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ACF#8: Movies, Poetry, America, and Marvel
Hello, Ricochet! It is my pleasure to share my first public lecture on American cinema and society. I’ll start with thanks to my friends Tom Harmon and Matt Peterson, professors at John Paul the Great Catholic University–and, of course, to the university. And to the kids who did the audio-video work with precious little help from me. They’re too young I think for me to buy them a beer, but if they play their cards right… I’ll soon publish the written lecture, which is somewhat different, just in case not everyone wants to watch…
This is full of Tocqueville, as well as of his American students. You’ll hear a lot of things you might not like to hear, but it may be permissible in a loyal friend to criticize. And while it’s perfectly alright to plagiarize the ancients, it is not so with our contemporaries, so I’ll mention two men I talked to, read, and listened to for criticism in the run up to these 50-odd minutes of fame. One, my friend James Poulos, also a Ricochet contributor.
The other, the man who did most to mentor me in publishing, the late Peter Lawler. Many of our common friends have joined and will join me on the podcast. We’re trying to bring back something of the PostModern Conservative enterprise Peter so well led that he made us proud to be the smallest, least influential conservative faction! I believe Peter would have urged me on in preaching the gospel of middlebrow, and his help would have meant a lot to me, as well as the chance to do my podcast with him. He was both kind and ironic and his irony was part of his kindness.
Here’s the audio on soundcloud:
Published in Podcasts
After finishing I did have one other point. It is interesting that with all of the talk about how dark the Batman trilogy was, it was the first time, after 50+ years of having her dangled in front of him, that Batman actually bags Catwoman. And it’s more than that. Whereas in the Tim Burton series, it would end with Batman standing up on top of a building, with the continuing tension of eternal vigilance, in this one he and Catwoman went off together to live happily ever after. It is a blatantly happy ending of a sort never before seen. So, not so dark after all.
Yeah, that part is very important, strange as it may be to take. Batman has to learn to live like a man, she like a woman. Their nature is a protection against the temptation to give into anger forever!
Excellent and thank you.
I was thinking that the move from extraordinary stories to more ordinary stories is either political or at least ideological in the sense that it is trying to prove a point. In some ways, the first few stories about ordinary people would be rare enough to extraordinary for being different rather than for being about unusual people or events. I suspect this can only go so far. The audience goes back to works about the extraordinary. Why should I devote two hours in a theater or several hundred pages of reading for what I encounter all around me all the time? It is almost certainly the source of the split between so-called high art and popular arts.
I agree with you about the role of individualism in storytelling. I’m no sure it is that hard to justify the insistence on a protagonist. Even a fairly radically collectivist movie like Battleship Potemkin had the crowd as a protagonist. Because a story happens to something, whether it is a person, a crowd or a fluffy animal. I’m not sure that I would distinguish the individualist against the democratic as the individualist against the collective, where works truly try to downplay the individual protagonist. To the extent that a democratic society is a free society, we don’t think man is ruled by fate so much as he is the master of his own destiny. It is usually among collectivists that you hear the case made that people have no control over their individual circumstances and that others must be compelled to help because the more successful people are also in their position because of powers outside their control.
This whole topic could be a post unto itself. This is why a transcript is going to be helpful.
In part because it is the full arc of the Batman story, with a beginning, middle and end. Because the story regenerates with new actors as Batman, the story never really ends so it doesn’t matter that much what is ultimate fate must be. But there are only a few possible endings: he dies in the line of duty, he quits, he defeats crime for all time, a few others.
There are elements of darkness. What is evil in these movies is very evil. The nihilism of the Joker is as undiluted as we had seen in an action movie up to that point. He is a horror movie character in an action movie universe. But he is not simply defeated personally. The ships on the river don’t explode. It’s a universe with a lot of brutality, but people of Gotham (not simply Batman) ultimately make the right choices. The question from the first movie is also an arc: is Gotham worth saving? By the end of the series, Batman is not fighting alone but with an army of policemen. The hero doesn’t have to stand alone.
