“63-been away but keeping tabs, nevertheless. Interesting thread, the only block and it's a dusy, is the one of vested interests. Some investiture goes back hundreds of years, by now transformed and renamed , fronted by various corporate entities. The problem with interest, is, beside relentlessly in need of being propped up, is it's dynamic working on a built in compensative effort to counter diminishing returns. “
The scary thing here, Obe, was something brought to my attention by Chris Hedges based on a book by Sheldon Wolin in that what we are dealing with now is a kind of inverted totalitarianism in which the market is given privilege over state. The thing we have to ask here, given those “vested interests” that are confronting “diminishing returns” as the consumer base is depleted by a widening wealth gap that, in turn, increases the differential between the general exchange value and the buying power created, is what will happen when the rich no longer have a market to justify their position of power. We have to wonder if they won’t turn to a classical totalitarianism in which the state they own will be given privilege over everything.
There is, however, one thing in our favor. In order to maintain this classical totalitarianism, the rich will have to also own the military; they will have to use them as a well compensated cushion between them and those they would exploit. And they would have to do as much with the government. The problem is that the very logic of Capitalism is dependent on the flow of money. In other words, their wealth would mean basically squat in a world in which there was no flow of exchange. The rich, in order to hold their leverage, would have to have something else of import like access to food or air (as was the case in the older version of Total Recall). Still, we have no way of knowing that they wouldn’t have some way bypassing that catch.
“As Deleuze and Guattarri point out: Capitalism, technically, should be a force of de-territorialization (freedom); but there is something about it that is constantly re-territorializing (the tyranny of the functional and profitable –or that which enslaves us to our role as producer/consumers).”
“Yes, because it's also the freedom to territorialize outside of state-restrictions. Freedom is not just for those who are relatively relaxed, it's also for those who are very tense and really need to be in control. And I think that's probably about half the human population. It's really not a question of a few bad apples. I never believed in the theory of cruelty as exception. The Prison Experiment is a good example of how the majority of human beings can be compelled by power and hierarchy and -- fear of being different.
Ah, the fear of difference
the fear of ones own difference
the compulsion to repeat the patterns of parents, peers, and professional superiors appears almost omnipotent.”
As luck would have it, F.C., I came across a point in Claire Colebrook’s book on Deleuze that sheds a little light on this:
“Being untimely, for Deleuze, meant being more than anti-capitalist. It meant disrupting the force that had allowed capitalism to emerge: the tendency to sameness, uniform quantification, the fixing of all becomings through one measure or ‘territory’ (of capital). Capitalism is only possible because we can reduce the complexity and difference of life to a single system of exchange.” -Colebrook, Claire (2002-12-07). Gilles Deleuze (Routledge Critical Thinkers) (p. 65). Taylor & Francis. Kindle Edition.
In other words, it is the reduction of everything to what is quantifiable in terms of the exchange of capitol that is the source of the reterritorializing force of Capitalism. And if you think about it, the Capitalist’s use of a hyper-intensification of difference (the constant state of change facilitated by the progress in technology (that which we experience as speed smear( ends up being the reason the competitive model of the base/cognitive sensibility feels so compelled to the order of the quantifiable that Capitalism offers it. In this sense, it becomes similar to the staged event involved in Orwell’s 1984 in which a fabricated rebellion is used as justification for the draconian measures of the state.
But something else I want to point out, F.C., is that my evolutionary backlash model, that in which the base of the brain is struggling to maintain its dominion over the cognitive (that which resists the next evolutionary step of the cooperative model), is not just a matter of the authoritarian element in republicans, but a matter of the authoritarian elements we experience on these boards as well in the form of TlBs (Troll-like Behaviors). We see it, for instance, in the analytical over-reach of those who claim that just because they use words like “objectivity” or “reason” or “the scientific method” or “facts”, they have the right to assert their conjectures and speculations as if they have the same fact status as 1+1=2. We see this in those who make claims like “the mind is just the brain” based on the sense that it sounds more scientific than dualism of any form –that is despite the fact that you are experiencing it as you read this. As Raymond Tallis rightly calls it: the neuromaniac is as much an expression of our obsolete evolutionary heritage (the competitive model) as Capitalism as grand narrative is.
I would also include in this the mentality we know from Satyr and KTS: that of the basement overman, the neo-Nietzscheian gospel of the fearlessly fanciful, and that which Tallis referred to as Darwinitus and Putman as Macho Ethics.
And we can also see, in these terms, the influence of corporate sponsorship in universities as state funds dwindle. As Colebrook put it:
“In capitalism everything becomes measured by money or quantity – even the commodity value of art and the information value of concepts.” -Colebrook, Claire (2002-12-07). Gilles Deleuze (Routledge Critical Thinkers) (p. 65). Taylor & Francis. Kindle Edition.
Back when I worked as a part-time janitor in office buildings, I noticed a tendency in a lot of the art I saw to use gold-leaf –like they were jewelry for the designer’s environment. It was as if it was there as an expression of corporate power. And can’t we see a similar quantifiable element in the dominance of analytic philosophy in our universities? Doesn’t it seem far more profitable to produce a Dennett, Pinker, or Searle who will celebrate the power of science and technology (thanks Capitalism) than a Rorty, Deleuze, or even a Marxian Critical Theorist that will question it?
Postcards:
Re: Postcards:
I have figured out how to destroy the tea party in America:
Have all Democrats in Red states switch their affiliation to the republican party. That way they become a factor in the primaries. This would force the republicans to take more moderate positions in order to even get in the running.
Those democrats can vote however they want in the general election.
Have all Democrats in Red states switch their affiliation to the republican party. That way they become a factor in the primaries. This would force the republicans to take more moderate positions in order to even get in the running.
Those democrats can vote however they want in the general election.
Re: Postcards:
I am not entirely sure you need to get rid of the Tea Party as of course all ridiculous numb nuts in politics in at least a democracy of sorts is of course going to destroy themselves.
No if I might suggest, by Vectron's Beard! The best thing I think is to just sit back and laugh at the fools. After all politics is a joke these days, so you might as well have fun at the expense of the loonies before you are forced to vote for a turd sandwich over a vaginal douche once again by the electoral process, or some mad rapper with a gun, or whatever passes for democracy in your neck of the world. In our neck of the world it's not even democracy any more as the voter turn out is so low, you might as well call it a dictatorship, as everyone's just fed up with the pricks. Who gets in in our neck of the humiliating democracy we like to call politics, really depends these days on if you are old and can be assed to drag you demented sorry arse into a voting boothe to vote the same way you ever did because you weren't going to let Hitler in. 67% of the electorate can't be assed to drag themselves out of bed to vote for yet another turgid wanker who lies over and over again, it's surprising the figure who actually care any more is close to a third over those who don't, by next general election it will be 10% I hope, because these cunts we are given to vote for are just wasting everyone's time...
No if I might suggest, by Vectron's Beard! The best thing I think is to just sit back and laugh at the fools. After all politics is a joke these days, so you might as well have fun at the expense of the loonies before you are forced to vote for a turd sandwich over a vaginal douche once again by the electoral process, or some mad rapper with a gun, or whatever passes for democracy in your neck of the world. In our neck of the world it's not even democracy any more as the voter turn out is so low, you might as well call it a dictatorship, as everyone's just fed up with the pricks. Who gets in in our neck of the humiliating democracy we like to call politics, really depends these days on if you are old and can be assed to drag you demented sorry arse into a voting boothe to vote the same way you ever did because you weren't going to let Hitler in. 67% of the electorate can't be assed to drag themselves out of bed to vote for yet another turgid wanker who lies over and over again, it's surprising the figure who actually care any more is close to a third over those who don't, by next general election it will be 10% I hope, because these cunts we are given to vote for are just wasting everyone's time...
Re: Postcards:
Actually, Blaggard, as I thought about it at work, I realized that I was presenting a 2 edge sword: while the Democrats could follow my suggestion in Red States, the Republicans could do as much in Blue states. At best, it might bring both parties closer to the middle. Consider it brainstorming that didn't work out as well I thought it did at the time.
That said, I sympathize with your cynicism. In my neck of the woods, it's beginning to feel like Democracy is little more than a smokescreen for the emerging aristocracy/oligarchy of Global Capitalism.
At the same time, I think America is in an exceptional position in that it is engaging in the dangerous hegemony of American Exceptionalism that borders on the fascistic. I mean it: listening to a lot of these people and their unquestioning embrace of producer/consumer Capitalism is a little like being in a version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. And this, I think, results from our being a relatively young nation still in an adolescent phase that expresses itself in the notion that if we weren't #1, the world would fall apart. The absurdity and irrationality of lies in the data that shows we are far from #1 in just about everything but military strength and the confidence expressed by our teenagers –that is despite the fact that they are low-score by most educational standards (imagine a NAZI in a pub who talks like they know it all while being fundamentally ignorant) .
To give you a sense of the irrationality at work here: if I were to tell a lot of the people around me that Canadians pay less for healthcare per Capita than America, that gets lost on our true believers in Capitalism or outright denied as the bullying of elitist social scientists. But feed them a tall tale of a Canadian pregnant woman put on a 10 month waiting list and they will eat it up whether it’s true or not. And even if you took them to Canada to talk to pregnant women and show it to be nonsense, they won’t admit that they’re wrong. They’ll just wait for Fox News to offer them the latest buzz phrase (such as Palin’s “Death Panels”) to rationalize their self interested desire to keep the healthcare they have even if it means others will die because of it –and that is when many people who have insurance are going bankrupt if they happen to get sick.
And this, once again, results from the evolutionary backlash of our baser impulses (the competitive model in which the base has dominion over our higher cognitive functions) resisting the next stage in our evolution: the cooperative model in which our baser impulses do not dominate, but rather work in tandem with our higher cognitive functions.
And this is what puts America in such an exceptional position: the exceptional role it is playing in this backlash, due to its adolescent phase, as it sits back and watches while global corporations engage in the coup of starving the economies of other western industrialized nations in order to force the issue of austerity measures that will force them to give up the safety nets they had the maturity to develop in the first place –that, BTW, which America should actually be gravitating to.
If there is anything that makes America exceptional right now, it is its exceptional potential for an atrocity as bad as any committed by other countries throughout our history. America is a sick culture. And it is spreading that sickness.
Sorry about that, BTW.
That said, I sympathize with your cynicism. In my neck of the woods, it's beginning to feel like Democracy is little more than a smokescreen for the emerging aristocracy/oligarchy of Global Capitalism.
At the same time, I think America is in an exceptional position in that it is engaging in the dangerous hegemony of American Exceptionalism that borders on the fascistic. I mean it: listening to a lot of these people and their unquestioning embrace of producer/consumer Capitalism is a little like being in a version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. And this, I think, results from our being a relatively young nation still in an adolescent phase that expresses itself in the notion that if we weren't #1, the world would fall apart. The absurdity and irrationality of lies in the data that shows we are far from #1 in just about everything but military strength and the confidence expressed by our teenagers –that is despite the fact that they are low-score by most educational standards (imagine a NAZI in a pub who talks like they know it all while being fundamentally ignorant) .
To give you a sense of the irrationality at work here: if I were to tell a lot of the people around me that Canadians pay less for healthcare per Capita than America, that gets lost on our true believers in Capitalism or outright denied as the bullying of elitist social scientists. But feed them a tall tale of a Canadian pregnant woman put on a 10 month waiting list and they will eat it up whether it’s true or not. And even if you took them to Canada to talk to pregnant women and show it to be nonsense, they won’t admit that they’re wrong. They’ll just wait for Fox News to offer them the latest buzz phrase (such as Palin’s “Death Panels”) to rationalize their self interested desire to keep the healthcare they have even if it means others will die because of it –and that is when many people who have insurance are going bankrupt if they happen to get sick.
And this, once again, results from the evolutionary backlash of our baser impulses (the competitive model in which the base has dominion over our higher cognitive functions) resisting the next stage in our evolution: the cooperative model in which our baser impulses do not dominate, but rather work in tandem with our higher cognitive functions.
And this is what puts America in such an exceptional position: the exceptional role it is playing in this backlash, due to its adolescent phase, as it sits back and watches while global corporations engage in the coup of starving the economies of other western industrialized nations in order to force the issue of austerity measures that will force them to give up the safety nets they had the maturity to develop in the first place –that, BTW, which America should actually be gravitating to.
If there is anything that makes America exceptional right now, it is its exceptional potential for an atrocity as bad as any committed by other countries throughout our history. America is a sick culture. And it is spreading that sickness.
Sorry about that, BTW.
Re: Postcards:
QFT ed and join the club.d63 wrote:Actually, Blaggard, as I thought about it at work, I realized that I was presenting a 2 edge sword: while the Democrats could follow my suggestion in Red States, the Republicans could do as much in Blue states. At best, it might bring both parties closer to the middle. Consider it brainstorming that didn't work out as well I thought it did at the time.
That said, I sympathize with your cynicism. In my neck of the woods, it's beginning to feel like Democracy is little more than a smokescreen for the emerging aristocracy/oligarchy of Global Capitalism.
At the same time, I think America is in an exceptional position in that it is engaging in the dangerous hegemony of American Exceptionalism that borders on the fascistic. I mean it: listening to a lot of these people and their unquestioning embrace of producer/consumer Capitalism is a little like being in a version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. And this, I think, results from our being a relatively young nation still in an adolescent phase that expresses itself in the notion that if we weren't #1, the world would fall apart. The absurdity and irrationality of lies in the data that shows we are far from #1 in just about everything but military strength and the confidence expressed by our teenagers –that is despite the fact that they are low-score by most educational standards (imagine a NAZI in a pub who talks like they know it all while being fundamentally ignorant) .
To give you a sense of the irrationality at work here: if I were to tell a lot of the people around me that Canadians pay less for healthcare per Capita than America, that gets lost on our true believers in Capitalism or outright denied as the bullying of elitist social scientists. But feed them a tall tale of a Canadian pregnant woman put on a 10 month waiting list and they will eat it up whether it’s true or not. And even if you took them to Canada to talk to pregnant women and show it to be nonsense, they won’t admit that they’re wrong. They’ll just wait for Fox News to offer them the latest buzz phrase (such as Palin’s “Death Panels”) to rationalize their self interested desire to keep the healthcare they have even if it means others will die because of it –and that is when many people who have insurance are going bankrupt if they happen to get sick.
And this, once again, results from the evolutionary backlash of our baser impulses (the competitive model in which the base has dominion over our higher cognitive functions) resisting the next stage in our evolution: the cooperative model in which our baser impulses do not dominate, but rather work in tandem with our higher cognitive functions.
And this is what puts America in such an exceptional position: the exceptional role it is playing in this backlash, due to its adolescent phase, as it sits back and watches while global corporations engage in the coup of starving the economies of other western industrialized nations in order to force the issue of austerity measures that will force them to give up the safety nets they had the maturity to develop in the first place –that, BTW, which America should actually be gravitating to.
If there is anything that makes America exceptional right now, it is its exceptional potential for an atrocity as bad as any committed by other countries throughout our history. America is a sick culture. And it is spreading that sickness.
Sorry about that, BTW.
That post of course deserves a more considered answer, but sadly it is later here, and I have to get my beauty sleep. So I will just say I think, it's not unhealthy, to question government, and it's not unhealthy to be cynical about it, after all a patriot if such a person exists may not burn the flag, probably wont piss on it, but when he sees his country going by the way he is the first in line to protest about the misdemeanor of its character.
Now don't get me wrong I am not a patriot per se and not because I am a wishy washy actual liberal or anything like that, but more because as Samuel Johnson once said: patriotism is the last resort of the scoundrel, and you will never have a peaceful world if you don't knock the patriotism out of the human race was opined by George Bernard Shaw in the same light. But I do I think like to see my country and my neck of the woods be something more than a **** in the world, I guess hence you could just call me a dreamer, because I doubt it will happen in my lifetime.
"Patriot: the person who can holler the loudest without knowing what he is hollering about."
Mark Twain
" My position is that it isn't government's job to mandate patriotism. To me, mandating a pledge of allegiance to a government is something Saddam Hussein would do."
Jesse Ventura.
"When I am abroad, I always make it a rule never to criticize or attack the government of my own country. I make up for lost time when I come home."
Sir Winston Churchill.
Incidentally this next quote is possibly the most obvious and trite thing any man has ever said, and yet ironically it is possible the least understood thing any man has ever heard.
"Part of the problem with extreme patriotism is that it makes the support of one's country and its policies unconditional. Moderate patriots, on the other hand, see that taking morality seriously requires that our commitment to our country be conditional in two ways. First, the actions or policies of a government must be worthy of support or, at least, must not be serious violations of morality. When nations behave immorally, patriots need not support them."
"
Stephen Nathanson.
Lazy I know I could of argued that in my own words, but tempis fugit. And of course better men have said it better than I ever could.
Re: Postcards:
Profound, nevertheless, Blaggard.
Enjoyed the post.
Enjoyed the post.
Re: Postcards:
I think the main reason I find myself drawn to French philosophy (specifically that of Deleuze) is what has evolved from its honorable tradition of dissent going back to romanticism. While we can equally develop the tools of dissent through the German tradition (Nietszche, Marx, and the Frankfurt School), Americans such as Rorty (who can at a more pragmatic level can get us to a place similar to Deleuze’s), and I’m certain there are examples from the UK I really wish I could quote right now (Keyene’s perhaps and definitely Russell –not to mention the Sex Pistols), the French have developed it to the point of recognizing phenomenon (almost metaphysical in nature) at the core of our existence that may be the source of our draw to our own oppression, an important problem for me given the authoritarian elements that increasingly dominate American culture. However, I’m not exactly working in my comfort zone here. So please be patient as I fumble my way, via Claire Colebrook’s book on Deleuze, towards connecting some of the revelations that have come to me.
I start with the raw engagement by which we deal with the reality. We see the object. It immediately affects us with a chaotic bombardment of qualities which our brain/mind complexes (either through the faculties as Deleuze describes it or the multiple drafts model as Dennett describes it) form into an experience of recognition due to the repetition of similar experiences that are always different than the previous repetition. This is the passive synthesis which is creative in nature and productive contrary to the ideologies that would insist that the only real work happens in the active synthesis of thought: that which establishes us as a subject forming judgments on the world. The problem is that due to the evolutionary source of thought, all we are really doing when we think is reacting to what we see. As Colebrook puts it:
“This is why we see a simplified world of extended objects, for we see what concerns us.”-Colebrook, Claire (2002-12-07). Gilles Deleuze (Routledge Critical Thinkers) (p. 40). Taylor & Francis. Kindle Edition.
To put it in evolutionary terms: thought is an act; and we act according to what we see. It’s the main reason we evolved the power of sight (or any of our other senses) in the first place. And while this has been useful and even necessary to our being here now, it may also be the source of our fascistic impulses. And this is what lies at the bottom of the absurd reasoning of the authoritarian sensibility. It is, for instance, an explanation for something I have to deal with as an American:
“To give you a sense of the irrationality at work here: if I were to tell a lot of the people around me that Canadians pay less for healthcare per Capita than America, that gets lost on our true believers in Capitalism or outright denied as the bullying of elitist social scientists. But feed them a tall tale of a Canadian pregnant woman put on a 10 month waiting list and they will eat it up whether it’s true or not. And even if you took them to Canada to talk to pregnant women and show it to be nonsense, they won’t admit that they’re wrong. They’ll just wait for Fox News to offer them the latest buzz phrase (such as Palin’s “Death Panels”) to rationalize their self interested desire to keep the healthcare they have even if it means others will die because of it –and that is when many people who have insurance are going bankrupt if they happen to get sick.”
