If You Want to Defend Torture, Start By Admitting That It's Torture

Going back a few weeks, George Will wrote an editorial with a number of similarities to Richard Cohen's piece on the morality of torture, particularly in the manner in which Will substitutes his experience in a movie theater for fact-based argument. Will opens with the sympathetic quotation of Col. Nathan Jessep, Jack Nicholson's character from A Few Good Men,

“I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom that I provide and then questions the manner in which I provide it.”

That diatribe was, of course, the lead-in to the film's Perry Mason moment, when Jessup confesses to ordering the abuse of an enlisted man who ended up dead. Will seems particularly taken with the quote, "You [expletive] people... you have no idea how to defend a nation", never mind that Jessup is addressing a military court martial. Sure, it's a movie and Jessup's speech is directed at the movie audience, but his on screen attack is directed at other military officers. Jessup's honor falls short of helping the two enlisted men who carried out his directive avoid being prosecuted for murder. If Will's argument is that there should be no checks on men who believe themselves to be acting in the best interest of the nation, Jessup by this point having rejected the opinions of every other officer who suggested an alternative to the Code Red, having excused himself from the confines of the Marine Corps' regulations and Uniform Code of Military Justice, having happily allowed two enlisted men to be looking at lengthy prison terms for carrying out his orders, and having repeatedly perjured himself on the stand and repeatedly disparaged the other military officers involved in the legal proceeding, he has every right to attempt that argument. But were Will to explore some of our nation's history, including how we came to have a civilian in the role of Commander in Chief, he might come to realize that in fact a Colonel, even one who is extraordinarily self-assured, even one who is doing important work, is and should be answerable to higher authorities.

Switching over to Zero Dark Thirty, Will informs us,

Viewers will know going in how the movie ends. They will not know how they will feel when seeing an American tell a detainee, “When you lie to me I hurt you,” and proceed to do so.

Frankly, "When you lie to me I hurt you," makes for better film than "When I think you have information you're not sharing, I'll keep you awake for 180 hours," but... call it poetic license. But contrary to Will's suggestion, most viewers will have seen plenty of dramatizations that involve torture, including torture committed by Americans. Kiefer Sutherland (whose character disagreed with Jessup's approach in A Few Good Men) made something of a career of it in his series, "24". Another season, another ticking time bomb. The difference is that this is supposed to be "based on a true story", and that unlike other films based upon true stories this one is... I don't know... more graphic? Easier to confuse with a documentary?

As is his wont, Will likes to overstate the benefits of torture, blithely reciting the claims of various Bush Administration officials about how tidbits of relevant information were gleaned from the torture of Khalid Sheik Mohammed, including "the nickname of a trusted courier of bin Laden". Will implies a straight line from the disclosure of that nickname in 2003 to the killing of Bin Laden some eight years later. That's not exactly a ringing endorsement of the "ticking timebomb" defense. We cannot know at this juncture whether the nickname of Bin Laden's courier would have been obtained from Mohammed without the use of torture, but we can reasonably conclude that either the name was not of much help to the investigation or that Mohammed poured out so much information under torture that the key to finding Bin Laden was buried in a mountain of irrelevant disclosures, with wild goose chases taking priority over the identification of the courier.

The question of whether torture "works" depends both on the tactics the torturer is willing to use, and also upon the torturer's goal. For example, let's say I want to know what the enemy is up to, and I have 100 enemy operatives in custody. If I am willing to torture all of them, I can start looking for commonalities among their disclosures. Sure, there's a chance that they will have been fed misinformation and not have the information I'm looking for, but odds are I'll learn something useful. Or I'll be able to test their stories and, if my information is good, use torture to punish what I believe to be errors or inaccuracies in the hope that the subject will become terrified of being caught in a lie. It's similar to the manner in which police divide suspects and interrogate them separately, then lie about what the other suspects have said or disclosed in order to try to trick the others. Except with torture. Sure, I may end up torturing people to try to get them to disclose something that they know nothing about, and if I'm not careful I can inadvertently feed them the answers to the questions that will stop the torture and mistake their new answers for actionable intelligence, but if I torture enough people in enough circumstances I will get names, locations, and other information that turn out to be valid. And if I break down the wrong door, shoot the wrong person, pick up and torture an innocent person based upon a bad tip, well, "I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom that I provide and then questions the manner in which I provide it."

Similarly, I may not care if the person I'm torturing tells the truth. I may want that person to lie. To pose for propaganda pictures or a film, to make or sign a confession to crimes, or to simply be too frightened to ever stand against me or my regime in the future lest he again be picked up and tortured.

Will lectures us,

Viewers of “Zero Dark Thirty” can decide whether or which “enhanced interrogation” measures depicted — slaps, sleep deprivation, humiliation, waterboarding — constitute, in plain English, torture. And they can ponder whether any or all of them would be wrong even if effective.

