Winter’s Bone, directed by Debra Granik and based on the novel by Daniel Woodrell, is the story of a seventeen-year-old girl named Ree Dolly who lives in the Ozark Mountain region of southern Missouri. Ree’s father, a methamphetamine manufacturer, has signed away the family’s land for his bail bond and then disappeared, leaving her to take care of her incapacitated mother and two younger siblings. To keep from losing the land, Ree must find him before his court date, but she finds herself opposed by her own extended family as her investigation touches on closely guarded secrets.
The story is a sharp observation of what might be called rural decay. Most obviously, it could be taken as a cautionary tale about how the drug trade ruins families and communities. The film wisely does not foreclose this reading, since it is true as far as it goes. Winter’s Bone goes deeper, however, avoiding a simplistic “blame the drugs” message and touching on a number of related issues that ought to be considered.
The 2007 documentary American Drug War: The Last White Hope described a community that was similar in many ways—Compton, California during the height of the “crack epidemic.” Hysteria over that particular form of cocaine led to the enactment of notoriously harsh laws, some of which are only now beginning to be reformed. The war against crack had predictably harsh consequences for black communities like Compton, where lifelong residents were driven away. Their properties were quickly snapped up and later resold as a new, gentrified community emerged. Today, many people whose families lived there for generations can scarcely dream of affording a house in Compton.
Too often scenarios like this are dismissed as symptoms of a characteristically African-American problem. As the story goes, young black men without good role models are drawn into the drug trade by the lure of easy money. Others condone their behavior or at least turn a blind eye. Without family values and a strong work ethic, a sense of entitlement prevails, and the community pays the price as a result. We can hope that the subculture will change for the better, but ultimately there’s nothing we can do since everyone is responsible for their own actions and decisions. Case closed.
This has long been the mainstream attitude toward black communities plagued by unemployment. Winter’s Bone presents us with a white community in very much the same circumstances responding in very much the same way. Other than the drug business, few opportunities exist. The best option is the military, and indeed the film portrays the public school as little more than an intake facility for the Army. But parents (especially single parents), would-be entrepreneurs, those with an independent bent, or anyone who wants to stay close to home for whatever reason may well find that choice unworkable.
As in Compton, there is a great deal of potential value in the land that the families own. Here the value is not in location but in timber. And as always, wealthy interests are ready and waiting to buy up the property forfeited by the ne’er-do-wells. As Ree’s uncle warns her, they’ll cut down a hundred years’ growth in a matter of weeks when her father misses his court date. Best to have it done right away if she wants a share in it.
The film shows a culture in which family loyalty has almost completely died and been replaced by a gangster code of conduct. It's a transformation far too deep and too frightening to have been accomplished by home-cooked stimulants alone. In urban black communities it was accomplished by powerful institutions, both private and public, that disregarded human values and wrote off unemployment, crime, and poverty as externalities of business. In Winter's Bone, we see the same disregard at work in a different setting. We're left with no excuse to continue believing it's someone else's problem.
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Democracy And Coke
A common myth holds that when Coca-Cola was first invented, the recipe included not only caffeine but also another stimulant called cocaine. This ingredient is what gave the drink its name, and it’s the reason why today the two products are both known as “coke” (or “Coke,” depending on whether you’re referring to the illegal or the legal substance).
Like a surprising number of myths, this one happens to be quite true. Cocaine was legally available in the 1880s, when Coca-Cola was introduced, and the soft drink originally contained a significant dose. It still contains coca flavoring extracted from the same leaves that yield the drug, but except for trace amounts that may linger in the flavor extract, the name on the can is all that remains of the original ingredient. This doesn’t stop us from referring to Coke Classic as the original Coke, which is understandable enough. Cocaine was removed from the recipe in the early 1900s. Coke Classic is the “original” as opposed to New Coke, which was introduced about 100 years after the real original.
Coca-Cola is perhaps the supreme corporate symbol of free markets and the American way of life. Only McDonald’s arguably stands ahead of it. When a smiling Arab or African or Latin American child holds a can of Coke and poses for a photograph, the image says all that needs to be said about America’s relationship with the world. We export joy and vitality, and deep down, everyone wants to buy.
Of course many cannot afford to emulate our lifestyle. Luckily, we have the formula for prosperity as well as refreshment. That formula is, of course, democracy. It’s the type of government that has made us what we are, and it’s primarily the lack of democratic values and institutions that mires the Third World in violence and poverty. So serious is this lack that it is in our vital interest, as well as everyone else’s, to liberate those people who don’t yet have democracy. Coke, McDonald’s, Apple, and the like are all symbols of our mission. Where they go freedom follows, and indeed, it already has a foothold.