This, in turn, goes back to Colebrook:
“We submit to repressive regimes, Deleuze argues, not because we are mistaken but because we desire certain affects.” -Colebrook, Claire (2002-12-07). Gilles Deleuze (Routledge Critical Thinkers) (p. 40). Taylor & Francis. Kindle Edition.
And the certain effects our American authoritarians seek can be found on Fox News which, via its stamp of corporate approval, props up the absurd reasoning (that which proves to be little more than rationalization) of those who seek to defend pure self interest (based on the dogmatic notion of a subject separate from and passing judgment on the world of objects (our baser impulses passing themselves off as more cognitive than they really are) via a kind of in-crowd mentality.
Now we could approach this at a more blue-collar level by recognizing that we seek our own repression out of repulsion to chaos. And sometimes this can be freeing, as Zizek points out, in that we will commit to certain repetitions or routines in order to free our minds to pursue our higher selves. Take Einstein’s wardrobe for instance. But it can also be taken to a fascistic extreme. This is because, as Colebrook later points out, our need to put things in order is rooted in our very experience of time:
“ Our relation to time is ethical and political precisely because it is our way of living time (or our ‘duration’) which explains the problem of politics: how is it that our desire submits to its own repression ? The very nature of time, for Deleuze, explains the way in which life can react against itself. Time creates certain ‘internal illusions’. (We do not need to posit some deceiving enemy outside life – such as ‘patriarchy’, evil, or ‘the capitalist’ – to explain our repression.) From the complex flow of time we produce ordered wholes – such as the notion of the human self. We then imagine that this self preceded or grounded the flow of time rather than being an effect of time.” -Colebrook, Claire (2002-12-07). Gilles Deleuze (Routledge Critical Thinkers) (p. 41). Taylor & Francis. Kindle Edition.
We are never in a present moment but are rather the resonant effect of what is slipping into memory and that future we are projecting into. No matter where we think we are, we are either 1 step behind or ahead of it. Imagine how hard that must seem on a self that wants to believe it is a self in complete control. Why wouldn’t it want to turn to dogma and higher principles (transcendence) in order to feel the fullness of being it cannot? Why wouldn’t it turn to:
“….the sensible intensities of political rallies: the anthems, the rhythm of speeches and marches, and the use of colour.” -Colebrook, Claire (2002-12-07). Gilles Deleuze (Routledge Critical Thinkers) (p. 40). Taylor & Francis. Kindle Edition.
I start with the raw engagement by which we deal with the reality. We see the object. It immediately affects us with a chaotic bombardment of qualities which our brain/mind complexes (either through the faculties as Deleuze describes it or the multiple drafts model as Dennett describes it) form into an experience of recognition due to the repetition of similar experiences that are always different than the previous repetition. This is the passive synthesis which is creative in nature and productive contrary to the ideologies that would insist that the only real work happens in the active synthesis of thought: that which establishes us as a subject forming judgments on the world. The problem is that due to the evolutionary source of thought, all we are really doing when we think is reacting to what we see. As Colebrook puts it:
“This is why we see a simplified world of extended objects, for we see what concerns us.”-Colebrook, Claire (2002-12-07). Gilles Deleuze (Routledge Critical Thinkers) (p. 40). Taylor & Francis. Kindle Edition.
To put it in evolutionary terms: thought is an act; and we act according to what we see. It’s the main reason we evolved the power of sight (or any of our other senses) in the first place. And while this has been useful and even necessary to our being here now, it may also be the source of our fascistic impulses. And this is what lies at the bottom of the absurd reasoning of the authoritarian sensibility. It is, for instance, an explanation for something I have to deal with as an American:
“To give you a sense of the irrationality at work here: if I were to tell a lot of the people around me that Canadians pay less for healthcare per Capita than America, that gets lost on our true believers in Capitalism or outright denied as the bullying of elitist social scientists. But feed them a tall tale of a Canadian pregnant woman put on a 10 month waiting list and they will eat it up whether it’s true or not. And even if you took them to Canada to talk to pregnant women and show it to be nonsense, they won’t admit that they’re wrong. They’ll just wait for Fox News to offer them the latest buzz phrase (such as Palin’s “Death Panels”) to rationalize their self interested desire to keep the healthcare they have even if it means others will die because of it –and that is when many people who have insurance are going bankrupt if they happen to get sick.”
This, in turn, goes back to Colebrook:
“We submit to repressive regimes, Deleuze argues, not because we are mistaken but because we desire certain affects.” -Colebrook, Claire (2002-12-07). Gilles Deleuze (Routledge Critical Thinkers) (p. 40). Taylor & Francis. Kindle Edition.
And the certain effects our American authoritarians seek can be found on Fox News which, via its stamp of corporate approval, props up the absurd reasoning (that which proves to be little more than rationalization) of those who seek to defend pure self interest (based on the dogmatic notion of a subject separate from and passing judgment on the world of objects (our baser impulses passing themselves off as more cognitive than they really are) via a kind of in-crowd mentality.
Now we could approach this at a more blue-collar level by recognizing that we seek our own repression out of repulsion to chaos. And sometimes this can be freeing, as Zizek points out, in that we will commit to certain repetitions or routines in order to free our minds to pursue our higher selves. Take Einstein’s wardrobe for instance. But it can also be taken to a fascistic extreme. This is because, as Colebrook later points out, our need to put things in order is rooted in our very experience of time:
“ Our relation to time is ethical and political precisely because it is our way of living time (or our ‘duration’) which explains the problem of politics: how is it that our desire submits to its own repression ? The very nature of time, for Deleuze, explains the way in which life can react against itself. Time creates certain ‘internal illusions’. (We do not need to posit some deceiving enemy outside life – such as ‘patriarchy’, evil, or ‘the capitalist’ – to explain our repression.) From the complex flow of time we produce ordered wholes – such as the notion of the human self. We then imagine that this self preceded or grounded the flow of time rather than being an effect of time.” -Colebrook, Claire (2002-12-07). Gilles Deleuze (Routledge Critical Thinkers) (p. 41). Taylor & Francis. Kindle Edition.
We are never in a present moment but are rather the resonant effect of what is slipping into memory and that future we are projecting into. No matter where we think we are, we are either 1 step behind or ahead of it. Imagine how hard that must seem on a self that wants to believe it is a self in complete control. Why wouldn’t it want to turn to dogma and higher principles (transcendence) in order to feel the fullness of being it cannot? Why wouldn’t it turn to:
“….the sensible intensities of political rallies: the anthems, the rhythm of speeches and marches, and the use of colour.” -Colebrook, Claire (2002-12-07). Gilles Deleuze (Routledge Critical Thinkers) (p. 40). Taylor & Francis. Kindle Edition.
Re: Postcards:
(Note: the point of the following is to post excerpts from the the more finished pieces I'll be working on for the next couple of weeks. And I do so not just out of Ego, or the hope of input (on both content and compositional issues), but, quite frankly, because I would miss you guys if I had to isolate and not have the oppurtunity to interact with you on the boards. It is not to irritate you. Christ! I'm not sure I could write without it.)
Watching Atlas Shrugged: My Struggle (and Rise) as a Fascist Looter
How I Got My Start:
I tried to take the high road and give it a chance. I really did. But then I had tried as much with Rand and The Virtue of Selfishness, but got so nauseous by the third essay, I had to put it down. And nothing I further read or heard about her tempered my disgust. Certainly not the movie biopic, the Passion of Ayn Rand, in which she has an affair with an intern after telling her husband and the intern’s girlfriend what they were going to do. This only came across as some kind of psychopathic notion of enlightened honesty and the self indulgence of a narcissistic bitch; the kind of woman that would eat her babies as a peer once pointed out. And I had assumed my sentiment to be common among the creative community. So imagine my surprise when I read that Atlas Shrugged was being made into a movie in an article that gave the misleading impression that Angelina Jolie was backing it. But then why not? God only knows what runs through that chick's mind. One sometimes gleams a hint of the psychopathic in that icy glare: that narrowing of the eyes as they zero in on the kill. Still, it seemed odd that the alleged Hollywood liberal elite would even consider it.
My curiosity had taken root and only intensified. Upon seeing a clip where Hank Reardon declares his utter indifference to the poor, I got the impression that it would be one of those moody independent films like The Blue Rose Hotel: a sort of cyberpunk Trojan horse in which subtle critique is cleverly concealed within tribute. Plus that, there was always the possibility of being surprised. I had always been impressed when talent from the other side managed to present old school and Christian values in a way digestible and empathetic enough to temper my own extremes and revise my mental concepts. Such sensibilities, even if I didn't share them, could clearly be presented in a dignified and non-sanctimonious manner as in the movie A River Runs Through It, Robert Duvall in such roles as Rambling Rose and Second Hand Lions, the work of Terrence Malick, and, hating on chairs aside, Clint Eastwood's classicist/conservative approach to filmmaking. So when I kept coming across it on Netflix, it was only a matter of time before I would set aside my political leanings, push the play button, resolve to not tarnish my intellectual integrity with petty heckling, and give the woman, her book, and her position their day in court. But then authentic Christian/classical values are something quite different than Capitalist ones.
It was a matter of minutes before the hope just dissipated when the second (if not third) rate production values revealed themselves. Many critics compared it to a TV mini-series. But I would equate it with the cheap B movies that are sometimes made for the ScyFy channel or shown on Fear Net. The only difference was that those films were generally innocuous enough to serve as mindless entertainment –something you stick with while rolling your eyes just to see if it ends in the way you predict. Atlas Shrugged, on the other hand, took the mean-spirited and paranoid route of conspiracy theory or holocaust denial: less the individual perspective that constitutes a work of art and more like war to anyone with a non-pathological sense of reality. I even began to suspect, perhaps out of denial, that what I was watching was not the theatrical release, but some made for TV knockoff much like the miniseries of Steven King's The Shining, that which stuck closer to the book at the expense of the production values, creativity, and style of Kubrick's version. Even when I recognized the clip where Reardon expresses his indifference to the poor, I wondered if it wasn't just another version of a key moment in the book. It just seemed odd that something like it would even be released in theaters, that some marketer would not have recognized that it might have made a better debut (it basically flopped with critics and the box office) in a more appropriate medium such as TV or straight to DVD. However, the more I watched and learned about it, the harder the possibility pressed itself: that ideological forces overrode business sense and the agents behind it thought they had something more profound than they actually did.
But I hung on anyway because between the cheesy production, the second rate special effects, the one dimensional portrayals given by the actors, and the talky ideology-laden dialogue, I had no choice but to focus on the message that was more or less being shoved down my throat. And while this approach seemed a little (maybe a lot( heavy-handed in Kevin Smith’s Dogma, and while I can now sympathize with the offense that Catholics may have felt in the face of that film, it gets really heavy handed and unsympathetic when you’re facing the equivalent of a master expecting the sympathy of the slave. It was, for me, becoming less about aesthetics and more about ideology, and a challenge I couldn't refuse.
My resolve continued to slip as a heavy handed contrast emerged between the protagonists and antagonists. In one corner of this mythical confrontation was the protagonists, Hank Reardon and Dagny Taggart, the respective heads of Reardon Steel and Taggart Transcontinental (a railway company), and champions of a miracle alloy that is lighter while being stronger; and in the other: the antagonists, those petty and bumbling government bureaucrats and rich quasi-socialists suffering from liberal guilt, the "looters" who skulked about plotting against the Promethean efforts of the supposed heroes, Reardon and Taggart. And as impressed as I was supposed to be by their heroics, I only found myself breaking into shrieks of mock whining:
"Why is everyone picking on me? Am I not the driver of progress? The job creator?"
In Rand's world, apparently, no one understands them. The only surprise was that the antagonists didn't have Hitleresque toothbrush mustaches that they could stroke as they contemplated their schemes and future victories. They were just short of it -and actually made the connection later in the series. But I hung on anyway. Then....
In hindsight, I'm not really sure what it was that set me off. I had seen the same kind of plot device in other movies: one to several people struggle for something until they come to a moment when their persistence pays off and it all comes together. It's a common and still effective motif in movies. But when Taggart and Reardon were riding alone on that train, to make their point about the safety of the Reardon steel used for the rails, and that triumphant music was playing in the back while the viewer was treated with a panorama of grand vistas, I felt it welling up. But when they came to that bridge gleaming in the sun, the one that Reardon had promised he could build in 3 weeks.... that was it. I had to throw down. It could have been how hokey it all seemed. It could have been the forced attempt to equate the beauty of nature with the beauty of Capitalism. It could have even been, as many RandHeads would assert, jealousy. But that neglects the many times I have found the approach effective in other movies where characters have done things beyond my capabilities -sometimes to the point of choking up or, if drunk enough, tears. Or it could have been my disgust at the sheer gall of thinking I could be manipulated into seeing the errors of my ways and prostrating myself before the glory of Capitalism. I could literally imagine a true believer (a Rand Head) standing behind me and shrieking triumphantly:
“You see it? Do you see it now?”
From that point to the end of part one (the story was divided, in Lord of the Rings fashion, into three parts with the third one pending), it was a self degrading frenzy of eye rolling and heckling my computer –when I’m not sure the poor thing deserved it. Meanwhile, the movie did everything it could to encourage my behavior. For instance, there was the heavy handed explanation that Rearden provided for the demise of the 20th Century Motor Company as he and Dagny were approaching it. Apparently, it was due to everyone getting pay raises based on need rather than merit. This was later reinforced by a loyal Taggart employee who explained to Dagny that new management had run it into the ground with new ideas about treating it like one big family. The question, though, was what factory (in reality that is) was it suppose to resemble? Granted, many companies will simplify things by granting raises through across the board percentages. But a percentage means that those who have been there longer will be gaining more. And, as far as I know, the way the more ambitious bypass that is by working their way up the ladder through promotion. But, once again: what profit seeking corporation would even consider such an approach? Of course, the preposterous nature of this slippery slope only foreshadowed the Kafkaesque labyrinth of bumbling and petty bureaucrats, and their policies, that grew more absurd as it went along.
Watching Atlas Shrugged: My Struggle (and Rise) as a Fascist Looter
How I Got My Start:
I tried to take the high road and give it a chance. I really did. But then I had tried as much with Rand and The Virtue of Selfishness, but got so nauseous by the third essay, I had to put it down. And nothing I further read or heard about her tempered my disgust. Certainly not the movie biopic, the Passion of Ayn Rand, in which she has an affair with an intern after telling her husband and the intern’s girlfriend what they were going to do. This only came across as some kind of psychopathic notion of enlightened honesty and the self indulgence of a narcissistic bitch; the kind of woman that would eat her babies as a peer once pointed out. And I had assumed my sentiment to be common among the creative community. So imagine my surprise when I read that Atlas Shrugged was being made into a movie in an article that gave the misleading impression that Angelina Jolie was backing it. But then why not? God only knows what runs through that chick's mind. One sometimes gleams a hint of the psychopathic in that icy glare: that narrowing of the eyes as they zero in on the kill. Still, it seemed odd that the alleged Hollywood liberal elite would even consider it.
My curiosity had taken root and only intensified. Upon seeing a clip where Hank Reardon declares his utter indifference to the poor, I got the impression that it would be one of those moody independent films like The Blue Rose Hotel: a sort of cyberpunk Trojan horse in which subtle critique is cleverly concealed within tribute. Plus that, there was always the possibility of being surprised. I had always been impressed when talent from the other side managed to present old school and Christian values in a way digestible and empathetic enough to temper my own extremes and revise my mental concepts. Such sensibilities, even if I didn't share them, could clearly be presented in a dignified and non-sanctimonious manner as in the movie A River Runs Through It, Robert Duvall in such roles as Rambling Rose and Second Hand Lions, the work of Terrence Malick, and, hating on chairs aside, Clint Eastwood's classicist/conservative approach to filmmaking. So when I kept coming across it on Netflix, it was only a matter of time before I would set aside my political leanings, push the play button, resolve to not tarnish my intellectual integrity with petty heckling, and give the woman, her book, and her position their day in court. But then authentic Christian/classical values are something quite different than Capitalist ones.
It was a matter of minutes before the hope just dissipated when the second (if not third) rate production values revealed themselves. Many critics compared it to a TV mini-series. But I would equate it with the cheap B movies that are sometimes made for the ScyFy channel or shown on Fear Net. The only difference was that those films were generally innocuous enough to serve as mindless entertainment –something you stick with while rolling your eyes just to see if it ends in the way you predict. Atlas Shrugged, on the other hand, took the mean-spirited and paranoid route of conspiracy theory or holocaust denial: less the individual perspective that constitutes a work of art and more like war to anyone with a non-pathological sense of reality. I even began to suspect, perhaps out of denial, that what I was watching was not the theatrical release, but some made for TV knockoff much like the miniseries of Steven King's The Shining, that which stuck closer to the book at the expense of the production values, creativity, and style of Kubrick's version. Even when I recognized the clip where Reardon expresses his indifference to the poor, I wondered if it wasn't just another version of a key moment in the book. It just seemed odd that something like it would even be released in theaters, that some marketer would not have recognized that it might have made a better debut (it basically flopped with critics and the box office) in a more appropriate medium such as TV or straight to DVD. However, the more I watched and learned about it, the harder the possibility pressed itself: that ideological forces overrode business sense and the agents behind it thought they had something more profound than they actually did.
But I hung on anyway because between the cheesy production, the second rate special effects, the one dimensional portrayals given by the actors, and the talky ideology-laden dialogue, I had no choice but to focus on the message that was more or less being shoved down my throat. And while this approach seemed a little (maybe a lot( heavy-handed in Kevin Smith’s Dogma, and while I can now sympathize with the offense that Catholics may have felt in the face of that film, it gets really heavy handed and unsympathetic when you’re facing the equivalent of a master expecting the sympathy of the slave. It was, for me, becoming less about aesthetics and more about ideology, and a challenge I couldn't refuse.
My resolve continued to slip as a heavy handed contrast emerged between the protagonists and antagonists. In one corner of this mythical confrontation was the protagonists, Hank Reardon and Dagny Taggart, the respective heads of Reardon Steel and Taggart Transcontinental (a railway company), and champions of a miracle alloy that is lighter while being stronger; and in the other: the antagonists, those petty and bumbling government bureaucrats and rich quasi-socialists suffering from liberal guilt, the "looters" who skulked about plotting against the Promethean efforts of the supposed heroes, Reardon and Taggart. And as impressed as I was supposed to be by their heroics, I only found myself breaking into shrieks of mock whining:
"Why is everyone picking on me? Am I not the driver of progress? The job creator?"
In Rand's world, apparently, no one understands them. The only surprise was that the antagonists didn't have Hitleresque toothbrush mustaches that they could stroke as they contemplated their schemes and future victories. They were just short of it -and actually made the connection later in the series. But I hung on anyway. Then....
In hindsight, I'm not really sure what it was that set me off. I had seen the same kind of plot device in other movies: one to several people struggle for something until they come to a moment when their persistence pays off and it all comes together. It's a common and still effective motif in movies. But when Taggart and Reardon were riding alone on that train, to make their point about the safety of the Reardon steel used for the rails, and that triumphant music was playing in the back while the viewer was treated with a panorama of grand vistas, I felt it welling up. But when they came to that bridge gleaming in the sun, the one that Reardon had promised he could build in 3 weeks.... that was it. I had to throw down. It could have been how hokey it all seemed. It could have been the forced attempt to equate the beauty of nature with the beauty of Capitalism. It could have even been, as many RandHeads would assert, jealousy. But that neglects the many times I have found the approach effective in other movies where characters have done things beyond my capabilities -sometimes to the point of choking up or, if drunk enough, tears. Or it could have been my disgust at the sheer gall of thinking I could be manipulated into seeing the errors of my ways and prostrating myself before the glory of Capitalism. I could literally imagine a true believer (a Rand Head) standing behind me and shrieking triumphantly:
“You see it? Do you see it now?”
