The Lost Symbol, like its predecessor, The DaVinci Code, has the same technique of hinged chapters that lead you one chapter to the next with irresistible speed, making the book a compulsive page turner. The reader swings through these series of 133 chapters like Tarzan swinging across the jungle one vine to the next to another in a quick and harmonic order. Robert Langdon is there again, playing the lead role at the center of action and the main resource of knowledge about symbols, puzzles, and “Ancient Mysteries,” as well as being an action figure and a victim. Playing against him is a villain named Mal’akh, a figure of superhero stature and strength, a man covered in tattoos that symbolize his past and future that he covers up with makeup when he has to deal with the normal world. He also wears a blond wig with a tiny camera hidden inside, which gives us the only real peek at a Freemasonry ceremony, which are assiduously kept secret by Masons. The twist at the end of the book is Mal’akh’s real identity, which surprised the hell out of me.
If somebody reading this doesn’t want to know what revelations are made at the end of the day, stop reading now. Earlier in the story we had learned that Zack Solomon had lost his life in a Turkish prison, being killed by Mal’akh who was also prison there. It was an unnecessary death because his father, Peter Solomon, a major figure among Washington DC Masons and long time friend of Robert Langdon, had decided to leave Zach in prison “to teach him a lesson” rather than buy his way out, which he could have done. Mal’akh turns out to be Zach, demented and remade along lines dictated by black magic, so the motive that drives the story is at bottom revenge, which begins with the discovery of his father’s cut off right hand. We aren’t sure what Zach’s plan is aiming at but he does keep saying we must learn how to die wisely. In a bizarre twist we learn he doesn’t want to kill his father, instead he wants Peter to kill him, ritually with an ancient knife used for such killings in the distant past, imagining it as some kind of daemonic apotheosis, an afterlife coronation. What he hoped for, this crazy ascension to daemonic glory, is a token how demented he had become in that Turkish prison and by his hunger for revenge. Not surprisingly, Peter could not sacrifice his son a second time, so he brought the knife down on the altar not into the body like he was suppose to and instead Mal’akh/Zack dies a horrible death as shards of glass from a skylight rain down on him, providing him with an agonizing death, depriving him of his carefully designed elevation to black arts sainthood. I had a curious reaction to finding out the villain was really Zach; It changed the thriller aspect of the story, that is, rather than a determined attack by a Darth Vader type anti-hero trying to bring down the central belief of western civilization, the whole thing was based on an interfamily feud and an exotic revenge plot. He wanted to destroy his father’s moral and ethical center, which in his mind was better—more satisfying-- than killing him outright.
The 12 hours of the story involve, of course, a long chase and several other characters; and reading of all the interactions and twists and turns of the plot make for an entertaining read. This book is more into outright fantasy than his previous two books which were spun around the Vatican and religious notions that have some credence, like Mary Magdalene and Jesus being a married couple and having an heir. Mal’akh is a more far-fetched villain, almost comic book-like in character and appearance. But Langdon remains the same, more or less solidly in the real world. At times you need to have some willing suspension of disbelief, as certain incidents, like our hero’s drowning, are far out and quite a stretch. The explanation Brown offers is Oxygenated perfluorocarbons or breathable liquid. In another section, Katherine Solomon, Peter’s sister, a specialist in the Noetic Sciences, contents you can measure the weight of the soul.
The last several chapters of the book and the epilogue pretty much an add-on, not really necessary to complete the tale. They serve as a patriotic lecture by the author, a tipping of his hat to the history of the Republic and the considerable influence of Freemasonry on the design of the Nation’s capital and on our money. The 18th century was the heyday of Freemasonry and many of our Founding Fathers were Masons. They were also Deists, a spiritual perspective that blended with the Freemasonry with no conflict. They saw to it that the Governmental structures and overall plan of the political precinct had the underpinnings of sound symbolic roots, ideas generated over time starting with the Renaissance. When all was said and done the Big Secret of the Masons was, to put it in a nutshell, Praise God. I have no quarrel with that sentiment, although I might prefer Praise the Universe. Brown’s uses the phrase like he is waving a flag, chiding us all to get our act together. It’s a plea by Brown that we to find unity as a Nation where once there was discord.
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Obama the Target
Two noteworthy voices spoke up this week about the character of the animosity toward Barack Obama. First, last Sunday, Maureen Dowd of the New York Times wrote an op-ed column that addressed itself to that animosity, what lies behind all the sound and fury. Today it was former president Jimmy Carter who spoke out about the presence of racism in the current hysteria in town meetings and even congress.
Dowd called her column “Boy, Oh, Boy,” and she deserves credit for calling a spade a spade (pun intended.) I was so impressed with the hard look she took at the implication of Joe Wilson’s shout of “You Lie,” that I sent the piece to several friends to read. I felt it was about time thinking people face the fact that raw racism is once more bubbling up to the surface and we need to examine it and where it might lead. She called her column what she did because she contends that what Wilson was really saying was “You lie, boy!” She then goes on to point out that South Carolina has long been the hotbed of Confederate zeal and pride; the Old South still exist in the minds of many South Carolinians. It has been a state always on the front lines of backward thinking, just look at Strom Thurmond, Senator DeMint, and Joe Wilson, not to mention their misbehaving Governor. DeMint was one of the featured speakers at the rally in Washington last Saturday. Retrograde vision seems endemic in South Carolina. But Joe Wilson has little to worry about in his district which is solidly Republican and white. T-shirts and car tags are selling like hotcakes with “You Lie! “ boldly set forth for all to see. Wilson was very upset when the story broke about Strom Thurmond, the veritable archetype of the Old Segregationist South, confirmed he had a daughter with a black woman in his employ. Wilson thought it brought shame to the state and white people.
