Author Archives: disinterested spectator

Executive Action (1973) and JFK (1991)

In 1957, I encountered my first conspiracy theory.  According to my father, American intelligence had broken the Japanese code six months before the attack on Pearl Harbor.  And so, by the first of December, 1941, they knew that the attack was imminent.  But they did nothing about it.  The reason, my father said, was that the American people were against entering World War II, and so Roosevelt, who wanted to get America into the war, let the attack happen, knowing that an inflamed public would then demand retaliation.  I was in the sixth grade at the time, and so naturally I believed what my father told me.

I no longer believe that story, of course.  But what I now find interesting is that no one has ever made a movie about it, one that dramatizes the conspiracy, in which we see Roosevelt conniving with his fellow conspirators to suppress the intelligence that an attack on Pearl Harbor was imminent, motivated by all the profits that will be had by makers of munitions, who in turn will contribute to his re-election campaign.  More importantly, there is glory in being a wartime president, most conducive to holding on to power.  Conspiracy-theory movies can be fun, so why not a movie like that?

But first, I suppose I must define a few terms.  As we all know, conspiracies go on in the world, as when some Roman senators conspired to assassinate Julius Caesar.  But that’s an historical fact.  On the other hand, it is only a theory that the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko was the result of a conspiracy involving Vladimir Putin.  But we do not call it a “conspiracy theory,” for to do so would not only imply that the theory is false, but also that those that believe it are goofy; whereas this is a theory that may be true, and one in which it is reasonable to accept.

However, much in the way that the demeaning expression “colored person” has been transformed into the acceptable “person of color,” so too can we eliminate the pejorative connotation of “conspiracy theory” by changing the order the words to “theory about a conspiracy,” which can be regarded as neutral as to whether the theory is true or not, and without disparaging those that might embrace it.

That being done, however, we must now distinguish between conspiracy theories that are real from those that are fictional.  It may seem that by definition, all conspiracy theories are fictional.  However, by “real conspiracy theory,” I mean those that a lot of people believe to be true, whereas by “fictional conspiracy theory,” I mean those that are made up simply for our entertainment in the form of a novel or a movie, usually bearing some similarity to a real conspiracy theory.

For example, there is a real conspiracy theory that the moon landing was faked.  It inspired the fictional conspiracy theory in Capricorn One (1977), in which a mission to Mars is faked.  Likewise, there is a real conspiracy theory that Lee Harvey Oswald was not the man that killed John F. Kennedy, and it inspired the fictional conspiracy theory in The Parallax View (1974), in which Warren Beatty plays a reporter who investigates one political assassination only to end up becoming an Oswald-like patsy in another.

However, the distinction between real and fictional conspiracy theories is not absolute.  There are real conspiracy theories concerning Area 51 and UFOs, in which the government is thought to know all about aliens from another planet, but is determined to keep us from learning about it.  The movies Men in Black (1997) and The X-Files (1998) are based on these real conspiracy theories, but involve fictional characters and events.

Most real conspiracy theories are never made into a movie in the classic Hollywood sense, the kind that is shown in major theaters in the United States, featuring well-known stars, the kind of movie that might even be considered for an Academy Award of one sort or another.  They do find an outlet, however, in other forms.  For example, there are the straight-to-video movies, such as The Death of Vince Foster:  What Really Happened? (1995).  There is Horseman Without a Horse (2002-2003), a television miniseries in Arabic and shown in the Middle East, based on The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which is about the Jewish plan for global domination.  And there is Paul Is Dead (2002), a movie made in Germany in which a young boy gets all into the conspiracy theory that Paul McCartney died in the 1960s and was replaced by a double.  And a lot of such second-rate movies are documentaries, as opposed to dramas.

The conspiracy theory that Lee Harvey Oswald was not the assassin of John F. Kennedy is the grand exception, having been made into two mainstream movies.  In 1991, Oliver Stone wrote and directed JFK, a movie about New Orleans district attorney Jim Garrison (Kevin Costner) and his investigation into the assassination of Kennedy, which provoked strong negative reactions from politicians and journalists alike.  Many books have been written arguing that Oswald was not the assassin of Kennedy, including the two on which this movie was based, but the negative reaction people had to JFK proves how much more powerful a movie can be than the written word.  The movie is populated with major stars, not just those playing the leading roles, but also small roles as well.  This makes the characters they portray seem important in a way that lesser known stars would not, which in turn makes their role in the conspiracy seem more believable.  Such is movie logic.