From that point to the end of part one (the story was divided, in Lord of the Rings fashion, into three parts with the third one pending), it was a self degrading frenzy of eye rolling and heckling my computer –when I’m not sure the poor thing deserved it. Meanwhile, the movie did everything it could to encourage my behavior. For instance, there was the heavy handed explanation that Rearden provided for the demise of the 20th Century Motor Company as he and Dagny were approaching it. Apparently, it was due to everyone getting pay raises based on need rather than merit. This was later reinforced by a loyal Taggart employee who explained to Dagny that new management had run it into the ground with new ideas about treating it like one big family. The question, though, was what factory (in reality that is) was it suppose to resemble? Granted, many companies will simplify things by granting raises through across the board percentages. But a percentage means that those who have been there longer will be gaining more. And, as far as I know, the way the more ambitious bypass that is by working their way up the ladder through promotion. But, once again: what profit seeking corporation would even consider such an approach? Of course, the preposterous nature of this slippery slope only foreshadowed the Kafkaesque labyrinth of bumbling and petty bureaucrats, and their policies, that grew more absurd as it went along.
Re: Postcards:
But the bigger issue was Rand's well-known propensity towards the heroic and mythological coupled with her clear disgust for her antagonists. Her influence by Shakespeare made itself more and more apparent as it went along, especially in part two -which seems strange given Shakespeare's clarity on the corruption of power. What resulted was a vacillation between a comic book dialogue and a classical propensity towards speechmaking. On one hand, there were lines of dialogue that sounded like something off a Lichtenstein painting such as when James Taggart, an antagonist by virtue of his wanting to serve “the public good”, advised his sister, Tagny:
“You can’t leave. It’s a violation of the directive.”
Or this line by Reardon (typical of the false dilemma the story presented) as he stomped away from an agent of the State Scientific Agency:
“One of these days, you’re going to have to decide which side your on.”
Even the repetition of the line “Who is John Galt?”, which threaded throughout the narrative and was passed about like some cultish inside joke, as well as the mystery character himself who went about collecting high achievers like a shepherd gathering his flock, took on a hokey comic book aura.
On the other hand, there were these Shakespearian dialogues that, for the too obvious purpose of effect, seemed delegated to the more heroic characters. Esai Morales, for instance, as Francisco d'Anconia, skulked about like some modern Iago, almost shaman-like, dispensing wisdom in resonant soliloquies on the folly of fools who do not know what they do and the unrecognized wisdom of Lassie Faire Capitalism:
“When money seizes to be the tool of men by which men deal with other men, then men become the tools of other men.”
And this might have seemed a poignant point if it wasn’t for the fact that no one I know of is trying to get rid of money and that, as anyone who is not self-employed would know, even with money men are the tools of other men.
But this Shakespearean element got even more vulgar in part two with the heroics of Hank Reardon as he stood before court accused of violating the “Fair Share Act”, that which imposed a limit on how much one company can sell to another –another act committed by petty bumbling bureaucrats that eluded me as to what the purpose would be.
“I do not recognize this court,” he stated in bold defiance, then proceeded to indict government policies that could not, in any dimension, exist. At one point, at the mention of “the public good”, he responded, yet again, with the same smug disregard he did earlier:
“I do not recognize the good of others as justification of my existence.”
And let’s be fair here. As Robert Reich convincingly points out in SuperCapitalism, we cannot expect corporations to act as moral agents. They exist solely to create profit for their shareholders. It is government that must serve as check and balance to corporate power. But then, it is government power, regardless of what function it serves, that Rand and the moviemakers wanted to undermine. At another point, Reardon proceeded to frame the “public good” in terms of being defined by:
“….those who would regulate and define us in our businesses and homes by stealing our liberty.”
Of course, at this point the crowd broke into the cheers of the converted. But then, who wouldn’t? Who isn’t concerned about their personal liberty? The problem is that Reardon’s point is a little hard to assimilate with the fact that, in our world (the real one), the primary agent of social control (under the encouragement of the health insurance industry) has pretty much been our employers through drug testing, smoking policies, and increasingly wellness programs. But then we’re not in that world are we? We’re in Rand’s world. Reardon then proceeded to describe the benefits provided by corporations, such as job creation and technological progress, while the crowd cheered and the court slammed their hammer and screamed:
“Silence! Or the court will be cleared!”
The cliché continued as the court, recognizing that they could not turn Reardon into a martyr, decided to sentence him to 10 years in prison then, in light of his achievements, suspended his sentence. This was then punctuated by the following scene in which Dagny played cheer squad and told Reardon that he had provided a voice to the people. But what people exactly? The rich? Those who are ignorant enough to believe that their personal freedom is dependent on the freedom of the rich and powerful to do as they please?
Of course, you can get away with a lot in a movie if the comedic effects work. But this depends on wit that defines the character. Unfortunately, in Rand’s world, what results when defining characters meant to represent a questionable ideology is a lot of lame humor. To give you a sense of it, think of the kind you see on church billboards, the heavy handed attempts at cleverness that can only fall flat and roll the eyes of anyone but the true believer, but addressed to the same kind of dogmatic certainty that Capitalism displays throughout this love letter. At one point, Dagny Taggart, faced with an employee who drones “Who is John Galt?”, responds:
“Don’t ask that question if you can’t answer it.”
And it is these kinds of references to the mock heroics and above-the-fray nature of the main characters that are suppose to seduce us throughout it all. At another point, Taggart and a scientist played by Dietrich Bader plot to research a supposed super-battery that, as we are to understand it, only the private sphere is capable of making happen. When Taggart inquired as to where the plan would be carried out, the scientist assured her, in the conspiratorial way meant to suggest a couple of lovable rebel rascals, that he can use his state funded lab to study it and that she shouldn’t worry since they have the best night watch there is: him. What poetic justice: the state’s failures are what allow the private sphere to carry out its own more heroic efforts. But the most telling comes when a CEO and political candidate snarls when his train is stopped:
“I swear, if this train doesn’t make my campaign stop in San Francisco, I’ll make it my personal priority to nationalize this railroad.”
This is then followed by the drunken wit of a fellow traveler in a British accent for good effect:
“History shows that it is the only way to make the trains run on time.”
Get it? Nazi Germany? Trains running on time? Unfortunately, for the movie, the real humor lies in what those behind it wanted us to take seriously. At one point, CEOs are photographed walking, with expressions of serious intent, to a board meeting in (can you guess?) slow motion. The only thing missing was the hard beat and crunchy guitar from Kill Bill Volume One in the club scene with Lucy Lui's crew. But the continuous joke throughout it all was the way plot line built not through suspense, but rather through of the heavy handed manner in which Rand's message was being relayed through the escalation of the ludicrous. This tendency peaked, appropriately, at the very end of part one when Ellis Wyatt, before leaving with Galt, left his newly discovered natural gas field in flames and a note that said:
"I'm leaving it as I found it."
Really? So now we know how he came into it. Apparently, he just wandered upon a burning field that no one else had noticed, put out the flames, and had his redneck self, with a southern accent added for appeal, a natural gas field. And doesn't there seem to be an underlying whininess about it: the feel of a child throwing a fit?
Part two, in Peter Jackson/Lord of the Rings style, was almost admirable in the way it maintained the thread of absurdity and kept it building to the most preposterous moment yet: the introduction of Directive 10-289. In a scene that was clearly meant to chill us out of our Priuses and drive us to the NRA, the President (played by Ray Wise) made a televised announcement of new policies that would make no sense in a purely communist regime, much less a democratic one. And in order to direct me as to how I was supposed to feel, there was everyone in the nation, rich and poor alike, watching with dropped jaws of shock and disgust. Among the policies were total bans on firing employees or employees quitting or changing their jobs, wage freezes, all companies surrendering their patents in the form of gift certificates, and a mandate on everyone to spend the same amount of money they had the year before. Of course, in a perfect world where the government wasn't so far up corporate ass as to actually act in the behalf of people, this might, at best, seem like a legitimate slippery slope. But how would wage freezes and bans on quitting or changing a job serve that purpose? In fact, what purpose would it serve under any circumstance? Forcing people to give up their hard earned patents would be a disincentive to new discovery. Even a Social Democrat and looter like me knows that. And the government has nothing on the market when it comes to forced consumption as anyone would know who, due to a lack of public transportation, has to maintain a car in order to get to work, or finds themselves in need of healthcare, or paying more for basic services such as TV which, by the way, use to be free, or generally wants to function in contemporary society. The only thing missing from the whole scene was the low, eerie hum of a synthesizer and someone shrieking at the president:
"Oh my God! It's a white Obama!"
From that pivotal point on, the denouement proceeded with a montage style breakdown that consisted of anti-corporation protesters, having been schooled in the principle of unintended consequences, turning anti-government, while Tagny pursued her scientific ally in a plane, having lost him to Galt, crashed, and, in the final scene, finally met the mystery man himself: John Galt.
However, the real money shot, at least in terms of the mentality behind the movie (and its desire to impose a kind of grim irony similar to the ending of Altman's Nashville), came with a bum sitting on a curve in the midst of the chaos, a sort of Nietzschian madman, writing on a gravestone shaped piece of wood:
America:
Born: 1776
Died: Yesterday.
“You can’t leave. It’s a violation of the directive.”
Or this line by Reardon (typical of the false dilemma the story presented) as he stomped away from an agent of the State Scientific Agency:
“One of these days, you’re going to have to decide which side your on.”
Even the repetition of the line “Who is John Galt?”, which threaded throughout the narrative and was passed about like some cultish inside joke, as well as the mystery character himself who went about collecting high achievers like a shepherd gathering his flock, took on a hokey comic book aura.
On the other hand, there were these Shakespearian dialogues that, for the too obvious purpose of effect, seemed delegated to the more heroic characters. Esai Morales, for instance, as Francisco d'Anconia, skulked about like some modern Iago, almost shaman-like, dispensing wisdom in resonant soliloquies on the folly of fools who do not know what they do and the unrecognized wisdom of Lassie Faire Capitalism:
“When money seizes to be the tool of men by which men deal with other men, then men become the tools of other men.”
And this might have seemed a poignant point if it wasn’t for the fact that no one I know of is trying to get rid of money and that, as anyone who is not self-employed would know, even with money men are the tools of other men.
But this Shakespearean element got even more vulgar in part two with the heroics of Hank Reardon as he stood before court accused of violating the “Fair Share Act”, that which imposed a limit on how much one company can sell to another –another act committed by petty bumbling bureaucrats that eluded me as to what the purpose would be.
“I do not recognize this court,” he stated in bold defiance, then proceeded to indict government policies that could not, in any dimension, exist. At one point, at the mention of “the public good”, he responded, yet again, with the same smug disregard he did earlier:
“I do not recognize the good of others as justification of my existence.”
And let’s be fair here. As Robert Reich convincingly points out in SuperCapitalism, we cannot expect corporations to act as moral agents. They exist solely to create profit for their shareholders. It is government that must serve as check and balance to corporate power. But then, it is government power, regardless of what function it serves, that Rand and the moviemakers wanted to undermine. At another point, Reardon proceeded to frame the “public good” in terms of being defined by:
“….those who would regulate and define us in our businesses and homes by stealing our liberty.”
Of course, at this point the crowd broke into the cheers of the converted. But then, who wouldn’t? Who isn’t concerned about their personal liberty? The problem is that Reardon’s point is a little hard to assimilate with the fact that, in our world (the real one), the primary agent of social control (under the encouragement of the health insurance industry) has pretty much been our employers through drug testing, smoking policies, and increasingly wellness programs. But then we’re not in that world are we? We’re in Rand’s world. Reardon then proceeded to describe the benefits provided by corporations, such as job creation and technological progress, while the crowd cheered and the court slammed their hammer and screamed:
“Silence! Or the court will be cleared!”
The cliché continued as the court, recognizing that they could not turn Reardon into a martyr, decided to sentence him to 10 years in prison then, in light of his achievements, suspended his sentence. This was then punctuated by the following scene in which Dagny played cheer squad and told Reardon that he had provided a voice to the people. But what people exactly? The rich? Those who are ignorant enough to believe that their personal freedom is dependent on the freedom of the rich and powerful to do as they please?
Of course, you can get away with a lot in a movie if the comedic effects work. But this depends on wit that defines the character. Unfortunately, in Rand’s world, what results when defining characters meant to represent a questionable ideology is a lot of lame humor. To give you a sense of it, think of the kind you see on church billboards, the heavy handed attempts at cleverness that can only fall flat and roll the eyes of anyone but the true believer, but addressed to the same kind of dogmatic certainty that Capitalism displays throughout this love letter. At one point, Dagny Taggart, faced with an employee who drones “Who is John Galt?”, responds:
“Don’t ask that question if you can’t answer it.”
And it is these kinds of references to the mock heroics and above-the-fray nature of the main characters that are suppose to seduce us throughout it all. At another point, Taggart and a scientist played by Dietrich Bader plot to research a supposed super-battery that, as we are to understand it, only the private sphere is capable of making happen. When Taggart inquired as to where the plan would be carried out, the scientist assured her, in the conspiratorial way meant to suggest a couple of lovable rebel rascals, that he can use his state funded lab to study it and that she shouldn’t worry since they have the best night watch there is: him. What poetic justice: the state’s failures are what allow the private sphere to carry out its own more heroic efforts. But the most telling comes when a CEO and political candidate snarls when his train is stopped:
“I swear, if this train doesn’t make my campaign stop in San Francisco, I’ll make it my personal priority to nationalize this railroad.”
This is then followed by the drunken wit of a fellow traveler in a British accent for good effect:
“History shows that it is the only way to make the trains run on time.”
Get it? Nazi Germany? Trains running on time? Unfortunately, for the movie, the real humor lies in what those behind it wanted us to take seriously. At one point, CEOs are photographed walking, with expressions of serious intent, to a board meeting in (can you guess?) slow motion. The only thing missing was the hard beat and crunchy guitar from Kill Bill Volume One in the club scene with Lucy Lui's crew. But the continuous joke throughout it all was the way plot line built not through suspense, but rather through of the heavy handed manner in which Rand's message was being relayed through the escalation of the ludicrous. This tendency peaked, appropriately, at the very end of part one when Ellis Wyatt, before leaving with Galt, left his newly discovered natural gas field in flames and a note that said:
"I'm leaving it as I found it."
Really? So now we know how he came into it. Apparently, he just wandered upon a burning field that no one else had noticed, put out the flames, and had his redneck self, with a southern accent added for appeal, a natural gas field. And doesn't there seem to be an underlying whininess about it: the feel of a child throwing a fit?
Part two, in Peter Jackson/Lord of the Rings style, was almost admirable in the way it maintained the thread of absurdity and kept it building to the most preposterous moment yet: the introduction of Directive 10-289. In a scene that was clearly meant to chill us out of our Priuses and drive us to the NRA, the President (played by Ray Wise) made a televised announcement of new policies that would make no sense in a purely communist regime, much less a democratic one. And in order to direct me as to how I was supposed to feel, there was everyone in the nation, rich and poor alike, watching with dropped jaws of shock and disgust. Among the policies were total bans on firing employees or employees quitting or changing their jobs, wage freezes, all companies surrendering their patents in the form of gift certificates, and a mandate on everyone to spend the same amount of money they had the year before. Of course, in a perfect world where the government wasn't so far up corporate ass as to actually act in the behalf of people, this might, at best, seem like a legitimate slippery slope. But how would wage freezes and bans on quitting or changing a job serve that purpose? In fact, what purpose would it serve under any circumstance? Forcing people to give up their hard earned patents would be a disincentive to new discovery. Even a Social Democrat and looter like me knows that. And the government has nothing on the market when it comes to forced consumption as anyone would know who, due to a lack of public transportation, has to maintain a car in order to get to work, or finds themselves in need of healthcare, or paying more for basic services such as TV which, by the way, use to be free, or generally wants to function in contemporary society. The only thing missing from the whole scene was the low, eerie hum of a synthesizer and someone shrieking at the president:
"Oh my God! It's a white Obama!"
From that pivotal point on, the denouement proceeded with a montage style breakdown that consisted of anti-corporation protesters, having been schooled in the principle of unintended consequences, turning anti-government, while Tagny pursued her scientific ally in a plane, having lost him to Galt, crashed, and, in the final scene, finally met the mystery man himself: John Galt.
However, the real money shot, at least in terms of the mentality behind the movie (and its desire to impose a kind of grim irony similar to the ending of Altman's Nashville), came with a bum sitting on a curve in the midst of the chaos, a sort of Nietzschian madman, writing on a gravestone shaped piece of wood:
America:
Born: 1776
Died: Yesterday.
Re: Postcards:
Watching Atlas Shrugged: My Struggle (and Rise) as a Fascist Looter
How I Got My Start:
I tried to take the high road and give it a chance. I really did. But then I had tried as much with Rand and The Virtue of Selfishness, but got so nauseous by the third essay, I had to put it down. And nothing I further read or heard about her tempered my disgust. Certainly not the movie biopic, the Passion of Ayn Rand, in which she has an affair with an intern after telling her husband and the intern’s girlfriend what they were going to do. That only came across as some kind of psychopathic notion of enlightened honesty and the self indulgence of a narcissistic bitch: the kind of woman that would eat her babies as a peer once pointed out. And I had assumed my sentiment to be common among the creative community. So imagine my surprise when I read that Atlas Shrugged was being made into a movie in an article that gave the misleading impression that Angelina Jolie was backing it. But then why not? God only knows what runs through that chick's mind. One sometimes gleams a hint of the psychopathic in that icy glare: the pouty lips and that narrowing of the eyes as they zero in on the kill. Still, it seemed odd that the alleged Hollywood liberal elite would even consider it.
My curiosity took root and only intensified upon seeing a clip where Hank Reardon declares his utter indifference to the poor. For some reason, I got the impression that it would be one of those moody independent films like The Blue Rose Hotel. But in my scheme it was a sort of cyberpunk Trojan horse in which subtle critique is cleverly concealed within tribute. Plus that, there was always the possibility of being surprised. I had always been impressed when talent from the other side managed to present old school and Christian values in a way that was digestible and empathetic enough to temper my own extremes and revise my mental concepts. Such sensibilities, even if I didn't share them, could clearly be presented in a dignified and non-sanctimonious manner as in the movie A River Runs Through It, Robert Duvall in such roles as Rambling Rose and Second Hand Lions, the work of Terrence Malick, and, hating on chairs aside, Clint Eastwood's classicist/conservative approach to filmmaking. So when I kept coming across it on Netflix, it was only a matter of time before I would set aside my political leanings, push the play button, resolve to not tarnish my intellectual integrity with petty heckling, and give the woman, her story, and her position their day in court. But then authentic Christian/classical values are something quite different than Capitalist ones.
It was a matter of minutes before the hope dissipated and I found myself reeling in shock and astonishment at the second (if not third( rate production values. Many critics compared it to a TV mini-series. But I would equate it with the cheap B movies that are sometimes made for the ScyFy channel or shown on Fear Net. The only difference was that those films were generally innocuous enough to serve as mindless entertainment –something you stick with while rolling your eyes just to see if it ends in the way you predict. Atlas Shrugged, on the other hand, took the mean-spirited and paranoid route of conspiracy theory or holocaust denial: less the individual perspective that constitutes a work of art and more like war to anyone with a non-pathological sense of reality. I even began to suspect, perhaps out of denial, that what I was watching was not the theatrical release, but some made for TV knockoff much like the miniseries of Steven King's The Shining, that which stuck closer to the book at the expense of the production values, creativity, and style of Kubrick's version. Even when I recognized the clip where Reardon expresses his indifference to the poor, I wondered if it wasn't just another version of a key moment in the book. It just seemed odd that something like it would even be released in theaters, that some marketer would not have recognized that it might have made a better debut (it basically flopped with critics and the box office) in a more appropriate medium such as TV or straight to DVD. However, the more I watched and learned about it, the harder the possibility pressed itself: that ideological forces overrode business sense and the agents behind it thought they had something more profound than they actually did.
