equality could lead to either anarchism on one extreme, or extreme state socialism on the other. But in both cases, equality of one sort or another is the desired outcome, and I think both movements can be placed on the left.
Since I’ve now expanded the definition phase to include these new terms (I’ll take a similar segue in a moment on “order”) I’ll invite you to provide your own thoughts on the matter at the outset of the next comment.
Moving on, then, equality and liberty are not always going to go hand-in-hand. equality refers to equality of liberty – a negative freedom from active outside intervention (though “One’s liberties end where another’s begin” is both an assurance of liberty and an infringement upon liberty, paradoxically.) Even more pertinently, “equality” can also refer to equality of property, opportunity, position, etc. Since we live in a world of limited resources, in which said resources were not provided (either by society or nature) equally, it would probably require direct intervention into the lives and goods of individuals to redistribute these goods “fairly.” Whether or not the state (or in the anarchist case, the dissolution-of-law) could do this effectively, whether or not it would be desirable or just, can be discussed another time, but whatever the value judgement, this sort of equality does entail an infringement of liberty. I would argue that what defines the left, at least economically (from which the other values arguably stem) is their ability to sacrifice some amount of liberty, along with other values, to this notion of equality. The degree to which they are willing to sacrifice other values to equality may determine in part where they reside on the spectrum (or in which camp if one doesn’t see it as a straight line).
Finally, this having taken to much space here already, I have to question the notion that “a large left state would protect the individual at all costs.” This was certainly not the case in the Soviet Union or Mao’s China, or any other state borne of a radical left revolution, so I can only assume that you do not consider those states “left.” Which may be true in some fundamental sense – but we do have to recognize that the movements which led to them were by all accounts left-wing, the men who created and then ran the state had their roots on the left and were not just opportunists (and while absolute power corrupts absolutely, who gave them absolute power in the first place?), and that the apologists for these regimes were by and large found on the left. So even if the states are wrongly identified as “left” there was obviously something about them which appealed to the left in spite of their better judgement. That’s perhaps a discussion worth reserving for later, but I think, along with other reservations, it should temper some degree of your purely positive definition here.
Right: Strict libertarians, of which there are relatively few when all’s said and done (they tend to emphasize either civil or economic concerns), do indeed belong to their own category, which we can conventionally disregard for now. The right we are concerned with, then, may contain some elements of libertarianism, particularly economically, but is not defined overall by a “liberty” ethos.
I see you have chosen largely to define the Right negatively; something you acknowledge in your last sentence of the definition is somewhat weak. This is understandable in a sense; the very nouns/adjectives “conservative” and “reactionary” suggest something that is defined to a large degree by its opposite. However, I think it’s helpful in the American context – and as we’re both Americans discussing largely American political and artistic phenomena here, we can probably stick to that context – to go a little further. Since at least the 50s, when Bill Buckley founded National Review, American conservatism has had an activist, philosophical strain. Ironically, it was Buckley who said, somewhat playfully, that a conservative’s role was to “stand athwart history yelling ‘stop!’” But in reality this defines a relatively non-ideological conservatism of the past, a Bob Taft conservatism not a “movement” conservatism. The conservatism of Reagan and Goldwater is much more clearly defined than just “a movement of ‘no’”.
First of all, I’m not sure they are most concerned with preserving the status quo – indeed in the post-New Deal era, the status quo was exactly what they found insufferable. (Though as you wisely note, they inevitably swallowed some elements of it, so that today relatively few conservatives will actively call for the dismantling of Social Security, though they may grumble about it and want to tweak it. At the same time I don’t think it’s really part of their agenda to “conserve” it so I don’t think “conservative” is as catch-all as you make it.) Are they purely for rollback, purely “reactionary” then? Not exactly. For a number of reasons (partly opportunism, partly some genuine philosophical affinity) movement conservatives are fond of certain types of innovations: they are generally excited by technological advances, very fond of free-market efficiency, and all in favor of development (leading to the paradox that one of the things most conservatives aren’t concerned with conserving is the environment!).
This is why I fall back on the term “order.” What most seems to animate modern conservatives is the notion of some sort of organizing principle, a functioning system which is efficient and productive. Now what exactly it is producing is a variable – in the case of fascists like Hitler the order was producing a national mythology and spiritual rebirth and racial purity as well as humming industry; whereas in the case of most modern economic conservatives, there is a suspicion of totalistic utopian schemes (and hence the state) and production is defined purely in terms of capitalistic development, which has its good and its bad points (on the plus side, it generally saves us from Hitler-like totalitarianism, on the other hand, its narrow-minded materialism is spiritually crippling if not kept in check by other values).
I see the attachment of “theocons” to this Right as rather incidental – a marriage of convenience, rather than deep affinity. They both had the same enemy – the 60s left, one for its socialistic tendencies, the other for its libertine cultural leanings – so they overlooked differences and joined forces to form the New Right. But the order the Religious Right is concerned with preserving doesn’t have much to do with the order the capitalistic right favors, which is why whenever the Right is in power, it generally contents itself with dropping a few crumbs the RR’s way while concerning itself with other matters – and occasionally the RR reacts in kind (look at the campaign of Huckabee, who was mushy on economics as far as most right-wingers were concerned). This is not to say there aren’t a lot of conservatives who share both the religious and economic views of the “movement” but I still contend that the alignment of these views is more a coincidence than anything else.
So I guess, ultimately, where we might disagree here is in seeing the Right as a positive (in the value-neutral sense) movement rather than as a purely negatory one. I also disagree that the Left never “hate” the government – anarchists certainly do, and they’re “left”. And even more statist leftists “hate” the government under certain administrations; perhaps what you mean is they don’t hate “government” in and of itself?