The rally last Saturday was billed as a protest over the Administration Health care Bill; but one look at the signs and posters people showed up with indicated the real purpose of the rally was a hate-fest aimed at our first black president. One sign that seemed very popular was “PUT OBAMA IN THE GRAVE WITH KENNEDY.”Other signs linked him with Hitler, Stalin, Lenin, and Castro. Another favorite was the image of Obama as the comic book image of the Joker, especially in the Heath Ledger interpretation—with the slashed mouth. It was all frothing-at-the-mouth expressionism, the trash thoughts of very angry and unhappy people. It was full of nasty comments and threats of violence. The organizers of the rally—corporate operatives using corporate money, like Freedomworks, which is headed by ex-congressman Dick Armey—tried to sell the gathering as positive, but you’d have to be an idiot to see it that way.
Dowd thinks, and Jimmy Carter agreed with her, that a sizable segment of the South has never accepted the Civil Rights Law and Integration and have been laying in the weeds waiting for an opportunity redress the “wrongs” that have been imposed on the South. They are folks who just can’t accept the idea of a black man in the Oval Office. It just ain’t right, and the fact he is a well-spoken, educated, and uppity black man makes all the worse. There seems to be no reasoning with these folks. Accompanying this racial discontent is silly talk about succession from the Union, first mentioned by the Governor of Texas several months ago.
The important thing about Carter speaking up, is the fact it was Carter, an ex-president from the South, someone who is deeply Southern and knows what he is talking about. He said outright that the animosity toward Obama is clearly based on the fact he is a black man. He said there are some people in the South and elsewhere who believe that a black man can’t have the right stuff to be president of this nation. The right stuff is white stuff—period! Black people, it is said, aren’t equipped to do the job. Since the comments come from Mr. Carter, who is respected around the world, they should carry some weight.
I got an email from my brother yesterday who lives in the Midwest. He’s retired now but part of his job was to go down to Nashville where his company had another factory. While he was there he saw a reenactment of the Battle of Lookout Mountain, a battle of the Civil War that the South lost. However, in the reenactment the outcome was different: this time the South won. This is how they work to redress past wrongs—replace reality with fantasy.
Dowd called her column “Boy, Oh, Boy,” and she deserves credit for calling a spade a spade (pun intended.) I was so impressed with the hard look she took at the implication of Joe Wilson’s shout of “You Lie,” that I sent the piece to several friends to read. I felt it was about time thinking people face the fact that raw racism is once more bubbling up to the surface and we need to examine it and where it might lead. She called her column what she did because she contends that what Wilson was really saying was “You lie, boy!” She then goes on to point out that South Carolina has long been the hotbed of Confederate zeal and pride; the Old South still exist in the minds of many South Carolinians. It has been a state always on the front lines of backward thinking, just look at Strom Thurmond, Senator DeMint, and Joe Wilson, not to mention their misbehaving Governor. DeMint was one of the featured speakers at the rally in Washington last Saturday. Retrograde vision seems endemic in South Carolina. But Joe Wilson has little to worry about in his district which is solidly Republican and white. T-shirts and car tags are selling like hotcakes with “You Lie! “ boldly set forth for all to see. Wilson was very upset when the story broke about Strom Thurmond, the veritable archetype of the Old Segregationist South, confirmed he had a daughter with a black woman in his employ. Wilson thought it brought shame to the state and white people.
The rally last Saturday was billed as a protest over the Administration Health care Bill; but one look at the signs and posters people showed up with indicated the real purpose of the rally was a hate-fest aimed at our first black president. One sign that seemed very popular was “PUT OBAMA IN THE GRAVE WITH KENNEDY.”Other signs linked him with Hitler, Stalin, Lenin, and Castro. Another favorite was the image of Obama as the comic book image of the Joker, especially in the Heath Ledger interpretation—with the slashed mouth. It was all frothing-at-the-mouth expressionism, the trash thoughts of very angry and unhappy people. It was full of nasty comments and threats of violence. The organizers of the rally—corporate operatives using corporate money, like Freedomworks, which is headed by ex-congressman Dick Armey—tried to sell the gathering as positive, but you’d have to be an idiot to see it that way.
Dowd thinks, and Jimmy Carter agreed with her, that a sizable segment of the South has never accepted the Civil Rights Law and Integration and have been laying in the weeds waiting for an opportunity redress the “wrongs” that have been imposed on the South. They are folks who just can’t accept the idea of a black man in the Oval Office. It just ain’t right, and the fact he is a well-spoken, educated, and uppity black man makes all the worse. There seems to be no reasoning with these folks. Accompanying this racial discontent is silly talk about succession from the Union, first mentioned by the Governor of Texas several months ago.
The important thing about Carter speaking up, is the fact it was Carter, an ex-president from the South, someone who is deeply Southern and knows what he is talking about. He said outright that the animosity toward Obama is clearly based on the fact he is a black man. He said there are some people in the South and elsewhere who believe that a black man can’t have the right stuff to be president of this nation. The right stuff is white stuff—period! Black people, it is said, aren’t equipped to do the job. Since the comments come from Mr. Carter, who is respected around the world, they should carry some weight.
I got an email from my brother yesterday who lives in the Midwest. He’s retired now but part of his job was to go down to Nashville where his company had another factory. While he was there he saw a reenactment of the Battle of Lookout Mountain, a battle of the Civil War that the South lost. However, in the reenactment the outcome was different: this time the South won. This is how they work to redress past wrongs—replace reality with fantasy.
Friday, September 4, 2009
Letter to a Friend
Parts of a letter to a friend….
Otherwise I am enjoying one of my drawing streaks. I have never been one to work on some regular, punch-the-time clock sort of schedule; it’s more periodic outbursts with me, an eruption of ideas and energy that can go on for three or four months and then lay dormant for 6 months, while I get into other things of interest to me. For the first time in ages I am working on a horizontal format, me, a strictly vertical guy for decades. I don’t know what got into me. On a sudden impulse I turned my paper because I had an idea to do a three panel triptych, like Max Beckmann was fond of doing. I am also in a more formal frame of mind, which is odd for me, as I am usually focused on subject matter and content. This time I am more concerned about pattern, the black-white-and-gray patterns I am getting by mixing pen and ink tones and shadings with pencil. When I sit back and contemplate what I have done, I am looking at how all the bits and pieces are hanging together; I am asking myself, do they all harmonize? I am getting an overall grey look with white and black accents in the grey field. There is a softness and subtlety to the imagery that I really like.