But I hung on anyway because between the cheesy production, the second rate special effects, the one dimensional portrayals, and the talky ideology-laden dialogue, I had no choice but to focus on the message that was more or less being shoved down my throat. And while this approach seemed a little (maybe a lot( heavy-handed in Kevin Smith’s Dogma, and while I can now sympathize with the offense that Catholics must have felt in the face of that film, it gets really heavy handed and unsympathetic when you’re facing the equivalent of a master expecting the sympathy of the slave. It was, for me, becoming less about aesthetics and more about ideology, and a challenge I couldn't refuse.
My resolve continued to slip as a heavy handed contrast emerged between the protagonists and antagonists. In one corner of this mythical confrontation were the protagonists, Hank Reardon and Dagny Taggart, the respective heads of Reardon Steel and Taggart Transcontinental (a railway company), and champions of a miracle alloy that is lighter while being stronger; and in the other: the antagonists, those petty and bumbling government bureaucrats and rich quasi-socialists suffering from liberal guilt, the "looters" who skulked about plotting against the Promethean efforts of the supposed heroes. And as impressed as I was supposed to be by their heroics, I only found myself breaking into shrieks of mock whining:
"Why is everyone picking on me? Am I not the driver of progress? The job creator?"
In Rand's world, apparently, no one understands them. The only surprise was that the antagonists didn't have Hitleresque toothbrush mustaches that they could stroke as they contemplated their schemes and future victories. They were just short of it -and actually made the connection later in the series. But I hung on anyway. Then....
In hindsight, I'm not really sure what it was that set me off. I had seen the same kind of plot device in other movies: one to several people struggle for something until they come to a moment when their persistence pays off and it all comes together. It's a common and still effective motif in movies. But when Taggart and Reardon were riding alone on that train, to make their point about the safety of the Reardon steel used for the rails, and that triumphant music was playing in the back while the viewer was treated with a panorama of grand vistas, I felt it welling up. But when they came to that bridge gleaming in the sun, the one that Reardon had promised he could build in 3 weeks.... that was it. I had to throw down. It could have been how hokey it all seemed. It could have been the forced attempt to equate the beauty of nature with the beauty of Capitalism. It could have even been, as many RandHeads would have it: jealousy. But that neglects the many times I have found the approach effective in other movies where characters have done things beyond my capabilities -sometimes to the point of choking up or, if drunk enough, tears. Or it could have been my disgust at the sheer gall of thinking I could be manipulated into seeing the errors of my ways and prostrating myself before the glory of Capitalism. I could literally imagine a true believer (a Rand Head) standing behind me and shrieking triumphantly:
“You see it? Do you see it now?”
From that point to the end of part one (the story was divided, in Lord of the Rings fashion, into three parts with the third one pending), it was a self degrading frenzy of eye rolling and heckling my computer –when I’m not sure the poor thing deserved it. Meanwhile, the movie did everything it could to encourage my behavior. For instance, there was the heavy handed explanation that Rearden provided for the demise of the 20th Century Motor Company. Apparently, it was due to everyone getting pay raises based on need rather than merit. This was later reinforced by a loyal Taggart employee who explained to Dagny that new management had run it into the ground with new ideas about treating it like one big family. The question, though, was what factory (in reality that is) was it suppose to resemble? Granted, many companies will simplify things by granting raises through across the board percentages. But a percentage means that those who have been there longer will be gaining more. And, as far as I know, the way the more ambitious bypass that is by working their way up the ladder through promotion. But, once again: what profit seeking corporation would even consider such an approach? Of course, the preposterous nature of this slippery slope only foreshadowed the Kafkaesque labyrinth of bumbling and petty bureaucrats, and their policies, that grew more absurd as it went along.
But the bigger issue was Rand's well-known propensity towards the heroic and mythological coupled with her clear disgust for her antagonists. Her influence by Shakespeare made itself more and more apparent as it went along, especially in part two -which seems strange given Shakespeare's clarity on the corruption of power. What resulted was a vacillation between a comic book approach and a classical propensity towards speechmaking. On one hand, there were lines of dialogue that sounded like something off a Lichtenstein painting such as when James Taggart, an antagonist by virtue of his wanting to serve “the public good”, advised his sister, Tagny:
“You can’t leave. It’s a violation of the directive.”
Or this line by Reardon (typical of the false dilemma the story presented) as he stomped away from an agent of the State Scientific Agency:
“One of these days, you’re going to have to decide which side your on.”
Even the repetition of the line “Who is John Galt?”, which threaded throughout the narrative and was passed about like some cultish inside joke, as well as the mystery character himself who went about collecting high achievers like a shepherd gathering his flock, took on a hokey comic book aura.
On the other hand, there were these Shakespearian dialogues that, for the too obvious purpose of effect, seemed delegated to the more heroic characters. Esai Morales, for instance, as Francisco d'Anconia, skulked about like some modern Iago, shaman-like, dispensing wisdom in resonant soliloquies on the folly of fools who do not know what they do and the unrecognized wisdom of Laissez Faire Capitalism:
“When money seizes to be the tool of men by which men deal with other men, then men become the tools of other men.”
And this might have seemed a poignant point if it wasn’t for the fact that no one I know of is trying to get rid of money and that, as anyone who is not self-employed would know, even with money men are the tools of other men. This Shakespearean element got even more vulgar in Part Two with the heroics of Hank Reardon as he stood before court accused of violating the “Fair Share Act”, that which imposed a limit on how much one company can sell to another –another act committed by petty, bumbling bureaucrats that eluded me as to what the purpose would be.
“I do not recognize this court,” he stated in bold defiance, then proceeded to indict government policies that could not, in any dimension, exist. At one point, at the mention of “the public good”, he responded, yet again, with the same smug disregard he did earlier:
“I do not recognize the good of others as justification of my existence.”
And let’s be fair here. Robert Reich makes a convincing point, in SuperCapitalism, that we cannot expect corporations to act as moral agents. They exist solely to create profit for their shareholders. It is government, as an ethical agent, that must serve as check and balance to corporate power. But then, it is government, regardless of what function it serves, that Rand and the moviemakers wanted to undermine. At another point, Reardon proceeded to frame the “public good” in terms of:
“….those who would regulate and define us in our businesses and homes by stealing our liberty.”
Of course, at this point the crowd broke into the cheers of the converted. But then, who wouldn’t? Who isn’t concerned about their personal liberty? The problem is that Reardon’s point is a little hard to assimilate with the fact that, in our world (the real one), the primary agent of social control (under the encouragement of the health insurance industry) has pretty much been our employers through drug testing, smoking policies, and increasingly wellness programs. Reardon then proceeded to describe the benefits provided by corporations, such as job creation and technological progress, while the crowd cheered and the court slammed their hammer and screamed:
“Silence! Or the court will be cleared!”
The cliché continued as the court, recognizing that they could not turn Reardon into a martyr, decided to sentence him to 10 years in prison then, in light of his achievements, suspended his sentence. This was then punctuated by the following scene in which Dagny played cheer squad and told Reardon that he had provided a voice to the people. But what people exactly? The rich? Those who are ignorant enough to believe that their personal freedom is dependent on the freedom of the rich and powerful to do as they please?
Of course, you can get away with a lot in a movie if the comedic effects work. But this depends on wit that defines the character. Unfortunately, in Rand’s world, what results when defining characters meant to represent a questionable ideology is a lot of lame humor. To give you a sense of it, think of the kind you see on church billboards, the heavy handed attempts at cleverness that can only fall flat and roll the eyes of anyone but the true believer, but addressed to the same kind of dogmatic certainty displayed throughout this love letter to Capitalism. At one point, Dagny Taggart, faced with an employee who drones “Who is John Galt?”, responds:
“Don’t ask that question if you can’t answer it.”
And it is these kinds of references to the mock heroics and above-the-fray nature of the main characters that are suppose to seduce us throughout it all. At another point, Taggart and a scientist played by Dietrich Bader plot to research a super-battery that, as we are to understand it, only the private sphere is capable of making happen. When Taggart inquired as to where their plan to develop it would be carried out, the scientist assured her, in the conspiratorial way meant to suggest a couple of lovable rebel rascals, that he can use his state funded lab to study it and that she shouldn’t worry since they would have the best night watch there is: him. Now that’s poetic justice: the state’s failures are what allow the private sphere to carry out its own more heroic efforts –that is as if the state has nothing to do with corporate activities in the first place. But the most telling comes when a CEO and political candidate snarls when his train is stopped:
“I swear, if this train doesn’t make my campaign stop in San Francisco, I’ll make it my personal priority to nationalize this railroad.”
This is then followed by the drunken wit of a fellow traveler in a British accent:
“History shows that it is the only way to make the trains run on time.”
Get it? Nazi Germany? Trains running on time? Of course, the British accent should have clued me in to how profound and witty this was. Unfortunately, for the movie, the real humor laid in what those behind it wanted me to take seriously. At one point, CEOs and government officials are filmed walking, with expressions of serious intent, to a board meeting in (can you guess?) slow motion. The only thing missing was the hard beat and crunchy guitar from Kill Bill Volume One in the club scene with Lucy Lui's crew. But the continuous joke throughout it all was the way plot line built not through suspense, but rather through the escalation of the ludicrous. This tendency peaked, appropriately, at the very end of Part One when Ellis Wyatt, before leaving with Galt, left his newly discovered natural gas field in flames and a note that said:
"I'm leaving it as I found it."
Really? So now we know how he came into it. Apparently, he just wandered upon a burning field that no one else had noticed, put out the flames, and had his redneck self, with a southern accent for added appeal, a natural gas field. But even funnier was how whiny this seemed for a tight-fisted Texan.
Part two, in Peter Jackson/Lord of the Rings style, was almost admirable in the way it maintained the thread of absurdity and kept it building to the most preposterous moment yet: the introduction of Directive 10-289. In a scene that was clearly meant to chill us out of our Priuses and drive us to the NRA, the President (or Head of State played by Ray Wise) made a televised announcement of new policies that would make no sense in a purely communist regime, much less a democratic one. And in order to direct me as to how I was supposed to feel, there was everyone in the nation, rich and poor alike, watching with dropped jaws of shock and disgust. Among the policies were total bans on firing employees or employees quitting or changing their jobs, wage freezes, all companies surrendering their patents in the form of gift certificates, and a mandate on everyone to spend the same amount of money they had the year before. Of course, in a perfect world where the government wasn't so far up corporate ass as to actually act in the behalf of people, this might, at best, seem like a legitimate slippery slope. But how would wage freezes and bans on quitting or changing a job serve that purpose? In fact, what purpose would it serve under any circumstance? Forcing people to give up their hard earned patents would be a disincentive to new discovery. Even a Social Democrat and looter like me knows that. And the government has nothing on the market when it comes to forced consumption as anyone would know who, due to a lack of public transportation, has to maintain a car in order to get to work, or finds themselves in need of healthcare, or paying more for basic services such as TV which, by the way, use to be free, or generally wants to function in contemporary society. The only thing missing from the whole scene was the low, eerie hum of a synthesizer and someone shrieking at the president:
"Oh my God! It's a white Obama!"
From that pivotal point on, the denouement proceeded with a montage style breakdown that consisted of anti-corporation protesters, having been schooled in the principle of unintended consequences, turning anti-government, while Tagny pursued her scientific ally in a plane, having lost him to Galt, crashed, and, in the final scene, finally met the mystery man himself: John Galt.
However, the real money shot, at least in terms of the mentality behind the movie (and its desire to impose a kind of chilling irony similar to the ending of Altman's Nashville), came with a bum sitting on a curve in the midst of the chaos, a sort of Nietzschian madman, writing on a piece of wood shaped like a gravestone:
America:
Born: 1776
Died: Yesterday.
How I Got My Start:
I tried to take the high road and give it a chance. I really did. But then I had tried as much with Rand and The Virtue of Selfishness, but got so nauseous by the third essay, I had to put it down. And nothing I further read or heard about her tempered my disgust. Certainly not the movie biopic, the Passion of Ayn Rand, in which she has an affair with an intern after telling her husband and the intern’s girlfriend what they were going to do. That only came across as some kind of psychopathic notion of enlightened honesty and the self indulgence of a narcissistic bitch: the kind of woman that would eat her babies as a peer once pointed out. And I had assumed my sentiment to be common among the creative community. So imagine my surprise when I read that Atlas Shrugged was being made into a movie in an article that gave the misleading impression that Angelina Jolie was backing it. But then why not? God only knows what runs through that chick's mind. One sometimes gleams a hint of the psychopathic in that icy glare: the pouty lips and that narrowing of the eyes as they zero in on the kill. Still, it seemed odd that the alleged Hollywood liberal elite would even consider it.
My curiosity took root and only intensified upon seeing a clip where Hank Reardon declares his utter indifference to the poor. For some reason, I got the impression that it would be one of those moody independent films like The Blue Rose Hotel. But in my scheme it was a sort of cyberpunk Trojan horse in which subtle critique is cleverly concealed within tribute. Plus that, there was always the possibility of being surprised. I had always been impressed when talent from the other side managed to present old school and Christian values in a way that was digestible and empathetic enough to temper my own extremes and revise my mental concepts. Such sensibilities, even if I didn't share them, could clearly be presented in a dignified and non-sanctimonious manner as in the movie A River Runs Through It, Robert Duvall in such roles as Rambling Rose and Second Hand Lions, the work of Terrence Malick, and, hating on chairs aside, Clint Eastwood's classicist/conservative approach to filmmaking. So when I kept coming across it on Netflix, it was only a matter of time before I would set aside my political leanings, push the play button, resolve to not tarnish my intellectual integrity with petty heckling, and give the woman, her story, and her position their day in court. But then authentic Christian/classical values are something quite different than Capitalist ones.
It was a matter of minutes before the hope dissipated and I found myself reeling in shock and astonishment at the second (if not third( rate production values. Many critics compared it to a TV mini-series. But I would equate it with the cheap B movies that are sometimes made for the ScyFy channel or shown on Fear Net. The only difference was that those films were generally innocuous enough to serve as mindless entertainment –something you stick with while rolling your eyes just to see if it ends in the way you predict. Atlas Shrugged, on the other hand, took the mean-spirited and paranoid route of conspiracy theory or holocaust denial: less the individual perspective that constitutes a work of art and more like war to anyone with a non-pathological sense of reality. I even began to suspect, perhaps out of denial, that what I was watching was not the theatrical release, but some made for TV knockoff much like the miniseries of Steven King's The Shining, that which stuck closer to the book at the expense of the production values, creativity, and style of Kubrick's version. Even when I recognized the clip where Reardon expresses his indifference to the poor, I wondered if it wasn't just another version of a key moment in the book. It just seemed odd that something like it would even be released in theaters, that some marketer would not have recognized that it might have made a better debut (it basically flopped with critics and the box office) in a more appropriate medium such as TV or straight to DVD. However, the more I watched and learned about it, the harder the possibility pressed itself: that ideological forces overrode business sense and the agents behind it thought they had something more profound than they actually did.
But I hung on anyway because between the cheesy production, the second rate special effects, the one dimensional portrayals, and the talky ideology-laden dialogue, I had no choice but to focus on the message that was more or less being shoved down my throat. And while this approach seemed a little (maybe a lot( heavy-handed in Kevin Smith’s Dogma, and while I can now sympathize with the offense that Catholics must have felt in the face of that film, it gets really heavy handed and unsympathetic when you’re facing the equivalent of a master expecting the sympathy of the slave. It was, for me, becoming less about aesthetics and more about ideology, and a challenge I couldn't refuse.
My resolve continued to slip as a heavy handed contrast emerged between the protagonists and antagonists. In one corner of this mythical confrontation were the protagonists, Hank Reardon and Dagny Taggart, the respective heads of Reardon Steel and Taggart Transcontinental (a railway company), and champions of a miracle alloy that is lighter while being stronger; and in the other: the antagonists, those petty and bumbling government bureaucrats and rich quasi-socialists suffering from liberal guilt, the "looters" who skulked about plotting against the Promethean efforts of the supposed heroes. And as impressed as I was supposed to be by their heroics, I only found myself breaking into shrieks of mock whining:
"Why is everyone picking on me? Am I not the driver of progress? The job creator?"
In Rand's world, apparently, no one understands them. The only surprise was that the antagonists didn't have Hitleresque toothbrush mustaches that they could stroke as they contemplated their schemes and future victories. They were just short of it -and actually made the connection later in the series. But I hung on anyway. Then....
In hindsight, I'm not really sure what it was that set me off. I had seen the same kind of plot device in other movies: one to several people struggle for something until they come to a moment when their persistence pays off and it all comes together. It's a common and still effective motif in movies. But when Taggart and Reardon were riding alone on that train, to make their point about the safety of the Reardon steel used for the rails, and that triumphant music was playing in the back while the viewer was treated with a panorama of grand vistas, I felt it welling up. But when they came to that bridge gleaming in the sun, the one that Reardon had promised he could build in 3 weeks.... that was it. I had to throw down. It could have been how hokey it all seemed. It could have been the forced attempt to equate the beauty of nature with the beauty of Capitalism. It could have even been, as many RandHeads would have it: jealousy. But that neglects the many times I have found the approach effective in other movies where characters have done things beyond my capabilities -sometimes to the point of choking up or, if drunk enough, tears. Or it could have been my disgust at the sheer gall of thinking I could be manipulated into seeing the errors of my ways and prostrating myself before the glory of Capitalism. I could literally imagine a true believer (a Rand Head) standing behind me and shrieking triumphantly:
“You see it? Do you see it now?”
From that point to the end of part one (the story was divided, in Lord of the Rings fashion, into three parts with the third one pending), it was a self degrading frenzy of eye rolling and heckling my computer –when I’m not sure the poor thing deserved it. Meanwhile, the movie did everything it could to encourage my behavior. For instance, there was the heavy handed explanation that Rearden provided for the demise of the 20th Century Motor Company. Apparently, it was due to everyone getting pay raises based on need rather than merit. This was later reinforced by a loyal Taggart employee who explained to Dagny that new management had run it into the ground with new ideas about treating it like one big family. The question, though, was what factory (in reality that is) was it suppose to resemble? Granted, many companies will simplify things by granting raises through across the board percentages. But a percentage means that those who have been there longer will be gaining more. And, as far as I know, the way the more ambitious bypass that is by working their way up the ladder through promotion. But, once again: what profit seeking corporation would even consider such an approach? Of course, the preposterous nature of this slippery slope only foreshadowed the Kafkaesque labyrinth of bumbling and petty bureaucrats, and their policies, that grew more absurd as it went along.
But the bigger issue was Rand's well-known propensity towards the heroic and mythological coupled with her clear disgust for her antagonists. Her influence by Shakespeare made itself more and more apparent as it went along, especially in part two -which seems strange given Shakespeare's clarity on the corruption of power. What resulted was a vacillation between a comic book approach and a classical propensity towards speechmaking. On one hand, there were lines of dialogue that sounded like something off a Lichtenstein painting such as when James Taggart, an antagonist by virtue of his wanting to serve “the public good”, advised his sister, Tagny:
“You can’t leave. It’s a violation of the directive.”