Sorry, but that's a cop-out. We would not see the situation as ambiguous if a police agency used those techniques to elicit confessions from a criminal suspect, particularly if it were an American citizen being tortured by a police agency in the developing world. We would not see the situation as ambiguous if those techniques were being applied to a U.S. solider in enemy custody. Let's not forget how few seconds it took for Christopher Hitchens to change his position from "waterboarding can't be that bad," to "it's torture." (For the record, sixteen.) If somebody were to put a bag over Will's head, strip him naked, transport him to a remote location, and apply the techniques he describes, I'm somehow not thinking that his subsequent column would be so deferential, "my readers can decide for themselves if the 'enhanced interrogation' measures I describe constitute, in plain English, torture". He would have an opinion.

Will shouldn't be so afraid to take a stand. After all, if these techniques were simply another form of acceptable interrogation, we wouldn't need the euphemisms and we wouldn't be talking about "tough choices" or quoting Colonel Jessup for the principle that "anything goes in the name of freedom". No small part of the reason we're still having this discussion is that men like Michael Mukasey and Bush Administration lickspittles like Marc Theissen refuse to acknowledge the truth of what we were doing, while prominent commentators like George Will provide them with cover. How can he talk about "facing up to what we did" if he's not even willing to hang a name on it?

Richard Cohen's Squishy Moral Relativism

"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."

- Benjamin Franklin

"I am torn between my desire for absolute security and my abhorrence of torture."

- Richard Cohen

Alas, poor Richard Cohen, having spent many years thinking (to the best of his ability) about torture, and writing columns about torture, he just can't figure out where he stands:

As with the famous ink blots developed by Swiss psychoanalyst Hermann Rorschach, some people look at the film and conclude that torture works, others conclude that it doesn’t, still others think the movie advocates torture, while some — and now we have gotten to me — don’t know what to think. I am implacably opposed to torture... unless it can save lives.

I oppose taxes, unless they're necessary to fund the government. I oppose vaccinations, unless they're necessary to prevent disease. Can you get more squishy?

Cohen is grateful that the film, Zero Dark Thirty, has started a debate over torture. This isn't like during the Bush Administration, when people were debating the definitions and use of torture in response to the actions of our own government. Our government has, after all, determined that torture is not a sufficiently effective tool for gathering actionable intelligence, and thus has abandoned the use of torture in favor of what it has determined to be better methods of intelligence gathering. No, that silly old debate didn't resolve anything, but now there's a movie!

Cohen speaks of "three senators [with] access to highly classified information... [who as] a group [] are a somber lot" taking the position that torture does not work. He elaborates,

Still, others have taken the same position. Journalists with no access to classified information but with access to people who possess that information insist that (1) torture doesn’t work and (2) it did not lead to the killing of bin Laden. Okay, point taken.

Apparently, to Richard Cohen, there is no difference between asserting, "point taken" versus "point not taken", because to him the important question is no longer whether torture "works", but whether torture is "moral". The concept of the lesser of two evils? Apparently that's not a concept that Cohen has ever encountered.

Is it immoral to waterboard someone who knows of an imminent Sept. 11-type attack? Wouldn’t it instead be immoral not to do everything in your power to avoid the loss of thousands of lives? Torture in that case might be hideous, repugnant and in some rarefied way still immoral, but I could certainly justify it.

In other words, who cares about the "real world" - Cohen has seen movies and TV shows in which bad guys are tortured into confessing their secrets seconds before nuclear bombs explode, with the good guys defusing the bomb just before the countdown timer reaches "zero", and if good guys do it on TV it can't be immoral!

The phrase "it depends" has been chased from our political life — a sign of feared wishy-washiness, which is, crucially, bad for TV ratings.

And yet it's TV shows and action movies, built to get those ratings, structured around simplistic plot lines and countdown timers, that inform Cohen's views. Does it matter that he can't find anybody "in the know" to tell him that torture "works"? Not in the slightest. He just wants somebody to admit that if we assume that torture can work in a fanciful, action movie scenario, there's moral ambiguity when the hero uses torture to elicit crucial information from a cartoon villain.

Cohen wants to engage in a dangerous form of moral relativism, the type that naturally extends to "If they do it, it's wrong, but if we do exectly the same thing it's an act of good because our motives are pure." He doesn't understand the difference between when something is morally justifiable and when it is moral. "If it saves a lot of lives" isn't sufficient - resorting to what appears to be Cohen's greatest source of moral influence, the motion picture, let's borrow from Batman and imagine The Joker is threatening to blow up Manhattan unless somebody shoots Richard Cohen in the head. Would it become moral to shoot Richard Cohen in the head? ("Ah, but I'm an innocent," Richard Cohen might protest, which under his theory of morality is beside the point. If it's "in your power to avoid the loss of thousands of lives" then it's "immoral not to do everything in your power to avoid the loss of thousands of lives", right?)

Cohen is also concerned that if the government bans torture, then people detained by the government won't be afraid of being tortured:

But it would be all right with me if the government were silent on torture so that no detainee could be confident of civilized treatment or if, in a crisis, an understandable looking away was permitted. Life ain’t neat.