The movie touches on all the standard elements of the conspiracy theory.  There is the faked picture of Oswald holding a gun, the reference to the live oak that would have blocked his view, the fact that it would have been difficult for him to get off three shots that quickly and accurately with a bolt-action rifle, the single-bullet theory, Oswald’s calling attention to himself at a shooting range, the grassy knoll, the Zapruder film, and more, much more.  It does so quite effectively.

At the same time, the movie is exhausting.  Have you ever known someone that was into a conspiracy theory?  You quickly learn never to bring the subject up, kicking yourself when you accidently touch on it, for you unleash a torrent.  As an example, let us consider the theory that the moon landing was faked, and let us imagine a hypothetical friend who is all into that theory.  If you are old enough, you probably saw the moon landing live on television, were impressed, and then went on with your life.  If you are younger, you nevertheless saw the footage, but at a later time.  And that’s about the extent of your knowledge of the event.  But your friend has about six or seven books on his bookshelf, telling of how it was all faked.  He has read them at least three times.  They are underlined with notes in the margins, full of cross-references.

Do you think you have any chance of winning an argument with him about the moon landing?  That’s a silly question.  You can’t even hold up your side of the conversation.  All you know is what you saw on television, whereas he is overwhelming you with “facts.”

“And that’s why the Bilker report was suppressed,” he asserts in the middle of his tirade.

“What’s the Bilker report?” you ask.

He is appalled.  “No wonder you believe we put men on the moon.  You just accept whatever you they tell you.  You probably believe that Judith Crenshaw’s death was an accident.”

“Who is that?” you foolishly ask.

“Oh, my God!  You don’t know who she is?” he exclaims with exasperation.  “She was the one who was out there in Arizona where they filmed the whole thing.  She was supposed to testify at a congressional hearing, but drowned in her bathtub the day before.”

That is what it feels like watching JFK.

There is a Mr. X (Donald Sutherland) who is a Deep Throat character.  When he starts talking to Garrison, we are presented with a fusillade of “facts” that will make your knees buckle, so it is fortunate that most people watch this movie sitting down.  He makes the point that the “How?” and the “Who?” are of secondary importance.  The real question is “Why?”  The principal answer to that question parallels the Pearl Harbor conspiracy theory I referred to above.  Just as allowing Pearl Harbor to happen got America into World War II, which meant big profits for the weapon manufacturers, and secured Roosevelt’s re-election; so too was the assassination of Kennedy intended to prevent him from getting us out of Vietnam, for there was much money to be made by getting us into a war over there.  Kennedy had already cost the business community a lot of money by refusing to invade Cuba, and they didn’t want him to do the same with Vietnam.  That is why the movie begins with Eisenhower’s farewell address, warning of the military-industrial complex, and ends by noting all the money that has been spent in fighting the Vietnam War.  Mr. X makes the ultimate declaration:

The organizing principle of any society, Mr. Garrison, is for war.   The authority of the state over its people resides in its war powers. The state needs war in order to exist.

It sounds as though Mr. X might have been the author of the notorious book, Report from Iron Mountain, which transcends even the profit motive in arguing that war and the threat of war meet the needs of society to such a degree that it would be difficult for society to exist without it.

But mostly it’s about money.  From that point of view, the movie argues that when those on the right accused Kennedy of being soft on communism, their real concern was that he was likely to sign peace treaties with adversaries rather than go to war with them, thereby cutting into profits.

But there is another motive, connected with the first, expressed by Guy Banister (Edward Asner).  “Goddamn peace treaties!” he says.  “That’s what happens when you let the niggers vote.  They get together with the Jews and the Catholics and elect an Irish bleeding heart.”  In this way, the war-profits motive is connected with that of Protestant white supremacy.

And this second motive blends with a third, which also angered Banister:  resentment over the Bay of Pigs, consisting of anti-Castro Cubans, of course, and American intelligence agents that felt betrayed when Kennedy failed to follow through on that invasion.