Is this driven by the artist or by the audience?
I’m not sure this is distinctive of democrats. One sees this a lot with totalitarians. The conspiracies of evil economic forces, class enemies or just cabals of Jews. It’s not that one never sees such things in democracies, but one sees it elsewhere too.
Well, this brings up two very different things that only come together incidentally. First, there is an enemy: Whether Jews or rich people or whatever–that can be a political proposition. Above all, the hatred of the many for the few & the fear the few harbor of the many are political propositions.
Secondly, there is the world-historical proposition. The closing stages of the materialistic dialectic of Marx–that’s not politics. That’s democratic egalitarianism radicalized. That is the pure thinking of democracy. It starts from the proposition of human equality & reasons to its ultimate conclusion by two assumptions, one about science, the other about community or togetherness.–That’s the theory of Marxism or Communism, & it’s both apolitical & antipolitical.
The other stuff, the rhetoric of war or sabotage or treachery–that is ultimately impossible to reconcile with Marxism, but it is typical of politics. Put it this way, America really was a threat to the USSR & an enemy & it could not have been otherwise, whatever Americans–& not just liberals–might believe.
The age of democracy is visible in two ways in my examples. First, the rational character of the forces postulated–the putatively rational character, at least. Secondly, the assumption that we’re all in the same situation & therefore there can be only one global, species-wide solution. That’s a claim of rational egalitarianism, or modern democracy.
It’s only a thinking through of what the originals of democracy thousands of years back. Back then, the democrats were often aware that not everyone’s a democrat–some are enemies of democracy. Now, not even that is possible. Everyone is or will be a democrat–the change in the mean time is the development of modern natural science.
Both are split. The audience wants something to admire, but then resents the alarmingly obvious inequality implied in admiration.
The artists see the potential in the greatest things, but resent the inequality & think the people stupid for setting up idols that will enslave them. The greatest lie about art that conservatives tell is that the artists are different: In their hearts, the artists, too, are democrats.
I’m not sure. I think there is a lot of identification with the heroes. The most extreme manifestation of this is the Harry Potter stories. People who identify with a character so unappreciated that his room is a closet under the stairs but, unbeknownst to all, has magic powers, is held in awe by all and will lead an army against the forces of evil.
It sounds less that they are all democrats and more than they are all socialists.
Quinn, think about the fact that in America, all artists who are popular are scared of the name artist & have rejected it for centuries. That’s how they showed prudence–that name is a killer with the people, because of envy. But with the unpopular few who have glamor, if nothing else, that name is an intoxicant, if not an aphrodisiac.–But only so far, then those people have to come up with elaborate ways to show their democratic credentials, their love for the people in the persons or phantoms of the least among us.
This is not socialism–this is democracy. Remember how Melville said there’d be a Shakespeare born on or beyond the Ohio? That’s the democratic faith lying to itself most shamelessly. It’s been centuries; never happened; but how to refrain from saying that! Who would disagree? If you poll 300 million Americans will many disagree? Melville gave America the best book written in America about democracy. It was his ruin; it was a work of art too conspicuous about being artsy. It did not invest its artfulness in feigning artlessness. As opposed to the stories he’d written before, some of which were greatly popular, if not worth much. On the other hand Mark Twain affected artlessness in his greatest work on democracy so that, though it’s not as worthy as the other, it is infinitely more popular–& mostly disrespected.
Now, about heroes. Sure–the heroes have to be super-magical, but just like everyone else. That’s what I meant that people want to escape democracy, ’cause it’s drab, but then want to return to it, because their minds are terrified of the unknown–whatever might be beyond the constraints of democratic experience. Harry Potter is just so vulgarly obvious about the fictitious character of the escape & the utterly political character of the democratic experience: The enemies are un-democrats. It was also the origin of the literature that tells kids to be politically paranoid & that conformism to democracy makes you a hero!