I'm not sure where he thinks he's going with this. (Actually, I am, but only because I've read beyond this column.) Cohen imagines a nation in which torture is legal, and can be used on any detainee, but in which it is not actually used? Because then detainees will believe that it might be used and will volunteer information rather than risking being legally tortured?

Really, what Cohen is doing is alluding back to an argument he's made in the past, based upon his misunderstanding of the detention and torture of a single individual:

I refer you to the 1995 interrogation by Philippine authorities of Abdul Hakim Murad, an al-Qaeda terrorist who served up extremely useful information about a plot to blow up airliners when he was told that he was about to be turned over to Israel's Mossad.

As Cohen is no longer referring us to Murad, it seems reasonable to infer that somebody has clued him into the fact that the plot was revealed not through the use of torture, but because Murad's computer was overflowing with files detailing every element of the plot. And they may also have clued him into the fact that Murad was subsequently tortured, and that the torture produced no useful information while sending authorities on myriad wild goose chases. What do you do if the one anecdote you use to support your argument turns out not to support your argument? If you're Richard Cohen, it would appear that you continue to make the same argument but stop mentioning the anecdote. Cohen concludes his column by telling us that, thanks to the release of an action movie, "We are getting a robust debate over torture that we should have had years ago". Which is false. We had the same debate years ago and, but for a few details, he wrote the same column years ago. Several times. He also writes, "we are finding out a bit more about it — whether it works and whether it can ever be justified." Those are questions Cohen also asked and answered years ago. For example, on April 28, 2009,

Yet the debate over torture has been infected with silly arguments about utility: whether it works or not. Of course it works -- sometimes or rarely, but if a proverbial bomb is ticking, that may just be the one time it works.

And on May 12, 2009:

I know how upsetting this will be to some Cheney critics, and I count myself as one, who think -- in respectful paraphrase of what Mary McCarthy said about Lillian Hellman -- that everything he says is a lie, including the ands and the thes. Yet I have to wonder whether what he is saying now is the truth -- i.e., torture works.

By September 1, 2009, it was all squish:

The questions of what constitutes torture and what to do with those who, maybe innocently, applied what we now define as torture have to be removed from the political sphere. They cannot be the subject of an ideological tug of war, both sides taking extreme and illogical positions -- torture never works, torture always works, torture is always immoral, torture is moral if it saves lives.

So even back in 2009 Cohen was lecturing us that we should never speak in absolutes, whatever the facts may be. Except back then it was "extreme and illogical" to argue that "torture is moral if it saves lives" whereas now that's his central thesis.

Coming Soon to a Theater Near You

Conan the Septuagenarian.

The Presidential Hopeful's Unfortunate Wife

Sometimes you wish that candidates would just keep their wives out of things, lest they end up having to pretend to like to bake cookies¹ or get caught saying silly things on camera.

For example....

"I feel like all [Obama]'s doing is saying, 'Let's kill this guy," she said, seated next to her husband, presumptive GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney, in an exclusive interview with CBS News chief political correspondent Jan Crawford. "And I feel like that's not really a very good campaign policy.

What does that over-the-top hyperbole actually mean?

Ann Romney said it's all part of a plan to portray her husband "in a light that is just completely wrong... they don't' get him at all."

How about a specific example?

Pressed by Crawford on what qualities in her husband she sees most misrepresented, she said, that "he's not as approachable as I am or something like that. That's like, really kind of funny to me because it's all - it's all backwards."

Um... yeah. You see, "The Adjustment Bureau" is based on real life, and... starting when he was in high school, perhaps before that, President Obama has been dispatching... agents that are similar to, but aren't quite angels... to change the path of Romney's life so that he appears stiff and unapproachable. Not to mention, the guy who was messing with Matt Damon's life in the Adjustment Bureau also played General Zod in Superman II - which could mean that his real-life counterpart is not only an alien but is evil... and has superpowers.

I don't mean to mock the actual argument, that the President is trying to "kill" Romney by making him look stiff and unapproachable. We need to be fair: the man is approachable by even the littlest of the little people - you just have to approach him in the right manner.


--------------
1. There is nothing wrong with liking to bake cookies - you just shouldn't have to pretend.

Citizen Romney

If you recall the film, Citizen Kane, you likely recall the start of the film when a dying Kane drops a snow globe that falls to the floor and shatters. Snow globe-style falling snow is used throughout the film as it segues through the chapters of Kane's life. The story covers Kane's escape from poverty through inherited wealth, and how he parlays that wealth into success as a newspaper magnate with political aspirations - there's lots of stuff to work with. But best start now, because before you know it the most obvious substitution for a snow globe, the Etch-a-Sketch, is not only going to be part of pretty much every analysis of Romney's shifting positions, but will be used as a segue between "what he said then" and "what he's saying now" in countless political ads.

If you haven't seen it, I recommend an earlier Citizen Kane parody, the "Rosebud" episode of the Simpsons. I can't offer you a link to the video, so for now you'll have to settle for this:

Looking for Outliers

Outliars?