Right-wing animosity toward African Americans and Jews is still with us, but the one about the Catholics seems quaint.  Looking back, it is hard to believe how much anti-papist sentiment there was in those days.  The fear was that the Pope would tell Kennedy what to do, on pain of excommunication if he refused to obey.  Kennedy even had to give a speech, declaring that he would resign the presidency should he receive an order from the Pope that was inconsistent with America’s best interests.

Today, conservatives love Catholics, at least when it comes to putting them on the Supreme Court, where there are now six Catholic justices, vastly exceeding their proportion in the general population.  The reason is clear.  Catholics believe that birth control is a sin, so a fortiori they believe abortion is a sin.  Now, a given Catholic may nevertheless be pro-choice, being unwilling to impose his religious beliefs on others.  But as far as conservatives are concerned, there will remain a residual sentiment of sin.  And so, regardless of the political stance that may have been taken by any of the Catholic justices on the Supreme Court, conservatives are content in their supposition that the prevailing attitude of those justices is that abortion is evil.

JFK is a movie about a real conspiracy theory in its pure form, for all the characters in the movie are based on real people.  It looks at the Kennedy assassination from the outside, from the standpoint of an investigator trying to piece together the elements of the conspiracy.  An earlier movie, Executive Action (1973), looks at it from the inside.  Whereas the number of people in on the conspiracy in JFK is beyond our ability to count, the number of conspirators in Executive Action is small.  At one point in the movie, they are all in one room, apart from those that will eventually be hired to do the shooting.  In JFK, you sometimes get the impression that in order to put all the conspirators in one place, you would have needed a football stadium.  The characters in Executive Action are fictional.  However, they are presented as representing the men that actually did conspire to have Kennedy assassinated, and so the movie still qualifies as a real conspiracy theory.  The conspiracy-theories dramatized by these two movies are almost the same, but there are slight differences.  In both movies, people quote Shakespeare, giving these movies the proper tone.

For the most part, Executive Action works and is entertaining.  First, there is the introductory part, which shows us the motivation of those that want to kill Kennedy.  We see a montage consisting of a refinery, an oil field, a factory, a commodities exchange, a bank, safe deposit boxes, and a board room.  Personifying these business interests is Ferguson (Will Geer), who will be putting up the money to fund the assassination if he gives his OK.  He is the one the other conspirators have to persuade.  Therefore, as with JFK, money is the primary motive for Kennedy’s assassination.

The persuasion begins with a prediction that must have been a conservative’s nightmare in the early 1960s:  three successive presidencies, each lasting eight years, consisting of John F. Kennedy, followed by his brother Robert, who in turn would be followed by Edward.  Whichever Kennedy was president, the other two brothers would occupy positions of power, based on a coalition of “big-city machines, labor, Jews, Negroes, liberals, and the press.”  The ideological agenda of this coalition would be socialism at the expense of business interests, a weakening of American military might by making nuclear arms deals with the Soviet Union, loss of influence in foreign affairs by pulling out of Vietnam, and loss of white privilege.  (Dalton Trumbo must have enjoyed writing the screenplay for this movie as a form of retaliation for what the right put him through earlier in his career.)  And so, as in JFK, we have the same secondary motive concerning race and religion, except for the absence of any expressed concern about Catholics.  The third motive, resentment about the Bay of Pigs, is present as well.

I also liked the part where the chief conspirator, Farrington (Burt Lancaster), points out that whereas Europeans will readily believe that there is a conspiracy behind an assassination of a major political figure, Americans are used to the idea that assassinations of presidents are carried out by mentally unbalanced individuals.  With that in mind, Farrington conceives a plan that will point to just such an individual as being the lone assassin, fitting right into what the American people are predisposed to accept.

The men trying to persuade Ferguson seem to have a lot of knowledge about intelligence agencies, most prominent of which are Farrington and Foster (Robert Ryan).  When they are alone, Foster expresses his concern to Farrington about the population explosion:

The real problem is this, James.  In two decades there will be seven billion human beings on this planet, most of them brown, yellow, or black.  All of them hungry; all of them determined to love.  They’ll swarm out of their breeding grounds into Europe and North America.  Hence Vietnam.  An all-out effort there will give us control of South Asia for decades to come.  And with proper planning, we can reduce the population to 550 million by the end of the century.