At any rate, though it was worth explaining where I’m coming from on this, I don’t think our differences here are fundamental in the sense of being contradictory. Though I do think to appreciate some of what I’m arguing, you’ll have to try and see the right to a certain extent as I describe them. Try reading “reasonable conservatives” (yes, Virginia/Jamie, they’re out there!) and do thought experiments to put yourself in their shoes – bad faith will only obscure your vision. Understand your enemy – a liberal conceit, right?
liberal/conservative – we can tacitly agree to let “conservatism” and “the right” overlap (perhaps when we want to distinguish between different branches we’ll use “classical conservative”/“traditional conservative” vs. neocon or some other delineation, just as with “left” we’ve established the difference between liberal and radical).
radical – One thing I wish I’d stressed more in my previous definitions, though I did mention it, is the extent to which liberals and radicals can be at each other’s throats. Though they are both part of the “left” spectrum their standpoints are in some ways more different than “left” and “right” themselves (indeed, sometimes I’ve felt that the far left and far right have more in common, temperamentally anyway, than the far left and center-left or far-right and center-right). This is an important point to remember because sometimes it gets lost in the black/white distinctions of contemporary American politics – particularly as, since at least the 1980s, the Left (meaning radical left, further out than the Democratic Party/conventional liberals) has been pretty marginal on the political scene, something that was not the case for much of the 20th century (even in the 50s, when they were forcibly marginalized by McCarthyism they “haunted” the scene in their absence in a way that has not really been true in the Reagan thru Bush II era). I do think, incidentally, radicals can be nonviolent as well (as I’m sure you do as well, despite writing “violent revolutionaries in a political sphere” – perhaps “militant” would be a better word than “violent”?).
neoconservatism – I am comfortable including the “modernizing” of conservatism under the blanket term “conservatism” itself, and utilizing neoconservatism more specifically. I think it can be defined in large part through foreign policy, with economics and culture playing a secondary role (mostly that of reconceiving once-liberal ideas in a conservative framework).
I don’t think religion, particularly the Christian religion you suggest, plays much of a role in neoconservatism; for one thing, many of its founding fathers, like Irving Kristol, were Jews. They do tend to talk about the Judeo-Christian tradition, but it’s more of an aesthetic/philosophical abstract than an actively theological element (and more about celebrating “Western civilization” than religion per se). I do think the leftist strain in neoconservatism is worth pointing out; to again highlight Kristol, he and others who migrated to conservativism in the 70s and gave it the “neo” appellation were former Trotskyites. But it is a very lazy leftism, preserving the utopianism but not the rigor of Marxism (not that that isn’t suspecptible to grand follies too, but more on that in a moment). Indeed, neoconservatism is kind of an attempt to synthesize all the utopianisms of the past – the world-changing revolutionary spirit, the proud American “city on a hill” patriotism
Like you, I have trouble keeping my bias out of this one; the recent wounds are still too raw for me to take a full step back! In the interests of fairness, one thing the neocons do have over the so-called paleocons is that, for some of them at least, their brand of foreign-policy was motivated by a certain idealism (one reason that many centrists, moderates, and liberals went along with the Iraq invasion, at least initially) as compared to the purely cynical mechanations of Kissinger-style “realpolitik.” But, that said, their idealism was so lazily conceived, their faith in American power (but not brainpower, which they coasted over in plotting the postwar occupation) so blithe, and their willingness to let the cynics – both greedy and power-hungry – ride their coattails so careless, that whatever optimistic dreams they had about knocking down dictatorships and spreading democracy carried its own poison within. I don’t think their patriotism was “phony” as you put it, I think it was sincere, but it was also quite shallow. /Digression.
Fascism The problem here is that you are defining authoritarianism, at its extreme totalitarianism, not fascism. By this definition, Soviet Communism and indeed any all-powerful state regime was fascist, which renders the term rather vague, redundant, and meaningless. I’d rather try and narrow it down; obvioiusly, some regimes have been described as “fascist” more than others; why is this so? What are the common traits? You also point out that communists – including Stalinists (though not in the period the USSR opportunistically allied with the Nazis, carving up Poland ’39 – ’41) – were actively opposed to the fascists throughout the 1930s. As members of the Communist Party were also followers of “a central authority [which in this case happened to be state, faith, AND individual!] that assumes or usurps liberty/authority over another” there obviously had to be another sticking point somewhere, and therein lies the uniqueness of fascism. But we’ll let this sit for now, as both of us struggled with this one.
Phew, sorry for the length. I suspect you enjoy a good verbose run-on as much as me, which is why I was not so conscientious in self-censorship. Please forgive. As we narrow our focus, I’ll presumably be able to pare down my thoughts a bit and re-discover the virtues of the concise.
For the next step, as we seem to be close enough in our definitions to warrant further discussion (and as we at least know whereof we differ), I’d suggest exploring what/why we think different aspects of the political spectrum are worth “listening to” or not – i.e., what they add to the discourse. Since I kicked off the discussion of definitions, here’s what I suggest: you respond to this with this with any remaining points, clarifications, or contentions you’d like to tackle in terms of our definitions/explanations; meanwhile I’ll prepare the next entry, dealing with the above point, and post it some time in the near future, and then we can go from there.
Meantime, here’s an interesting site I’ve just discovered and become glued to, due to some fascinating discussions: this fellow is a very smart, very civil conservative. He’s utterly disenchanted with Obama, to a degree I don’t quite fathom (it seems to be taken for granted on the right that Obama is just a horrible president, either incompetent, extreme, or both) but his explanations of his philosophy are quite lucid, his tone even-handed and reasonable, and he takes other conservatives to task with great frequency, particularly your own much-beloved Glen Beck. Might provide some food for thought before our next discussion. Here are some good pieces from him (some of which I chimed in on): http://zombiecontentions.com/2010/04/09/on-re-reading-liberal-fascism-defining-fascism-down/ and http://zombiecontentions.com/2010/04/30/sarah-palin-shouldnt-be-pretending-glenn-beck-is-normal/. His particular take on the whole left/right, who-inherited-whose-tradition thing is that both “liberals” and “conservatives” are inheritors of “progressivism” (something you suggested yourself when you noted that as time passes, what conservatives are preserving is more liberal than it was). This has put him in the line of fire of those, including Beck himself who seized on a blog post this guy wrote, who have decided “progressivism” is the root of all political evil today, encompassing everything from Barack Obama to the Nazis. An argument that Goldberg’s book has pretty much pioneered in recent years and that’s taken off like wildfire in the current climate, one reason – despite my initial reticence – I’m actually reading the damn thing now. It has some interesting observations, but sinks them by lashing them to the mast of its absurd thesis.
By the way, that iTunes lecture sounds right up my alley; I will check it out forthwith, perhaps burn some CDs – if I can do that with a “station” (yep, I’m old-school; my iPod broke last fall for good, and I have not mustered up the will/cash to replace it!).
Guys, I respect your enthusiasm and effort here, but why do we need labels and definitions?
Political thought is a continuum and can’t be isolated from economics, history, philosophy or sociology. You must start from a philosophical premise and state your own position clearly before even attempting to debate such a topic.
Without an ethical position you bring little to the table. For the record mine is that each human life is as valuable and worthy as my own – period.
Joel, you said inter-alia: “a concern for equality could lead to either anarchism on one extreme, or extreme state socialism on the other. Does not this position undermine your desire to keep an open mind? What is the corollary of this? Inequality is necessary? If so, why?