Or this line by Reardon (typical of the false dilemma the story presented) as he stomped away from an agent of the State Scientific Agency:
“One of these days, you’re going to have to decide which side your on.”
Even the repetition of the line “Who is John Galt?”, which threaded throughout the narrative and was passed about like some cultish inside joke, as well as the mystery character himself who went about collecting high achievers like a shepherd gathering his flock, took on a hokey comic book aura.
On the other hand, there were these Shakespearian dialogues that, for the too obvious purpose of effect, seemed delegated to the more heroic characters. Esai Morales, for instance, as Francisco d'Anconia, skulked about like some modern Iago, shaman-like, dispensing wisdom in resonant soliloquies on the folly of fools who do not know what they do and the unrecognized wisdom of Laissez Faire Capitalism:
“When money seizes to be the tool of men by which men deal with other men, then men become the tools of other men.”
And this might have seemed a poignant point if it wasn’t for the fact that no one I know of is trying to get rid of money and that, as anyone who is not self-employed would know, even with money men are the tools of other men. This Shakespearean element got even more vulgar in Part Two with the heroics of Hank Reardon as he stood before court accused of violating the “Fair Share Act”, that which imposed a limit on how much one company can sell to another –another act committed by petty, bumbling bureaucrats that eluded me as to what the purpose would be.
“I do not recognize this court,” he stated in bold defiance, then proceeded to indict government policies that could not, in any dimension, exist. At one point, at the mention of “the public good”, he responded, yet again, with the same smug disregard he did earlier:
“I do not recognize the good of others as justification of my existence.”
And let’s be fair here. Robert Reich makes a convincing point, in SuperCapitalism, that we cannot expect corporations to act as moral agents. They exist solely to create profit for their shareholders. It is government, as an ethical agent, that must serve as check and balance to corporate power. But then, it is government, regardless of what function it serves, that Rand and the moviemakers wanted to undermine. At another point, Reardon proceeded to frame the “public good” in terms of:
“….those who would regulate and define us in our businesses and homes by stealing our liberty.”
Of course, at this point the crowd broke into the cheers of the converted. But then, who wouldn’t? Who isn’t concerned about their personal liberty? The problem is that Reardon’s point is a little hard to assimilate with the fact that, in our world (the real one), the primary agent of social control (under the encouragement of the health insurance industry) has pretty much been our employers through drug testing, smoking policies, and increasingly wellness programs. Reardon then proceeded to describe the benefits provided by corporations, such as job creation and technological progress, while the crowd cheered and the court slammed their hammer and screamed:
“Silence! Or the court will be cleared!”
The cliché continued as the court, recognizing that they could not turn Reardon into a martyr, decided to sentence him to 10 years in prison then, in light of his achievements, suspended his sentence. This was then punctuated by the following scene in which Dagny played cheer squad and told Reardon that he had provided a voice to the people. But what people exactly? The rich? Those who are ignorant enough to believe that their personal freedom is dependent on the freedom of the rich and powerful to do as they please?
Of course, you can get away with a lot in a movie if the comedic effects work. But this depends on wit that defines the character. Unfortunately, in Rand’s world, what results when defining characters meant to represent a questionable ideology is a lot of lame humor. To give you a sense of it, think of the kind you see on church billboards, the heavy handed attempts at cleverness that can only fall flat and roll the eyes of anyone but the true believer, but addressed to the same kind of dogmatic certainty displayed throughout this love letter to Capitalism. At one point, Dagny Taggart, faced with an employee who drones “Who is John Galt?”, responds:
“Don’t ask that question if you can’t answer it.”
And it is these kinds of references to the mock heroics and above-the-fray nature of the main characters that are suppose to seduce us throughout it all. At another point, Taggart and a scientist played by Dietrich Bader plot to research a super-battery that, as we are to understand it, only the private sphere is capable of making happen. When Taggart inquired as to where their plan to develop it would be carried out, the scientist assured her, in the conspiratorial way meant to suggest a couple of lovable rebel rascals, that he can use his state funded lab to study it and that she shouldn’t worry since they would have the best night watch there is: him. Now that’s poetic justice: the state’s failures are what allow the private sphere to carry out its own more heroic efforts –that is as if the state has nothing to do with corporate activities in the first place. But the most telling comes when a CEO and political candidate snarls when his train is stopped:
“I swear, if this train doesn’t make my campaign stop in San Francisco, I’ll make it my personal priority to nationalize this railroad.”
This is then followed by the drunken wit of a fellow traveler in a British accent:
“History shows that it is the only way to make the trains run on time.”
Get it? Nazi Germany? Trains running on time? Of course, the British accent should have clued me in to how profound and witty this was. Unfortunately, for the movie, the real humor laid in what those behind it wanted me to take seriously. At one point, CEOs and government officials are filmed walking, with expressions of serious intent, to a board meeting in (can you guess?) slow motion. The only thing missing was the hard beat and crunchy guitar from Kill Bill Volume One in the club scene with Lucy Lui's crew. But the continuous joke throughout it all was the way plot line built not through suspense, but rather through the escalation of the ludicrous. This tendency peaked, appropriately, at the very end of Part One when Ellis Wyatt, before leaving with Galt, left his newly discovered natural gas field in flames and a note that said:
"I'm leaving it as I found it."
Really? So now we know how he came into it. Apparently, he just wandered upon a burning field that no one else had noticed, put out the flames, and had his redneck self, with a southern accent for added appeal, a natural gas field. But even funnier was how whiny this seemed for a tight-fisted Texan.
Part two, in Peter Jackson/Lord of the Rings style, was almost admirable in the way it maintained the thread of absurdity and kept it building to the most preposterous moment yet: the introduction of Directive 10-289. In a scene that was clearly meant to chill us out of our Priuses and drive us to the NRA, the President (or Head of State played by Ray Wise) made a televised announcement of new policies that would make no sense in a purely communist regime, much less a democratic one. And in order to direct me as to how I was supposed to feel, there was everyone in the nation, rich and poor alike, watching with dropped jaws of shock and disgust. Among the policies were total bans on firing employees or employees quitting or changing their jobs, wage freezes, all companies surrendering their patents in the form of gift certificates, and a mandate on everyone to spend the same amount of money they had the year before. Of course, in a perfect world where the government wasn't so far up corporate ass as to actually act in the behalf of people, this might, at best, seem like a legitimate slippery slope. But how would wage freezes and bans on quitting or changing a job serve that purpose? In fact, what purpose would it serve under any circumstance? Forcing people to give up their hard earned patents would be a disincentive to new discovery. Even a Social Democrat and looter like me knows that. And the government has nothing on the market when it comes to forced consumption as anyone would know who, due to a lack of public transportation, has to maintain a car in order to get to work, or finds themselves in need of healthcare, or paying more for basic services such as TV which, by the way, use to be free, or generally wants to function in contemporary society. The only thing missing from the whole scene was the low, eerie hum of a synthesizer and someone shrieking at the president:
"Oh my God! It's a white Obama!"
From that pivotal point on, the denouement proceeded with a montage style breakdown that consisted of anti-corporation protesters, having been schooled in the principle of unintended consequences, turning anti-government, while Tagny pursued her scientific ally in a plane, having lost him to Galt, crashed, and, in the final scene, finally met the mystery man himself: John Galt.
However, the real money shot, at least in terms of the mentality behind the movie (and its desire to impose a kind of chilling irony similar to the ending of Altman's Nashville), came with a bum sitting on a curve in the midst of the chaos, a sort of Nietzschian madman, writing on a piece of wood shaped like a gravestone:
America:
Born: 1776
Died: Yesterday.
Last edited by d63 on Sun May 25, 2014 9:19 pm, edited 2 times in total.
Re: Postcards:
How I Faltered and the Plot Thickened:
It all seemed like some kind of bad surrealist joke. I mean: why? Why did they even go through with this? Who would push such a project? They had to have seen just how badly the whole project was developing. Wouldn't the stilted dialogue have been a clue? Were the Koch brothers behind it? It just seemed self defeating to showcase Rand’s work and thought in such a blatantly hokey and ridiculous manner. I found myself going back to the theory that what the producers were actually doing was offering up a combination of tribute and critique of the book. But that might have made a good movie. The only other possibility was that they were undermining it, in a backdoor kind of way, by presenting it in the most distasteful manner possible. But that seemed an incredible risk of money without marketing it and actually presenting it as satire. And, of course, there was the most obvious possibility of the project being pushed as propaganda by corporate interests or a right wing think tank.
By Part Two, I had calmed down and found myself playing the game of “why these actors would involve themselves?” And this was mainly because the cast from Part One had been completely replaced with what, as far I could tell, were more familiar faces. There was Richard T. Jones utilizing the same stoic loyalty as Dagny’s assistant that he did in Judging Amy and Paul McCrane portraying the same obnoxious worm, as a government official, that he did in ER. And the inclusion of these two suggested that they had been chosen, like character actors, for their perfect fit based on these previous roles. And further research showed that, unlike An American Carol where all the actors had some association with the Republican Party, there was nothing to indicate that any of these had any ideological affinity to the story itself. Nor was there any indication that they were lacking for work and participated out of desperation. The only conclusion I could come to is that they were just minor actors who took whatever work was available to them and stood little to lose by it: the immunity to career suicide that comes from being a minor actor. This especially seemed the case with Ray Wise, as Head of State Thompson, who, having gotten notice in David Lynch’s Twin Peaks, seems to show up everywhere, regardless of quality, and keeps showing up due to his unique physical characteristics. He's hardly a precious diva when it comes to his art. And given that possibility, I had to wonder if such character actors such as Danny Trejo and William Forsyth might show up in the third installment. That said, though, I couldn't help but suspect that Esai Morales took the part to brush up on his Shakespearian chops, while Deidrich Bader took it to break from his more air headed roles and write complex mathematical formulas on glass, just like he saw Russell Crowe do on A Beautiful Mind.
Still, there was the question of what happened to the first cast. John Aglialoro, the driving force behind the series, implied that the cost of hiring the cast from Part One exceeded Part Two’s budget and added that Taylor Schilling, Dagny in Part One, had become a bona fide star. This was immediate cause for suspicion since I hadn’t heard of or seen much of her. However, as a little researched showed, she had since appeared in the movie The Lucky One and the Netflix Series, Orange is the New Black. But how did that make her anymore inaccessible or expensive than Esia Moralas, Ray Wise, or Diedrich Bader? And Aglialoro wouldn’t be the first executive to spin something. So there was still the possibility of what, in some deep, dark, and petty element of my psyche, would have given me the satisfaction of the sanctimonious: that the first cast, having seen what a flop they had participated in, jumped ship, or the less pleasurable one of the producers abandoning them in the hopes of getting it right the next time. Or perhaps a combination of both.
Unfortunately, the story of how the movie came to be offered less leeway for self indulgence and sanctimony than I would have liked. After I got past my own expectations, and an initial propensity to read them into my research, I found the truth to be a little less odious. First of all, it was a project that took 30 plus years to be realized, starting in 1972 when Albert S. Ruddy approached Rand with the idea, which she agreed to on the condition that it focus on the love story between Reardon and Taggart and that she had final script approval. However, Ruddy rejected the offer and the deal fell through. It was then proposed as an 8 hour mini-series, but fell through again due to a CEO change. Rand even attempted a screenplay, but misfortune followed the project when she died 1/3 of the way through it. After yet several more setbacks, Aglialoro, an investor and co-writer to the script that finally got used, obtained the rights in 1992 only to suffer several more setbacks (including losing the commitment of Angelina Jolie, Julia Roberts, Charlize Theron, and Anne Hathaway to play Dagny) until the movie went into production in 2010 and was released in 2011. The hope was that Part One would finance the making of Part Two. But that, due to bad critical and box office reception, didn’t happen. However, Aglialoro and conspirators would not be discouraged and they somehow managed to scrape together an even bigger budget for Part Two only to create an even bigger flop. And as would be expected, the criticism it received was contingent on the individual’s ideological position. Most critics, being of a liberal or moderate lean, bludgeoned it with some caveats such as the look of the film and the casting choices in Part Two. But the most insightful criticism came from the A.V. Club:
"The irony of Part II’s mere existence is rich enough: The free market is a religion for Rand acolytes, and it emphatically rejected Part I.”
Reception in the Conservative press was, of course, generally more positive while being more mixed than one might expect. Fox New’s Sean Hannity and Jon Stossel, along with critics from conservative journals, sang its praises , while others were a little more reserved in recognizing the bad production values while recommending it for the message. But a point needs to be made here, one I have neglected, in that not every conservative would necessarily advocate this series or the ideological extremes that Rand goes to. William F. Buckley Jr., for instance, rejected the book itself on the grounds of its underlying objectivism. It would serve us here to make an important distinction made by Thom Hartman between your everyday conservative and the Neo-Con, or what he referred to as a Con. As I have learned, throughout my intellectual process, conservatism can mean any number of things depending on which conservative you're talking to, and even if I disagree with it in general, it is far too complex to warrant, across the board, the venom I have focused on this particular extreme.
As it stands now, Part Three is slated to appear in the summer of 2014. And given the struggles and dramatic turns this project has gone through, it will be interesting to see if it does. The making of it has become a kind of narrative in itself –one that, like a cheap B movie, you can’t help but follow through with to see how it turns out. There will, of course, be the true believers that will try (much as Aglialoro did) to pass these struggles off as the result of a Hollywood leftist conspiracy. It was the critics that killed it; not the quality of the movie. And we have to attribute some credibility to this argument. Creative people, at least those in the arts, do tend to be more liberal. But this is because their chosen pursuit requires that they be a little sympathetic and sensitive to the complexity of a given character or personality type. I, myself, have long felt it to be cornerstone of my creative process to recognize that, if I look deep enough into myself, there isn’t anyone I can’t at least empathize with, if not sympathize, no matter how despicable. Which makes me even more curious as to what it was they expected. No more than I could hope to get through to the true believers with this, how could they think this series would get through to the very people they are, with an air of disgust, referring to as “Looters”? How well would that work if my side of the fence referred to rich people and the true believers as “Hoarders”? How much corporate sponsorship could they hope to solicit?
In the end though, I had to eat a little crow in having to admit that it wasn't pimped by corporations, or a right wing think tank. And the Koch brothers, as far as I know, were not involved. Eventually, I had to admit, as much as I didn't want to, that it was a labor of love. With time, I found myself making further concessions as I went back through both parts in a more calm and lucid state of mind and, having gotten past the initial sting, a little more sympathetic with Jack Hunter, from The American Conservative, who noted:
“If you ask the average film critic about the new movie adaptation of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged they will tell you it is a horrible movie. If you ask the average conservative or libertarian they will tell you it is a great movie. Objectively, it is a mediocre movie at best. Subjectively, it is one of the best mediocre movies you’ll ever see.”
Once I got past my predispositions and expectations, I found it to be not totally lacking in cinematic quality. And it did seem a little more sophisticated than most B movies in that, between Rand and those who behind the series, there was a clear awareness of just about every plot device that Hollywood had to offer –even if they came off as clichés. And Rand certainly seemed to know how to put a story together, which gives some credibility to the achievements she managed with other books such as The Fountainhead. So I can easily see how someone who was a little more sympathetic to the ideology, or even indifferent, might be able to enjoy it in the same mindless manner I might some low budget film on ScyFy or Fear Net.
And while I have yet to well up as the train crosses the bridge, I also found myself with an inkling of sympathy for Hank Reardon. In the beginning of Part One, he gave his wife, Lillian Reardon a bracelet made of Reardon Steel, a rather appealing piece of work and admittedly thoughtful gift that reflected Hank’s commitment to his work and his high hopes for her future. However, Lillian, a gold digging looter who spends much of the story skulking about and plotting against her husband, takes it as a symbol of his egoism, scoffs, and eventually trades it with Dagny for a pearl necklace. And we have to recognize the semiology at work in that achievement is given privilege over materialism, and in the suggestion that Dagny’s common understanding of this privilege is what underlies the chemistry between her and Reardon. Interestingly, though, it was Lillian that provided the one insightful line in the whole thing. In a confrontation between her and Hank, over the divorce he wanted but she wouldn't consent to, she approached him, looked him straight in the eye, and said:
"I'm the one that knows you most. You're an ordinary man who thinks he doesn't owe anyone anything. But you do. You owe everyone."
What was revealed, whether consciously or not on the part of those who produced this story (perhaps even Rand), is the natural force fallacy that haunted and compromised Reardon's courtroom stand. What one needs to accept, that is in order to see his point as anything else than ludicrous, is the notion that it is perfectly natural for some to rise to the top even if it comes at the expense of others. And while we can agree with Reich that it is not the role of corporations to act as moral agents, we have to take pause when the question is asked:
“What do the rich owe us?”
The problem is the underlying assumption that the achiever acts in a vacuum, which is easy to do when Capitalism does such a effective job of mimicking a natural force and can be treated like an expression of nature (like the weather or death). But it’s not. It’s a human construct and, by virtue of that, an agreement. And as with any agreement, when it fails to work for all parties involved (or too few of them), it becomes a disagreement that warrants renegotiation. Second of all, in the real world, Reardon would not have created his wealth by himself. He would have built it on the productivity of labor and the purchases of consumers. So while he is not obligated to recognize the “public good” as justification for his existence (even though it actually is given that the "public good" was and is why we agree to Capitalism in the first place), he has every obligation to recognize it when it expresses itself through government policy –that is since his achievement was as dependent on that policy, via infrastructure, as anything. But then I’m speaking in terms of the real world where far less ludicrous forms of legislation are created and enforced. And doesn’t this interdependence between producer and consumer point to a major discrepancy between the real world and Rand’s? Throughout the story, we’re presented a scenario in which America is suffering from major economic distress, one that is unlikely to produce the consumer base necessary to support Reardon’s and Taggart’s activities. Where would the profits come from? It seems that if such a scenario actually did exist, the only real struggle the main characters would have is avoiding bankruptcy.
And it gets more interesting, assuming this scene to be taken from the book, when we consider that Rand may have revealed an internal conflict that inadvertently gave the story a little depth. First of all, she clearly recognized that Capitalism was, in fact, not a natural force, but a human agreement that was vulnerable to further choices made by future agents. Otherwise, what would be the point? Why would there be the need to write Atlas Shrugged in order to “warn us”? And this goes to a general inconsistency at work in the back and forth between Capitalism as an agreement that must be protected from the non-believers at all costs, and Capitalism as a natural force immune to all arguments against it -that is: dependent on which take happens to be convenient at the time. Furthermore, we get the feeling from this that Lillian, having penetrated Hank's denial concerning his dependency on others, is Rand’s worst nightmare due to a truth that Rand could not completely overcome. You have to wonder if Lillian did not serve as her evil alter-ego: a composite of common characteristics (ambition, materialism, and general narcissism) and Rand’s own doubts about herself.
But, in all fairness, we should consider the time in which Rand wrote Atlas Shrugged which was published in 1957. At the time, the cold war was heating up and there were Marxist elements that still bought into the egalitarian dream of Communism. Nor was she the only one concerned about this aspect of it as was demonstrated in Kirk Vonnegut’s short story, published in 1961, Harrison Bergeron. Plus that, she, like Smith and Marx, had no way of foreseeing the actual consequences of her push for deregulation much as we saw in the economic meltdown of 2007 -something that even Alan Greenspan, one of her biggest fans, had to acknowledge. However, this point fails to redeem those who started this series in 2010 and, in fact, strategically chose the release date of the first part for tax day and the second for the 2012 election thereby confirming the series' status as propaganda.