As a physical substance, Coke is relatively easy to define, although as we’ve seen even that definition is somewhat complicated. Not surprisingly, the idea of democracy turns out to be even more problematic. It’s generally understood as a type of government in which the people choose leaders to represent their interests and limit the state’s power through laws and a constitution. It stands in opposition to dictatorship, for example, in which an executive holds power indefinitely, or the police state, in which there is no due process.
One would expect the history of American involvement in the Third World to show a pattern of support for democracy and opposition to dictatorships and police states. Interestingly, the actual pattern is somewhat the opposite. Since at least 1953, when we helped the British overthrow the government of Iran, the United States has tended to oppose rather than support democratic movements. The pattern has continued even through the occupation of Iraq, as we found ourselves attacking elements of the elected parliament that refused to vote our way on the question of oil interests. Our arch-enemy, Al Qaeda, has its origins in the Muslim Brotherhood, a radical organization formerly nurtured by Western powers as a counter to emerging nationalist (read democratic) trends. Hamas was nurtured in the same way for the same reasons, until we and Israel decided they had become too powerful and suddenly threw our support to their nationalist rivals. It remains to be seen how long that support will last if Fatah threatens to make any significant gains on behalf of its constituency.
While claiming to promote democracy, mostly by military conquest, the US seems to work tirelessly against actual populist movements and in favor of despots who cater to our interests. Nor can this be explained on the grounds that the populists are radical Islamic fundamentalists; in fact we’ve shown that we’ll even support the fundamentalists rather than risk ceding our influence to the popular will.
What then is the relationship between the kind of democracy we export and our signature brand, the red and white Coke can? A few parallels come to mind. Both are aggressively “marketed.” Neither contains what its name suggests. And in both cases the substance advertised is not only not being offered, it’s being actively suppressed, largely because it’s considered too dangerous in the hands of non-whites. “Democracy” still functions as a brand name, its associated good will providing a sense of continuity with the best of our civic values. But the content of the brand has changed. Instead of representative government, liberty, or the rule of law, it now means simply this—compliance with American wishes. Call it New Democracy, or if you’re a bit more savvy and audacious, perhaps Democracy Classic. But whatever you do, make sure you don’t get caught peddling any unapproved substitutes.
Like a surprising number of myths, this one happens to be quite true. Cocaine was legally available in the 1880s, when Coca-Cola was introduced, and the soft drink originally contained a significant dose. It still contains coca flavoring extracted from the same leaves that yield the drug, but except for trace amounts that may linger in the flavor extract, the name on the can is all that remains of the original ingredient. This doesn’t stop us from referring to Coke Classic as the original Coke, which is understandable enough. Cocaine was removed from the recipe in the early 1900s. Coke Classic is the “original” as opposed to New Coke, which was introduced about 100 years after the real original.
Coca-Cola is perhaps the supreme corporate symbol of free markets and the American way of life. Only McDonald’s arguably stands ahead of it. When a smiling Arab or African or Latin American child holds a can of Coke and poses for a photograph, the image says all that needs to be said about America’s relationship with the world. We export joy and vitality, and deep down, everyone wants to buy.
Of course many cannot afford to emulate our lifestyle. Luckily, we have the formula for prosperity as well as refreshment. That formula is, of course, democracy. It’s the type of government that has made us what we are, and it’s primarily the lack of democratic values and institutions that mires the Third World in violence and poverty. So serious is this lack that it is in our vital interest, as well as everyone else’s, to liberate those people who don’t yet have democracy. Coke, McDonald’s, Apple, and the like are all symbols of our mission. Where they go freedom follows, and indeed, it already has a foothold.
As a physical substance, Coke is relatively easy to define, although as we’ve seen even that definition is somewhat complicated. Not surprisingly, the idea of democracy turns out to be even more problematic. It’s generally understood as a type of government in which the people choose leaders to represent their interests and limit the state’s power through laws and a constitution. It stands in opposition to dictatorship, for example, in which an executive holds power indefinitely, or the police state, in which there is no due process.
