In the past two weeks, both Paul Cantor and I have released new books on television, literature and film.
My new book, Commie Cowboys: The Bourgeoisie and the Nation-State in the Western Genre is now available on Amazon. The book examines the relationship between the Western genre and the bourgeois liberalism of nineteenth-century America, and looks how at how post-war Westerns, which appealed to a generation of New Deal-loving, Cold War-enamored nationalists, teach us that capitalism is bad and the nation-state is good. It includes a forward by Paul Cantor.
Also newly available is Paul Cantor’s extensive study of television and film, The Invisible Hand in Popular Culture: Liberty vs. Authority in American Film and TV. If you read Gilligan Unbound: Pop Culture in the Age of Globalization (which I reviewed here.) you’ll remember that Cantor can take pretty much any television show, such as Gilligan’s Island, and dissect it using everything from Homer to Shakespeare to Marshall McLuhan, and entertain you while doing it.
In The Invisible Hand, Cantor provides a section on Westerns, and from there goes on to examine South Park, Mars Attacks! and more.
The more I think about it, the less respect I have for the trite, and supposedly pragmatic, attack some people make on tattoos. It goes something like this: “How will that look when you’re 80?”
Basically, who gives a rat’s ass?
My suspicion is that by the time one gets to 80 years old, other areas of concern–like pooping regularly without help and figuring out whence that scratchy hair in strange places came–will dominate. You won’t be worried about whether or not your Celtic Cross still looks just as good as it used to!
The condition of your tats, and frankly, what anyone else thinks about how they look, won’t be in the Top 25 Things About Which to Worry. On top of that, let’s say you got that tattoo at 30. I submit that 50+ years of enjoyment ain’t too bad. Of course, YMMV.
I read Atlas Shrugged about three years ago. There is nothing in the movie not in the book and the stuff that is skipped is obviously skipped for the sake of time. It’s technically set in modern times, but with a heavy-handed attempt to pay homage to the art-deco, 1920s aesthetic of the book. The result is an awkward identity crises in terms of overall artistic intent and ends up just screaming ‘budget film’. The acting was rather atrocious, but when your screen-play is cut-and-pasted Ayn Rand, the writing doesn’t help either. Platitudes read on the page are far more believable than when stated in flesh and blood as normal dialogue. They worked very hard to avoid the sermonizing that is so characteristic of Rand and did a decent job of keeping things moving – though where to, you were never really certain. If you’re starved for rational ideas from the silver screen, it’s refreshing and invigorating to hear your ideology in the mouths of beautiful movie stars. But if you have much discerning taste regarding good movie making, you’ll be left wanting.
I went with two Rand fans who are not Objectivists but big sympathizers. They thoroughly enjoyed it. I think this is largely due to the fact that they were just excited to hear the anti-government, anti-welfare, pro-industry, pro-property message so clearly proclaimed. When I asked what they thought of the overall effect of the film outside of the ideas, their response was “well, it was an Indie film” as if this is supposed to excuse lack of creativity. I love a lot of Indie films precisely because they use their status and low budget to take a different approach to cinematic story-telling. If the creators of Atlas Shrugged the movie had started with a clear artistic/creative vision of how they wanted to tell the story rather than merely simply trying to translate Ayn Rand’s text to the screen, I think they could have really leveraged their status as a low-budget Indie film. As it is, it comes off as trying really hard to be a glossy, big-budget, epic film – and just falls flat.
That being said, I recognize that they potentially would have had thousands of Randroids all over them if they’d tried something too different from the text. Making movies of popular books is always a challenge and having a small budget is always a challenge. But the best art/storytelling views such limitations as opportunities for creativity, not defects to be disguised.
So should you go see it in theatres, should you wait for the DVD, or should you skip it altogether? Well, if you’re a libertarian, you should probably watch it at some point, especially if you haven’t and don’t want to read the book. It definitely gets the gist across in far less time. I wouldn’t recommend it as an introduction to free-market, anti-government ideas, though, as I think you have to already be sold on these ideas, or at least be considering them, to really enjoy the movie. It is a good excuse to go have a fun night out with friends or significant other who share your ideology. But if you prefer saving money, I would wait for the DVD.
A few years ago in honor of Arthur C. Clarke’s then-recent birthday, I wrote on my own blog that he must never have read Ludwig von Mises and Murray Rothbard,
because according to this quote cited by Gregory Benford in his happy-birthday letter in Locus Magazine (January 2008), he claims that “there are some general laws governing scientific extrapolation, as there are not (pace Marx) in the case of politics and economics.” Well, far be it from me to disagree that Marx was wrong about a lot of things, but Clarke is wrong here. Sir Clarke, you may be 90 years old now, and happy birthday by the way, but it’s never too late to acquire a firm grasp of sound economic theory.
As disappointing as it is, it’s not surprising that he had a natural-scientistic bias against economics. Sadly, he died only a few months after my post.
In a more recent article in the Sri Lanka Guardian, more of Clarke’s economic ignorance is on display:
While researching for this article I came across a searing indictment by Clarke on the American capitalist system. After observing that the structure of American society may be unfitted for the effort that the conquest of space demands he continued, “No nation can afford to divert its ablest men into essentially non-creative and occasionally parasitic occupations such as law, insurance and banking”. He also referred to a photograph in Life Magazine showing 7,000 engineers massed behind a new model car they had produced as ‘a horrifying social document’. He was appalled by the squandering of technical manpower it represented. All this indeed makes one wonder whether he really was a closet socialist.
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With great solemnity, “Defense” Secretary Robert Gates imparted on West Point cadets this Friday a hard-earned pearl of newly discovered wisdom:
“In my opinion, any future defense secretary who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should ‘have his head examined,’ as General MacArthur so delicately put it,” Mr. Gates told an assembly of Army cadets here.
In other words, ”Never get involved in a land war in Asia.”
Sounds like good advi… Wait,what? Not everyone knows this already? Inconceivable!
Any culturally literate person has seen The Princess Bride at least once in the last 24 years and certainly knows about the most famous classic blunder:
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