What is the nature of the imagery? Well, let’s see, how about an explosion in a cartoon factory, or perhaps a kind of intoxicated surrealism, or like the theater of the absurd. One thing is for sure: it is horror vacui taken to an extreme. One drawing I have titled “Merry Mayhem,” and another “Four-square Evolution.” The sizes of the images are small, 12” X 8,” like Paul Klee’s work, diminutive but complex and lively. However, I have not abandoned the figurative/symbolic imagery I am noted for. No indeed. I saw this German film two weeks ago, “Eight Miles High,” starring this incredibly sexy young actress. She inspired me to do two ‘hieroglyphs’ featuring her as a Betty Page retread strutting her stuff on my typical floating stage with symbolic bric-a-brac surrounding her like broken and random pieces of memory, all tokens of my experience more than what belongs to her. I have done 5 things like that which are larger than the other group. All this work is as good as anything I have done in the past. So at 73 I am not slipping or losing any of my power. The one problem that I do have that is connected to old age is the “yips.” Golfers and pool players are familiar with the yips. They are those sudden uncontrollable twitches and jerks, the result of old and tires nerves. They can ruin a putt or make you miscue at the worse time—or make you draw a line you didn’t want there. Such ‘accidents’ can screw up am image.
Interestingly, I sent a bunch of my drawigs to RC, that old friend from college, who I have been communicating with a lot last six weeks. He said he would, unlike Fred Spratt, comment on them. He knows the story how Fred would not comment on them because they were so far removed from what he does; he just couldn’t relate to them. Well, it has been three weeks since I sent those things to RC and so far nothing has been forthcoming. It really doesn’t matter because he has already rendered me a service that I deeply appreciate. Both he and I have had a long time interest in what is commonly called “Outsider Art.” After some back and forth about some Outsider artists, he told me that is how he is seeing me. I am an outsider despite my education, because I have pretty much thrown the baby out with the bath water, which is true. In Primus Rota I characterize this by saying my education “was cargo I no longer needed so I threw it overboard.” RC has given me much to think about. The label does fit with my eccentric and highly subjective imagery, which have been inscrutable puzzles to so many people and, frankly, to me too, although I do speculate about them for the hell of it, to be playful. It fits with my character and what I have experienced in extreme moments of vision and illumination, which removed me from the club of professors at UNLV. My work has been so personal since 1968, that fateful year for so many people my age and younger, and for a long time I have ignored the trends and fashions of the moment and gone my own way, no matter what the consequences. The guy who took my place at UNLV was once a colleague of RC’s. He painted stripes, what Celine liked to call “necktie art.” He is still there, Head of the Art Department now, and probably still paints stripes. God bless him. Some belong there, I didn’t. I work on the basis of inner impulse not external dictates and I have been following that star for four decades, and so I say fuck the art world, its money, games, and galleries, and all the rest of it. Right? Right…
The following is a response to the above from SD, my friend up in Canada.
“Your comments about “outsider artists” don’t surprise me at all except that you think that is a revelation. That’s how I have always thought of you. Beyond the art, it speaks for your integrity. I think of you as one of the few people I know who has stayed with your values all the way through.”
Otherwise I am enjoying one of my drawing streaks. I have never been one to work on some regular, punch-the-time clock sort of schedule; it’s more periodic outbursts with me, an eruption of ideas and energy that can go on for three or four months and then lay dormant for 6 months, while I get into other things of interest to me. For the first time in ages I am working on a horizontal format, me, a strictly vertical guy for decades. I don’t know what got into me. On a sudden impulse I turned my paper because I had an idea to do a three panel triptych, like Max Beckmann was fond of doing. I am also in a more formal frame of mind, which is odd for me, as I am usually focused on subject matter and content. This time I am more concerned about pattern, the black-white-and-gray patterns I am getting by mixing pen and ink tones and shadings with pencil. When I sit back and contemplate what I have done, I am looking at how all the bits and pieces are hanging together; I am asking myself, do they all harmonize? I am getting an overall grey look with white and black accents in the grey field. There is a softness and subtlety to the imagery that I really like.
What is the nature of the imagery? Well, let’s see, how about an explosion in a cartoon factory, or perhaps a kind of intoxicated surrealism, or like the theater of the absurd. One thing is for sure: it is horror vacui taken to an extreme. One drawing I have titled “Merry Mayhem,” and another “Four-square Evolution.” The sizes of the images are small, 12” X 8,” like Paul Klee’s work, diminutive but complex and lively. However, I have not abandoned the figurative/symbolic imagery I am noted for. No indeed. I saw this German film two weeks ago, “Eight Miles High,” starring this incredibly sexy young actress. She inspired me to do two ‘hieroglyphs’ featuring her as a Betty Page retread strutting her stuff on my typical floating stage with symbolic bric-a-brac surrounding her like broken and random pieces of memory, all tokens of my experience more than what belongs to her. I have done 5 things like that which are larger than the other group. All this work is as good as anything I have done in the past. So at 73 I am not slipping or losing any of my power. The one problem that I do have that is connected to old age is the “yips.” Golfers and pool players are familiar with the yips. They are those sudden uncontrollable twitches and jerks, the result of old and tires nerves. They can ruin a putt or make you miscue at the worse time—or make you draw a line you didn’t want there. Such ‘accidents’ can screw up am image.