Needless to say, you could not get the population in South Asia down to that number in that time frame by birth control alone, even if you sterilized every female in the region, so we have to figure he is planning on more drastic means of population reduction.  He continues:

Well, someone has to do it.  Not only will the nations affected be better off, but the techniques developed there can be used to reduce our own excess population:  Blacks, Puerto Ricans, Mexican-Americans, poverty-prone whites, and so forth.

Meanwhile, we see scenes of Ferguson watching television, in which he sees Kennedy talking about the test-ban treaty with the Soviets and getting out of Vietnam, and in which he sees Martin Luther King giving his “I have a dream” speech, followed by black people marching and singing “We Shall Overcome.”  He slowly becomes angrier and angrier until finally he gives the OK.

In planning the operation, the conspirators set out to make Oswald, who apparently has some mysterious connections with intelligence agencies, their “sponsor,” which is to say, their patsy.  He will take the fall while three real assassins make their getaway.  They even get an Oswald look-alike to help create incriminating evidence.  It is interesting to see the mechanics of the operation being planned and carried out.  Some of it strains credulity, however, as when the conspirators sneak into Oswald’s garage, that conveniently happens to be unlocked, in order to steal his rifle, so that one of the assassins can use it and then leave it behind in the book depository.

Another weak link in the movie comes when Oswald shoots a policeman.  Watching the report on television, Tim, an associate of Farrington, says, “That wasn’t in the scenario,” indicating that they did not expect Oswald to do that.  Farrington tries to explain why Oswald would kill a policeman, but it is a bit lame.  After all, according to this movie, Oswald did not shoot Kennedy, so it is hard to believe that he would panic and kill a policeman, whereas that is precisely something a man might do who had just assassinated the president.

But I was willing to let that one slide.  It is the part about Jack Ruby that constitutes the weakest part of this conspiracy theory.  The explanation Ruby gave as to why he shot Oswald was that he was upset that Oswald killed Kennedy.  This movie should have let it be just that.  Instead, we get a scene in which Tim goes to talk to Ruby, so as to make Ruby part of the conspiracy, but we are not privy to their conversation.  Nor do Tim and Farrington refer to whatever it was Tim supposedly said to Ruby when they watch him shoot Oswald on television.  We can’t help but conclude that the reason we do not get to hear what Tim says to Ruby is that Dalton Trumbo could not come up with anything that would make sense.  The whole point of this movie is to show us in detail what might have happened and to do so in a way that makes the theory credible. By leaving the conversation between Tim and Ruby out, the movie as much as admits that it cannot explain this part, which detracts from its believability.

At the end of the movie, while enjoying a game of pool, Foster receives a phone call from Tim.  After he hangs up, he tells his companions that Farrington just died of a heart attack, while he continues his turn at the pool table.  Now, Farrington is a fictional character.  Therefore, his death and Foster’s nonchalance in hearing about it were put into this movie as a matter of choice.  This leads us to ask, what purpose does it serve?  Inasmuch as this movie has us in a frame of mind as to suspect that nothing happens by chance, that all events are guided by sinister purposes, we cannot help but suspect that Farrington’s death was arranged as a way of guaranteeing the security of the remaining conspirators.

This is followed immediately by an epilogue, in which we are told that eighteen of the material witnesses to the assassination died within the next three years, many of them violently.  The implication is that the conspirators saw to it that these people died so as to impede any investigation into what really happened.  One wonders if the witnesses to those deaths were then killed off.  You can never be too careful.

But now let us address the observation made above that most real conspiracy theories are never made into mainstream American movies like JFK and Executive Action.  Given this relatively small sample, it is difficult to draw any conclusions with certainty.  Nevertheless, I cannot help but wonder if making these two movies was acceptable because the villains were on the right, whereas having the villains be on the left would preclude turning a real conspiracy theory into a mainstream, dramatic film.  This would explain why the Pearl Harbor conspiracy theory was never made into a movie, since the chief villain would have been Franklin D. Roosevelt, a Democratic icon, even though the motive of getting the country into a war for the profiteering that would ensue would be the same as in the Kennedy movies.

In both Kennedy movies, the villains on the right express anti-Semitic attitudes, in which they regard the Jews, among others, as causing them problems.  But we know we will never see a movie in which the Jews are the conspirators.  For example, there is no way a movie producer in Hollywood will get himself a copy of Holocaust Denial for Dummies and make a movie dramatizing the way the Jews fabricated the holocaust, starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Scarlett Johansson.