And it’s not as if I’m completely unsympathetic with the ideology. I too recognize that “selfishness” is a term that tends to be bandied about by those who would selfishly insist that you focus on what it is they think you should be doing. Being of modest but relatively impressive resources, I know what it’s like to be surrounded by people who either can’t do for themselves, or won’t, yet make demands that I’m expected to fulfill. As Bill Maher expressed n Real Time, I too know what it’s like to feel like I’m the only one pulling the wagon while everyone else jumps in. But it’s always a little more complex than that. There is a big difference between deciding to balance one’s own needs with that of others and the plundering of taking what one wants regardless of who suffers. For one, what do we do with those who can’t do for themselves? Help them? Or do we take the more fascistic route of letting them die off? And it’s not like those that won’t lack for incentive or motivation. Working still seems to be a much better option than the hand to mouth existence I’ve seen such people get by on -social programs or not. But the most odious aspect of this is that Rand’s version of Capitalism acts as if society shedding this burden would magically make it disappear. What really happens, by not spreading the burden through social programs, is that it becomes more localized either through the crimes committed by the desperate, or the desperate that turn to those closest to them to survive. Take, for instance, the Tea Party justification for dismantling social security that refers back to the good old days when families took care of their elderly. Of course, the problem with this is that back then the elderly usually didn’t get so elderly because healthcare was less developed and effective (and life expectancy much lower) with the consolation of being less expensive. A stroke, heart attack, or cancer generally meant imminent death, not a lot of lingering around in a decrepit state. In other words, you were generally either healthy enough to take care of yourself, or dead. On top of that, a family could generally survive on one income, thereby leaving one parent, usually the wife, with the time to take care of the aged. And given that such a financial arrangement is no longer practical, I fail to see how such an approach could be conducive to “achievement”, which is supposedly the main issue here. But if we follow the reasoning through, we find that the only real achievement at stake is that of the Rand Head or Tea Bagger (or those who have already achieved and are arrogant enough to think their fortune could never change), since the possibility of achievement in their world would be contingent on either being fortunate enough to not have any relationships with those who cannot do for themselves, or even won't, or being cruel enough to abandon them -that is unless you have the good fortune of having excess resources in the first place.
And it is the repeatedly proven failure, poverty, and outright cruelty of their policies that forces them to resort to this kind of misdirection. Such self-indulgence simply cannot be propped up through reason -that is since reason, a cooperative venture, must inherently involve a consideration of all interests involved. Instead it must work purely in the mode of rationalization, an inherently competitive venture that seeks to dominate the discourse by any means available. Hence the false dilemma that neglects to get across how Laissez Faire Capitalism serves all our interests, the downplaying of its failures (the people dying due to lack of access to healthcare, food, or shelter, or ghettos and distressed environments that invariably exist under it), and the heavy emphasis on the evils of the looters who, we're suppose to believe, want it all -which now strikes me as a kind of transference in that the greed and megalomania of the Capitalist is magically imposed upon the reformer. But let’s be clear on this: neither myself, nor anyone I can think of, want to strip the rich of all their assets and distribute BMWs in the ghettos. The notion that they do is utter nonsense. And had Rand, or the movie makers, taken such considerations into the balance, they might have achieved something more than propaganda. They might have created a decent story. But that, in a spectacular way, is not what happened.
It all seemed like some kind of bad surrealist joke. I mean: why? Why did they even go through with this? Who would push such a project? They had to have seen just how badly the whole project was developing. Wouldn't the stilted dialogue have been a clue? Were the Koch brothers behind it? It just seemed self defeating to showcase Rand’s work and thought in such a blatantly hokey and ridiculous manner. I found myself going back to the theory that what the producers were actually doing was offering up a combination of tribute and critique of the book. But that might have made a good movie. The only other possibility was that they were undermining it, in a backdoor kind of way, by presenting it in the most distasteful manner possible. But that seemed an incredible risk of money without marketing it and actually presenting it as satire. And, of course, there was the most obvious possibility of the project being pushed as propaganda by corporate interests or a right wing think tank.
By Part Two, I had calmed down and found myself playing the game of “why these actors would involve themselves?” And this was mainly because the cast from Part One had been completely replaced with what, as far I could tell, were more familiar faces. There was Richard T. Jones utilizing the same stoic loyalty as Dagny’s assistant that he did in Judging Amy and Paul McCrane portraying the same obnoxious worm, as a government official, that he did in ER. And the inclusion of these two suggested that they had been chosen, like character actors, for their perfect fit based on these previous roles. And further research showed that, unlike An American Carol where all the actors had some association with the Republican Party, there was nothing to indicate that any of these had any ideological affinity to the story itself. Nor was there any indication that they were lacking for work and participated out of desperation. The only conclusion I could come to is that they were just minor actors who took whatever work was available to them and stood little to lose by it: the immunity to career suicide that comes from being a minor actor. This especially seemed the case with Ray Wise, as Head of State Thompson, who, having gotten notice in David Lynch’s Twin Peaks, seems to show up everywhere, regardless of quality, and keeps showing up due to his unique physical characteristics. He's hardly a precious diva when it comes to his art. And given that possibility, I had to wonder if such character actors such as Danny Trejo and William Forsyth might show up in the third installment. That said, though, I couldn't help but suspect that Esai Morales took the part to brush up on his Shakespearian chops, while Deidrich Bader took it to break from his more air headed roles and write complex mathematical formulas on glass, just like he saw Russell Crowe do on A Beautiful Mind.
Still, there was the question of what happened to the first cast. John Aglialoro, the driving force behind the series, implied that the cost of hiring the cast from Part One exceeded Part Two’s budget and added that Taylor Schilling, Dagny in Part One, had become a bona fide star. This was immediate cause for suspicion since I hadn’t heard of or seen much of her. However, as a little researched showed, she had since appeared in the movie The Lucky One and the Netflix Series, Orange is the New Black. But how did that make her anymore inaccessible or expensive than Esia Moralas, Ray Wise, or Diedrich Bader? And Aglialoro wouldn’t be the first executive to spin something. So there was still the possibility of what, in some deep, dark, and petty element of my psyche, would have given me the satisfaction of the sanctimonious: that the first cast, having seen what a flop they had participated in, jumped ship, or the less pleasurable one of the producers abandoning them in the hopes of getting it right the next time. Or perhaps a combination of both.
Unfortunately, the story of how the movie came to be offered less leeway for self indulgence and sanctimony than I would have liked. After I got past my own expectations, and an initial propensity to read them into my research, I found the truth to be a little less odious. First of all, it was a project that took 30 plus years to be realized, starting in 1972 when Albert S. Ruddy approached Rand with the idea, which she agreed to on the condition that it focus on the love story between Reardon and Taggart and that she had final script approval. However, Ruddy rejected the offer and the deal fell through. It was then proposed as an 8 hour mini-series, but fell through again due to a CEO change. Rand even attempted a screenplay, but misfortune followed the project when she died 1/3 of the way through it. After yet several more setbacks, Aglialoro, an investor and co-writer to the script that finally got used, obtained the rights in 1992 only to suffer several more setbacks (including losing the commitment of Angelina Jolie, Julia Roberts, Charlize Theron, and Anne Hathaway to play Dagny) until the movie went into production in 2010 and was released in 2011. The hope was that Part One would finance the making of Part Two. But that, due to bad critical and box office reception, didn’t happen. However, Aglialoro and conspirators would not be discouraged and they somehow managed to scrape together an even bigger budget for Part Two only to create an even bigger flop. And as would be expected, the criticism it received was contingent on the individual’s ideological position. Most critics, being of a liberal or moderate lean, bludgeoned it with some caveats such as the look of the film and the casting choices in Part Two. But the most insightful criticism came from the A.V. Club:
"The irony of Part II’s mere existence is rich enough: The free market is a religion for Rand acolytes, and it emphatically rejected Part I.”
Reception in the Conservative press was, of course, generally more positive while being more mixed than one might expect. Fox New’s Sean Hannity and Jon Stossel, along with critics from conservative journals, sang its praises , while others were a little more reserved in recognizing the bad production values while recommending it for the message. But a point needs to be made here, one I have neglected, in that not every conservative would necessarily advocate this series or the ideological extremes that Rand goes to. William F. Buckley Jr., for instance, rejected the book itself on the grounds of its underlying objectivism. It would serve us here to make an important distinction made by Thom Hartman between your everyday conservative and the Neo-Con, or what he referred to as a Con. As I have learned, throughout my intellectual process, conservatism can mean any number of things depending on which conservative you're talking to, and even if I disagree with it in general, it is far too complex to warrant, across the board, the venom I have focused on this particular extreme.
As it stands now, Part Three is slated to appear in the summer of 2014. And given the struggles and dramatic turns this project has gone through, it will be interesting to see if it does. The making of it has become a kind of narrative in itself –one that, like a cheap B movie, you can’t help but follow through with to see how it turns out. There will, of course, be the true believers that will try (much as Aglialoro did) to pass these struggles off as the result of a Hollywood leftist conspiracy. It was the critics that killed it; not the quality of the movie. And we have to attribute some credibility to this argument. Creative people, at least those in the arts, do tend to be more liberal. But this is because their chosen pursuit requires that they be a little sympathetic and sensitive to the complexity of a given character or personality type. I, myself, have long felt it to be cornerstone of my creative process to recognize that, if I look deep enough into myself, there isn’t anyone I can’t at least empathize with, if not sympathize, no matter how despicable. Which makes me even more curious as to what it was they expected. No more than I could hope to get through to the true believers with this, how could they think this series would get through to the very people they are, with an air of disgust, referring to as “Looters”? How well would that work if my side of the fence referred to rich people and the true believers as “Hoarders”? How much corporate sponsorship could they hope to solicit?
In the end though, I had to eat a little crow in having to admit that it wasn't pimped by corporations, or a right wing think tank. And the Koch brothers, as far as I know, were not involved. Eventually, I had to admit, as much as I didn't want to, that it was a labor of love. With time, I found myself making further concessions as I went back through both parts in a more calm and lucid state of mind and, having gotten past the initial sting, a little more sympathetic with Jack Hunter, from The American Conservative, who noted:
“If you ask the average film critic about the new movie adaptation of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged they will tell you it is a horrible movie. If you ask the average conservative or libertarian they will tell you it is a great movie. Objectively, it is a mediocre movie at best. Subjectively, it is one of the best mediocre movies you’ll ever see.”
Once I got past my predispositions and expectations, I found it to be not totally lacking in cinematic quality. And it did seem a little more sophisticated than most B movies in that, between Rand and those who behind the series, there was a clear awareness of just about every plot device that Hollywood had to offer –even if they came off as clichés. And Rand certainly seemed to know how to put a story together, which gives some credibility to the achievements she managed with other books such as The Fountainhead. So I can easily see how someone who was a little more sympathetic to the ideology, or even indifferent, might be able to enjoy it in the same mindless manner I might some low budget film on ScyFy or Fear Net.
And while I have yet to well up as the train crosses the bridge, I also found myself with an inkling of sympathy for Hank Reardon. In the beginning of Part One, he gave his wife, Lillian Reardon a bracelet made of Reardon Steel, a rather appealing piece of work and admittedly thoughtful gift that reflected Hank’s commitment to his work and his high hopes for her future. However, Lillian, a gold digging looter who spends much of the story skulking about and plotting against her husband, takes it as a symbol of his egoism, scoffs, and eventually trades it with Dagny for a pearl necklace. And we have to recognize the semiology at work in that achievement is given privilege over materialism, and in the suggestion that Dagny’s common understanding of this privilege is what underlies the chemistry between her and Reardon. Interestingly, though, it was Lillian that provided the one insightful line in the whole thing. In a confrontation between her and Hank, over the divorce he wanted but she wouldn't consent to, she approached him, looked him straight in the eye, and said:
"I'm the one that knows you most. You're an ordinary man who thinks he doesn't owe anyone anything. But you do. You owe everyone."
What was revealed, whether consciously or not on the part of those who produced this story (perhaps even Rand), is the natural force fallacy that haunted and compromised Reardon's courtroom stand. What one needs to accept, that is in order to see his point as anything else than ludicrous, is the notion that it is perfectly natural for some to rise to the top even if it comes at the expense of others. And while we can agree with Reich that it is not the role of corporations to act as moral agents, we have to take pause when the question is asked:
“What do the rich owe us?”
The problem is the underlying assumption that the achiever acts in a vacuum, which is easy to do when Capitalism does such a effective job of mimicking a natural force and can be treated like an expression of nature (like the weather or death). But it’s not. It’s a human construct and, by virtue of that, an agreement. And as with any agreement, when it fails to work for all parties involved (or too few of them), it becomes a disagreement that warrants renegotiation. Second of all, in the real world, Reardon would not have created his wealth by himself. He would have built it on the productivity of labor and the purchases of consumers. So while he is not obligated to recognize the “public good” as justification for his existence (even though it actually is given that the "public good" was and is why we agree to Capitalism in the first place), he has every obligation to recognize it when it expresses itself through government policy –that is since his achievement was as dependent on that policy, via infrastructure, as anything. But then I’m speaking in terms of the real world where far less ludicrous forms of legislation are created and enforced. And doesn’t this interdependence between producer and consumer point to a major discrepancy between the real world and Rand’s? Throughout the story, we’re presented a scenario in which America is suffering from major economic distress, one that is unlikely to produce the consumer base necessary to support Reardon’s and Taggart’s activities. Where would the profits come from? It seems that if such a scenario actually did exist, the only real struggle the main characters would have is avoiding bankruptcy.
And it gets more interesting, assuming this scene to be taken from the book, when we consider that Rand may have revealed an internal conflict that inadvertently gave the story a little depth. First of all, she clearly recognized that Capitalism was, in fact, not a natural force, but a human agreement that was vulnerable to further choices made by future agents. Otherwise, what would be the point? Why would there be the need to write Atlas Shrugged in order to “warn us”? And this goes to a general inconsistency at work in the back and forth between Capitalism as an agreement that must be protected from the non-believers at all costs, and Capitalism as a natural force immune to all arguments against it -that is: dependent on which take happens to be convenient at the time. Furthermore, we get the feeling from this that Lillian, having penetrated Hank's denial concerning his dependency on others, is Rand’s worst nightmare due to a truth that Rand could not completely overcome. You have to wonder if Lillian did not serve as her evil alter-ego: a composite of common characteristics (ambition, materialism, and general narcissism) and Rand’s own doubts about herself.
But, in all fairness, we should consider the time in which Rand wrote Atlas Shrugged which was published in 1957. At the time, the cold war was heating up and there were Marxist elements that still bought into the egalitarian dream of Communism. Nor was she the only one concerned about this aspect of it as was demonstrated in Kirk Vonnegut’s short story, published in 1961, Harrison Bergeron. Plus that, she, like Smith and Marx, had no way of foreseeing the actual consequences of her push for deregulation much as we saw in the economic meltdown of 2007 -something that even Alan Greenspan, one of her biggest fans, had to acknowledge. However, this point fails to redeem those who started this series in 2010 and, in fact, strategically chose the release date of the first part for tax day and the second for the 2012 election thereby confirming the series' status as propaganda.
And it’s not as if I’m completely unsympathetic with the ideology. I too recognize that “selfishness” is a term that tends to be bandied about by those who would selfishly insist that you focus on what it is they think you should be doing. Being of modest but relatively impressive resources, I know what it’s like to be surrounded by people who either can’t do for themselves, or won’t, yet make demands that I’m expected to fulfill. As Bill Maher expressed n Real Time, I too know what it’s like to feel like I’m the only one pulling the wagon while everyone else jumps in. But it’s always a little more complex than that. There is a big difference between deciding to balance one’s own needs with that of others and the plundering of taking what one wants regardless of who suffers. For one, what do we do with those who can’t do for themselves? Help them? Or do we take the more fascistic route of letting them die off? And it’s not like those that won’t lack for incentive or motivation. Working still seems to be a much better option than the hand to mouth existence I’ve seen such people get by on -social programs or not. But the most odious aspect of this is that Rand’s version of Capitalism acts as if society shedding this burden would magically make it disappear. What really happens, by not spreading the burden through social programs, is that it becomes more localized either through the crimes committed by the desperate, or the desperate that turn to those closest to them to survive. Take, for instance, the Tea Party justification for dismantling social security that refers back to the good old days when families took care of their elderly. Of course, the problem with this is that back then the elderly usually didn’t get so elderly because healthcare was less developed and effective (and life expectancy much lower) with the consolation of being less expensive. A stroke, heart attack, or cancer generally meant imminent death, not a lot of lingering around in a decrepit state. In other words, you were generally either healthy enough to take care of yourself, or dead. On top of that, a family could generally survive on one income, thereby leaving one parent, usually the wife, with the time to take care of the aged. And given that such a financial arrangement is no longer practical, I fail to see how such an approach could be conducive to “achievement”, which is supposedly the main issue here. But if we follow the reasoning through, we find that the only real achievement at stake is that of the Rand Head or Tea Bagger (or those who have already achieved and are arrogant enough to think their fortune could never change), since the possibility of achievement in their world would be contingent on either being fortunate enough to not have any relationships with those who cannot do for themselves, or even won't, or being cruel enough to abandon them -that is unless you have the good fortune of having excess resources in the first place.
And it is the repeatedly proven failure, poverty, and outright cruelty of their policies that forces them to resort to this kind of misdirection. Such self-indulgence simply cannot be propped up through reason -that is since reason, a cooperative venture, must inherently involve a consideration of all interests involved. Instead it must work purely in the mode of rationalization, an inherently competitive venture that seeks to dominate the discourse by any means available. Hence the false dilemma that neglects to get across how Laissez Faire Capitalism serves all our interests, the downplaying of its failures (the people dying due to lack of access to healthcare, food, or shelter, or ghettos and distressed environments that invariably exist under it), and the heavy emphasis on the evils of the looters who, we're suppose to believe, want it all -which now strikes me as a kind of transference in that the greed and megalomania of the Capitalist is magically imposed upon the reformer. But let’s be clear on this: neither myself, nor anyone I can think of, want to strip the rich of all their assets and distribute BMWs in the ghettos. The notion that they do is utter nonsense. And had Rand, or the movie makers, taken such considerations into the balance, they might have achieved something more than propaganda. They might have created a decent story. But that, in a spectacular way, is not what happened.
Last edited by d63 on Sun May 25, 2014 6:46 pm, edited 2 times in total.
Re: Postcards:
The Comeback or how I Crossed My Bridge:
Of course, some true believers, those with the taste and the honesty to know bad cinema when they see it, would argue that it is unfair to judge Rand’s book, and the ideas behind it, on a badly made movie, that I should read the book. And outside of the most obvious objection, that the movie did little to inspire wading through a 1200 page book, there are a couple problems with this argument. For one, let’s imagine the movie made with top level talent. Let’s say George Clooney for Hank Reardon. I could see him play it with the mixture of drive, restraint, and civility that Rand seemed to want for this character. However, Clooney would play up the conflicts in more subtle ways, much as he did in Up in the Air. And this would have to include his stated indifference to the poor. He would have to find a way to smooth the vacillation between the likable Rearden and the smug, obtuse one. And that might include self doubt. For Dagny Taggart, any one of the actresses originally slated for the movie would work. Angelina Jolie could certainly play it hardnosed. As could Julia Roberts which she demonstrated in Charlie Wilson’s War where she played a right wing contributor to Senator Wilson’s agenda. But, for all the rough edges, Roberts had to play counter to Tom Hank’s humanity and make their compatibility seem realistic. Charlize Theron could certainly pull it off. And I don't know enough about Anne Hathaway to comment. But they would also have to incorporate the Madonna –like character of Taggart. And it's something we can be certain actresses of such a caliber would be more than willing to do. However, it would involve a little more than being nice to people who happen to serve their purposes. They might actually have to show a little reservation when witnessing the struggles of the poor. But regardless of who played what, it would require much better dialogue and a more rounded approach to the motivations of the main characters and those around them. This would be especially true of the antagonists as no talented actor would choose to play the one dimensional villains portrayed. And this would likely require stepping outside of Rand’s original intent and message into a combination of tribute to those aspects of her thought that many can agree with, such as the value of achievement, and critique of those aspects many find repulsive. For instance, the main characters might have to be as fallible and prone to being wrong as they are heroic. And one thing good actors would not do, as Stallone has, and Costner back in his The Bodyguard days, is just tack those flaws onto their otherwise heroic behavior. Their flaws would have to be as intertwined in their character as their virtues. In other words, the greed and self indulgence would have to rear its ugly face.