Tony, thanks for jumping in – and not biting too hard (ha ha). If I may…
“Guys, I respect your enthusiasm and effort here, but why do we need labels and definitions?”
For the simple reason that if labels and ideologies are going to enter the discussion, as they have and will continue to do, they deserve to be defined. Otherwise we can get hung up on semantic disagreements or confusion stemming from different conceptions of what we’re talking about. This is just the beginning of the conversation, not the (dead?) end.
“Political thought is a continuum and can’t be isolated from economics, history, philosophy or sociology. You must start from a philosophical premise and state your own position clearly before even attempting to debate such a topic.”
I disagree. One must start with an attempt to achieve some sort of common ground and then – within that framework – carve out one’s own position. Otherwise one is just shouting into the wind; discussion must be built on a foundation.
“Without an ethical position you bring little to the table. For the record mine is that each human life is as valuable and worthy as my own – period.”
Yes, fundamentally I agree. But so do many other people – including some who would define themselves as left, and others as right (and some on both left and right disagree). Because they have different interpretations of how we reach the point in which society respects all individuals equally, and I think those different interpretations are worth exploring.
“Joel, you said inter-alia: “a concern for equality could lead to either anarchism on one extreme, or extreme state socialism on the other. Does not this position undermine your desire to keep an open mind?”
The statement “a concern for equality could lead to either anarchism on one extreme, or extreme state socialism on the other” is not a “position”, it’s simply an observation. A concern for equality could – and has – led individuals to embrace anarchism (which is not necessarily a perjorative, by the way) or extreme state socialism (also a descriptor). The two are indeed on separate extremes of what is seen as the left-wing spectrum. Not sure where the value judgement comes in in that particular statement; perhaps you were referring to another part of the argument which got cut off?
“What is the corollary of this? Inequality is necessary? If so, why?”
Inequality is a given. Broadly speaking, we can distinguish two types of inequality – internal (stemming from the abilities and consciousness of the individual) and external (stemming from societal and/or natural impediments, repressions, or deficiencies) – while noting that they are by no means mutually exclusive and that, in particular, external obstacles tend to exacerbate internals.
If the goal is to remove obstacles for the individual, questions remain. First question: what are we removing obstacles to? Basic needs – food, water, shelter, basic learning? More spiritual needs – a satisfying job, an advanced education, a pleasing environment? Second question: Who is doing the removing? Is it the state? Private institutions? Or individuals themselves – in which case state and/or institutions presumably still have to intervene to hold back forces which profit from said obstacles and would otherwise be powerful enough to keep them imposed. Thirdly, How are they being removed? In a world of limited resources, if the question is financial, and willing donors to the worthy cause are limited, there must be a redistribution of assets. (Furthermore, who are they going to? Not everyone can get the same tract of land, and not all tracts of land are equal – how do we decide who gets what?) This is the sense in which I imply equality can, by necessity, infringe upon liberty. Whether or not this is appropriate depends on the situation at hand, and I by no means am attempting to suggest that liberty should always win out – just that there will be a contest. Since we are concerned with definitions rather than judgements now, I brought this up to explain why I was defining the left in terms of “equality” rather than “liberty”, being that what historically connects its myriad strands is a focus on the former.
Hope this clears up what I’m trying to say here.
My own position is not totalistic, but rather proceeds on a case-by-case basis, particularly as I recognize that at any given moment, one value is going to be sacrificed to another. I don’t want to define, a priori, which one will always trump the other, regardless of proportion, so I’d rather take issues as they come.
Tony,
I’ve been following MM’s and Jamie’s comments here.
By that Statement (“a concern for equality could lead to either anarchism on one extreme, or extreme state socialism on the other”), I think Joel means what I believe: An extreme drive towards liberty (As is teh case with state-driven Capitalism) will oppress the flawed individual and an extreme drive towards equality suffocates the gifted individual (as in Stalinist Communism). I think there must be a sweet spot somewhere in between.
That’s a succinct way of putting it, JAFB, which is probably why you said it, not I! I would only add that I wouldn’t necessarily use the term “flawed” though I see what you’re getting at, and that aside from the conundrum you suggest, there is also the question of trade-offs and, of course, efficiency, which I didn’t bring up (the question of whether or not the delivery system of redistribution can be trusted to do its job both competently and justly, or whether corruption will ensure an even worse outcome than that which is being rectified).
I think ultimately Tony’s and my disagreements stem from philosophical emphasis above all else. He tends to stress commitment, I tend to stress independence (the reverse of the statement “each human life is as valuable and worthy as my own” being equally true: “my own life is as valuable and worthy as every other”). Obviously both values are important, and here – as elsewhere – the dialectic/dialogue can remind us of this.
Ha, That’s revealing.
I used the term “flawed” to denote people like many of us, who do make mistakes and find themselves unable to recover from it. But yes, a better term must be out there.
And I agree with Tony and you on the point that it ultimately is a philosophical question: What should man work towards? Greatness or happiness (although they are not entirely separable)?
Cheers!
Man or “a man” (or woman)? This seems a different question to me than the one I posed above, but my brain is too taxed now to parse it. Greatness, happiness, or sleep? I chose the third.
Hahaha, Good Knight…
This thread is getting way too long… by the time I get to the ‘Reply’ link I have forgotten which comment I am replying to and, worse, what I was going to say!
Joel, I understand where you are coming from, but without an ethical framework you can’t argue coherently. With respect you sound like a politician – shifting the goal posts to suit the circumstances so you can say you have haven’t painted yourself into corner (aside: how is that for fractured metaphors).
Labels are fine if all engaged in a discussion agree on what they mean, but you and Jamie are hardly in accord on categories.
This is not to say that I doubt your sincerity or don’t respect your views.
Fair comment JAFB. I concede that the point.
There is a trade-off between individual liberty and community – I decided not to use the word ‘collective’ Equally though, you can’t claim that individual rights are paramount and not accept that in a fair society the rights of the individual must be tempered and that the individual has obligations that supersede individual rights.
Tony, the purpose of the discussion is to establish where we stand and incidentally, I think Jamie and I see eye-to-eye enough on the big terms to move forward without getting too hung up on semantic disagreements. Besides which, I’m sure they’ll still be some discussion around these points which will yield further understanding if not agreement.
In regard to an ethical framework, I’ve already said I agree with yours. But, among liberty, equality, order and other values I am not comfortable choosing one that can trump the others most of the time. Rather, I see life and society as a balance between different values. That is why I try to avoid a totalistic statement of “commitment”. My “ideal” society is a pluralistic one which accomodates different views of what society should entail, and my ideal government contains checks and balances so that no one institution could gain overweening power.