Interestingly, I sent a bunch of my drawigs to RC, that old friend from college, who I have been communicating with a lot last six weeks. He said he would, unlike Fred Spratt, comment on them. He knows the story how Fred would not comment on them because they were so far removed from what he does; he just couldn’t relate to them. Well, it has been three weeks since I sent those things to RC and so far nothing has been forthcoming. It really doesn’t matter because he has already rendered me a service that I deeply appreciate. Both he and I have had a long time interest in what is commonly called “Outsider Art.” After some back and forth about some Outsider artists, he told me that is how he is seeing me. I am an outsider despite my education, because I have pretty much thrown the baby out with the bath water, which is true. In Primus Rota I characterize this by saying my education “was cargo I no longer needed so I threw it overboard.” RC has given me much to think about. The label does fit with my eccentric and highly subjective imagery, which have been inscrutable puzzles to so many people and, frankly, to me too, although I do speculate about them for the hell of it, to be playful. It fits with my character and what I have experienced in extreme moments of vision and illumination, which removed me from the club of professors at UNLV. My work has been so personal since 1968, that fateful year for so many people my age and younger, and for a long time I have ignored the trends and fashions of the moment and gone my own way, no matter what the consequences. The guy who took my place at UNLV was once a colleague of RC’s. He painted stripes, what Celine liked to call “necktie art.” He is still there, Head of the Art Department now, and probably still paints stripes. God bless him. Some belong there, I didn’t. I work on the basis of inner impulse not external dictates and I have been following that star for four decades, and so I say fuck the art world, its money, games, and galleries, and all the rest of it. Right? Right…
The following is a response to the above from SD, my friend up in Canada.
“Your comments about “outsider artists” don’t surprise me at all except that you think that is a revelation. That’s how I have always thought of you. Beyond the art, it speaks for your integrity. I think of you as one of the few people I know who has stayed with your values all the way through.”
Saturday, August 29, 2009
"When Europe Slept"
Dear Lon,
Since I have read 4 of the essays in those two FIRST THINGS you sent me a while back, I’d be happy to read more if you care to send them. Also, a while back I mentioned Phillip Jenkins to you, the scholar from Penn State who has become the chief spokesman for the demographics of the Christian Church—where the Faith is leaving from and where it is going to and what is likely to take its place in Europe. I went on to buy two of Jenkins books, The Next Generation: the Coming of Global Christianity and The Lost History of Christianity, or how the thousand year reign of the religion in the Middle East came to an end. That is the topic in another great book that I read 2 years ago, From the Holy Mountain by William Dalrymple, which, some time or other you ought to read, for it tracks where Christianity was so strong at first, and so dominant, only to be gradually pushed out of the region by Islam, although it still hangs on here and there, but the great majority of the Christians have gone elsewhere.
Clearly, the glory days of the Faith in that region, the region of its birth, is over with, just as the same eclipsing of the Faith is likely to happen in Europe by mid-century as Muslim immigrants are reproducing at a rate that will overwhelm the ‘native’ population of white Europeans. Muslim workers went there after WW II to help build a new Europe so devastated by the war. The Natives thought they would go back home after a while, but they stayed and that phenomena is going to have unexpected consequences. R.J. Neuhaus himself mentions Muslim immigration in his essay on “Secularizations,” stating that some observers already “depict Europe as a dying continent; dying culturally, spiritually, and, perhaps most decisively, demographically.” Like many others I am familiar with, he thinks Europeans may have reached the ‘point of no return,” and that their numbers will stay well below the Muslim’s “replacement level.” Islamic demographic dominance is like a boulder rolling down hill. It is not a question of IF, but of WHEN. Ponder what that might mean for the civilization of Old Europe, the famous buildings, great Art, churches, and other unique things and places created through the Christian centuries, not to mention the Greek and Roman civilization that went before Christian Culture. But by mid-century the Vatican will have been moved from Rome to some place in Africa, where the church, both Fundamentalist Protestant and Catholic, are flourishing and growing at a fast pace. The new home base for Christianity will be in the Southern Hemisphere; because that is the direction the faith is traveling right now. Europe is a secular state but that won’t last much longer.
Another essay that I responded to was “While Europe Slept,” by some professor from the University of Chicago. It covered things I have thought about too, over the years, especially after I left the church. Two questions hang in the air considering a post-Christian world. First, I was certain I could but I wondered about others being able to live peacefully and constructively sans an institutional support system and its moral and ethical guidelines. Is multiculturalism a substitute principle for guidance? The professor doesn’t think so and neither do I. He also argues that without the Church and what it provides, anarchy and nihilism would be the results—because then all things would be permitted. . I am not persuaded by this argument, but then, I am no measure against the ordinary citizen. They may need to have all the rules and regulations spelled out very clearly. Dostoyevsky, Nietzsche, Camus, and others, all felt we were headed toward nihilism if God was dead, as Nietzsche had written, or if his church dissolved under secular and material pressures. Personally I think we have innate equilibrium that would serve us well if people could tap into it, but that would take a certain amount of inner work and modern man would rather take and pill and watch American Idol.
Secondly, if we are no longer rooted in Christian Culture does that mean we have no access to transcendence? Again, I can answer in the affirmative; it is possible because it is built into out make-up, our psyche. But at the same time I realize modern individualism may not be able to sustain a purely secular world with a total absence of a religious principle and a spiritual aspiration. Left to his own devices the professor says the will to power will override everything else. The universe of human interactions would tend to be self-serving, wolfish, and selfish, where might makes right, and the extreme form of that is indeed nihilism.
So what do you think Lon?
Saturday morning. I got a call from Brodek this morning, a bad connection so I probably missed if he called you too or not. But he fell out of his golf cart playing at Meadowbrook and broke his shoulder and as a consequence he’ll be out of commission probably till next year sometime. They don’t plan to operate.
Since I have read 4 of the essays in those two FIRST THINGS you sent me a while back, I’d be happy to read more if you care to send them. Also, a while back I mentioned Phillip Jenkins to you, the scholar from Penn State who has become the chief spokesman for the demographics of the Christian Church—where the Faith is leaving from and where it is going to and what is likely to take its place in Europe. I went on to buy two of Jenkins books, The Next Generation: the Coming of Global Christianity and The Lost History of Christianity, or how the thousand year reign of the religion in the Middle East came to an end. That is the topic in another great book that I read 2 years ago, From the Holy Mountain by William Dalrymple, which, some time or other you ought to read, for it tracks where Christianity was so strong at first, and so dominant, only to be gradually pushed out of the region by Islam, although it still hangs on here and there, but the great majority of the Christians have gone elsewhere.