One would expect the history of American involvement in the Third World to show a pattern of support for democracy and opposition to dictatorships and police states. Interestingly, the actual pattern is somewhat the opposite. Since at least 1953, when we helped the British overthrow the government of Iran, the United States has tended to oppose rather than support democratic movements. The pattern has continued even through the occupation of Iraq, as we found ourselves attacking elements of the elected parliament that refused to vote our way on the question of oil interests. Our arch-enemy, Al Qaeda, has its origins in the Muslim Brotherhood, a radical organization formerly nurtured by Western powers as a counter to emerging nationalist (read democratic) trends. Hamas was nurtured in the same way for the same reasons, until we and Israel decided they had become too powerful and suddenly threw our support to their nationalist rivals. It remains to be seen how long that support will last if Fatah threatens to make any significant gains on behalf of its constituency.
While claiming to promote democracy, mostly by military conquest, the US seems to work tirelessly against actual populist movements and in favor of despots who cater to our interests. Nor can this be explained on the grounds that the populists are radical Islamic fundamentalists; in fact we’ve shown that we’ll even support the fundamentalists rather than risk ceding our influence to the popular will.
What then is the relationship between the kind of democracy we export and our signature brand, the red and white Coke can? A few parallels come to mind. Both are aggressively “marketed.” Neither contains what its name suggests. And in both cases the substance advertised is not only not being offered, it’s being actively suppressed, largely because it’s considered too dangerous in the hands of non-whites. “Democracy” still functions as a brand name, its associated good will providing a sense of continuity with the best of our civic values. But the content of the brand has changed. Instead of representative government, liberty, or the rule of law, it now means simply this—compliance with American wishes. Call it New Democracy, or if you’re a bit more savvy and audacious, perhaps Democracy Classic. But whatever you do, make sure you don’t get caught peddling any unapproved substitutes.
Friday, June 10, 2011
Welcome
This is my first post written specifically for the new blog. For the previous entries, I've imported some posts from social sites over the last few years and dated them according to when they were written. I hope many old and new friends will enjoy reading here.
Why the name "Marxa~Cola," especially for a blog written by a non-Marxian? I hope it will serve as a hint to some of the issues that interest me. I hope it's catchy. Most of all, I hope it suggests contradiction. It was chosen because it's problematic. The older I get and the more I learn, the more questions I have and the more difficult it is to apply political labels. I see this as a good thing. In some ways I've gotten more "conservative," in other ways more "liberal." Part of what I'd like to do is challenge others to question the labels they apply to themselves.
I don't mean to say that categories are useless, or that all values are relative. But what seems important to me, before anything else, is to know the nature of the paradigm through which one views the world. Is it fashioned from experience and observation, or was it fabricated for sale and picked up from a shelf like any other item offered for consumption? Do we engage with the ideas that make us who we are, perhaps even participate in fashioning them, or do we merely pay our money and put them on?
Most of all, I'm interested in the unthinkable, the outdated, the yet-to-be-tried, that which is not worthy of consideration. Most problems have unworkable, discarded solutions that are buried in footnotes and warrant no more than a blank stare or perhaps a polite shrug on the rare occasions when they are mentioned at all. It seems to me that the more contentious and confusing our times, the more likely it is that these solutions are the right ones. I hope you'll feel free to challenge my solutions and offer new ones of your own.
Why the name "Marxa~Cola," especially for a blog written by a non-Marxian? I hope it will serve as a hint to some of the issues that interest me. I hope it's catchy. Most of all, I hope it suggests contradiction. It was chosen because it's problematic. The older I get and the more I learn, the more questions I have and the more difficult it is to apply political labels. I see this as a good thing. In some ways I've gotten more "conservative," in other ways more "liberal." Part of what I'd like to do is challenge others to question the labels they apply to themselves.
I don't mean to say that categories are useless, or that all values are relative. But what seems important to me, before anything else, is to know the nature of the paradigm through which one views the world. Is it fashioned from experience and observation, or was it fabricated for sale and picked up from a shelf like any other item offered for consumption? Do we engage with the ideas that make us who we are, perhaps even participate in fashioning them, or do we merely pay our money and put them on?
Most of all, I'm interested in the unthinkable, the outdated, the yet-to-be-tried, that which is not worthy of consideration. Most problems have unworkable, discarded solutions that are buried in footnotes and warrant no more than a blank stare or perhaps a polite shrug on the rare occasions when they are mentioned at all. It seems to me that the more contentious and confusing our times, the more likely it is that these solutions are the right ones. I hope you'll feel free to challenge my solutions and offer new ones of your own.