Within this framework, I would like to see 3 things.
1) a greater equality of opportunity so that avenues to success and fulfillment are at the very least less determined by birth than the are today (and while it’s no time to be patting ourselves on the back in this regard, it’s worth noting that much of the human society has made a great leap in this respect over past centuries). This goes with point #2.
2) a stronger social safety net, including some kind of provision for health insurance so that every citizen has access to affordable and quality health care. Aside from society-wide entitlements like education and (ideally) health care, I would think safety-net provisions should be designed as a last resort not a fallback, that they should serve as something to keep one’s head above water in an emergency situation, rather than an easy-way-out which mitigates self-reliance in the able-bodied/minded. Despite conservative claims, I do not think in this day and age, these provisions generally fall into the latter category though I have admittedly not researched them in depth.
3) Aside from the aforementioned necessity of removing obstacles to success and providing a basic safety net (as well as enforcing the law, dealing with crises or budding crises such as energy scarcity and environment damage, and providing for the common defense) – i.e. that which only the state can probably provide in a meaningful way, I would LOVE to see social change and innovation enacted on a wide scale OUTSIDE of government. For
threefour reasons: a) I think reliance on the state is an easy out, for all the people who complain about getting taxed, public sector do-gooderism essentially palms the responsibility for your fellow man off onto the “big guy” and removes the need for individual citizens to grapple with social problems; b) if conservatives are sincere about their affection for charity outside of government (some are, some aren’t), then they should have no problem joining hands with liberals and radicals who want to affect change in a bottom-up fashion or through private institutions like foundations or charities; c) state action DOES involve coercion, inasmuch as it is funded by mandatory taxation, whereas private giving is voluntary and thus preferable where there’s an option; d) I don’t like the idea that ideas or societies must be filtered through “the state” or “politics” to find meaning. Look at the current debate on gay marriage. As long as marriage is a state-supported institution, I have no problem with gays being included. But why SHOULD it be a state-sponsored institution? We should have civil unions, in which couples or even groups of people have visitation rights or other benefits, but marriage as a romantic/spiritual covenant should be a private institution, not one that is only legitimate if it’s state-approved. This goes for other institutions, and individuals as well. Anarchists of the left and libertarians of the right could certainly see eye-to-eye on this notion: the individual and society do not gain their meaning from the state in a free society and as much as possible should be outside the provenance of the state and belong to “the people” themselves.And a fifth reason: e) solutions which arise from within communities themselves are usually going to be more effective, efficient, self-empowering, and geared towards the need of that particular community than a solution imposed from without, with a “one-size-fits-all” approach. You will protest that the causes of social problems are widespread and deep-rooted and that this returns us to the band-aid mentality. But whatever the common causes, problems manifest themselves in different ways in different places, and require solutions contingent upon the specific situation at hand. Any sensible approach to problem-solving will take this into account.
MovieMan I want you to know that it may take me a day or two to respond, and if it does know that I will return. You have my word.
Just wanted to get that message to you ASAP.
Already I like how plain the language is.
Hey, no problem. I had it in mind that this conversation would unfold slowly, methodically over the course of an extended period. This works for me too.
Now, if only my right-wing sparring partner would get back to me. 😉
(http://www.amazon.com/review/R1HSIWIO8XHIQ/ref=cm_cr_rev_detmd_pl?ie=UTF8&cdMsgNo=103&cdPage=11&asin=1595230017&store=books&cdSort=oldest&cdMsgID=Mx34CDAEUDIJB2#Mx34CDAEUDIJB2)
I think you can guess which one I am, by name alone…
Jamie,
Would you prefer an e-mail exchange (perhaps to be posted here after the fact if both of us wish)? I have no problem with this conversation unfolding over the course of several months, at a slow pace, but I’d hate for it not to happen at all – I think it could be to fascinating & productive to miss out on.
Let me know what you think –
Joel
Sorry Joel for the delay. I’ve been quite busy the past few days with design work and my free time has been literally horror film after horror film for the horror countdown in a few months.
Hence why all my posts around here have been on the short side, I will post a response though– to quote Axl Rose, ‘soon is the word’.
No worries at all, take your time. Anyway, I sympathize – as I glance to my left, I see my laundry bag keeling over because an increased work schedule makes finding time for the laundromat impossible! So no rush – just wanted to check up and see if you were still interested in the discussion. My curiosity is satisfied…
Joel, have you heard of TinyURL 😉
Yeah, he’s got mad flow but I prefer his early albums.
Oh, you mean…? 😉 As established with my mention of burning CDs above, I am that rarity, the luddite-blogger. I actually trascribe my blog posts on longs with a chisel and pass them to a more techno-savvy interlocutor who re-types them on the computer, ha ha…
Oh what a cracker of a discussion. beats, Schindler, Pulp Fiction et al by miles. I’m waiting for the discussion (kicked off ever so wonderfully) by MovieMan to start rolling guys…
No way I’m reading through all this but I’m not a fan. It was great in the cinema and fell apart afterwards.
JUST WHEN YOU THOUGHT IT WAS SAFE TO CONSIDER A THREAD FINISHED…. Here comes MOVIEMAN, guns-a-blazing, blogging the shit out everything in sight!!!! LOL!!! I’m about to turn in for the evening… However, I’m putting the book I’m working on down (I usually read a bit before sleep) and reading the massive comment JOEL left above in its place. I’m sure its enrapturing! Just goes to show that you can’t hold Batman down. I wonder what would have happened if Allan had placed this higher, like in the TOP TEN? Would thw response on the thread been bigger than this at No. 86?????? Hmmmmmmm…. INTERESTING…..
Well, to be fair, Jamie led the way today! (Be sure to read his comment before mine, or better yet, start at the top of this indentation, because it won’t make any sense out of context – or perhaps in context either, but I’ll take the blame for that…)
Btw, as you are a self-confessed Glenn Beck fan if I recall correctly, you might find the site I linked to interesting…
Lastly/leastly, please note the conversation no longer has anything whatsoever to do with Batman though supposedly it will swing around that way again eventually. That’s one thing I’ve always loved about Wonders, the ability of its conversations to veer way, way off-course…
I think it has. Batman the comic myth is reactionary, as are most comic heroes: vigilante justice and a zero challenge to the status quo. Batman’s philanthropic alter-ego does not concern himself with the economic structures of inequality or the causes of social disadvantage that are the hot-bed of criminality and social dysfunction. That’s why Hollywood loves them…
Oh, don’t get me wrong. The conversation had its origin in Batman (as the discussion of spirituality began with Viridiana, the valuation of canons with 2001, or the judgement of 60s American cinema with Girls of Rochefort, etc), but it’s obviously wandered off away from that subject, though I suspect it will return (and indeed, intend to point it back in that direction eventually).