Clearly, the glory days of the Faith in that region, the region of its birth, is over with, just as the same eclipsing of the Faith is likely to happen in Europe by mid-century as Muslim immigrants are reproducing at a rate that will overwhelm the ‘native’ population of white Europeans. Muslim workers went there after WW II to help build a new Europe so devastated by the war. The Natives thought they would go back home after a while, but they stayed and that phenomena is going to have unexpected consequences. R.J. Neuhaus himself mentions Muslim immigration in his essay on “Secularizations,” stating that some observers already “depict Europe as a dying continent; dying culturally, spiritually, and, perhaps most decisively, demographically.” Like many others I am familiar with, he thinks Europeans may have reached the ‘point of no return,” and that their numbers will stay well below the Muslim’s “replacement level.” Islamic demographic dominance is like a boulder rolling down hill. It is not a question of IF, but of WHEN. Ponder what that might mean for the civilization of Old Europe, the famous buildings, great Art, churches, and other unique things and places created through the Christian centuries, not to mention the Greek and Roman civilization that went before Christian Culture. But by mid-century the Vatican will have been moved from Rome to some place in Africa, where the church, both Fundamentalist Protestant and Catholic, are flourishing and growing at a fast pace. The new home base for Christianity will be in the Southern Hemisphere; because that is the direction the faith is traveling right now. Europe is a secular state but that won’t last much longer.
Another essay that I responded to was “While Europe Slept,” by some professor from the University of Chicago. It covered things I have thought about too, over the years, especially after I left the church. Two questions hang in the air considering a post-Christian world. First, I was certain I could but I wondered about others being able to live peacefully and constructively sans an institutional support system and its moral and ethical guidelines. Is multiculturalism a substitute principle for guidance? The professor doesn’t think so and neither do I. He also argues that without the Church and what it provides, anarchy and nihilism would be the results—because then all things would be permitted. . I am not persuaded by this argument, but then, I am no measure against the ordinary citizen. They may need to have all the rules and regulations spelled out very clearly. Dostoyevsky, Nietzsche, Camus, and others, all felt we were headed toward nihilism if God was dead, as Nietzsche had written, or if his church dissolved under secular and material pressures. Personally I think we have innate equilibrium that would serve us well if people could tap into it, but that would take a certain amount of inner work and modern man would rather take and pill and watch American Idol.
Secondly, if we are no longer rooted in Christian Culture does that mean we have no access to transcendence? Again, I can answer in the affirmative; it is possible because it is built into out make-up, our psyche. But at the same time I realize modern individualism may not be able to sustain a purely secular world with a total absence of a religious principle and a spiritual aspiration. Left to his own devices the professor says the will to power will override everything else. The universe of human interactions would tend to be self-serving, wolfish, and selfish, where might makes right, and the extreme form of that is indeed nihilism.
So what do you think Lon?
Saturday morning. I got a call from Brodek this morning, a bad connection so I probably missed if he called you too or not. But he fell out of his golf cart playing at Meadowbrook and broke his shoulder and as a consequence he’ll be out of commission probably till next year sometime. They don’t plan to operate.
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Julia
Aug. 26, 2009 (Journal Notes)
Sue and I watched a gripping, nerve-wracking drama last night about a crazy, off-the-wall alcoholic woman who drank every night and slept with any man who’ll buy her drinks. The name of the movie is “Julia,” and stars Tilda Swinton who won an Academy Award a couple of years ago for her performance in “Michael Clayton.” Julia meets a Mexican American woman at an AA meeting who tries to persuade her to help her kidnap her 8 year old son who has been living with his rich grandfather who happens to be a gangster. She dismisses the idea as absurd, sheer foolishness dreamt up by a desperate woman anxious to get her son back. The woman offers her half of the ransom money they could obtain from the rich old man. But as Julia thinks about what the money could do for her, she begins to reconsider; it could help her get off this merry-go-round to nowhere. So she decides to do it, but to do it without the mother. She tries to talk an old lover into going in with her, but he refuses, seeing it as a crazy idea. But she goes ahead on her own; she kidnaps the boy, kills his caretaker by running over his body with her car, the first of two murders she commits in pursuit of the ransom money. But the next hour or so of the movie is so full of ups and downs you get dizzy watching her flail her away through one crisis after another.
A sub-plot to the kidnapping caper is her relationship with the boy. At first he is just an object she needs to manipulate with little thought about his comfort or feelings; it is also perfectly obvious she knows absolutely nothing about kids. But gradually she realizes he is a human being and so she begins to soften up toward him, as he does toward her, as he realizes she is the only ally he has in the mess they are both in. Eventually, they become quite close, even cuddly and affectionate. This development is handled quite nicely; what happens between the two of them is the only real positive in a story otherwise full of negatives. In effect, she becomes his mother, at least until they unite with his real mother in Mexico.
The worse crisis that occurs toward the end of the film is the boy is kidnapped by a couple of young Mexican lads in Tijuana. She kills a Taxi Driver acting as their messenger. She meant to only scare the guy but the gun went off as she was waving it at him. She finally wrestles the cash from the grandfather, a cool $2,000,000. She plans to keep half of it, but she runs into a snag. The boys want all of it, otherwise no boy. So it becomes her Sophie’s Choice: What’s more important, the money or the safety of the boy? She opts for the boy. The Mexican lad with the money drives off beside himself with joy, with $2,000,000 in the back seat. Somehow, given the cutthroat world he lives in, one doubts it will be in his possession very long. In any event, free at last the boy gives Julia a big hug; he is so happy to be reunited with her. A last moment of regret flashes across her face, but then she looks down at the boy and says, “Let’s go find a mother.”
I like “Julia,” not only because Tilda Swinton is an accomplished and nuanced actress, but also because I liked the process she went through to let the money go in order to save the boy and therefore save her own soul; it was a byproduct of the choice, its truth and consequence. That decision, to love the boy rather than sell him as piece of meat in the black market, allowed her to also love herself, which upped her self-esteem. She had none of at the beginning of the story.