Sunday, May 15, 2011
If We Cared About Narcotics Trafficking
This is a response to Mark Osler's interesting new take on the drug war. He suggests that if we really want to cripple the drug industry we should stop attacking its labor source, which is limitless, and instead focus on depriving it of capital.
I agree that we need to bring our drug policy into line with the best of our core values, but I don’t think this is the way to do it. There are other, darker values at work here, and I think we eventually will have to revisit our most basic assumptions about drug use and see those values for what they are. Many people are rightly concerned about the disproportionate effect that mass incarceration has on minority communities. We shouldn’t mistake this for some unfortunate by-product of drug criminalization, however. Instead we should recognize it as one of the policy’s raisons d'être. In that light, targeting cheap labor makes a lot more sense. The Harrison Narcotics Act originated in the belief that marijuana would cause black men to "step on a white man's shadow" or to "look at a white woman twice." Opium laws were a response to the flood of Chinese immigrants who were seen to threaten American jobs. Harassing labor, minorities, and the poor was always the real point, anyway. Mainstream America’s alarmist notions about the drugs themselves followed from our fear of minorities and, especially since the 60s, our fear of political dissidents.
Likewise, the benefits reaped by Third World dictators are not entirely contrary to our policy goals. Those who benefit may be in the “friendly” class of thugs because they oppose communism or terrorism or because they otherwise cooperate with our business interests. In those cases, turning a blind eye to the drug trade is a good way to prop up our friends without officially including them in the budget. It’s only the “unfriendly” ones that we want to target seriously, so in that sense the drug war is a policy tool more than a law enforcement agenda. Osler's proposed solution is especially complicated by the fact that, as in the case of Manuel Noriega, the good guys and the bad guys may be the same people at different times. The question which is which depends on other factors that often have nothing to do with drugs, public health, or any domestic issue at all.
To make matters worse, even the legitimate economy depends to some extent on the drug trade. There’s evidence that drug money may have saved the international banking system from failure in 2008 by providing crucial liquidity during the financial crisis. This is hardly surprising; an industry so big can’t exist in a vacuum. As long as all that money is working to support the economy, it’s at least serving some productive purpose. The consequences of diverting it directly to law enforcement would be unpredictable at best, and more than a little frightening. I don’t relish the idea of a federal police force with an extra $100 billion a year on its hands casting about for something to do in order to justify its existence.
While it is true that drug abuse undermines families and productivity, the same can be said of alcohol abuse. We learned that prohibition undermines them more, and we should take the same lesson here. The law may define anyone who self-medicates with a controlled substance as an abuser, but we should be careful not to confuse the law with the facts. Clinically speaking, narcotics are no more pernicious than alcohol. They’re actually less addictive and less damaging physiologically. If you ask most people which drug is so addictive that withdrawal can kill you, most will say it’s heroin. The correct answer is not heroin, but alcohol. Facts like these need to become part of the public’s perspective in this debate.
As for productivity, I question the assumption that we should use the criminal law to maximize it. It strikes me as a direly Puritanical idea. But assuming we should, the truth is that narcotics are not necessarily incompatible with productivity. Look at Freud, for example. One can agree or disagree with his ideas, but a quick glance at his collected works on the library shelf is enough to show that he at least had a lot of them. As heretical as it sounds, productive drug users are the norm rather than the exception. The basket cases typically encountered by lawyers and doctors in the course of their work aren’t representative. In fact, they’re part of a group that’s self-selected for pathology.
My solution? If we really want to help the communities that are most damaged by drug activity, we should simply acknowledge that there’s a market for narcotics and bring that market into the open. Our inability to do this depends, I think, on the retributive instinct that Osler talks about. I’ll offer an analogy that I've found instructive. Opiates, as we know, are a family of prescription drugs related to heroin. They include codeine and morphine, and they’re among the oldest and safest painkillers known to humans. They also have the drawback of lending themselves to addiction, which we all know leads to disaster. Generally speaking, though, even ongoing use of opiates doesn’t kill people or create serious health issues. Drug manufacturers have solved this problem by adding Tylenol to most prescription opiates. Tylenol’s effectiveness as a painkiller is negligible compared to that of codeine, but unlike codeine it is highly toxic to the liver and will kill you fairly quickly if you overuse it. This is what’s known as a strategy for “preventing addiction.”
Our whole drug policy is a version of the same strategy. Our prejudices (against people and ideas, not just substances) have told us that drugs would destroy us as a society. Rather than giving up our prejudices, we’ve found a way to make it so.