As for the point you raise, I think it’s mixed. In ’39, with Hitler on the rise and a Jew behind the easal, Superman – with his concern for justice and looking out for the “little guy” – could be seen as antifascist par excellence. Batman is obviously a somewhat different case; the vigilante element is more pronounced and Batman is in general a darker, more brooding figure, his world seemingly a more violent one – though he himself eventually developed a no-kill ethos (on display in this film as well).
Taking off on a point of yours that rubbed me the wrong way, though, are philanthropists necessarily reactionary? I find that implication a bit offensive – it seems to leave no ground between the Marxist and the reactionary, and it also gives too much ground to those armchair lovers of the “people” who theoretically want “change” (but seldom get their hands dirty with actual charities, which are considered “bourgeois” indulgences) over those who actually try to enact it in the nitty-gritty, solving problems on the ground instead of smugly moralizing in the air. Now, please don’t misunderstand, I’m not saying someone can’t be both – seek systemic change while also trying to make an on-the-ground, person-by-person difference (and I suspect you are one of those people with a foot planted on both grounds, based on what I know of you) – but I don’t think it’s fair to scorn someone who does not share your particular political solutions (or is not a big-picture person, generally) but does share your compassion, and wants to do something about it in their own way. Obviously, we are speaking of real-life figures here, not Bruce Wayne. 😉
Perhaps I’m misunderstanding, it’s just that I’ve heard the above type of argument before and it really irks me. When you write “Batman’s philanthropic alter-ego does not concern himself with the economic structures of inequality or the causes of social disadvantage that are the hot-bed of criminality and social dysfunction.” are you giving this a pejorative connotation in and of itself? Or are you accepting philanthropy on its own terms, but then moving on to criticize the larger context for not considering other factors (i.e. is your beef not so much with the “Bruce Waynes” of the world as with the stories that focus on this type of activity but ignore others)? Sorry if I misinterpreted you there.
Joel, I could have been clearer, and nothing you have said in your responses causes me any angst.
I have an issue with philanthropy yes, but I wouldn’t go so far as to call it reactionary. In my comment on the fictional Bruce Wayne, I just wanted to make it clear that I appreciate he is a philanthropist. For example, in my estimation a Gates is above a Murdoch. The trouble with philanthropy is that it is a band-aid that masks the socio-economic foundations of inequality and disadvantage, and at best is only a palliative.
I only mention the following as it is relevant. A couple of weeks back I was asked by a US community organisation to help them out free (as their funding was limited and being cut) with a case management database (I build database tools for a living). I offered to help, but the project’s scope needed someone on the ground with a greater ability to provide the necessary commitment, so I only provided a little very limited help. The group is based in a major US city and services indigent AIDS sufferers. The moral of the story: in the richest capitalist nation on earth why must such a group ask for charity?
Apropos the origin of super-hero comics, Michael Chabon’s novel, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay (2000), is great reading, and there is an underlying pessimism and disillusionment with the corruption of ideals that grows out of the pursuit of wealth.
Tony, thanks for your response. It sounds like you generally respect philanthropy, having no beef with philanthropists per se but feeling that it in itself is a limited field. (Though you do at times seem to put revolution and philanthropy in a bit of your “either/or” conundrum by saying that band-aids “mask” root causes; I think we can agree it would not be better to let the sores “fester” just to hopefully awaken public consciousness). Putting aside the question of whether or not radical societal change is for the better (in its ideal form, I think it probably would be) – is it possible? Myself, I suspect that the band-aids are all we’ve got for the foreseeable future. But that’s another discussion.
On the subject of philanthropists vs. revolutionaries (disregarding those who are both), I will always respect the former more than the latter. If one wants to love and honor “the people” one must first love and honor individual people, otherwise the concept is an abstract. I’ve seen too many left intellectuals – and given your comments on French thinkers, I know you agree with me on the latter – who profess to be on the side of the angels, yet persist in a snobbery and misanthropy on the day-to-day basis. I have always appreciate the fact YOUR views – wherever I may disagree with them – seem to stem from a humanism rather than some “cause” romanticism or hunger for change for its own sake; you appear to advocate radicalism as a means to a humanist end (and “humanist” has oft been a dirty word in parts of the far left, seen as wishy-washy liberal). I respect that. The notion that those leftists who are not humanists get to claim bragging rights over non-leftists who are bugs me, which is why I reacted strongly to your first aside. I think we’ve made ourselves clear on this matter, though.
As for the AIDS group, in response to your question “in the richest capitalist nation on earth why must such a group ask for charity?” I would make a few observations. Firstly, assuming your point is about why more people aren’t voluntarily donating: in a society where there are countless charities, even the highest tide can’t keep all the boats afloat. Secondly, in this economic climate, donations have probably been curtailed so even less boats are afloat than usual. Thirdly, though I can’t quote statistics off the top of my head, I have seen figures which suggest that Americans are in the lead – I believe both proportionately and in raw volume – in terms of charitable-giving so in this case at least, wealth does seem to have corresponded to a leap in charitable giving.
Out of curiosity, what is the name of that AIDS group/do they have a website?
Joel, you keep building straw men of the left to knock down, and then use that as weakness in the left critique of market economies. The left critique has a long tradition, stands on its own, is a powerful indictment, and is also borne out in recent history.
You have got my view on charities wrong. Charities should NOT exist in the US. They are a shameful indictment of greed and indifference, an affront to decency.
Btw, I feel it would be a breach of trust to reveal details of the community group I mentioned.
I thought we had settled this to our liking – not sure why contention is rearing its head again. I am not constructing straw men. I am reacting to what I see, and using the adjectives “some” etc. to make certain I do not generalize too far, though this doesn’t seem to be enough for you – as long as I have anything critical to say about the left you are always going to be there castigating me. Guess I’ll have to get used to it.
“Charities should NOT exist in the US. They are a shameful indictment of greed and indifference, an affront to decency.” Speaking of straw men, I don’t know what the heck to do with this statement. Who exactly is it supposed to be indicting? Until we exist in a society in which there is no hunger, disease, poverty, or other form of human suffering (and, guess what, Tony no government – left or not – has ever eradicated these phenomena and for a long to come, it’s likely no government will) there will be a need for charities and a need for people to operate them, donate to them, and so forth. Self-righteous tone notwithstanding, your statement just comes off as bitching at the scene of an car crash. Car crash happened, now question is how do we deal with it at this moment? If you want to discuss building better roads, better safety conditions, fine and good, but let’s try and rescue the people who are entangled in the wreckage right now – that’s the only concrete, tangible thing we can do to help in the moment.