And similar considerations would be at play concerning how the movie was made or by whom it was directed. Someone like Spielberg, for instance, would bring much better special effects into the mix and might approach it like he did War of the Worlds and jumble up time by setting the time in the near future of 1957 when Atlas Shrugged was written. That would insulate it from what we know in the present, thereby, making Rand’s predictions a little more palatable since the causality at work would be that of an imaginary world remote from our own. Plus that, it would effectively deal with something that bothered a lot of critics: the discrepancy between the movie's economy, built around the railway, and our own digital economy. But Spielberg, like the actors, would want to mix it up. He too would want to dig into the multiplicity of motivations and circumstances and the conflicting ethical considerations. And once again, the only way to do so would be a subtle mix of tribute and critique.
Another approach could be like a CGI remake of a graphic novel like Sin City or Sky Captain of Tomorrow. This would make it remote enough from our reality to preempt most comparisons between Rand's slippery slope and the way things have actually turned out. On the other hand, purposely making it seem like a cartoon would only constitute mocking the seriousness of Rand's message to the true believers. But if I had my choice, I would go with Neil Blomkamp. Given the point he made in the director's comments for District 9 (and expanded on in Elysium), that anyone who wanted a look into the future only needed to go to Johannesburg where 5% of the population holds all the wealth while the other 95% lives in abject poverty, and given the portrayal of it he gave in the movie, he would seem qualified and willing enough to bring out something that was conspicuously missing in the first two parts of the series: the distressed environments and ghettos that would certainly surround the world of Reardon and Taggart.
But regardless of who participates or how the movie was made, such high level artists would insist that there be changes and additions to Rand's original story in order to obtain the subtle complexity that distinguishes real art from propaganda. But then such a balanced perspective would not serve the tunnel vision and one sided perspective propping up the ideology. Such complexity would only raise the possibility that the only economic system that makes sense would be the one we're already in, the hybrid economy, and that beyond that there is only the question of which aspects of its multiplicity should be either left where they are, and which should be moved closer to the command or market side of the spectrum.
And therein lies the core problem with the argument that it’s not Rand’s fault, but mine for not reading the book. While I may not be able to completely blame Rand for a badly made version of her story, what I can almost be certain of is that the message is explicitly hers. This would seem evident in the high praise given the series by true believers such as Hannity and Fossel. Plus that, this was a labor of love by true believers who would have little reason to alter the message. But, for me, it was most evident in the fact that I have heard the same arguments used a thousand times against any argument I have presented for anything less than a religious and dogmatic faith in the invisible hand of the market.
This leads me to question whether Rand's sensibility, and her zealous embrace of it, excludes her from the possibility of writing a classic. Once again, art's distinguishing asset, especially as concerns storytelling, is its ability to capture the complexity and often conflicting forces at work in reality. It, more than any other medium, is equipped to deal with the multiplicity of motives and the emergent subtleties that can come into play in any confrontation. But Rand only sees one side, that of Capitalism, and stubbornly maintains a blind spot for the other. At best, she only offers caveats such as her apparent respect for the railway service tech (which is the equivalent of the token black or gay friend for xenophobes) and her willingness to portray the rich surrounding the main protagonists as looters along with government and the needy masses. Consequently, I can’t help but feel that the main source of this deficit lays in a seething contempt, rooted in her experiences in communist Russia, for the other that she struggles to contain for the sake of integrity -or the expectations she found herself surrounded by as a Hollywood writer. Furthermore, we should consider the distinction between fancy and imagination made by Coleridge. In fancy, we indulge the fantasies that emerge from our baser impulses and thereby give into simplistic notions concerning the monsters that inhabit them. With imagination, we utilize the cognitive in an attempt to understand those monsters as having recognizable and sometimes sympathetic motivations. And Rand, given the one dimensional portrayal of her antagonists and heroes, clearly settles for the fanciful. And while you can entertain people with such, art, sooner or later, requires imagination -not the caveats she sprinkles throughout the story. Paul Krugman makes a humorous but observant point on this:
"There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs."
This becomes especially evident when we consider the main thread that ties it all together: John Galt, the enigmatic but shadowy figure that goes about like a shepherd gathering his flock of overachievers to take them to their promise land, a place where their efforts will be fully appreciated and nourished. But appreciated by who? And how does insulating oneself from the world nourish the creative impulses that arise from dealing with the problems presented by the world? And who exactly will there be to reward those accomplishments with money or applause? Lack of reward, after all, was the issue in the first place. They would, of course, have the appreciation of their peers. But would that be enough? As Nietzsche, an apparent influence on Rand, well knew: mediocrity, for all the frustration it might present, is as necessary to greatness as greatness is to it. There exists an interdependence between the two. But this seems to be a complete blind spot to Rand. This is why she can entertain this rather vindictive fantasy of Galt’s ultimate revenge: to stop the motor of the world, to punish the looters and show them the error of their ways by depriving them of the benefits of greatness and excellence. And how does she know that this will necessarily lead to the downfall? She bases this on the assumption that excellence can only flourish within the context of Laissez Faire Capitalism. But how does she know the challenges presented by a world without Galt’s flock wouldn't stimulate those left behind to rise to their full creative potential and assure the survival of their community? And wouldn’t it be poetic justice to see the strike fail and Galt and flock skulking back to society, hoping to partake of the fruits of its efforts, much as the scientist, who had tried to undermine Reardon Steel, did with Dagny after her success with the John Galt line? Perhaps then the looters could engage in the same heavy-handed nobility by deflecting the pathetic concessions of the once great. And in the end, doesn’t Galt’s strike feel like the child-like fancy of holding one's breath until they either get their way, or everyone’s face turns blue?
And it is this vindictiveness, coupled with Rand's zealousness for her beliefs and her propensity towards fancy that undermines the aesthetic of the work. It appeals to beauty, but succumbs to propaganda. Less concerned with convincing anyone of anything, and more with rallying the true believers, she plays on the internal feedback loop of the cult dynamic. And in her Gecko-like world where greed, if not good, is acceptable for the sake of achievement, and altruistic notions such as the public good are spat out with snarls of disgust, a world where there are only the achievers and the looters, and in which we can assume most of us to be the latter, you have to wonder how much we are suppose care or feel for the main characters, to what extent we are suppose to share in the triumph of Reardon and Taggart as the train crosses the bridge. But then it wasn't sympathy or care that Rand wanted us to feel, was it? It was, rather, awe: the very awe that subjects of the past were suppose feel for their monarch.
This is evident in Dagny's relationship with a service tech from Taggart Railway. Rand, like most who argue for Laissez Faire Capitalism, was prudent in including the common man in her vision. As Deleuze and Guattarri point out: no tyrranny could exist in a vacuum. They always have to insulate themselves from those they would exploit by creating a cushion of loyal and well compensated benefactors. This is what Malcolm X was talking about when he referred to the house slave -in terms a little harsher than mine. He noted that in the days of slavery, the slave owner would keep one family of closer to the house and give them advantages the others would not have. That way, when one of the lesser slaves started to get uppity and talk about rebelling or escaping, the house slave would be right there arguing that such acts of dissent could only make things worse. And one could easily see the RandHead fawning over this particular employee: complacent to the point of easy going, dedicated to his job, and perfectly willing, as an ex-employee of Twentieth Century Company, to reiterate Reardon’s explanation of its demise –not to mention his casual awe at finding himself in the presence of Dagny. After he explains to her where the scientist who created the super battery was, she asks if she can take his truck to which he responds in yet another lame attempt at humor that plays on the ultimate truth of private property:
“Sure, it’s yours anyway.”
Of course, Dagny rewards this loyalty, as most employers do (?), by telling her other loyal sidekick, Eddie, to get that employee another truck since (another stab at humor) she stole his and to triple his salary. But we really need to look at the semiology at work here. What one might see in this employee is the one non-achiever that manages to avoid the tag of being a looter: someone perfectly willing to just do what their told and not question the forces at work in their life: the ideal producer/consumer. In other words, what is being praised here is conformity. And this seems a little strange and contradictory given that Rand, throughout her career, pushed her ideology under the banner of some radical form of freedom. She argued as if she were championing what was best for all. But the only vision that seems to be at work is a world in which the achievers, unobstructed, can enjoy the full fruits of their labors, while those that can’t complacently accept their position in life for the sake of the higher principle of Capitalism.
Despite all that, allow me to indulge in a cheap narrative device (that of the gratuitous plot twist) and actually plug the series and say that I look forward to Part Three, if for no other reason than to see how ludicrous it can get. And I would also confess that I do so, in part, in the pure Randian spirit of self interest. Why wouldn't I? Those that do will understand and appreciate the preceding essay all that more? Furthermore, I would implore Netflix not to take my 1 star rating as an inducement to take the series off their catalogue. (It was their user critiques that inspired this.) With most films I didn’t like, I wouldn't even bother. And I generally find negative criticism to be a little self indulgent in that it becomes more about the critic than the thing being criticized. But this case is special. And because of that, I would argue that it is Netflix’s social duty to keep it available as an ideological artifact, something to be approached in the same negative sense of Reefer Madness, the thought of John Calvin, and Mein Kampf. While the series may not exactly represent Rand’s thought, story, and ideology, it clearly represents the mentality that has evolved from it. And in that sense, it is every bit as significant and culturally important as the book itself.
Furthermore, I would encourage everyone to see it –even at the risk of reinforcing the belief system behind it. While Roger Ebert expressed disappointment that the low quality of Part One preempted a healthy discussion around the work and ideas of Rand, I would respectfully disagree and reiterate that it may well be the ideology, itself, that preempted the possibility of a good movie. And that, in itself, is cause for discourse and contention.
Now for my fellow looters, my progressive and moderate peers, I would appeal to their forgiving nature and ask that they bear with it until they find themselves immune to the initial sting of insult and bad taste and find in it what I have: a sense of clarity about the other, the encouragement to set aside one's self-questioning and open mindedness and recognize bad reasoning when one sees it, and the recognition that when even the boundaries of common sense have been transgressed, one can no longer afford the luxury of being a noble or beautiful soul. We can no longer afford the relativity of acting like it is just one opinion among others. This, via global warming and the empire of globalization, can actually end up destroying civilization as we know it.
As for the true believers, the Rand and Ditto-heads who have invaded, throughout much of my intellectual life, a large part of my audio and ideological space with droning repetitions of Randian scripture and the unquestioning praise of producer/consumer Capitalism, many of which I have found to be otherwise decent people (some to the point of dear friends), I can, on one hand, see it as a just form of therapy or deprogramming in that given the task, the best method would be to strap them to a chair and force them to watch this nonsense, repeatedly, with the added effect of interspersing it with ad-like spots, made by real talent, that describe the misery and devastation their perspective has caused. Maybe then, after enough of it, they’ll develop some taste, then a clue, then hopefully, just hopefully, a social conscience. One can only hope that it might lead to an epiphany and recognition of what is effectively a sickness and form of addiction to producer/consumer Capitalism, and that this break from denial will force them to see their belief system for what it is: not so much reason as reason in the service of baser impulses. Maybe then they’ll see that referring to someone as “looters” is as much as calling them “rats” or “cockroaches” and goes to the same effect of reducing the other to an undesirable which must be overcome to achieve some erroneous notion of perfection. But more important is the hope that they’ll see Rand’s thought and Atlas Shrugged for what it is: the propaganda of the self indulgent and sociopathic, and the hegemony that would blind us to the exploitation of those impulses, and the fancies that emerge from them, for the sake of advantage and power. On the other hand, many of “those people” are dear friends who are far more than their ideologies. Therefore, in my more rational moments, I lean towards forgoing strapping them to a chair. Still: I would recommend the series in the remote hope that they’ll see how absurd and disturbing some of the reasoning is to their dear friend. Maybe then they’ll think less in terms of defending their corner at all costs and, while not surrendering to my position on it (that would just be scary), recognize Atlas Shrugged for the dangerous extreme it is.
Of course, some true believers, those with the taste and the honesty to know bad cinema when they see it, would argue that it is unfair to judge Rand’s book, and the ideas behind it, on a badly made movie, that I should read the book. And outside of the most obvious objection, that the movie did little to inspire wading through a 1200 page book, there are a couple problems with this argument. For one, let’s imagine the movie made with top level talent. Let’s say George Clooney for Hank Reardon. I could see him play it with the mixture of drive, restraint, and civility that Rand seemed to want for this character. However, Clooney would play up the conflicts in more subtle ways, much as he did in Up in the Air. And this would have to include his stated indifference to the poor. He would have to find a way to smooth the vacillation between the likable Rearden and the smug, obtuse one. And that might include self doubt. For Dagny Taggart, any one of the actresses originally slated for the movie would work. Angelina Jolie could certainly play it hardnosed. As could Julia Roberts which she demonstrated in Charlie Wilson’s War where she played a right wing contributor to Senator Wilson’s agenda. But, for all the rough edges, Roberts had to play counter to Tom Hank’s humanity and make their compatibility seem realistic. Charlize Theron could certainly pull it off. And I don't know enough about Anne Hathaway to comment. But they would also have to incorporate the Madonna –like character of Taggart. And it's something we can be certain actresses of such a caliber would be more than willing to do. However, it would involve a little more than being nice to people who happen to serve their purposes. They might actually have to show a little reservation when witnessing the struggles of the poor. But regardless of who played what, it would require much better dialogue and a more rounded approach to the motivations of the main characters and those around them. This would be especially true of the antagonists as no talented actor would choose to play the one dimensional villains portrayed. And this would likely require stepping outside of Rand’s original intent and message into a combination of tribute to those aspects of her thought that many can agree with, such as the value of achievement, and critique of those aspects many find repulsive. For instance, the main characters might have to be as fallible and prone to being wrong as they are heroic. And one thing good actors would not do, as Stallone has, and Costner back in his The Bodyguard days, is just tack those flaws onto their otherwise heroic behavior. Their flaws would have to be as intertwined in their character as their virtues. In other words, the greed and self indulgence would have to rear its ugly face.
And similar considerations would be at play concerning how the movie was made or by whom it was directed. Someone like Spielberg, for instance, would bring much better special effects into the mix and might approach it like he did War of the Worlds and jumble up time by setting the time in the near future of 1957 when Atlas Shrugged was written. That would insulate it from what we know in the present, thereby, making Rand’s predictions a little more palatable since the causality at work would be that of an imaginary world remote from our own. Plus that, it would effectively deal with something that bothered a lot of critics: the discrepancy between the movie's economy, built around the railway, and our own digital economy. But Spielberg, like the actors, would want to mix it up. He too would want to dig into the multiplicity of motivations and circumstances and the conflicting ethical considerations. And once again, the only way to do so would be a subtle mix of tribute and critique.
Another approach could be like a CGI remake of a graphic novel like Sin City or Sky Captain of Tomorrow. This would make it remote enough from our reality to preempt most comparisons between Rand's slippery slope and the way things have actually turned out. On the other hand, purposely making it seem like a cartoon would only constitute mocking the seriousness of Rand's message to the true believers. But if I had my choice, I would go with Neil Blomkamp. Given the point he made in the director's comments for District 9 (and expanded on in Elysium), that anyone who wanted a look into the future only needed to go to Johannesburg where 5% of the population holds all the wealth while the other 95% lives in abject poverty, and given the portrayal of it he gave in the movie, he would seem qualified and willing enough to bring out something that was conspicuously missing in the first two parts of the series: the distressed environments and ghettos that would certainly surround the world of Reardon and Taggart.
But regardless of who participates or how the movie was made, such high level artists would insist that there be changes and additions to Rand's original story in order to obtain the subtle complexity that distinguishes real art from propaganda. But then such a balanced perspective would not serve the tunnel vision and one sided perspective propping up the ideology. Such complexity would only raise the possibility that the only economic system that makes sense would be the one we're already in, the hybrid economy, and that beyond that there is only the question of which aspects of its multiplicity should be either left where they are, and which should be moved closer to the command or market side of the spectrum.
And therein lies the core problem with the argument that it’s not Rand’s fault, but mine for not reading the book. While I may not be able to completely blame Rand for a badly made version of her story, what I can almost be certain of is that the message is explicitly hers. This would seem evident in the high praise given the series by true believers such as Hannity and Fossel. Plus that, this was a labor of love by true believers who would have little reason to alter the message. But, for me, it was most evident in the fact that I have heard the same arguments used a thousand times against any argument I have presented for anything less than a religious and dogmatic faith in the invisible hand of the market.
This leads me to question whether Rand's sensibility, and her zealous embrace of it, excludes her from the possibility of writing a classic. Once again, art's distinguishing asset, especially as concerns storytelling, is its ability to capture the complexity and often conflicting forces at work in reality. It, more than any other medium, is equipped to deal with the multiplicity of motives and the emergent subtleties that can come into play in any confrontation. But Rand only sees one side, that of Capitalism, and stubbornly maintains a blind spot for the other. At best, she only offers caveats such as her apparent respect for the railway service tech (which is the equivalent of the token black or gay friend for xenophobes) and her willingness to portray the rich surrounding the main protagonists as looters along with government and the needy masses. Consequently, I can’t help but feel that the main source of this deficit lays in a seething contempt, rooted in her experiences in communist Russia, for the other that she struggles to contain for the sake of integrity -or the expectations she found herself surrounded by as a Hollywood writer. Furthermore, we should consider the distinction between fancy and imagination made by Coleridge. In fancy, we indulge the fantasies that emerge from our baser impulses and thereby give into simplistic notions concerning the monsters that inhabit them. With imagination, we utilize the cognitive in an attempt to understand those monsters as having recognizable and sometimes sympathetic motivations. And Rand, given the one dimensional portrayal of her antagonists and heroes, clearly settles for the fanciful. And while you can entertain people with such, art, sooner or later, requires imagination -not the caveats she sprinkles throughout the story. Paul Krugman makes a humorous but observant point on this:
"There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs."
This becomes especially evident when we consider the main thread that ties it all together: John Galt, the enigmatic but shadowy figure that goes about like a shepherd gathering his flock of overachievers to take them to their promise land, a place where their efforts will be fully appreciated and nourished. But appreciated by who? And how does insulating oneself from the world nourish the creative impulses that arise from dealing with the problems presented by the world? And who exactly will there be to reward those accomplishments with money or applause? Lack of reward, after all, was the issue in the first place. They would, of course, have the appreciation of their peers. But would that be enough? As Nietzsche, an apparent influence on Rand, well knew: mediocrity, for all the frustration it might present, is as necessary to greatness as greatness is to it. There exists an interdependence between the two. But this seems to be a complete blind spot to Rand. This is why she can entertain this rather vindictive fantasy of Galt’s ultimate revenge: to stop the motor of the world, to punish the looters and show them the error of their ways by depriving them of the benefits of greatness and excellence. And how does she know that this will necessarily lead to the downfall? She bases this on the assumption that excellence can only flourish within the context of Laissez Faire Capitalism. But how does she know the challenges presented by a world without Galt’s flock wouldn't stimulate those left behind to rise to their full creative potential and assure the survival of their community? And wouldn’t it be poetic justice to see the strike fail and Galt and flock skulking back to society, hoping to partake of the fruits of its efforts, much as the scientist, who had tried to undermine Reardon Steel, did with Dagny after her success with the John Galt line? Perhaps then the looters could engage in the same heavy-handed nobility by deflecting the pathetic concessions of the once great. And in the end, doesn’t Galt’s strike feel like the child-like fancy of holding one's breath until they either get their way, or everyone’s face turns blue?