I agree that we need to bring our drug policy into line with the best of our core values, but I don’t think this is the way to do it. There are other, darker values at work here, and I think we eventually will have to revisit our most basic assumptions about drug use and see those values for what they are. Many people are rightly concerned about the disproportionate effect that mass incarceration has on minority communities. We shouldn’t mistake this for some unfortunate by-product of drug criminalization, however. Instead we should recognize it as one of the policy’s raisons d'être. In that light, targeting cheap labor makes a lot more sense. The Harrison Narcotics Act originated in the belief that marijuana would cause black men to "step on a white man's shadow" or to "look at a white woman twice." Opium laws were a response to the flood of Chinese immigrants who were seen to threaten American jobs. Harassing labor, minorities, and the poor was always the real point, anyway. Mainstream America’s alarmist notions about the drugs themselves followed from our fear of minorities and, especially since the 60s, our fear of political dissidents.
Likewise, the benefits reaped by Third World dictators are not entirely contrary to our policy goals. Those who benefit may be in the “friendly” class of thugs because they oppose communism or terrorism or because they otherwise cooperate with our business interests. In those cases, turning a blind eye to the drug trade is a good way to prop up our friends without officially including them in the budget. It’s only the “unfriendly” ones that we want to target seriously, so in that sense the drug war is a policy tool more than a law enforcement agenda. Osler's proposed solution is especially complicated by the fact that, as in the case of Manuel Noriega, the good guys and the bad guys may be the same people at different times. The question which is which depends on other factors that often have nothing to do with drugs, public health, or any domestic issue at all.
To make matters worse, even the legitimate economy depends to some extent on the drug trade. There’s evidence that drug money may have saved the international banking system from failure in 2008 by providing crucial liquidity during the financial crisis. This is hardly surprising; an industry so big can’t exist in a vacuum. As long as all that money is working to support the economy, it’s at least serving some productive purpose. The consequences of diverting it directly to law enforcement would be unpredictable at best, and more than a little frightening. I don’t relish the idea of a federal police force with an extra $100 billion a year on its hands casting about for something to do in order to justify its existence.
While it is true that drug abuse undermines families and productivity, the same can be said of alcohol abuse. We learned that prohibition undermines them more, and we should take the same lesson here. The law may define anyone who self-medicates with a controlled substance as an abuser, but we should be careful not to confuse the law with the facts. Clinically speaking, narcotics are no more pernicious than alcohol. They’re actually less addictive and less damaging physiologically. If you ask most people which drug is so addictive that withdrawal can kill you, most will say it’s heroin. The correct answer is not heroin, but alcohol. Facts like these need to become part of the public’s perspective in this debate.
As for productivity, I question the assumption that we should use the criminal law to maximize it. It strikes me as a direly Puritanical idea. But assuming we should, the truth is that narcotics are not necessarily incompatible with productivity. Look at Freud, for example. One can agree or disagree with his ideas, but a quick glance at his collected works on the library shelf is enough to show that he at least had a lot of them. As heretical as it sounds, productive drug users are the norm rather than the exception. The basket cases typically encountered by lawyers and doctors in the course of their work aren’t representative. In fact, they’re part of a group that’s self-selected for pathology.
My solution? If we really want to help the communities that are most damaged by drug activity, we should simply acknowledge that there’s a market for narcotics and bring that market into the open. Our inability to do this depends, I think, on the retributive instinct that Osler talks about. I’ll offer an analogy that I've found instructive. Opiates, as we know, are a family of prescription drugs related to heroin. They include codeine and morphine, and they’re among the oldest and safest painkillers known to humans. They also have the drawback of lending themselves to addiction, which we all know leads to disaster. Generally speaking, though, even ongoing use of opiates doesn’t kill people or create serious health issues. Drug manufacturers have solved this problem by adding Tylenol to most prescription opiates. Tylenol’s effectiveness as a painkiller is negligible compared to that of codeine, but unlike codeine it is highly toxic to the liver and will kill you fairly quickly if you overuse it. This is what’s known as a strategy for “preventing addiction.”
Our whole drug policy is a version of the same strategy. Our prejudices (against people and ideas, not just substances) have told us that drugs would destroy us as a society. Rather than giving up our prejudices, we’ve found a way to make it so.