Writing about "patterns of misconduct", Paul Krugman observes,

My sense, after 11 years of punditizing, is that people are complicated, but gangs of people less so. Individuals are often mixed in their behavior: incorruptible politicians may cheat on their spouses, political scoundrels may have impeccable personal lives. But groups, like a politician’s inner circle or the management team of a media empire, tend to behave similarly on multiple fronts. If they lie and cheat routinely in one domain, they tend to do it in others as well.

My sense is a bit different - what's true for the group is also true, on the whole, for the individual. I do grant, you're far more likely to find an exception while looking at individuals than when looking at groups, but if the general pattern didn't hold for individuals it would not hold for groups.

For a related study of perception, if you've seen The Ides of March, is Clooney's governor an incorruptible politician who happens to cheat on his spouse, or is he a sociopath?

Once Again, The Facts Have a Liberal Bias?

A review of the movie, Conviction, on Netflix:

Acting was good. Ugly cast. Story was tiring. Evil cops and DA's, innocent criminal killers. Typical liberal slant. Boring!!!

The film was... based on a true story in which the defendant ended up serving life in prison due to police and prosecutorial misconduct. (And as much as you could make a movie about, say, Roger Coleman, it wouldn't be very interesting.) I wonder what the author of the review would make of The Thin Blue Line.

Wasn't there once a day when you could interest conservatives in freeing the wrongfully convicted, or did Wm. F. Buckley, Jr.'s experience end that experiment.

So Sayeth the Winklevii

Skip this post if you haven't yet seen The Social Network.

The Social Network, with a rather unsympathetic depiction of Mark Zuckerberg, helps carry itself by presenting a series of characters who are even less sympethetic. In the early part of the film that role was filled by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss. In the later part of the film, by Sean Parker. Which isn't to say there aren't elements of humanity to those characters, or by the same token somebody whose arrogant disdain helps humanize the Winklevoss brothers (enter Larry Summers), but the elements of caricature and exaggeration (along with Jesse Eisenberg's impressive portrayal of 'Zuckerberg') help carry the film forward.

The film doesn't quite answer the question of why Zuckerberg played the Winklevoss brothers for suckers. One interpretation is that they treated him with arrogant disdain, as somebody who was capable of scripting their vision of a social website but not worthy of getting past the bike room of their social club. The other is more mercenary: that Zuckerberg didn't believe in the brothers or their vision of a social network, but he recognized the importance of primacy. He strung them along because had he done otherwise they might have sought out a different programmer and become the first to market. One way or another, it was Zuckerberg's failure to simply tell them, "No, I'm not going to work with you," (along with, if accurately depicted, his behavior during depositions) that breathed life into a lawsuit that would otherwise have had no legs.

David Brooks recently lectured us that the Harvard that is depicted in the movie doesn't actually exist. That there is no longer an elite Harvard with "the old WASP Harvard of Mayflower families, regatta blazers and Anglo-Saxon cheekbones" squared off against "the largely Jewish and Asian Harvard of brilliant but geeky young strivers". The Winklevoss brothers, celluloid personifications of the "old WASP Harvard" who were depicted in the film as wearing regatta blazers at the time of their decision to sue Zuckerberg, appear to disagree:

The 29-year-old identical twins, who are suing the Internet site on claims they came up with the idea for Facebook while students at Harvard University, said on Saturday they were pleased with the way they were portrayed in the Hollywood film.

“It does a great job of capturing the factual events of the 18 months of the founding of Facebook. It is a true story,” Cameron said in an interview.

Whatever reticence the brothers once had about suing has apparently evaporated, as "the twins have taken up legal action again, saying they were given misinformation about Facebook’s value and that relevant documents were withheld." A few 'Zuckerberg' quotes, then, from the "true story":

If you guys were the inventors of Facebook, you'd have invented Facebook.

The "Winklevii" aren't suing me for intellectual property theft. They're suing me because for the first time in their lives, things didn't go exactly the way they were supposed to for them.

A guy who makes a nice chair doesn't owe money to everyone who has ever built a chair.

Character Flaws of the Rich and Powerful

In an odd column about The Social Network, simultaneously emphasizing that it is a fictionalized account of Mark Zuckerberg's rise and treating it as if it's fact, David Brooks laments,

The Zuckerberg character is without social and moral skills. It’s not that he’s a bad person. He’s just never been house-trained. He’s been raised in a culture reticent to talk about social and moral conduct. The character becomes a global business star without getting a first-grade education in interaction.

and concludes,

Many critics have compared this picture to “Citizen Kane.” But I was reminded of the famous last scene in “The Searchers,” in which the John Wayne character is unable to join the social bliss he has created. The character gaps that propel some people to do something remarkable can’t be overcome simply because they have managed to change the world.