Sue and I watched a gripping, nerve-wracking drama last night about a crazy, off-the-wall alcoholic woman who drank every night and slept with any man who’ll buy her drinks. The name of the movie is “Julia,” and stars Tilda Swinton who won an Academy Award a couple of years ago for her performance in “Michael Clayton.” Julia meets a Mexican American woman at an AA meeting who tries to persuade her to help her kidnap her 8 year old son who has been living with his rich grandfather who happens to be a gangster. She dismisses the idea as absurd, sheer foolishness dreamt up by a desperate woman anxious to get her son back. The woman offers her half of the ransom money they could obtain from the rich old man. But as Julia thinks about what the money could do for her, she begins to reconsider; it could help her get off this merry-go-round to nowhere. So she decides to do it, but to do it without the mother. She tries to talk an old lover into going in with her, but he refuses, seeing it as a crazy idea. But she goes ahead on her own; she kidnaps the boy, kills his caretaker by running over his body with her car, the first of two murders she commits in pursuit of the ransom money. But the next hour or so of the movie is so full of ups and downs you get dizzy watching her flail her away through one crisis after another.
A sub-plot to the kidnapping caper is her relationship with the boy. At first he is just an object she needs to manipulate with little thought about his comfort or feelings; it is also perfectly obvious she knows absolutely nothing about kids. But gradually she realizes he is a human being and so she begins to soften up toward him, as he does toward her, as he realizes she is the only ally he has in the mess they are both in. Eventually, they become quite close, even cuddly and affectionate. This development is handled quite nicely; what happens between the two of them is the only real positive in a story otherwise full of negatives. In effect, she becomes his mother, at least until they unite with his real mother in Mexico.
The worse crisis that occurs toward the end of the film is the boy is kidnapped by a couple of young Mexican lads in Tijuana. She kills a Taxi Driver acting as their messenger. She meant to only scare the guy but the gun went off as she was waving it at him. She finally wrestles the cash from the grandfather, a cool $2,000,000. She plans to keep half of it, but she runs into a snag. The boys want all of it, otherwise no boy. So it becomes her Sophie’s Choice: What’s more important, the money or the safety of the boy? She opts for the boy. The Mexican lad with the money drives off beside himself with joy, with $2,000,000 in the back seat. Somehow, given the cutthroat world he lives in, one doubts it will be in his possession very long. In any event, free at last the boy gives Julia a big hug; he is so happy to be reunited with her. A last moment of regret flashes across her face, but then she looks down at the boy and says, “Let’s go find a mother.”
I like “Julia,” not only because Tilda Swinton is an accomplished and nuanced actress, but also because I liked the process she went through to let the money go in order to save the boy and therefore save her own soul; it was a byproduct of the choice, its truth and consequence. That decision, to love the boy rather than sell him as piece of meat in the black market, allowed her to also love herself, which upped her self-esteem. She had none of at the beginning of the story.
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
More Funny Games
8/19/09 (Journal Notes)
After I did my 30 laps in the pool at LA Fitness I walked across the street to Blockbuster’s to pick up “Sunshine Cleaning” only to find it’s not available to next week. So instead I picked up four films more or less at random, at least two of them straight-to-video type films. The one I decided to see first was something called “Surveillance,” a film directed by David Lynch’s daughter, Jennifer, starring Bill Pullman and the lovely Julia Ormand. David Lynch was also listed as Executive Producer. Right from the opening sequence, of a grisly murder, you could see the influence of father on daughter. The scene was dark, obscure, and unexplained. Altogether it was a strange and violent film: If I counted correctly there were 14 murders. Those are Tarantino totals. Bloody mayhem. It was extreme, ghoulish, and bizarre, like the director wanted to rub your face in it, with there also being an underlying absurdity to the killings, almost as if they were recreational, like in the recent film, “Funny Games,” directed by Michael Haneke. There are references made to two black-clothed killers wearing bag masks in the opening sequence and in a few flashbacks but we don’t find out who they are till the last quarter of the picture. Their Identity is something of a surprising twist.
The story starts out with two FBI agents, Sam Hallaway (Bill Pullman) and Elizabeth Anderson (Julia Ormand) arriving at a police station in the middle of god-forsaken country out West somewhere. There is the usual conflict between the local police, who are atypical and sometimes outside the law themselves, and the FBI, who want to interrogate everyone, including some officers, about the death of one cop and several other people on a nearby highway. The agents act with decorum and take over, with Elizabeth grilling with sensitivity an 8 year old girl, one of two survivors of the highway killings. But the agents knew what happened because they were there; it turns out they are the psychotic killers in disguise. The only person who figured that out early was the little girl, who whispers in Hallaway’s ear, “I know who you are.” That kicks off the bloody last section of the film. Elizabeth goes off with two officers to investigate the murders we saw at the beginning of the film, the killing of the real agents, but one of the cops finds some photographs in the back seat that show erotic scenes between Sam and Liz, which forces her hand and she kills them both. Meanwhile back at the station Sam has revealed his true identity and starts killing cops, leaving only the other survivor, a pretty blond cokehead. Lynch is saving her for the finale. When Liz comes back to the station their passion for each other is revealed; they are literally MAD for each other. Liz takes off her belt, gives it to her lover, climbs on the blonde’s lap, and starts to kiss and fondle her, while Sam puts the belt around her neck and slowly tightens it, killing the blond woman while Liz continues to passionately kiss her. That really gets the couple off, and shortly afterward they drive off, their dirty work completed. They see the little girl off in a field. Sam says to his mate, “Because she guessed who we were, I am going to let her live.” Liz smiles and says, “That is so romantic.”
I once saw on film one of David Lynch’s paintings, which had rotten meat on it that was filled with maggots crawling around the surface of the painting. Looking at this movie was comparable to looking at that painting. If there is a category below low-life, the characters in this movie inhabit that category, and that includes the scummy cops.