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Scream 4
The 2006 documentary Going to Pieces: The Rise and Fall of the Slasher Film expresses a bit of common wisdom that seems to be accepted by horror fans and critics. The most successful horror movies, it is believed, do more than tap into general, universal fears. They also exploit fears that are specific to their time and place. So, for example, the sci-fi monster films of the 50s and 60s were about Cold War paranoia and nuclear weapons. Later films dealt with generational conflict, economic distress, and so on.
The original Scream, written by Kevin Williamson and directed by Wes Craven, is famous for its slyly self-referential quality, which inoculated it from certain criticisms about its plot and gave young, sophisticated audiences an excuse to buy into it. Craven and Williamson created a new type of slasher villain for a new generation of viewers. Unlike the killers in earlier films, those in Scream are not crazy or abnormal in any way that’s easy to identify. They’re just two high school kids, apparently happy and good-natured, who kill for no reason. Motive, as one character in the film points out, is incidental. Scream came out three years before the Columbine massacre, but it’s hard not to think about Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold when you watch the film now. Like Harris, the killers in Scream have the true psychopathic gift for lying and charming their way out of trouble in order to appear normal.
Scream 4, released 11 years after the third installment, is the first really satisfying sequel to the original. Scream 2 and Scream 3, though not without merit, were mostly forgettable pot-boilers that veered too far into the ridiculous. Granted, the story necessarily becomes less plausible with each installment, and this one is no exception. Unlike the previous two, however, the new film eschews contrived revenge motives and gets back to what was disturbing about the original, albeit with a twist. Pure psychopathy is once again the driving force, but Scream 4 traces a link to the relatively common narcissism that exists on the other end of the anti-social spectrum. It suggests that mass media are at least partly to blame for nudging the villain's psyche toward violence. Like in some of the classic horror films of past decades, there's an element of social critique here. Without giving too much away, one could say the killer is a kind of post-modern capitalist who seeks to market the appearance of Sidney Prescott's victimhood without the substance.
More than any of the other Scream films, this one takes on the issue of media-driven violence directly. In doing so, it practically dares any Ghostface wannabes in the audience to imitate it. With each chapter, more and more critics complain that the filmmakers seem tired of horror, that the films' running commentary on themselves is an expression of hatred for the genre and the audience. This is where the critics get it absolutely wrong, I think. Because Craven and Williamson understand that post-modern audiences are more emotionally distant from what's being signified on screen, they understand the need to implicate those audiences in the action. And because the audience believes itself to be skeptical and more attentive to the signifier than the signified, the films have to address them where they are in order to involve them. An obvious example is the opening of Scream 2, where the killer attacks his victims in a movie theater while they're watching a fictional horror film based on the "real" events in the preceding film. Scream 4 goes furthest of all, implicating us not only as victims but also as voyeurs and therefore, it suggests, as villains.
It's an open question whether today's horror audiences really are as skeptical and as attentive to the techniques of the medium as we imagine. To me the Scream films suggest otherwise. Each one has some discussion of the rules by which horror films operate, with the suggestion that the characters (and the audience) can use these rules to their advantage and figure things out before they happen. This is tedious to some critics, who observe that tired conventions are no less tired for being pointed out. What's less often observed is that the Scream films don't really follow the rules that they trumpet. More often than not, their recognition of these "rules" is just another way of setting up expectations which they can then manipulate. The tactic is ingratiating in a way that plays well to a po-mo audience, but it's really no different from what horror films have always done. The cool thing is that it still works. Whatever others may believe, I imagine this pleases a venerable scare-meister like Craven quite a bit.
The other big question, at least for a lot of non-horror fans, is why anyone would want to subject themselves to all of this. As they usually put it, "Why do you pay money to be scared?" Stephen King explains that horror films confront us with the most unpleasant realities--there exist pain, suffering, even cruelty, we're all liable to be victims, and in any case we're all made of flesh and blood and destined to die. But in the end the movies also tell us that none of that is going to happen this time. The characters on screen may not have survived, but for now, we did. The comfort we get from horror, according to King, is in that little addendum.
Peter Straub sees another aspect, which he finds even more important than fear. According to him, the true defining emotions of the horror genre are grief and loss. Scream 4 explores these emotions in the main character, Sidney. At this point, after the events of the first three films, she is anything but fearful. She seems more sad than anything else, her demeanor recalling the scene in Scream 3 where she explores a haunting simulacrum of her childhood home on a movie set. Neve Campbell brings an unexpected gravitas to the role of the older Sidney, playing her as weary but somehow strangely empowered by her scars.