In JFK, there is the suggestion that the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy are a continuation of the conspiracy.  When Garrison wakes up his long-suffering wife (Sissy Spacek) to tell her that Bobby Kennedy has just been shot, she finally becomes convinced of the conspiracy too.  “You were right,” she says. “It hasn’t ended yet.”  Then they proceed to have the best sex they’ve had in months.

At the trial of Clay Shaw, Garrison argues that Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King were killed because they were also opposed to war, threatening the war-profiteering that was in progress, while it was made to appear that they were “also killed by such lonely crazed men.”  But he’s not through.  “How many more political murders,” he asks, “disguised as heart attacks, suicides, cancers, drug overdoses?  How many plane and car crashes will occur before they are exposed for what they are?”

But the conspiracy theories that have been promoted concerning the assassination attempts on George Wallace and Ronald Reagan will probably never make it to the big screen.  It’s not that the villains are said to be on the left.  Rather, the alleged conspirators are on the right, just not the far right where Reagan and Wallace were.  But since they are to the left of Reagan and Wallace, that’s left enough to preclude a conspiracy-theory movie about either of these two assassination attempts.  Or maybe there is simpler explanation:  failed assassination attempts just aren’t interesting enough to warrant the production of a major film.

However, were this the sole consideration, we should expect to have seen a mainstream 9/11 trutherism movie by now.  One version of this theory is that George W. Bush and other politicians on the right knew that the attack on September 11, 2001 was imminent, but they let it happen so that America would invade the Middle East, with the usual war-profiteering motive underlying that, along with the glory of being a wartime president.  There are the various versions of Loose Change 9/11, beginning in 2005, but they are basically internet videos and documentaries besides.  Therefore, even if I am correct in my supposition that right-wing villains are a necessary condition for the making of a Hollywood movie about a real conspiracy theory, it is not a sufficient condition.  In fact, so few are the mainstream movies depicting real conspiracy theories that the sufficient condition, whatever it is, must be difficult to attain.

A birtherism movie, on the other hand is out of the question, as the villains would have to be on the left, creating a phony birth certificate so that we wouldn’t know that Obama was really born in Kenya, thereby allowing him to become president of the United States.  And that’s too bad, because I can envision a scene in which some right-wing politician says, “Of course, Obama was born in Kenya.  That’s why he believes in Kenyansian economics!”

Consensual Sex and the Double Standard

Back in September of 2014, California enacted a law requiring college students to get consent before they have sex.  The language is couched in gender-neutral terms, so that technically the law applies to men and women, either gay or straight.  But the primary intent of the law is directed toward heterosexual couples, and it is only the consent of the woman that is of concern.  In other words, the law is written in such a way that it appears to grant equal protection under the law to both sexes, even though we all know that a double standard will and ought to be applied in its implementation.

It is women that need protection against rape, even in the case where force is not used.  This is for several reasons:  First, men are bigger and stronger than women.  Not only is this true on average, but men and women tend to select each other on the basis of size as well.  Although the law is not intended to cover cases where force is used, for that is already illegal and does not need additional legislation, the size and strength of a man compared to a woman can be a factor in cases where consent is ambiguous. That is, a man can simply wear a woman out physically, until she becomes too tired to resist.

Second, it is the woman that can become pregnant.  This puts her at a severe disadvantage compared to the man.  Though birth control may make pregnancy unlikely, and abortion may be available to terminate it, yet it is a big problem for women nevertheless.  And while the man may find himself forced to pay child support if she has the baby, she will still have the greater burden in caring for it and raising it.

Third, a woman is more likely to feel violated by a man than a man would feel violated by a woman.  A major reason for this difference is penetration. Though a woman may be disgusted by the unwanted kisses of a man, or by his groping her, nothing can compare to being penetrated.  Furthermore, an erection is prima facie evidence of consent regarding the man, thereby undermining his ability to claim that he was similarly violated.  Apart from this, there may be psychological differences as well.  Some men think of sex as a matter of conquest.  And it is part of nature of sexual conquest to have a “love ’em and leave ’em” attitude, resulting in one night stands, which can make a woman who surrenders to such a man feel betrayed, especially if he whispered words of love as part of the seduction.  In fact, whether a rape has occurred may depend in part on the subsequent behavior of the man.  If a man refuses to have anything to do with a woman after they have sex, and possibly even insults her, she may feel violated; if he calls her up the next day and asks to see her again, thereby beginning a long-term relationship, that is another thing altogether.  In other words, whether a rape has occurred may have as much to do with the subsequent behavior of the man as it does with what happened just before and during sex.