It seems worth noting that the psychological factors that Brooks ascribes to not being "house trained" as a result of being "raised in a culture reticent to talk about social and moral conduct" should evoke in his mind something a bit more contemporary than a John Wayne movie. It's interesting that he rejects, without any real analysis, the comparison to Citizen Kane, a fictionalized account of William Randolph Hearst. Who was more ruthless, "Caine" or Zuckerman as depicted in the movie? Who was more vengeful, less moral, more selfish? Were "Caine's" character flaws a manifestation of his being "raised in a culture reticent to talk about social and moral conduct"?

The fact is, darn few people claw their way to the top of the economic pyramid while playing the part of the socially conscious gentleman. The novelty in the rise of somebody like (movie) Zuckerberg is not so much that he's ruthless with his friends and enemies alike, but that (as Brooks points out) he's a "nerd" - somebody who wouldn't have been able to penetrate the class system that Brooks assures us no longer exists at Harvard. Yes, the information age has allowed a huge number of "nerds", including many with weak social skills", to become wealthy and lead companies. Historically many of those same people would have been stuck working for somebody else. But let's not pretend that the history of capitalism stands as a monument to moral, ethical, well-socialized businessmen.

I sometimes come across platitudinous assertions about the wealthy and powerful, such as "Great men have great appetites" or "Great men have great faults." The fact is, every human being has faults, and most of us have pretty significant faults. Appetites? The same thing - I doubt that there's a person on the planet who hasn't, at some point in time, wanted or felt driven to do something that was wrong or immoral - but when you're wealthy you can either find "legal" ways to exercise your desires, or use your wealth to insulate yourself from consequence. Think of Rupert Murdoch and the way he looted his companies for personal gain - he is indignant at his prosecution because, in effect, he "stole the money, fair and square". He and his lawyers found a way to loot the companies that they believed to be legal. Take a look at Elliot Spitzer and his prostitutes, or Tiger Woods and his affairs. Their wealth brought them opportunities (or is it temptations) that most people don't get, and they made choices based upon their own character. On one level, most certainly, it's easier to avoid crossing a moral line if you don't face temptation. But on another level there's nothing special about them that compelled them to surrender to temptation. It's still a matter of personal choice - what type of person do you want to be?

I think you will find that, among people who manage to climb to the top of the economic pyramid, there's a tendency to put concerns about others - their wishes, feelings, needs, whatever - to the background. There is often a single-mindedness to their push to the top. In some cases that's highly contextual, with the driven individual simply not allowing others to stand between him and his goal. With others it branches out into all areas of his life. That has a lot less to do with being "raised in a culture reticent to talk about social and moral conduct" and a lot more to do with their childhood experiences and their personality. How many generations of wealthy people would have told you that their station was a manifestation of the will of God, and would happily explain why their actions were morally proper if not dictated by their faith?

I don't want to sound like Brooks, and oversimplify the wealthy into two classes of individual. But I do think it's fair to observe that the tendency to run roughshod over others within the context of business does roughly break down into two varieties: those who simply don't care, and those who recognize what they are doing and seek forgiveness after-the-fact - adherents to the principle that it's easier to get forgiveness than to get permission. (If you succeed, odds are you'll get that permission. And if you successes significantly outweigh your failures, you'll probably still get forgiven.) Forging ahead when others around you are urging caution can be reasonably described as leadership. But, as one would hope that movie Zuckerman learned by the end of the screenplay, you don't have to be an ass to be a leader.

Exit Through The Gift Shop, Featuring Banksy

Fake but fun? The movie, "Exit Through The Gift Shop" is getting some attention.

Allegedly, the doc was made by Banksy who – this too is certain – is an actual street artist of real renown and carefully cultivated anonymity. We glimpse him, or perhaps someone purporting to be him, in the opening frames. A hooded figure shot in low light and speaking with a rough English accent, he explains the film’s subject: “It’s about a guy who tried to make a documentary about me, but he’s a lot more interesting than me.”

I have a suspicion that, if people found out who "Banksy" really is, they would be surprised by what a brazen, commercial exploit his "art" is, from start to finish. Not subversive, but corporate and motivated by profit from day one: making bank(sy).

Movies About Bullying

When writing about bullying in schools, I mentioned a number of films that deal with bullying. Some movies that highlight the various forms of bullying come to mind:

The "Antisocial" Bully:

• Big Bully
• Max Keeble's Big Move (Also featuring a bullying school principal)
• Back to the future (Biff, of course, but let's not forget Principal "No McFly has ever amounted to anything" Strickland)
• Three O'Clock High

The "Pack of Bullies":

• Sometimes They Come Back (Horror)
• Hearts in Atlantis
• Stand By Me
• My Bodyguard
• Carrie
• Let Me In (And the original, Let the Right One In.)
  

(Lots of Stephen King here.) Bullying by the "In Crowd":

• Heathers
• Revenge of the Nerds
• Mean Girls
• Lucas
• School Ties (Exploring themes of anti-Semitism)

Bullying by Teachers and School Administrators:

• Scent of a Woman
• Sky High (Administrators support a social order of "heroes" vs. "sidekicks"; also includes a pair of traditional student bullies.)
• The Karate Kid (Kids bullying kids, but the root of the problem is a bully turned karate instructor.)
• Mr. Woodcock (The gym teacher is a relentless bully; the movie takes the incredible view that many of his victims became grateful.)
• Matilta (Worst principal ever?)
• Ferris Bueller's Day Off (Principal Rooney)
• The Breakfast Club (Principal Vernon)

There are films with teachers who bully, or have bullying tendencies, such as Fast Times at Ridgemont High, but it seems like bullying principals get a lot of screen time.