From my own perspective, the first thing I thought about when I walked out of the theater and into the daylight was my son, still struggling in intensive care three weeks after being born. My heart sank a little as I remembered that he'd had a setback and we were still waiting to find out how serious the complications were. I may have thought I was scared a few minutes earlier, but as I stepped back into real life, I knew that wasn't really true. What's inside the theater isn't what's scary. It's just a pretty good imitation, good enough to make you forget the real thing for a while. No doubt, a comedy or drama can also take your mind off things. But for me at least, I guess there's a special psychic zone reserved for anxiety, and perhaps the best way to drive it out is with a story that takes over and occupies the same zone. So, that's my explanation for why I pay to see horror movies. Contrary to what the question usually assumes, I'm paying money not to be scared...for a while.
Saturday, April 16, 2011
The One Percent, And What's Wrong With Milton Friedman
In keeping with my ongoing drift to the left side of economic issues, I recently watched Jamie Johnson's documentary The One Percent. The title refers to the small number of people who control about 40 percent of the country's wealth. The filmmaker's family, heirs to the Johnson & Johnson fortune, are part of that small number. His father is also a former documentarian who, as a young man, ran afoul of his parents and their advisors by making a film about South Africa.
Jamie is young, and he's often unprepared to meet the arguments of the people he interviews in the film. Interestingly, his subjects go a long way to make up for his limitations. They're so defensive and paranoid, it's almost impossible not to believe he has a point. Warren Buffett's reaction is perhaps the most telling even though he doesn't appear in the film. Jamie meets and interviews his granddaughter Nicole instead, whereupon Buffett disowns her for her participation and writes a letter stating that she is not his real grandchild. Her twin sister is apparently still a genuine descendant, though.
The economist Milton Friedman sits for an interview and bullies Johnson rather ungracefully. Even he seems defensive, especially considering his credentials. He asks a question that sums up the right-libertarian response to the issue of income disparity--since the income of the poor is also increasing, what's the problem? Would it be better if wealth were more equally distributed but we all stayed poorer?
Anyone who knows Friedman has heard this argument a lot. I'd like to suggest that the answer is a qualified "yes." Given the choice Friedman posits, in some ways it would be better if incomes did not increase. Alexis de Tocqueville explained why. He noted that, contrary to what one might expect, low income is not always correlated with discontent or lack of public morality. Poorer societies may be happier while richer ones are full of turmoil. What causes conflict, according to Tocqueville, is not poverty but injustice or the perception of injustice. Most people are going to be angry when they get ripped off, even if they happen to get somewhat wealthier in the process. The more marginal the gains are, the angrier they're likely to be.
In a similar vein, Friedman points out that someone must always be lowest on the ladder. We must have someone to sell the french fries, mop the floors, and so on. It's hard to argue with this truism, as far as it goes. What Friedman doesn't address is the question of opportunity, meaning not just theoretical but actual opportunity to improve one's station. This is one of the essential elements that distinguish capitalist from pre-capitalist societies, which already had private property, the profit motive, and most of the other features that famously distinguish American capitalism from Soviet communism.
So, are we to assume that forced redistribution of wealth is the only solution? No. Like Friedman's question whether it would be better if we all stayed poor, this presents a false dichotomy. The One Percent happens to show an example of how redistributive policies actually create injustice--the Fanjul brothers. The Fanjuls are a pair of Florida sugar barons who have used government subsidies to shut out competition and become fabulously wealthy while seriously damaging the environment and getting taxpayers to cover the cost of cleaning it all up. Unfortunately, people like the Fanjuls aren't what most "libertarians" have in mind when they talk about cutting welfare.
Finally, a few words about the flatscreen high-definition TV. I mention it because this technology has become the poster boy for bad economic decisions by the lower classes. If you can afford a widescreen TV, why don't you have medical insurance, and how can you complain? On closer inspection, this argument is far from the truth. Given a choice between buying medical insurance for a family for two months and buying a TV that will last for ten years, anyone with any sense is going to buy the TV. My son was recently on a heart-lung bypass machine that was less technologically sophisticated than my TV, yet the procedure cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not more.
The TV should really be a poster boy for what's wrong with the system. Entertainment consistently gets cheaper while medical care gets more expensive. Many don't have insurance, and those who are lucky enough to have it are tied to their jobs and may have to forego other opportunities for fear of emergencies. That's not an environment that encourages creativity or entrepreneurship. In fact, it's not capitalism.