I take issue with some of the things you say, not out of a hatred of the left or a personal vendetta but because your “values” as you call them frequently involve taking potshots at others for acting insufficiently according to your own rulebook. Most of us are doing the best we can. By the way, don’t get huffy about the organization. I asked the name of that charity because I thought maybe there was something I could do to help.
How was I ‘huffy’ about details of the community group? You asked “out of curiosity”. If you are still interested let me know by email, and I will pass on the info.
We can move on, but why should I accept the line that sadly the rich will always be with us…
“We can move on”
Probably a good idea, though I’ve one last question below you can take or leave.
“If you are still interested let me know by email”
Fair enough.
“but why should I accept the line that sadly the rich will always be with us”
You can accept/not accept whatever you want. Just so I can finally be clear where you’re coming from, could you describe what you mean by implying that “the rich” need to go away? (Btw, Michael Moore and other lefties you admire are quite rich. They may preach against wealth, but they still accumulate it and have not shown much interest in redistributing it. I do not think the administrators of a thoroughly socialist state would be any different, and incidentally as of yet they haven’t been.) You don’t say poverty, or disease, or misery, or even “excess wealth” (which some would argue is not the cause of those previous woes). Heck, you don’t even say “wealth” full-stop, you say “the rich”.
In short, what is the society you propose in terms of property ownership, taxation, government authority, and productivity (in lieu of the profit motive, which obviously be non-existent if there are no “rich”)? I will sit tight, read your description, and I PROMISE, whatever the temptation to respond, tweak, analyze, I will not reply – I will let your answer stand as the last word in this discussion.
I have emailed the info. Let the facts speak.
Share of wealth held by the Bottom 99% and Top 1% in the United States, 1922-2007:
Bottom 99% Top 1%
1922 63.3% 36.7%
1929 55.8% 44.2%
1933 66.7% 33.3%
1939 63.6% 36.4%
1945 70.2% 29.8%
1949 72.9% 27.1%
1953 68.8% 31.2%
1962 68.2% 31.8%
1965 65.6% 34.4%
1969 68.9% 31.1%
1972 70.9% 29.1%
1976 80.1% 19.9%
1979 79.5% 20.5%
1981 75.2% 24.8%
1983 69.1% 30.9%
1986 68.1% 31.9%
1989 64.3% 35.7%
1992 62.8% 37.2%
1995 61.5% 38.5%
1998 61.9% 38.1%
2001 66.6% 33.4%
2004 65.7% 34.3%
2007 65.4% 34.6%
Sources: 1922-1989 data from Wolff (1996). 1992-2007 data from Wolff (2010).
Distribution of net worth and financial wealth in the United States, 1983-2007:
Total Net Worth
Top 1% Next 19% Bottom 80%
1983 33.8% 47.5% 18.7%
1989 37.4% 46.2% 16.5%
1992 37.2% 46.6% 16.2%
1995 38.5% 45.4% 16.1%
1998 38.1% 45.3% 16.6%
2001 33.4% 51.0% 15.6%
2004 34.3% 50.3% 15.3%
2007 34.6% 50.5% 15.0%
Financial Wealth
Top1% Next 19% Bottom 80%
1983 42.9% 48.4% 8.7%
1989 46.9% 46.5% 6.6%
1992 45.6% 46.7% 7.7%
1995 47.2% 45.9% 7.0%
1998 47.3% 43.6% 9.1%
2001 39.7% 51.5% 8.7%
2004 42.2% 50.3% 7.5%
2007 42.7% 50.3% 7.0%
Source: Wolff (2010).
Wolff, E. N. (2007). Recent trends in household wealth in the United States: Rising debt and the middle-class squeeze. Working Paper No. 502. Annandale-on-Hudson, NY: The Levy Economics Institute of Bard College.
Wolff, E. N. (2010). Recent trends in household wealth in the United States: Rising debt and the middle-class squeeze – an update to 2007. Working Paper No. 589. Annandale-on-Hudson, NY: The Levy Economics Institute of Bard College.
Tony,
Thanks for the email.
Interesting stats. I’ve some questions but I promised to shut up, so I will. Let me know if you would like to discuss further.
Wow the conversation has really spiraled! I’m not sure were to fit in, I’ll read through it, and see what/where I want to comment (on).
I will initially say the argument I here from righties about Moore’s supposed wealth, is a rich one. Lefties, who are socialist leaning (of which I am, and I believe Tony is as well) do not abject to someone doing well within his/her profession, rather we want the top and bottom directors (the profession we are speaking on here) salaries to be with a reasonable number of each other. In Orwell’s fantastic ‘Why I Write’ I believe he puts the number at 10-15%, which seems fair to me. Rather in America we see CEO’s making 200+% what there average employee makes. Besides, Moore has acquired wealth doing something good, or trying to draw light on important injustices, to lump him in with the idle rich Tony is almost certainly speaking of is grossly untrue, and a great trick that every righty I’ve ever know uses.
So because someone argues against injustice they shouldn’t be allowed to become successful? That’s such a bogus Bill O’Reilly argument, that if the left played by that it would ruin ANY mainstream opposition to the conservatives of the world.
Tony said “the rich” not the “idle rich” or the “unproductive rich” and I responded in kind. I’d say let this particular conversation die on the vine and focus on the one above for now. However, since you responded to some of my points, I’ll respond in turn.
You are also describing a social-democratic viewpoint which is not shared by everyone on the left (anarchists would rather pull out the property-protection foundation altogether making questions of “limiting” someone’s income irrelevant; full-on Marxism-Leninism would put the state in charge of professions, not regulating them, but running them so that, again, talking of someone like Moore “doing well” financially in his profession would be impossible).
And Jamie, who defines what doing something “good” is? You? Government bureaucrats? Are we going to have good professions and bad ones – and if not, if you’re speaking only of private opinion, what bearing does this have on the discussion?
“So because someone argues against injustice they shouldn’t be allowed to become successful?”
Um, where did I say anything remotely like that? I just
pointed outimplied that it may be hypocritical for someone to advocate the redistribution of wealth and yet not redistribute their own. The are “allowed” to do whatever they want, that doesn’t mean they can’t be criticized.We’re playing fast and loose with definitions and labels again. I suggest we return to the parameters of the previous, step-by-step discussion.