Fourth, alcohol has one legal implication for women and a different implication for men.  People drink, in part, simply because it feels good.  But they also drink in order to get carried away.  I once had a girlfriend who, by her own admission, had been quite promiscuous in college.  During some pillow talk one night, she told me about all the one night stands she had when she was young, and I expressed amazement.  “I don’t think I could have a one night stand,” I said.  “In fact, I don’t think I would want to.  I have to get to know a woman first before I would feel comfortable having sex.”  Without the slightest hesitation, and through half-closed eyelids, she said, “That’s because you don’t drink, John.  Standing there cold sober, no one could do it. But when you drink, you feel like you’re in love.  And it’s easy to have sex with someone you love.”

Alcohol not only lowers our inhibitions, it also gives us cover for inappropriate behavior. Drinking gives us a license for license.  We are more likely to misbehave if we know that others will excuse this misbehavior as being the result of intoxication.  Therefore, a lot of people drink knowing it will not only make it easier to have sex, but also will be a prophylactic against shame the next morning.

The problem lies in judging when someone has consumed enough alcohol to get carried away, but not so much as to no longer be able to consent to sex. And here the double standard may strike some people as unfair.  If the woman is drunk, her saying “yes” to sex does not constitute consent, but if the man has sex with her, he cannot use the fact that he was drunk as a legal justification against a charge of rape.   So we end up with the situation in which if a man and woman who are equally drunk have sex, she can claim to have been raped, because the legal implications of being drunk are different for men and women.

But even if the woman is sober and only the man is drunk, their having sex will not be construed as her raping him.  No one has ever watched The Way We Were (1973), and thought that Katie (Barbara Streisand) deserved to go to prison for raping Hubbell (Robert Redford), even though she had sex with him while he was too passed-out drunk to know what he was doing.

The double standard here regarding alcohol, not holding a drunk woman responsible for saying “yes,” while holding a drunk man responsible for not realizing that she was too drunk to consent, is justified on account of the reasons given previously:  the size and strength of the man, the possibility of pregnancy, and the difference in the male and female psyches.

It is peculiar that the law seems to apply only to college students.  Although I support a double standard for men and women when it comes to sex, I hope we do not have a double standard for college students and all other adults. Presumably, women who are not in college are not fair game, and the “yes means yes” standard applies to them too.  It is only on account of the unique circumstance of young women living away from home and under the protection of a university that special legislation for coeds has been enacted.

Unfortunately, a double standard is a two-edged sword.  In affirming a double standard for sexual activity, we run the risk of having that double standard leach out into areas where it is inappropriate, such as in the workplace.  By saying men are more responsible for their drunken behavior than women, by saying women are psychologically more likely to feel violated and be traumatized by sex than men are, we run the risk of suggesting that women cannot be trusted with responsibility in the workplace, and that they are psychologically weaker than men.  It is partly for this reason that the law is stated in gender-neutral terms.  Although gender-neutral language allows the law to apply to gay couples too, I suspect that this gender-neutral language would still be there anyway, as if to suggest that a man has the same protection against being violated by a woman, and could thus bring charges of rape against her.  So, to keep from having a double standard for men and women in the workplace and in other contexts where sex should not matter, we pretend not to have a double standard for men and women in the matter of sexual activity.  I don’t doubt that someday a man will bring rape charges against a woman, saying he was too drunk to consent.  In anticipation of this event, allow me to smirk preemptively at such a claim.

This is our dilemma:  either we deny the existence of a double standard in matters of sex as being repugnant to egalitarian principles, and end up being forced to accept conclusions that are absurd or paradoxical; or we admit to the need to have a double standard in matters of sex, which leaves an opening for those who want a reason to discriminate against women elsewhere.

Blaming the Victim or Counseling Prudence?