Thursday, March 25, 2010
The Politics Of The Self
I'm a political junky, but I try to handle my addiction with as much class as I can manage. In my college years, I was a bit like the clammy, unkempt junky who shoots up in public and ends up passed out on a park bench. Today I'm a somewhat less clammy, somewhat less unkempt junky with a professional life, so I've learned to indulge my habit more discreetly, as is fitting for secret vices.
Still, a part of me has always resented having to hide my lifestyle from others. It grates on me when people say politics is a private or personal thing. What could be less private than the business of the polis ("the city") or the res publica ("the republic," literally "the public thing")? Nena Eliasoph's fascinating book Avoiding Politics: How Americans Produce Apathy in Everyday Life goes a long way toward explaining how this came to be, and how we junkies came to be second-class citizens. Specifically, she notes an inversion of the public and private areas of discourse in recent decades. At the same time when politics has become a hush-hush topic, matters that used to be more private (e.g. sex, relationships, diseases, neuroses) have become mainstays of casual conversation. If you've ever been at a party and found your mind wandering while your hostess entertained the rest of the group with that droll anecdote about the time she accidentally sharted at work, you know what I'm talking about. And you might be a redneck...but I digress.
The question remains, why this inversion? A documentary film I saw recently, Adam Curtis' The Century of the Self, may provide a clue. It deals with the work of Sigmund Freud's nephew Edward Bernays, who applied Freud's theories to marketing and advertising in the United States throughout most of the last century. The same theories were also applied to political campaigns since at least the late 1970s. In sum, American corporations and politicians systematically trained the public to base their political thinking on deeply rooted, and deeply personal, fears and desires. Most of these emotions are so profound that the individual isn't even consciously aware of them. That's why they're so powerful and at the same time so manipulable. Regardless of what one thinks of Freud as a philosopher or healer, the film does show some evidence that his theories worked as applied by Bernays.
I wonder whether the phenomenon described by Eliasoph in her book could be a side-effect of this conditioning, a consequence of redefining the political and the personal at an unconscious level. If politics is the business of the polis, then idio-tics can only be the business of the idios, that is, the self ("idiot," in Greek, being defined as "the private person, the layman, the ignorant"). No one wants to hear others go on about what are, after all, just their own idiosyncrasies. And it's all the more offensive, far more in fact, when they start questioning mine. Would this explain why people feel the need to guard their opinions like shameful secrets? Might it also explain why civilized disagreement and rational, productive debate seem to be less and less common?
Still, a part of me has always resented having to hide my lifestyle from others. It grates on me when people say politics is a private or personal thing. What could be less private than the business of the polis ("the city") or the res publica ("the republic," literally "the public thing")? Nena Eliasoph's fascinating book Avoiding Politics: How Americans Produce Apathy in Everyday Life goes a long way toward explaining how this came to be, and how we junkies came to be second-class citizens. Specifically, she notes an inversion of the public and private areas of discourse in recent decades. At the same time when politics has become a hush-hush topic, matters that used to be more private (e.g. sex, relationships, diseases, neuroses) have become mainstays of casual conversation. If you've ever been at a party and found your mind wandering while your hostess entertained the rest of the group with that droll anecdote about the time she accidentally sharted at work, you know what I'm talking about. And you might be a redneck...but I digress.
The question remains, why this inversion? A documentary film I saw recently, Adam Curtis' The Century of the Self, may provide a clue. It deals with the work of Sigmund Freud's nephew Edward Bernays, who applied Freud's theories to marketing and advertising in the United States throughout most of the last century. The same theories were also applied to political campaigns since at least the late 1970s. In sum, American corporations and politicians systematically trained the public to base their political thinking on deeply rooted, and deeply personal, fears and desires. Most of these emotions are so profound that the individual isn't even consciously aware of them. That's why they're so powerful and at the same time so manipulable. Regardless of what one thinks of Freud as a philosopher or healer, the film does show some evidence that his theories worked as applied by Bernays.
I wonder whether the phenomenon described by Eliasoph in her book could be a side-effect of this conditioning, a consequence of redefining the political and the personal at an unconscious level. If politics is the business of the polis, then idio-tics can only be the business of the idios, that is, the self ("idiot," in Greek, being defined as "the private person, the layman, the ignorant"). No one wants to hear others go on about what are, after all, just their own idiosyncrasies. And it's all the more offensive, far more in fact, when they start questioning mine. Would this explain why people feel the need to guard their opinions like shameful secrets? Might it also explain why civilized disagreement and rational, productive debate seem to be less and less common?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)