There are, of course, many more.

Douthat on Movies

Ross Douthat wrote a rather silly column about the movie Avatar, which left me wondering if it was written before he actually saw the film. But I just stumbled across one of his related blog entries....

Sci-fi spectaculars deserve to be taken seriously, as pop art if not as high art, and not just patted on the head for putting on a good show. That doesn’t require comparing a James Cameron film to, say, “The Rules of the Game” and finding Cameron wanting. But it means recognizing that there’s a world of difference between a truly great special-effects driven fantasy — like “The Matrix” (the first one, not the sequels), or Peter Jackson’s “Lord of the Rings,” or “The Empire Strikes Back” — and a gorgeous disappointment like “Avatar,” which succeeds at being eye-popping but doesn’t succeed at very much else.

I recognize that Douthat's obligated to praise the Lord of the Rings trilogy, as it's a Christian allegory. But most of that film's physical beauty arose not from special effects, but from its being filmed in New Zealand. And with due respect, at least to me, The Eye of Sauron was a huge disappointment. There are roughly equally compelling special effects on the back of a one dollar bill. Also, with no offense intended to its fans, I found the Matrix to be very much like Avatar - a very simple, not particularly compelling plot wrapped up in a beautiful package of special effects.

But what really caught my eye was Douthat's endorsement of "The Empire Strikes Back". Plot summary: "Luke finds out that Darth Vader is his father." Beyond that, you could pretty much skip from "A New Hope" to The Ewok Adventure "Return of the Jedi" without the loss of any significant plot detail. Sure, you might spend a few minutes wondering why Han Solo was frozen in 'carbonite', and where the little green muppet guy came from, but otherwise? Really, back in the day I enjoyed the film, but because it was exciting and eye-popping.

Destroying Fine Art

Rob Zombie is saving us from the possibility of inferior sequels to last year's Halloween remake....

In summer 2007, just weeks before the big-screen arrival of his "Halloween" reboot, director Rob Zombie said he was done with the franchise....

Then a couple of things happened: The movie became the #1 movie of the Labor Day weekend, and Zombie found out what other filmmakers were planning to do with the series he'd pulled off the horror-franchise scrap heap.

"I just got protective of the series, because I had spent so much time trying to revive the whole thing that it looked like they were just going to go back in and destroy it," he told MTV News recently.

Yes, heaven forbid another director might come along and make a sequel to a horror movie retread that, unlike Zombie's film, is actually scary.

Speaking in Code

Lest I be "speared", I have no wish to disrespect Huorini / Waodoni culture.

The Huaorani believe that when someone dies, the soul starts a journey towards heaven. On the way, in the middle of the path, a big anaconda is obstructing the way. Only brave souls can jump the boa and reach heaven. Whoever fails, returns to earth as a termite, and leads a miserable existence.

However, if your first exposure to the term is the discussion in a pretty, but clumsily made movie (The End of the Spear), glorifying missionary work, over when particular characters "jumped the great boa"... similar expressions come to mind. I thus propose "Jumped the Boa" as a term to describe when Christian-themed entertainment goes way off mark.

The War on Terror, On Film

In a nutshell, Body of Lies opens well, and starts building an interesting story. Then it goes off on a dubious subplot that isn't very convincing and takes far too long to develop. As the subplot is crucial to the ending of the film - your understanding of the characters, their motivations and their actions - it is indispensable. Unfortunately, it makes the film a bit too long and at times tedious.

The film tell a story that focuses on human intrigue, an expanding network of dysfunctional relationships with Agent Ferris (Leonardo DiCaprio) at its center. That is, as contrasted with a lot of other modern films about the war on terror, it seems to be trying to put story ahead of politics. But make no mistake, this is a very political film, from its outset unapologetically asserting that the war on terror (efforts to fight terrorist cells and capture terrorist leaders) is crucial to the preservation of western values and freedoms. The Iraq war merits mention, but this film is about what its makers seem to see as the real "war on terror" - an often low-tech war with some high-tech components. There's plenty of double-cross and moral ambiguity.

As overt as the politics often are, as contrasted with a film like Babel or Syriana, the films largely avoids feeling like a condescending lecture or becoming lost in its convoluted plot. But you'll still get some elements of a political lecture, with characters dropping comments here or there describing how "torture doesn't work" (which isn't to say that those same speakers find no use for it) or that Islamic terrorism is predicated upon a misinterpretation of the Koran (while making it clear that you'll have no luck convincing the adherents of that interpretation that they've made a mistake).