John Kasich, when asked by a female college student what policies he would promote as president that would help her “feel safer and more secure regarding sexual violence, harassment and rape,” made some general remarks about confidential reporting and rape kits, but then ended with this:  “I’d also give you one bit of advice. Don’t go to parties where there’s a lot of alcohol. OK?”  As a result, he was accused of blaming the victim.

Just prior to making that remark, Kasich made reference to his two sixteen-year-old daughters.  The idea was to show that he had empathy for young women like the one that asked him the question.  But that was undoubtedly what led him astray.  He was thinking about the advice he likely has already given his daughters regarding parties they are invited to in high school, and it is only charitable to imagine that in giving that advice he is counseling prudence, not blaming his daughters in advance if they are raped.  So, part of Kasich’s problem lies in confusing his role as a politician hoping to become president of the United States with his role as a father trying to protect his daughters.

In like manner, President Obama confused his roles regarding the Morning-After Pill.  Although his administration eventually quit blocking the sale of that pill to minors without a prescription, his administration resisted for some time, as noted in an article in The New York Times:

Mr. Obama had expressed personal concern about making the drug more broadly available last year and offered support to Kathleen Sebelius, his secretary of health and human services, when she blocked a decision by the F.D.A. that would have cleared the way for nonprescription distribution to all girls and women regardless of age. He said that as the father of two young girls, the idea of making the drug available to them without a prescription made him uncomfortable.

I never was sure what to make of that.  Did Obama expect his daughters to come to him and say, “I had sex last night without a rubber.  Could we go to the doctor and get a prescription for the Morning-After Pill?”  Let’s face it.  It was not the availability of the drug that made Obama uncomfortable, but the thought of his daughters having sex.  And this brings us back to Kasich, who said, “I have two 16-year-old daughters and I don’t even like to think about it.”  Of course, Kasich was thinking about his two daughters being raped, not merely having consensual sex, which is what bothered Obama.  But they had this in common:  they were both confusing their roles as fathers with their roles as president.

Another thing they had in common was voluntarily bringing their families into the subject of public policy.  Sometimes consideration of a politician’s family will be forced upon him in the context of a discussion about public policy, as when Bernard Shaw, the moderator in a presidential debate in 1988, asked Michael Dukakis if he would favor the death penalty for a man who raped and murdered his wife Kitty.  Unlike Obama, who allowed his personal feelings about his daughters having sex to influence his public policy regarding the Morning-After Pill, Dukakis made the opposite blunder of insisting that even the rape and murder of his own wife would not change his feelings about the death penalty.  With the wisdom that comes from hindsight, most people believe that Dukakis should have first said how he would have felt personally in such a case, perhaps saying that though he would want to avenge his wife’s rape and murder by killing the man who did it, yet the death penalty is still a bad idea as a matter of public policy.  It is part of the social contract that the individual gives up the right to revenge in exchange for which the state takes on the responsibility to see that justice is done.

Separating one’s personal feelings from what would make for good public policy is not always easy.  I sometimes suspect that if Moses had been a bachelor, there would have been no commandment to honor one’s mother and father, and in its place would have been something like, “Thou shalt treat thy children with respect.”  After all, bachelors do not know what it is like to lose control of their willful children, but they do have painful memories of being mistreated by their parents.  In fact, it may have been Moses’s exasperation with his two sons that caused him to send them and their mother Zipporah back to her father (What a great return policy!).  On the other hand, had Jesus been married to a nagging wife who was always after him to get a job, he might have had more liberal views on divorce.

Returning to the present, it is clear that in the case of Obama, his personal feelings about his daughters led to bad policy.  One almost suspects he tried to block the availability of the Morning-After Pill in order to block the idea of his daughters having sex.  In the case of Kasich, however, his giving the same advice to women in general that he gives to his daughters led to a charge of blaming the victim.

Does it make sense to say that private advice given to daughters about how to avoid being raped is counseling prudence, while that same advice given to women in general is victim-blaming?  The difference in our feelings about the two different situations may lie in a presumption of intent.  We assume that a father loves his daughter and thus is only counseling prudence when he advises her on how to avoid being raped, whereas when a politician makes such a remark to women in general, there is no such presumption.