And it is this vindictiveness, coupled with Rand's zealousness for her beliefs and her propensity towards fancy that undermines the aesthetic of the work. It appeals to beauty, but succumbs to propaganda. Less concerned with convincing anyone of anything, and more with rallying the true believers, she plays on the internal feedback loop of the cult dynamic. And in her Gecko-like world where greed, if not good, is acceptable for the sake of achievement, and altruistic notions such as the public good are spat out with snarls of disgust, a world where there are only the achievers and the looters, and in which we can assume most of us to be the latter, you have to wonder how much we are suppose care or feel for the main characters, to what extent we are suppose to share in the triumph of Reardon and Taggart as the train crosses the bridge. But then it wasn't sympathy or care that Rand wanted us to feel, was it? It was, rather, awe: the very awe that subjects of the past were suppose feel for their monarch.
This is evident in Dagny's relationship with a service tech from Taggart Railway. Rand, like most who argue for Laissez Faire Capitalism, was prudent in including the common man in her vision. As Deleuze and Guattarri point out: no tyrranny could exist in a vacuum. They always have to insulate themselves from those they would exploit by creating a cushion of loyal and well compensated benefactors. This is what Malcolm X was talking about when he referred to the house slave -in terms a little harsher than mine. He noted that in the days of slavery, the slave owner would keep one family of closer to the house and give them advantages the others would not have. That way, when one of the lesser slaves started to get uppity and talk about rebelling or escaping, the house slave would be right there arguing that such acts of dissent could only make things worse. And one could easily see the RandHead fawning over this particular employee: complacent to the point of easy going, dedicated to his job, and perfectly willing, as an ex-employee of Twentieth Century Company, to reiterate Reardon’s explanation of its demise –not to mention his casual awe at finding himself in the presence of Dagny. After he explains to her where the scientist who created the super battery was, she asks if she can take his truck to which he responds in yet another lame attempt at humor that plays on the ultimate truth of private property:
“Sure, it’s yours anyway.”
Of course, Dagny rewards this loyalty, as most employers do (?), by telling her other loyal sidekick, Eddie, to get that employee another truck since (another stab at humor) she stole his and to triple his salary. But we really need to look at the semiology at work here. What one might see in this employee is the one non-achiever that manages to avoid the tag of being a looter: someone perfectly willing to just do what their told and not question the forces at work in their life: the ideal producer/consumer. In other words, what is being praised here is conformity. And this seems a little strange and contradictory given that Rand, throughout her career, pushed her ideology under the banner of some radical form of freedom. She argued as if she were championing what was best for all. But the only vision that seems to be at work is a world in which the achievers, unobstructed, can enjoy the full fruits of their labors, while those that can’t complacently accept their position in life for the sake of the higher principle of Capitalism.
Despite all that, allow me to indulge in a cheap narrative device (that of the gratuitous plot twist) and actually plug the series and say that I look forward to Part Three, if for no other reason than to see how ludicrous it can get. And I would also confess that I do so, in part, in the pure Randian spirit of self interest. Why wouldn't I? Those that do will understand and appreciate the preceding essay all that more? Furthermore, I would implore Netflix not to take my 1 star rating as an inducement to take the series off their catalogue. (It was their user critiques that inspired this.) With most films I didn’t like, I wouldn't even bother. And I generally find negative criticism to be a little self indulgent in that it becomes more about the critic than the thing being criticized. But this case is special. And because of that, I would argue that it is Netflix’s social duty to keep it available as an ideological artifact, something to be approached in the same negative sense of Reefer Madness, the thought of John Calvin, and Mein Kampf. While the series may not exactly represent Rand’s thought, story, and ideology, it clearly represents the mentality that has evolved from it. And in that sense, it is every bit as significant and culturally important as the book itself.
Furthermore, I would encourage everyone to see it –even at the risk of reinforcing the belief system behind it. While Roger Ebert expressed disappointment that the low quality of Part One preempted a healthy discussion around the work and ideas of Rand, I would respectfully disagree and reiterate that it may well be the ideology, itself, that preempted the possibility of a good movie. And that, in itself, is cause for discourse and contention.
Now for my fellow looters, my progressive and moderate peers, I would appeal to their forgiving nature and ask that they bear with it until they find themselves immune to the initial sting of insult and bad taste and find in it what I have: a sense of clarity about the other, the encouragement to set aside one's self-questioning and open mindedness and recognize bad reasoning when one sees it, and the recognition that when even the boundaries of common sense have been transgressed, one can no longer afford the luxury of being a noble or beautiful soul. We can no longer afford the relativity of acting like it is just one opinion among others. This, via global warming and the empire of globalization, can actually end up destroying civilization as we know it.
As for the true believers, the Rand and Ditto-heads who have invaded, throughout much of my intellectual life, a large part of my audio and ideological space with droning repetitions of Randian scripture and the unquestioning praise of producer/consumer Capitalism, many of which I have found to be otherwise decent people (some to the point of dear friends), I can, on one hand, see it as a just form of therapy or deprogramming in that given the task, the best method would be to strap them to a chair and force them to watch this nonsense, repeatedly, with the added effect of interspersing it with ad-like spots, made by real talent, that describe the misery and devastation their perspective has caused. Maybe then, after enough of it, they’ll develop some taste, then a clue, then hopefully, just hopefully, a social conscience. One can only hope that it might lead to an epiphany and recognition of what is effectively a sickness and form of addiction to producer/consumer Capitalism, and that this break from denial will force them to see their belief system for what it is: not so much reason as reason in the service of baser impulses. Maybe then they’ll see that referring to someone as “looters” is as much as calling them “rats” or “cockroaches” and goes to the same effect of reducing the other to an undesirable which must be overcome to achieve some erroneous notion of perfection. But more important is the hope that they’ll see Rand’s thought and Atlas Shrugged for what it is: the propaganda of the self indulgent and sociopathic, and the hegemony that would blind us to the exploitation of those impulses, and the fancies that emerge from them, for the sake of advantage and power. On the other hand, many of “those people” are dear friends who are far more than their ideologies. Therefore, in my more rational moments, I lean towards forgoing strapping them to a chair. Still: I would recommend the series in the remote hope that they’ll see how absurd and disturbing some of the reasoning is to their dear friend. Maybe then they’ll think less in terms of defending their corner at all costs and, while not surrendering to my position on it (that would just be scary), recognize Atlas Shrugged for the dangerous extreme it is.
Re: Postcards:
Deleuze and Guattari Study: The Anti-Oedipus:
Once again, the purpose of the following is a study that will follow a fixed reading list that will start with Professor Buck’s (just prodding you, man! (actually, Professor Buchannan’s reader guide, then move on to Holland’s, then end with the book itself –that is if anyone wants to follow along. I realize this seems kind of neurotic and odd. But as anyone who has engaged with me during the last couple of weeks during my vacation (the mad hours (could appreciate, these kind of repetitions (this Einstein’s wardrobe (are necessary to me to get anything done and keep me from succumbing to the perfect chaos of the creative difference and becoming that I have just found myself extraordinarily vulnerable to. Imagine Immanuel Kant questioning his assumptions about his own consciousness and workaholic that he was with a propensity towards beer and Jager , and you may get why I cling to such routines.
(I would also point out something brought to my attention, by either Levi Bryant or Williams, that the French word for experience is interchangeable with the word for experiment. Therefore, given that my choice to follow a given reading list is a choice to give myself whatever experience it allows me, and is, by definition, a kind of experiment, I would argue in my behalf that, despite my lack of spontaneity, I am still working in the Deleuzian spirit.)
That said, having gotten 64 pages into Buchannan’s book, I now realize why it was I found myself chatting with him and facing the anxious revelation that I had read his book and could not remember a thing about it. Unlike most of the other books I’ve read around this subject, the problem wasn’t that it was difficult. It was, rather, that it was too readable –in fact, to the point of being a page turner. I normally am easily able to limit my daily meditation to around 20 pages. Today, however, I found myself drawn all the way to 40+ and wanting to go further. The main book I would compare it to in Colebrook’s Routledge guide to Deleuze. The difference was, however, while Colebrook presented me with concepts I could immediately assimilate into my individual point in my process, Buchannan presented me with concepts that were intriguing but just out of my reach, but close enough to know I can eventually get at them.
This presents a practical problem for me in that after I do my daily meditation, I tend to go to the bar and engage in a process I call fishing. This is where the real stuff happens –and within a 20 to 30 minute window. It is then that I go back to a previous point in the book, focus on a small section, and take notes as suits me. This is where I mainly assimilate the points I will carry with me throughout my process into other books: something I can put into the 500 word payoff that comes after I get back from the bar.
In other words: love the book Professor Buchannan. But if I understate it in this run, I hope you will understand why.
Once again, the purpose of the following is a study that will follow a fixed reading list that will start with Professor Buck’s (just prodding you, man! (actually, Professor Buchannan’s reader guide, then move on to Holland’s, then end with the book itself –that is if anyone wants to follow along. I realize this seems kind of neurotic and odd. But as anyone who has engaged with me during the last couple of weeks during my vacation (the mad hours (could appreciate, these kind of repetitions (this Einstein’s wardrobe (are necessary to me to get anything done and keep me from succumbing to the perfect chaos of the creative difference and becoming that I have just found myself extraordinarily vulnerable to. Imagine Immanuel Kant questioning his assumptions about his own consciousness and workaholic that he was with a propensity towards beer and Jager , and you may get why I cling to such routines.
(I would also point out something brought to my attention, by either Levi Bryant or Williams, that the French word for experience is interchangeable with the word for experiment. Therefore, given that my choice to follow a given reading list is a choice to give myself whatever experience it allows me, and is, by definition, a kind of experiment, I would argue in my behalf that, despite my lack of spontaneity, I am still working in the Deleuzian spirit.)
That said, having gotten 64 pages into Buchannan’s book, I now realize why it was I found myself chatting with him and facing the anxious revelation that I had read his book and could not remember a thing about it. Unlike most of the other books I’ve read around this subject, the problem wasn’t that it was difficult. It was, rather, that it was too readable –in fact, to the point of being a page turner. I normally am easily able to limit my daily meditation to around 20 pages. Today, however, I found myself drawn all the way to 40+ and wanting to go further. The main book I would compare it to in Colebrook’s Routledge guide to Deleuze. The difference was, however, while Colebrook presented me with concepts I could immediately assimilate into my individual point in my process, Buchannan presented me with concepts that were intriguing but just out of my reach, but close enough to know I can eventually get at them.
This presents a practical problem for me in that after I do my daily meditation, I tend to go to the bar and engage in a process I call fishing. This is where the real stuff happens –and within a 20 to 30 minute window. It is then that I go back to a previous point in the book, focus on a small section, and take notes as suits me. This is where I mainly assimilate the points I will carry with me throughout my process into other books: something I can put into the 500 word payoff that comes after I get back from the bar.
In other words: love the book Professor Buchannan. But if I understate it in this run, I hope you will understand why.
Re: Postcards:
Fair enough. I look forward to your take on it. That said, you bring up an issue for me that came up in the latest issue of Philosophy Now concerning baseball and the ethics of using performance enhancing drugs. While it is easy to see the issues at work in a sport, it gets a little different when you consider the role that performance enhancing drugs (pot, alcohol, psychedelics (have when it comes to the arts. As Bill Maher said about heroin: "it certainly hasn't hurt my record collection". And we can easily make the distinction of the arts not being competitive in the sense of sports. Still, we can be almost certain that such an ethical point could be imposed upon the arts. For instance: why would giving creativity privilege over health not be an expression of freedom as much as good health? There are certainly works of art that would not be possible without the effects of performance enhancing drugs such as the later Beatles without LSD or even Jimi Hendrix without it. And I'm not sure there would be the blues as we know them (via Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters, and John Lee Hooker without alcohol along with the sudden freedom blacks found themselves confronted with after slavery. And I'm not sure a mathematician like Lewis Carroll would have written Alice in Wonderland without the use of opiates he engaged in in order to deal with health problems. In fact, even Nietzsche took opiates (that is while claiming beer would be the downfall of German society (to deal with his health problems and which clearly had an effect on his work. And I can't help but feel that Deleuze's drinking (due to constant pain (much like Kurt Cobain's constant stomach pain that fueled his heroin addiction (had an effect on his work as well-perhaps, even, to the better. But Deleuze eventually sobered up and eventually claimed that the work goes on fine without alcohol. But he also wrote, in the dry period in What is Philosophy that we wander through the plane of imminence and return with bloodshot eyes. That sounds to me like someone who misses being able to have a drink. Perhaps his suicide was a result of recognizing his condemnation to what he was or felt like: a failed human being who managed to compensate for it by achieving greatness and, thereby, pushing humanity further than it had ever gone before. In this sense, performance enhancing drugs contribute to our common evolution as much as if not more than good health ever could.
Re: Postcards:
“I believe in internet philosophy as open source wisdom, enabling us to grow without permission. I think the academic world is largely lost, at least when it concerns fundamental questions. Philosophy and science will have to carry their own weight, they can not rely on society, on funding, on tradition to grow beyond their current form, which is I suppose still adolescent, in the grand scheme of things. Or: split between adolescent will to freedom and dogmatic paternal control. For the father to become less dominant, the son will have to stop referring to this father as the authority. I believe the only way to defeat the machine is to disregard it. Of course fighting is necessary but the values that need to be established nee to stay clean of the machine. There's two fronts; b) fight back the machine -- in this fight millions upon millions of awesome humans are engaged, which gives me a lot of hope, and a) create a new mindform, which can only come to flourish 'on neither side of the machine'.”
First of all, I apologize for seeing the use of this, and what I’m about to respond with, within the general discourse and for grooming your quote for that purpose. And I would also apologize to the Deleuzian group if I seem to be wandering “off topic”. But I believe there are Deleuzian implications in this as concerns the plane of immanence and the interaction of desiring and social machines implied by it and the creative aspect of the continental approach that Deleuze championed.
First of all, while I mainly avoid the university system for the practical matters of time and money; I also have reservations concerning (from what I have heard (the dominance of the analytic method in college philosophy departments. All I see coming out of it is an emphasis on the latest and greatest which will generally lean towards to the scientific, or that which is issue oriented as is implied by the recent popularity of such philosophical fields as animal and scientific ethics, at the expense of the literary. And while I like the work of such people as Searle or Dennett –or even Pete Singer if I ever read him, I’m not sure I would want to commit my future process to them.
And I think this comes out of 2 phenomena’s –both of which have to do with the tyranny of the functional. First of all, I think it come out of a self consciousness that philosophy has always felt in the face of science. No matter how profound it has managed to be, it has always cringed at the thought of not being able to make a Smartphone. The problem with this assumption is that, as the 90’s demonstrated, technological booms tend to be accompanied by creative booms. There are times, for instance, when it is the ambitions of the creative community (such as the video game, movie, or music industry (will lay out the agendas of the scientific and technical community. Plus that, there is the general creative energy generated between the practical (science and technology (and creative fields that can lead to advances in both –an exchange of flows in which the tyranny of the functional can only act as a blockage.
Secondly, I think that this is the result of unconditional state funds decreasing while universities become more dependent on corporate funding –that which is conditional on the tyranny of the functional or what will result in quantifiable profit margins. This is why universities might prefer to train future Searles or Dennetts and why the Anglo-American approach tends to focus on the more immediate issues presented by science and current issues. And it why, as Chris Hedges points out, Marx has basically been expelled from economic departments and exiled to the humanities.
However, because of this, my hope lies in the law of unintended consequences and the old adage: keep your friends close; but keep your enemies closer. As the influence of corporate funds grow stronger, there is a growing sentiment that higher education should be strictly geared to what will increase the profit margin. Even Bill Mahers, an American progressive, expresses distaste for such things as fine and liberal arts degrees. And we can easily see the higher education system accommodating this sentiment. Graphic Arts, because of their attachment to marketing and the Capitalist need to make their product pretty, will stay while the fine arts are thrown out on the streets. The humanities, including Marx and more continental approaches to philosophy will have to go while philosophers that play lip service to science and technological advancement (state philosophy (like Dennett and Searle (will stay.
The upside of this is that it might drive these aspects of our culture into workshops that, being more affordable, could end up democratizing the means of entering our cultural meme machine which, in turn, could democratize (much as the message boards are doing (the general discourse that Capitalism (via our universities (is performing an ideological coupe on.
First of all, I apologize for seeing the use of this, and what I’m about to respond with, within the general discourse and for grooming your quote for that purpose. And I would also apologize to the Deleuzian group if I seem to be wandering “off topic”. But I believe there are Deleuzian implications in this as concerns the plane of immanence and the interaction of desiring and social machines implied by it and the creative aspect of the continental approach that Deleuze championed.
First of all, while I mainly avoid the university system for the practical matters of time and money; I also have reservations concerning (from what I have heard (the dominance of the analytic method in college philosophy departments. All I see coming out of it is an emphasis on the latest and greatest which will generally lean towards to the scientific, or that which is issue oriented as is implied by the recent popularity of such philosophical fields as animal and scientific ethics, at the expense of the literary. And while I like the work of such people as Searle or Dennett –or even Pete Singer if I ever read him, I’m not sure I would want to commit my future process to them.
And I think this comes out of 2 phenomena’s –both of which have to do with the tyranny of the functional. First of all, I think it come out of a self consciousness that philosophy has always felt in the face of science. No matter how profound it has managed to be, it has always cringed at the thought of not being able to make a Smartphone. The problem with this assumption is that, as the 90’s demonstrated, technological booms tend to be accompanied by creative booms. There are times, for instance, when it is the ambitions of the creative community (such as the video game, movie, or music industry (will lay out the agendas of the scientific and technical community. Plus that, there is the general creative energy generated between the practical (science and technology (and creative fields that can lead to advances in both –an exchange of flows in which the tyranny of the functional can only act as a blockage.
Secondly, I think that this is the result of unconditional state funds decreasing while universities become more dependent on corporate funding –that which is conditional on the tyranny of the functional or what will result in quantifiable profit margins. This is why universities might prefer to train future Searles or Dennetts and why the Anglo-American approach tends to focus on the more immediate issues presented by science and current issues. And it why, as Chris Hedges points out, Marx has basically been expelled from economic departments and exiled to the humanities.
However, because of this, my hope lies in the law of unintended consequences and the old adage: keep your friends close; but keep your enemies closer. As the influence of corporate funds grow stronger, there is a growing sentiment that higher education should be strictly geared to what will increase the profit margin. Even Bill Mahers, an American progressive, expresses distaste for such things as fine and liberal arts degrees. And we can easily see the higher education system accommodating this sentiment. Graphic Arts, because of their attachment to marketing and the Capitalist need to make their product pretty, will stay while the fine arts are thrown out on the streets. The humanities, including Marx and more continental approaches to philosophy will have to go while philosophers that play lip service to science and technological advancement (state philosophy (like Dennett and Searle (will stay.
The upside of this is that it might drive these aspects of our culture into workshops that, being more affordable, could end up democratizing the means of entering our cultural meme machine which, in turn, could democratize (much as the message boards are doing (the general discourse that Capitalism (via our universities (is performing an ideological coupe on.