And, pray tell, what percentage of Moore’s profits (not salary; many CEOs are not
highly paidmaking the majority of their take-home from salary but get great stock options, so I presume it’s profits not salary you’re objecting to here) do the grips and production assistants on his films make? The point at any rate was not whether Moore operates by the rules HE advocates (which are not entirely clear, as he tends more to criticize than hypothesize, and to couch his criticisms in varying terms – sometimes mainstream, sometimes more left) but whether or not a left critique and opposition to “the rich” automatically go hand-in-hand. Tony, by advocating a left critique and opposing it the existence of “the rich” suggested this was so; I brought up Moore to provide a counter-example.Jamie, one last note and then, having made myself clear we can return to the original discussion (which perhaps should be relegated to e-mail and then reproduced here when it’s wound-up so that it does not get lost in the shuffle). Hopefully you do not take offense at this; as I say, you’re obviously intelligent and when we’ve moved the discussion onto logical rather than emotionally-loaded ground, you’ve proven more than willing to play ball. (And finally, I will definitely offer that I also lose my cool way too often in these types of discussions, which is one reason they often turn out to be unproductive.)
One of the stronger points of the left is its ability to criticize ideological allies. Orwell, whom you highlight above, is of course a shining example of this. This can be a drawback too – both because it does not necessarily lead to full-on self-criticism (in a sense, socialists warning against communists, or anarchist libertarians checking establishment liberals are still attacking the “other”) and because it can lead to political ineffectiveness, hence the longing from time to time for a popular front. Nonetheless, I think it’s a welcome attribute – a tendency to keep itself in check – which the right is usually more prone to lack (for example, while some conservatives broke away from the administration on Iraq, the debate over both the decision to go to war and the subsequent conduct was largely left vs. right; contrast with the first 4-5 years of the Vietnam conflict, which was largely in intra-left struggle).
What has sometimes befuddled me in my discussions with you, is that you seem to lack any such impulse. You characterize the left in exclusively positive terms, generalize to obscure differences between different and often opposing groups on the left, and engage in cliches about the right (really? no conservative friends, relatives, neighbors?? at least no even moderately tolerable ones?!). Your politics seem to have a single-minded intensity which I find perplexing, particularly as you’re obviously a smart and knowledgeable guy. You lack a certain political self-consciousness, a kernel of liberal skepticism and cautiousness, which I tend to take for granted (most liberals and conservatives I know are self-aware and willing to criticize at least some aspects of their own “side”), and so constantly I’m stymied by your totally un-concessionary tone.
Part of what I hope for with the longer discussion (which so far has been much more reasonable and productive than our previous exchanges) is, by reducing the embattled aspect and turning towards analytical rather than polemical means, we can come to a more nuanced understanding if not agreement on the role of politics in art and in life. Anyway, that’s all.
As for Bill O’Reilly, speaking of nuance, apparently he’s losing popularity on the right for going after Wall Street as well as Michael Moore, and not going for the jugular on Obama et al. with the same vitriol as a Beck. Doesn’t make him a saint, or right about everything else, but it’s worth considering in the rush to characterize all members of a “movement” as like-minded (something I’m guilty of doing sometimes too, by the way, mea maxima culpa).
“What has sometimes befuddled me in my discussions with you, is that you seem to lack any such impulse. You characterize the left in exclusively positive terms, generalize to obscure differences between different and often opposing groups on the left, and engage in cliches about the right (really? no conservative friends, relatives, neighbors?? at least no even moderately tolerable ones?!). Your politics seem to have a single-minded intensity which I find perplexing, particularly as you’re obviously a smart and knowledgeable guy. You lack a certain political self-consciousness, a kernel of liberal skepticism and cautiousness, which I tend to take for granted (most liberals and conservatives I know are self-aware and willing to criticize at least some aspects of their own “side”), and so constantly I’m stymied by your totally un-concessionary tone.”
This, to me, is neither here nor there. Do I question ‘the Left’ capital L as an organization/movement. Yes, everyday. I feel it needs to do any number of things differently on any number of issues. But when I speak politics (or really anything for that matter) I speak on personal things to me, or in me and how I personally feel about them. The left that I talk with you about, that you claim I am not skeptical about is the left that only I feel (the left that I define). Of course personally I am skeptical–I am a diagnosed self-loather after all–but in our discussions we are (or I am) merely stating what it is we believe. I have said in the past that politics to me is not an intellectual game, it’s something that lives and breathes in the real world, and affects peoples lives in real ways (mostly I believe in the negative). It’s not something that should be bookishly debated where one is awarded points for how well there argument looks, or how much one can claim to be safely in the middle.
To get more personal, I come from a family of staunch Union/blue collar workers (and sure I have select friends and family that are conservative but this really doesn’t matter), with even some holding positions of power within said movement. I was the first male on my fathers side to attend college. I was always taught to view these things as plainly as one could. Debate personally, then act. Your constant arguing for the Right, (when perhaps you don’t even feel that way is something I detest) just to seem ‘fair’ or ‘skeptical’ of all sides is akin to giving argument to a side that neither needs another voice, or needs a hand to reassert there already held position of power. It’s like my friends who accuse me of wanting a ‘class war’ (something I could hear you perhaps saying to me if we were chums), to which I always say: “the class I come from has already had war thrust on them since the beginning of time.”
I may be aggressive, I may have ‘single-minded intensity’, but when one is young, and when one has seen what I have seen, and felt what I have felt and have only two choices in front of me, I must be strident. I must be intense on my stances. The skepticism must be (and has) already been dealt with in house. I have the rest of my life when I am beat down and tired to ease on stances. Or does one call this ‘succumbing’? Until then I’ll be forceful and assured, because I know I am right in this matter.
‘Part of what I hope for with the longer discussion (which so far has been much more reasonable and productive than our previous exchanges) is, by reducing the embattled aspect and turning towards analytical rather than polemical means, we can come to a more nuanced understanding if not agreement on the role of politics in art and in life. Anyway, that’s all.”
This is what I do not understand. We can get analytical about art and politics, but I feel I simply cannot talk about either without getting personal, or expressive. These topics are just do serious not to. I can talk analytically about painting, or a specific film’s craft, but if we are going to talk seriously about great art’s impact in the world I fell we both must be heated (if we disagree that is). If we stick to a purly analytical discussion but I fear all we’ll talk about is things like craft, color, composition. Strictly text-book things, I want personalities weighing heavily in the discussion.
I feel I know you well enough, and respect you enough that things can get heated and I will not feel offended by anything you say.
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Rereading what you’ve said maybe I just reiterated what you’ve said. Damn this internet language barrier.