The erotized murder of the blonde was the next shocking and uncomfortable killing on screen that I have ever seen. Number one in my estimation remains the opening sequence in Sam Peckinpaugh’s “Osterman Weekend,” where another blond woman is assailed by two bad men moments after making love to John Hurt who had just jumped out of bed into the shower. Suddenly these two men break in, hold her down while one of them takes a long hypodermic needle and injects something lethal into her brain by going up her nose with a long needle. She’s dead in seconds. That scene still rattles my cage and disturbs my sleep. It’s not only the method of killing but the abruptness of the scene and how it was accomplished in less than a minute that is so creepy and disconcerning.
After I did my 30 laps in the pool at LA Fitness I walked across the street to Blockbuster’s to pick up “Sunshine Cleaning” only to find it’s not available to next week. So instead I picked up four films more or less at random, at least two of them straight-to-video type films. The one I decided to see first was something called “Surveillance,” a film directed by David Lynch’s daughter, Jennifer, starring Bill Pullman and the lovely Julia Ormand. David Lynch was also listed as Executive Producer. Right from the opening sequence, of a grisly murder, you could see the influence of father on daughter. The scene was dark, obscure, and unexplained. Altogether it was a strange and violent film: If I counted correctly there were 14 murders. Those are Tarantino totals. Bloody mayhem. It was extreme, ghoulish, and bizarre, like the director wanted to rub your face in it, with there also being an underlying absurdity to the killings, almost as if they were recreational, like in the recent film, “Funny Games,” directed by Michael Haneke. There are references made to two black-clothed killers wearing bag masks in the opening sequence and in a few flashbacks but we don’t find out who they are till the last quarter of the picture. Their Identity is something of a surprising twist.
The story starts out with two FBI agents, Sam Hallaway (Bill Pullman) and Elizabeth Anderson (Julia Ormand) arriving at a police station in the middle of god-forsaken country out West somewhere. There is the usual conflict between the local police, who are atypical and sometimes outside the law themselves, and the FBI, who want to interrogate everyone, including some officers, about the death of one cop and several other people on a nearby highway. The agents act with decorum and take over, with Elizabeth grilling with sensitivity an 8 year old girl, one of two survivors of the highway killings. But the agents knew what happened because they were there; it turns out they are the psychotic killers in disguise. The only person who figured that out early was the little girl, who whispers in Hallaway’s ear, “I know who you are.” That kicks off the bloody last section of the film. Elizabeth goes off with two officers to investigate the murders we saw at the beginning of the film, the killing of the real agents, but one of the cops finds some photographs in the back seat that show erotic scenes between Sam and Liz, which forces her hand and she kills them both. Meanwhile back at the station Sam has revealed his true identity and starts killing cops, leaving only the other survivor, a pretty blond cokehead. Lynch is saving her for the finale. When Liz comes back to the station their passion for each other is revealed; they are literally MAD for each other. Liz takes off her belt, gives it to her lover, climbs on the blonde’s lap, and starts to kiss and fondle her, while Sam puts the belt around her neck and slowly tightens it, killing the blond woman while Liz continues to passionately kiss her. That really gets the couple off, and shortly afterward they drive off, their dirty work completed. They see the little girl off in a field. Sam says to his mate, “Because she guessed who we were, I am going to let her live.” Liz smiles and says, “That is so romantic.”
I once saw on film one of David Lynch’s paintings, which had rotten meat on it that was filled with maggots crawling around the surface of the painting. Looking at this movie was comparable to looking at that painting. If there is a category below low-life, the characters in this movie inhabit that category, and that includes the scummy cops.
The erotized murder of the blonde was the next shocking and uncomfortable killing on screen that I have ever seen. Number one in my estimation remains the opening sequence in Sam Peckinpaugh’s “Osterman Weekend,” where another blond woman is assailed by two bad men moments after making love to John Hurt who had just jumped out of bed into the shower. Suddenly these two men break in, hold her down while one of them takes a long hypodermic needle and injects something lethal into her brain by going up her nose with a long needle. She’s dead in seconds. That scene still rattles my cage and disturbs my sleep. It’s not only the method of killing but the abruptness of the scene and how it was accomplished in less than a minute that is so creepy and disconcerning.
Monday, August 24, 2009
The Outrage
Aug. 23, 2009 (Journal Notes)
I saw “The Outrage” last night, Martin Ritt’s take on Kurosawa’s film “Rashomon.” I had seen it before but it had been many years since I last saw it. I thoroughly enjoyed it, I thought it was a great script, and I thought Edward G. Robinson did a marvelous job as the cynical con-man. Before writing about it I thought I’d look it up to get some basic info, but to my surprise I couldn’t find a thing about it in Martin & Porter for 2007, none of Pauline Kael’s books mention it, and neither does David Thomson in his listing of a thousand films. I wondered why it was ignored; skipped over when it is obviously a solid film, even more if you ask me. It was listed with the 500 best Westerns.
The story is set up so well, with the three men in the train station, which is decrepit, while a heavy rain pours down, creating a gloomy ambience for the three men who have gathered there. There is the delusion preacher (William Shatner), the absolutist who believes truth should be one and unassailable; the old prospector (Howard de Silva), who hides his version of “the truth” to the last; and the con-man (Edgar G. Robinson) who is there to prick the balloons of idealism floated by the other two. While sitting in foul weather the con-man persuades them to tell the story of the trial held the day before, which is still fast on their minds—actually, more like an acid eating into their guts. At first it’s just away to past the time till the train arrives, but as the tale unfolds it becomes the perfect foil for the con-man to deliver his merciless and insightful attack on this foolish, dishonest, and pathetic humanity who wouldn’t recognize truth if they sat on it.