I haven't read David Ignatius's book, but if the screenplay is any indication he's given a great deal of thought to the "war on terror", the mistakes we have made, and the reasons for our continued difficulties in identifying and stopping terrorist leaders and terrorist cells. This film sees great value in human capital (agents working in the field, and their building relationships with locals), and is often scornful of the U.S./CIA preference for surveillance technology that arose following the end of the cold war, as well as their treatment of the locals who risk their lives (or die) while working with or assisting field agents. In the film, Agent Ferris is morally elevated over his boss not because of what he does for those harmed or killed by his actions, but because he wants to offer assistance before indifferently accepting that it's not forthcoming.

But Ignatius is no Luddite - far from it. The film depicts whiz-bang, nifty keen technologies in all, or perhaps most of, their glory. While highlighting the limitations of technological surveillance, he also illustrates its usefulness, and showcases how even one or two people can orchestrate a massive disinformation campaign through the Internet.

Leonardo DiCaprio is well cast in this film, although the character he plays will be familiar to those who have seen his recent work. (His accent may change, but it's essentially the same character he played in Blood Diamond and The Departed.) His character is suited to his role. I suspect that Ridley Scott had fun with Russell Crowe, chubby and aged, commenting to DiCaprio at one point that a decade earlier he could have taken him in a fight. (Believe it or not, yes, it's almost a decade since Scott directed Crowe in Gladiator.)

Politics Overpowering The Story Line

In the past couple of years I've seen two movies in which Chris Cooper had major roles - Silver City and Syriana. Those films had something else in common - the mistake of working so hard to advance a political message that the story line suffered.

Silver City, which you probably missed, mixes an interesting "whodunit" where a body floats to the surface of a lake as a political ad is being filmed. Instead of simply telling that story, the movie focuses heavily on criss-crossing plotlines surrounding Dickie Pilager, a less-than-intellectually-stellar candidate for Governor of Colorado being carefully managed by his handlers as he runs for office. Pilager is a parody of George W. Bush, and the movie's politics are about as subtle as the "play on words" represented by his surname. (However, even as they clearly disagree with his politics, the film makers depict Pilager as sincere in his beliefs.) Even the competent cast and strong performances can't save the film from itself.

Syriana has an even more impressive cast, at least by Hollywood A-list measures, and is in many ways more coherent. But again, to advance a political message and to "educate the audience" about the Middle East, the film incorporates a couple of unnecessary plotlines, one of which was not sufficiently developed to be convincing. You knew from the start that the story lines would ultimately intersect, but the ultimate intersection was surprisingly clumsy. In comparison to most political movies, the film did not condescend to the audience in order to advance its political message... which may be a problem in terms of its effort to create a deeper understanding of the issues. If you don't have at least some awareness of what the film is trying to convey, you are probably scratching your head in the manner of a woman a couple of rows back who, as the closing credits started to roll, asked "Did you get that?"

Both films take a very cynical view of the manner in which this nation is run, and the manner in which corporate interests can override the public good with little to no consequence. Or should I say, circumvent laws which interfere with the public good, as Syriana was rather explicit in its position that the government's collusion with business interests was perceived as advancing American interests. At most, the government will ask for a couple of sacrificial lambs who can be prosecuted in the name of good governance, as it otherwise blesses international business dealings and corporate mergers that increase the reach, wealth and power of America's corporations. Given a choice between two possible leaders for an oil-rich nation, one of whom is a regressive moron who will cater to American oil interests, and the other of whom is a progressive who wishes to transform the nation into a modern, progressive democracy, and to invest the nation's oil wealth in building that society, we pick the former. (It's easy enough to see a history where we supported thugs and dictators in the Middle East, and subverted democracy. But I'm not sure that the brand of progressive Arab leader depicted in Syriana can be found outside of fiction - and if such a leader exists, he's certainly not outspoken in his beliefs.)

Unfortunately, beyond its heavy-handed caricatures, there's truth to its depiction of the merger of corporate and government interests. True believers in our claimed effort to bring Democracy to the Middle East will probably hate the film. The film was rather explicit in its belief that the United States wants to keep the Middle East backward, dependent, and open for business with the U.S., and doesn't much care what happens to the region when the oil runs out.

The biggest surprise of Syriana? Alexander Siddig, who played the annoying Dr. Bashir on Star Trek Deep Space 9, really can act. (It's like seeing Jamie Foxx's outstanding performance in Ray.... Whodathunkit.)

In any event, had either film cut down on the amount of political baggage it chose to carry, either could have been quite enjoyable. And perhaps (metaphorically speaking) had they chosen carry-on luggage instead of overweight checked baggage, both films would have been in a better position to win converts to their respective causes.

The Shrinking Box Office

Reportedly, Hollywood is in something of a tizzy because of declining box office revenues. I think a big part of the problem has to do with the behavior of movie house patrons, and the reluctance of their owners to intercede.