I’m wondering if the democrat/socialist distinction is why I am having some difficulty following. I don’t associate being a democrat with egalitarianism. Maybe it’s an American thing where we conflate democracy and republicanism, which are popularly the same thing, but would have been considered different before the 19th century. But we would commonly express the idea of distinction of being a democrat and socialist as equality of opportunity versus equality of outcome.
As the very least, I think we have a different view of the terminology and that is root of some of our disagreement.
If there is a third-party observer who wants to see how much the argument appears substantive and how much is terminology, I would appreciate it. Because I am more interesting in understanding than “winning.” Better understanding is its own victory.
Twain as worthy as Melville? Fie!
The quote shows Melville’s misunderstanding of Shakespeare and sounds a lot like the claims made for the new socialist man. Shakespeare was primarily an adapter of material, 35 or 38 plays are based on other source material. But Shakespeare was working at a time when modern English was coming into being. (The other great influence for modern English was the King James Bible being written around the same time.) And Shakespeare was preserved in part because people needed plays when the theaters re-opened after the Protectorate and they were readily available. This is not to downgrade Shakespeare but to concretize his significance. If there is another Shakespeare coming, it will be in a language that doesn’t have a strong literary tradition.
I’d find the quote about socialism, but I’ll look for them after work.
There–I’m unashamed of my unpopular opinions. & for all his super-democratic rhetoric, Melville had better hope someone like me helps keep his name alive. The good people on or beyond the Ohio might find better things to do… Actually, didn’t Melville attain classic status because of colleges, in the 20s or so?
I think Melville, like me, thought that Shakespeare was the true teacher of the English-speaking peoples. Philosophy, morality, politics, good taste, bad taste, nature, law–all that…
Maybe what you’re thinking about in regard to socialism is Oscar Wilde’s The soul of man under socialism?
I think what Melville wanted to preserve for America is not the possibility of a new language, but the possibility of a new genius. He also may have not wanted to face the possibility that such a genius is not possible in America at all, even theoretically. That’s something people should consider-
His first few books were well-received, but Moby Dick sank (ahem) with scarcely a trace only to experience a resurgence after Melville had died.
Exactly. Every conservative should be punished with reading it & understanding it.
I agree that Melville thought that of Shakespeare. I think Melville is wrong on the substance.
I’ll have to find the passage I am thinking about. I don’t remember whether it was Lenin or Trotsky. It’s a common trope of revolutionary socialism that the change in political system will create new genius.
Again–just look over that Wilde essay. It’s not necessary to find a revolutionary tyrant to find the argument.
For what it’s worth, on the Melville-Shakespeare subject, there is one American from west of Ohio would could have been truly said to have created an artistic language…Griffith with his film editing. At least one author has posited that between Birth of Nation, Intolerance and Broke Blossoms gave birth to the three major film traditions of American Hollywood, Soviet Montage and German Expressionism.
I wouldn’t put D.W.Griffith very high–unlike a critic I admire, Mr. Armond White, who thinks Intolerance the pinnacle of movie-making–precisely because I don’t think “creating an artistic language” is really that important. But I do think he is a great teacher &, unfortunately, too much forgotten now…
I’d add, Caligari came out within five months or so of Broke blossoms. I’m not sure there’s really much of a relation; at least not of generation…
We are now off on so many tangents, but it’s ok because it is interesting
Creating an artistic language is important. Movies without that language are just plays. Plays have their virtues, but it’s not the same experience.
I dunno about that. I’m as yet on the fence on the actual meaning of the language of cinema so called. That may be hard to believe–but if you listen to any of the stuff I say about movies I admire, you might see what I mean-
My biggest influence on the subject is Hitchcock in the Truffaut interviews.
You are lucky you didn’t have me in the lecture hall. I would have been asking questions the whole time.
The passage was from Trotsky’s Literature and Revolution:
Mostly for the record of anyone skimming through to see what I meant.
I’ll have to read the Wilde essay at some point. I’ve read most of his plays and Dorian Gray, but not that one.
The essay is mostly him saying, when once you remove from mankind the burden of labor, because of a mechanized economy of abundance, every man can be an artist…