(Everything is) Temporary

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

Like in a Greek tragedy, just about all the violence in The Boy in the Striped Pajamas takes place off screen. That however doesn't diminish in any way its power to shock and trouble you. What it does, though, is let the real issue the film deals with be truly front and center. What this movie is about is not the ability of one decent man to shape and save the lives of many of his fellow humans (Schindler's List) nor about the attempts of one decent individual to safeguard a child's innocence (Life is Beautiful). Rather this is about losing one's innocence in a criminally totalitarian regime, in all the forms this loss can take, from the slow and painful realization of the horror going on under one's very nose, to the troubled attempts to reconcile one's experience with the way public discourse frames that experience (particularly insidious when one's father is representative of that public discourse); from the informed unwillingness or inability to speak out to the uninformed acceptance and embrace of the brainwashing exercised by the public discourse and the educational systems. Bruno's attempts to put together the puzzle of reality are followed admirably, and Asa Butterfield's performance is as troublingly sad as Jack Scanton's (Shmuel) is haunting. Beyond the tragedy unfolding on screen, this film has a truly much darker message, or two, up its sleeve: first, that because a totalitarian system has this way of imbricating all its privileged members in its crimes, (where "privileged" means those it doesn't choose to kill or otherwise harm), there is an overarching complicity that is truly damaging of human nature and human decency. Second, as a result of the rather strange choice of making this a film in English, what it loses in authenticity (though, in the end not much, because of extremely good performances) it gains in universality: it's always suspectingly easy to think only others capable of perpetrating criminal acts. It's always difficult if not impossible to think that our own parents and relatives and friends and acquaintances may in fact be guilty of anything like that. Well, maybe not of something quite like what the movie shows happening, but of a similar disregard for our fellow humans, that can, in extremis, lead to similarly criminal acts. And, fortunately for our sanity and for the human race, most of us never have to actually face such a situation where our bearings become completely useless. The possibility though is always there, and it is against it that we have to be always most careful, it is against the complicit theorization that evil is always "the other" that this movie also seems to warn.

Lesson Learned

Well, now that the Botox convention in Minnesota is over, I think it's safe to say I learned at least one thing: the Bible belt that most people imagine running around the southern US is more like a Bible harness: it runs down and across, all the way to Alaska. Or perhaps, a Bible safety belt. A safety belt that allows the bearer to indulge in all kinds of reckless behavior: starting unprovoked wars; damaging the environment; abusing the "poor in spirit" with well-crafted, if empty slogans like "country first" and "more money in your pockets" - how are these two even compatible?; denying and ignoring scientific truths; denying and ignoring truths about human nature (abstinence only sex ed); all with the thought that ultimately the Bible safety belt will somehow, miraculously, save said bearer.

The I of the be-holder

"Ich" sagst du und bist stolz auf dieses Wort. Aber das Grössere ist, woran du nicht glauben willst, - dein Leib und seine grosse Vernunft: die sagt nicht Ich, aber tut Ich.

"I", sayest thou, and art proud of this word. Greater though is that in which you would not believe, your body and its great reason, which does not say I yet makes the I.

(Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra)

Years after Nietzsche, Freud and many others (some all the way to this day) operate in a blissful ignorance of this Nietzschean thought: the I of the be-holder, the I of the being whose being is expressed in holding on to the notion of being, is ultimately the expression of a corporeal "reason". Or rather, of corporeal reasons. Pascal's thought on the raisons du coeur que la raison ne comprend pas (or something like that) turned upside down: there is no question in Nietzsche of "Reason" "comprehending" the reasons of the body, because Reason is the product of those reasons, and one cannot truly know one's progenitors.

(Really, comprehending is more than simply knowing: both Biblically and as a matter of common sense, knowing is more akin to penetrating, with unveiling, removing the veils of deception or darkness and getting to, reaching, the kernel of that which is to be known. To comprehend something one incorporates it, encircles it and makes it part of oneself. That is why Reason, expressed, or rather implied in the word "I", cannot comprehend the reasons of the body, because one cannot comprehend one's parents.)

Unsettled

Three significant disappointments in the space of a single week, from the direction of Mr. Obama... I guess I was right in not feeling "inspired" by his so called trailblazing run.
1. His statement on public financing. Here it's not so much the principle of private financing that I object to; although, of course, I would like to see it abolished, with the same intensity (and the same hope for success) one might put in hoping to be forever young, smart and rich. Nor do I object quite so much to Obama changing his mind. That continues to be for me the sign of a reasonable person who realizes circumstances change. Flip flopping charges are in most cases just nitpicking when you don't have a stronger case against someone. What I truly object to is the kind of argument Obama made in support of his change of heart; his argument that the public system is broken is specious; his claim that McCain and the republicans are gaming the system is ridiculous given 1) that democrats do the same; 2) the general reluctance of a certain sizable portion of the republican voters to support McCain. In a word, Obama engages in sophistry just like Hillary did when arguing for counting the Florida and Michigan votes, that is, changing the rules in the middle of the game. If Obama had said: "I changed my mind because circumstances are different (that is: I can make a lot more money privately and ensure that I will win)", then I would have been ok with it.
2. FISA vote. This is a big one. Voting to grant immunity to the telecoms who broke the law is not only against his previous statements, it is against the law as it currently stands, and it is against common sense. And I realize the word immunity is not in the law, that instead there is a process and so on. Still, that is not how this should work. I realize Obama's biggest fear is to be branded soft on terrorism come fall. Yet I would venture that the public doesn't really care or doesn't really see the issues as related. Except for a few nuts, who care about principles, what the public knows and cares about telecoms is that they may be able to provide the new IPhone with a 10% discount for a two year contract. Moreover: it is not as if these companies we strive so much to grant immunity from lawsuits to never have had a lawsuit on their hands; it isn't as if they haven't had even one or two class action suits to fight or settle; or as if they don't already have huge legal teams and budgets allocated to fighting or settling such issues; it is not as if their customers wouldn't anyway end up paying in higher costs or fees any penalty a class action suit over breaking the law and spying on us would entail; it is not as if they had an untarnished reputation. So why bother defend them in Congress? Why give up your principles, Mr. Obama?
3. Courting the "evangelical voters". He was quoted somewhere saying that even though he knows he will not win these voters over, he still wants them to know he is a person of faith and that he is listening to them. Well here is the problem: the evangelical voter should not be courted by anyone. The evangelical voter should not exist, and in truth it does not exist: it is simply a category made up by some uninspired republicans so that they may group together voters who have no business voting together, from the country club gentleman to the trailer park population. The Republican Party would be a lot better off without the evangelical voter illusion. Not only that: it is a sign of a maturing democracy to move away from voting on ethnic and religious criteria. Parliamentarian democracies based entirely in ethnic or religious differences will end up arguing the wrong types of arguments, and it is a small distance from debating the wrong argument to arguing with the wrong kinds of tools. That is why, 2500 years ago, Cleisthenes of Athens broke down the ancient Athenian tribes based on family and clan loyalties into geographic and socio-economic units. America on the other hand, with its insistence of cultivating a so called religious vote (in opposition to those other voters who vote non-religiously) seems to move backwards... This is why Obama's courting of the "religious" vote is so disappointing. Here, as in the issue with FISA and the one with the public financing, he simply contributes to preserving a state of fact that is damaging both the American democracy and the American republic.