The story is told in flashback from four perspectives. The prospector had found a dead man with a knife buried in his chest and reported it to the sheriff who arrests Jose Carrasco (Paul Newman) who was found asleep under a tree near the sight of the murder. Carrasco is a notorious bandit well-known in the Arizona territory, and the locals would love to pin the killing on him just to rid the territory of him. We hear Carrasco’s story first at his trial for the murder of the gentleman; and it’s full of his egotism and bravado, as he touts his own mastery of fighting, having killed the man in a duel of honor, and his power over women as the genteel lady he snares, along with her husband, falls for his sexual charisma. He had stopped them on the trail and then kidnapped the pair; the man, a Southern gentleman (Lawrence Harvey), he ties to a tree and rapes the woman, who to some extent enjoys the experience. When she tells her story there’s no question she enjoyed the encounter with Carrasco and her husband treats her with contempt, as he was witness to their embraces and love-making, later accusing her of inviting the rape. Angered by his view and snobbery she kills him with his knife. The husband has a story too, which he told to an old Indian who found him still alive but dying. He claimed he had killed himself over the humiliation by accidently falling on his knife while fighting with Carrasco. As each of these different versions are unraveled the con-man delivers biting discourses on the folly of human nature, and Robinson gives these speeches with plenty of brio and black humor, taking no guff from the other two who are too tender-minded as far as he is concerned.
But there is a 4th version and that belongs to the prospector who claims to have witnessed the whole charade. His telling is broad and comical, a kind of absurdist summing up of the event. It leaves everyone involved without much dignity and looking quite foolish, with the gentleman this time killing himself quite deliberately. We also learn why the fancy murder knife wasn’t found. Some old reviews treat the 4th version as definitive but it’s hardly that; it just one more telling by someone with a stake in the telling.
One thing I didn’t like was the finding of the baby in a room at the train station; it is no more that foil to encourage the prospector and especially the preacher back to rejoin the society they had temporarily been disillusioned with due to this rape and murder. It was an improbable event at best.
The movie cleverly argues truth is subjective and shaped by the storyteller’s investment in a situation; they will always color things in their own favor. Carrasco make himself out to be commanding in the situation with the Southern pair; in her version her sexuality made him jump through some her hoops. He also said the gentleman was a good fighter but he was better. But the prospector said the so-called duel between them was a farce, as both were scared to death and acted cowardly.
Newman was enjoyable as a Mexican bandit, although a bit too broad and too comical throughout, although that did not bother me very much, as clearly he and Robinson had the job of being comic relief to the tale of murder and rape. To see the movie these days, it would have to be through Netflix.
I saw “The Outrage” last night, Martin Ritt’s take on Kurosawa’s film “Rashomon.” I had seen it before but it had been many years since I last saw it. I thoroughly enjoyed it, I thought it was a great script, and I thought Edward G. Robinson did a marvelous job as the cynical con-man. Before writing about it I thought I’d look it up to get some basic info, but to my surprise I couldn’t find a thing about it in Martin & Porter for 2007, none of Pauline Kael’s books mention it, and neither does David Thomson in his listing of a thousand films. I wondered why it was ignored; skipped over when it is obviously a solid film, even more if you ask me. It was listed with the 500 best Westerns.
The story is set up so well, with the three men in the train station, which is decrepit, while a heavy rain pours down, creating a gloomy ambience for the three men who have gathered there. There is the delusion preacher (William Shatner), the absolutist who believes truth should be one and unassailable; the old prospector (Howard de Silva), who hides his version of “the truth” to the last; and the con-man (Edgar G. Robinson) who is there to prick the balloons of idealism floated by the other two. While sitting in foul weather the con-man persuades them to tell the story of the trial held the day before, which is still fast on their minds—actually, more like an acid eating into their guts. At first it’s just away to past the time till the train arrives, but as the tale unfolds it becomes the perfect foil for the con-man to deliver his merciless and insightful attack on this foolish, dishonest, and pathetic humanity who wouldn’t recognize truth if they sat on it.
The story is told in flashback from four perspectives. The prospector had found a dead man with a knife buried in his chest and reported it to the sheriff who arrests Jose Carrasco (Paul Newman) who was found asleep under a tree near the sight of the murder. Carrasco is a notorious bandit well-known in the Arizona territory, and the locals would love to pin the killing on him just to rid the territory of him. We hear Carrasco’s story first at his trial for the murder of the gentleman; and it’s full of his egotism and bravado, as he touts his own mastery of fighting, having killed the man in a duel of honor, and his power over women as the genteel lady he snares, along with her husband, falls for his sexual charisma. He had stopped them on the trail and then kidnapped the pair; the man, a Southern gentleman (Lawrence Harvey), he ties to a tree and rapes the woman, who to some extent enjoys the experience. When she tells her story there’s no question she enjoyed the encounter with Carrasco and her husband treats her with contempt, as he was witness to their embraces and love-making, later accusing her of inviting the rape. Angered by his view and snobbery she kills him with his knife. The husband has a story too, which he told to an old Indian who found him still alive but dying. He claimed he had killed himself over the humiliation by accidently falling on his knife while fighting with Carrasco. As each of these different versions are unraveled the con-man delivers biting discourses on the folly of human nature, and Robinson gives these speeches with plenty of brio and black humor, taking no guff from the other two who are too tender-minded as far as he is concerned.
But there is a 4th version and that belongs to the prospector who claims to have witnessed the whole charade. His telling is broad and comical, a kind of absurdist summing up of the event. It leaves everyone involved without much dignity and looking quite foolish, with the gentleman this time killing himself quite deliberately. We also learn why the fancy murder knife wasn’t found. Some old reviews treat the 4th version as definitive but it’s hardly that; it just one more telling by someone with a stake in the telling.
One thing I didn’t like was the finding of the baby in a room at the train station; it is no more that foil to encourage the prospector and especially the preacher back to rejoin the society they had temporarily been disillusioned with due to this rape and murder. It was an improbable event at best.
The movie cleverly argues truth is subjective and shaped by the storyteller’s investment in a situation; they will always color things in their own favor. Carrasco make himself out to be commanding in the situation with the Southern pair; in her version her sexuality made him jump through some her hoops. He also said the gentleman was a good fighter but he was better. But the prospector said the so-called duel between them was a farce, as both were scared to death and acted cowardly.
Newman was enjoyable as a Mexican bandit, although a bit too broad and too comical throughout, although that did not bother me very much, as clearly he and Robinson had the job of being comic relief to the tale of murder and rape. To see the movie these days, it would have to be through Netflix.
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