A few years ago, an older woman I know expressed to me that she stopped going to movies when they were transformed from a nice night out to a place where you had to suffer through the person behind you slurping soda and chomping a bucket of popcorn. I don't think she would be attracted back to today's movie houses, where increasingly you can add such items as pizza, nachos, and hotdogs to your list of "eat while viewing" pleasures. Yet most people adapted to that level of interference with their movie enjoyment. So enter what bothers me.

The phenomenon of parents dropping kids off at a movie theater for several hours, such that the movie theater acts as a de facto babysitter, is not new. Nor is the fact that some teens don't behave well in the theater. But in recent years the type of bad behavior one might associate with a young teenager seems to be exemplified in a population of young adults - people in their late teens and early twenties - who seem to believe that the movie theater is an extension of their living rooms. Most of these people are just plain inconsiderate, but some actually make a special effort to make a movie unenjoyable for everybody else in the theater. When a patron complains, missing part of the movie to do so, management may warn the rambunctious viewers, but the sanction for bad conduct rarely extends past a warning, and the bad behavior often resumes the moment the manager (or security guard) leaves the theater.

I think that the theaters view this as in their own self-interest. The problem customers are frequent visitors. The complainers are typically infrequent customers. With profits turning on repeat viewers (that is, people who watch the same movie more than once) and high concession sales, movie theaters seem to prefer losing the older, more mature customers who are irregular movie viewers, in favor of retaining those who disturb the viewing pleasure of other patrons but (statistically) see lots of movies. (Movies, particularly "blockbusters", are increasingly written to draw viewers in their teens and early twenties to the theater, two, three, four or more times. The economics of a blockbuster are dependent upon repeat viewers.)

Two adult tickets, a couple of sodas, and a bag of popcorn - about $25? A DVD rental, a bag of microwave popcorn, beverages from your fridge, and nobody talking over the movie dialog - about $7? If this Michigan experience is typical of the rest of the nation, presumably a big part of the box office decline can be attributed to people deciding that there are darn few movies which they want to see so badly that they won't wait for the DVD.

Master and Commander

Last night I saw the film "Master and Commander. Russell Crowe was well-cast as the obsessive captain, and most of the cast acquits itself well in bringing to life the sights and sounds (but fortunately not the smells) of a 19th century naval vessel.

Engrafted upon its lessons of loyalty, duty, and even fealty of crew to commander, we have a ship's doctor whose convenient frienship with the captain permits some rather anachronistic exchanges about authority. (On screen, it's almost reminiscent of Star Trek, with the captain entertaining and simultaneously dismissing the doctor's comments.) In the context of the period, the ship's mission, and the captain's personality, that dismissal is not surprising - particularly when the doctor's suggestions are absurd, such as dumping the ship's rum overboard such that the crew will be sober.

It is interesting to observe some of the reactions to this film in political quarters. In "Happily Seduced", William F. Buckley, Jr. takes a very romantic, almost yearning approach to the film, which to me suggests that Mr. Buckley spent a great many years of his childhood reading and daydreaming of nautical adventure. (The most salient criticism one might make of this film was that it was more about bringing that fantasy to life than it was about telling a story.)

In contrast, in "Success On the High Seas", Charles Krauthammer seems more enamored with the film's depiction of a military hierarchy, with blind allegiance owed to the commander (in chief), who is free to reward his men with double rations of rum or to order them tied to a mast and lashed in order to maintain order and discipline.

We are at war, and this is a film not just about the conduct of war but about virtue in war. Its depiction of the more ancient notions of duty, honor, patriotism and devotion is reminiscent of what we glimpsed during live coverage of the dash to Baghdad back in April but is now slipping from memory.

The film was first planned a decade ago, long before Sept. 11, long before Afghanistan, long before Iraq. But it arrives at a time of war. And combat on the high seas -- ships under unified command meeting in duelistic engagement in open waters -- represents a distilled essence of warfare that, in the hands of a morally serious man such as Weir, is deeply clarifying.

A fair observation at this point would be that, with only slight modification, this film could have been transformed into "Moby Dick" - the obsessive captain chasing his elusive prey to the furthest corners of the earth, to the ultimate doom of himself, his ship, and most of his crew.

Krauthammer can't help taking some of his usual, ill-considered potshots:

Even better is the fact that the hero in his little British frigate is up against a larger, more powerful French warship. That allows U.S. audiences the particular satisfaction of seeing Anglo-Saxon cannonballs puncturing the Tricolor. My favorite part was Aubrey rallying the troops with a Henry V, St. Crispin's Day speech featuring: "Do you want your children growing up and singing the Marseillaise?" It was met by a chorus of deafening "No's." Maybe they should have put that in the trailer too.

Perhaps Krauthammer has no sense of history, and is unaware of the fact that this film is set a mere generation after the French helped the U.S. achieve independence from England. Perhaps Krauthammer has never seen Casablanca, and its poignant use of the Marseillaise to drown out the singing of "Die Wacht am Rhein" by German (Nazi) officers.

But Krauthammer was simply reflecting his larger attitude - which appears to be that everybody (himself, presumably excluded) should engage in mindless deference to the commander (in chief), and that anybody is either the enemy or deserving of a lashing.

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