Les Carabiniers – Jean Luc Godard

"La guerre sera fini quand le Roi vainquerait." (The war will be over when the King will have won it.)

Of all the war's absurdities derided and exposed in Godard's movie, this is perhaps the most striking: the king, who declared the war, gets to declare when the war is over, won or, as the case may serve him, lost (though, in reality, the king rarely admits to losing, he may instead simply say that the battle is much longer and more costly than previously thought and there still are sacrifices to be made before the promised "trèsors" will be reaped.) On the other hand, of course, one should not discount what G's movie has to say about the commoners, who've been persuaded (and indeed avail themselves) of the promises made to them in the beginning that all is fair in war ("can we kill the innocents?" a reluctant future enlistee asks. "Yes," the king's man replies. "Can we burn the towns?" "Yes" "Can we burn the women?" "Yes" "Can we eat in a restaurant without paying?" "Yes"). Beautiful.

Settled

So, it’s settled. After what seems more than a year (really more than ten years) worth of campaigning, it will be Obama versus McCain. Back in the old days when the campaigns were just starting, I sort of supported Clinton. Some of my reasons were good: she is obviously a smart candidate, much smarter than what we’ve been used to the last eight years; she is a democrat; she had some interesting notions on healthcare, back in the nineties, even though they were crushed by the propaganda machine. Having lived in a propaganda regime for sometime I have come to know that propaganda always reaches a point where its contrast to felt and lived reality is so blatant that it, propaganda, loses its power of persuasion. I believe the American healthcare system is fast approaching such a point, and slogans having proved worthless, actions will have to be embraced, and action will mean, to the desperation of those still in the grasp of propaganda, the American embrace of the European and Canadian model of healthcare, where patient are not “customers”. Oh, the tangents and their irresistible attraction. Some of my reasons for supporting Hillary were not so good: she is a woman – one should never vote gender or race or religion or personal life; if elected she would have been the bane of the legions having mindlessly voted for Bush (twice) – one should never vote out of spite.

By the time the primaries rolled around in Georgia, I was becoming an Obama supporter, but not strong enough to actually bother voting for him. Hillary completely lost me when she started her Michigan and Florida sophistry.

I like Obama. I will vote for him wholeheartedly, if uselessly, given the electoral system and the political predilections in this state. I am not “inspired” by him, but then, nor have I ever been inspired by a politician, so it’s probably me. Paradoxically, one thing that endeared him to me was his leaving his church the other day. There have been repeated instances of crazy stuff spewed out by bona fide church leaders or church members these days, so much so that I’ve been weighing lately putting together an anthology of the craziest sayings to reach the mainstream via the mass media. Left and right, people in churches think and say crazy things. Like the government wanted to kill blacks and invented AIDS; or, the one about Hitler shepherding the Jews back to the promised land, which is all the more horrifying to me in so far as it seems to be sanctioned by erudite interpretations of I don’t know what line in I don’t know what prophecy in I don’t know what book of the Bible. Although, of course on the other hand I should not be horrified: the ultimate consequence of the Bible-informed view is that the worst outbreaks of human monstrosity are the result of “God allowing them to happen”. (Remember the older one about God punishing us with 9/11 for our gays and lesbians and with Katrina for our “abortionists”? Nor do Christians have a monopoly on this sort of stupidity: Sharon Stone, on behalf of some religion yet to be identified, had to put her foot where her mouth is, about the China earthquake as karma for the way Chinese treat her friend, the Dalai Lama… I bet he won’t be too eager to return Mrs. Stone’s Karma cards come the holiday season.)
So there… for all these reasons I am glad Obama is churchless. I would be even happier if that was the result of a philosophy of life not of a contingency. The contingency though is pretty telling: crazy stuff goes on in churches and in church-infected minds all across America. People trying to swift boat him will use that crazy stuff against him, forgetting the crazy stuff that goes on in their own churches, of which the examples above are only a pale and minuscule sample.
The other reason to feel good about the coming election is that opposite Obama sits McCain, who is the best one could have hoped from the Republican Party at this juncture. So even if the electorate does its worst again, come November, we should still be a lot better off than now. That's the one good thing about hitting bottom: you can only go up...