Jamie, thanks – and as I said to Tony in an e-mail I may be taking grumpiness due to other circumstances and letting it inappropriately filter into discussions here (though of course there are other factors at play too). I respect where you are coming from and the fact that your internet statements do not necessarily reflect your total worldview or temperament or whatever.
There are numerous reasons I am so keen on analysis and logic, which you see perhaps correctly as somewhat cold-blooded. Among others, I weary of the muddle one finds oneself in when “feelings” are allowed to guide and the clarity of intellect can be refreshing to me (it can also be tiring and withering, and I find myself swinging back and forth, back and forth between the two poles – right now for whatever reason, I’m in the midst of a pitch towards the rational…). Based on what I’ve observed in personal life and elsewhere, I have an instinctive loathing of letting feelings take the lead over facts. A post or a rock of common ground, frame of reference I find necessary to avoid slipping into the maelstrom – that way madness lies, perhaps the most dangerous madness being a sureness based on (erroneous) instinct rather than analysis.
But, as someone once said in not quite these words, I have an ear to the norm and an ear to the weird. The former quality is what usually comes through on the web, as I am able to express myself more coherently and find an outlet for a intellectual activity which frankly does not find any other outlet in my life (aside from very occasional conversations with friends, which I generally enjoy less and find myself less able to make myself coherently than when writing). Plus I’m at a stage in my life when I was trying to keep my head above water and carve out a little space of ground upon which I can build – so single-mindedness and rationalism are at their premium.
When I have parsed out aesthetics vs. ethics before, consigning one to the realm of art and the other to politics it is partially for these reasons. Since we are discussing politics, I would note that above all political decisions have consequences, real-world effects on people’s lives as you yourself note. So I think it behooves us to try and remove our gut instincts and emotional impulses from the scenario and take a cold, hard look at every argument on the table just to see if they have anything to offer we might have missed in our initial prejudice. I don’t want to be trapped into one way of thinking, agreeing to a stand on one issue because it typically aligns with my position on another, even as this connection may have historical reasons that are not well-based philosophically (or practically). I also have a bit of protectiveness/defensiveness about myself, and whenever I feel somebody pressing a view onto me, I resist. Here, these views usually come from the left, elsewhere they come from the right. All of this will probably be discussed in the next batch of comments in our ongoing conversation (which I hope you do not despair of though, probably like you, I very much want to wait a few weeks before jumping back in).
“It’s not something that should be bookishly debated where one is awarded points for how well there argument looks, or how much one can claim to be safely in the middle.” No, but the arguments should be judged in how well they hold up to scrutiny/opposition, and how effectively they achieve their desired end if put into practice. The middle is neither here nor there. I am centrist inasmuch as I am generally pragmatic and willing to look at arguments of both left and right, but I will not adopt a position because it is in the “middle” but rather because I think it is correct, even if it lands well within one or the other tradition. According to Jonah Goldberg, this makes me a “liberal fascist”. Oh well.
If I “argue” a position I don’t believe in – something I’m not sure I’m guilty of – I may in fact be reminding someone of an opposing viewpoint, just to temper their own. Viewpoint may be misguided or wrong, but it’s worth considering and rebutting rather than ignoring. And not just from a standpoint of outside analysis, either. If you want to rebut the voices that “already held position of power” you need to familiarize yourself with and overcome their arguments on their own terms. It’s not just a contest of raw political power, or rather if it is it also involves the winning of hearts and minds, particularly in a society like America where a large number of citizens view politics with suspicion and like to consider themselves independent-minded (yep, I’ll admit, guilty as charged).
Lately I’ve become interested in the book, which I’ve not yet read, “Rules for Radicals” by Saul Alinsky. This seems like something you’d be acquainted with/a fan of. Have you read it/what did you think? I like what I’ve heard (even though, ironically, I was hearing it characterized by someone arguing against it!).
By the way, as art sometimes gets denigrated in lieu of politics, I like that you’ve included both as matters of importance! They really address different spheres of life, and while some might feel that art is trivial compared to politics I like to remember that if politics is the fight for (or, in some cases, against) opportunity, art is the fruit of this opportunity; it reflects what we do with the life we are able to attain/achieve amidst the struggle, whatever its particular nature.
On art, one must be careful about segregating too strongly the craft, color, composition arguments from the emotional appeal. The best analysis will fuse what you dismiss as the “text-book qualities” with the visceral impact and remind us why those qualities were considered important before they got coated in a layer of dust in some dry academic tome. Particularly when one is hoping to create art oneself, as I believe you are (like me). One generally creates by instinct, of course, but it’s an instinct best informed by (preferably self-)education and knowledge, which are submerged to the subconscious level and then manifest themselves again in action. Someone like Godard is a great example of this – he was hyper-conscious of course, but in a way that never mitigated impulsiveness or spontaneity, and for all the severe intellectual analysis of his film the sense one usually gets is of a jazz improviser, soaked in a discipline, but never knowing at a particular moment where he’s going to go next.
Apropos, someone (ironically, a conservative on another message board) pointed me to this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDVy1-fkK7U&feature=fvsr A fictionalized account of the Weather Underground made in the 70s with Sissy Spacek. I have zero respect for the WUO politically (incidentally, a position shared by a great many of their radical peers) but find them endlessly fascinating. Looking forward to this pic; apparently it also features a young Henry Winkler.
Oddly enough, given the content, it’s one of those You Tube vids with advertisements spliced in…
MOVIEMAN-Im NOT, as you say, a “self-confessed Glenn Beck fan”. However, I think some of what he talks about is true/correct. I’m no huge fan of Barrack Obama but, like Beck, I derive some of what he says as true/correct as well. I’m neither die-hard Democrat or staunch Republican. I like to think of myself a “Logician” (I can hear the chuckling comparisons to Mr. Spock beginning-LOL!). In my assessment of both men and their views I’d like to think we can incorporate some of the best things they represent into the social/political field. Logic seems, to me, something the politico’s have forgotten about these days and, if they applied it, using a bit from this party and that, maybe, just maybe, we could all just get along and make some truly remarkable changes and progress. There is no logic to war. There is no logic to banning abortion or bailing out companies without regulation. Logic dictates that if we step back, take deep breaths and think about all sides of an argument; we can make a difference.
“Logic dictates that if we step back, take deep breaths and think about all sides of an argument; we can make a difference.”
That more or less sums up my own attempted approach as well – with the caveat that, like everyone else, I need to work on stepping back and taking deep breaths.
JOEL-Trust me. If I didn’t take deep breaths and step back and think, I’d be slamming my head against the desk all day long.