Even when advice on how to avoid rape is offered publicly, however, we can still distinguish that which is clearly victim-blaming, as in, “Don’t wear tight, revealing clothes that might provoke a man’s sexual appetite,” from that which is clearly counseling prudence, as in, “Don’t walk across campus by yourself late at night,” advice recently given out at a university where a young women was murdered, as reported by The Washington Post:

University and law enforcement officials have repeatedly warned students to be careful on campus and be aware of their surroundings. Students should walk in groups, especially at night, officials said. And they should stay vigilant and think twice about focusing on their phones or wearing headphones.

Surely, we wouldn’t want to say that the school officials were blaming the victim.

Part of the problem with Kasich’s advice is that it is not realistic.  A female college student may think she is going to an ordinary party and only later find out that it borders on an orgy.  But once there, she may hate to leave and be thought of as a party pooper.  So, rather than be rude, she figures she will just stick it out.  And in most cases, nothing bad will happen to her.  But what if Kasich had given the woman who asked him the question that same advice as that of the school officials:  “Be aware of your surroundings.  Walk in groups and avoid walking at night or while distracted with cellphones or headphones.”  I suspect he would still have been accused of blaming the victim by those that take an absolutist position in this matter.  One wonders if that advice just sounds better coming from school officials than it would from a politician, especially a pro-life conservative.

Kasich eventually tweeted, “Only one person is at fault in a sexual assault, and that’s the assailant.”  Had he said that to begin with, he would have avoided the mess he got himself in.  However, by insisting that there is no fault on the part of the victim, we may be inadvertently suggesting that there is nothing women should do to try to protect themselves.  If it is legitimate for the school officials to advise women to avoid walking at night, to walk in groups, etc., then does it not follow that a woman who ignores such advice and ends up being assaulted is partly to blame?

Part of the problem in sorting this out is that what one says to a woman who wants to be safe from sexual assault must be distinguished from what one says to a woman that has already been raped.  Once a woman has been raped, it is rude to tell her that she acted imprudently.  It is precisely in that case that we should insist that she is not to blame, in an effort to make her feel better.  After all, she can probably figure out for herself that it was a bad idea to walk across campus at night alone.  Unfortunately, public statements, whether by politicians or school officials, cannot selectively deliver their message only to women that have never been attacked, while sending a more consoling message to those that have.

Ultimately, politicians like Kasich should leave the counsels of prudence to parents and school officials acting in loco parentis, while sticking to public policies that will reduce the likelihood of sexual assault on campus.  Whatever advice they might give their daughters, however wise and caring it may be, that same advice given out publicly to women in general is going sound like blaming the victim.

Blaming the Victim

Blaming the victim is an old story.  One old story in particular is that of Job. In order to test Job’s righteousness, God allows Satan to inflict great misery upon him.  Satan begins by killing all Job’s animals, servants, and children, and then eventually covers Job’s body with boils. Notwithstanding this, Job remains righteous and does not curse God as Satan predicted. Instead, with the patience that has become proverbial, Job sits on a dung heap, scraping his body with a shard of broken pottery.  And then three friends come along and declare that all that has happened to Job is punishment for his sins, for God would never forsake a righteous man. One of them even says that Job’s sins are such that he deserves more punishment than he is actually getting. In this story, we see that the tendency to blame the victim is an ancient one. Job’s friends unhesitatingly assume he must have sinned because they are anxious to reconcile the existence of an all-powerful God with the suffering of mankind; for if people deserve their suffering, then God is merely being just by punishing them.  But even in ancient times, people must have chafed at the sanctimonious attitude exemplified by Job’s friends.  We may not be satisfied with the answer God finally gives, but it is clear that the story condemns the tendency to blame the victim.

The belief that people deserve their suffering implies that they have free will, that they are responsible for their actions, a notion that many find unacceptable.  Some believe that everything happens necessarily, whether in the form of fate, predestination, or determinism.  For them, chance is merely an expression of our ignorance, and free will is an illusion.  For others, bolstered by certain interpretations of modern physics, everything ultimately happens by chance, and it is necessity that is just as much an illusion as free will.  Whatever the case may be, free will, chance, and necessity exhaust the possible ways in which an event can be understood.

Metaphysics aside, each way of understanding what happens in the world affects the way we feel about things, and such feelings are temptations that even an atheist, who may fancy himself free of all silly superstition, must be on guard against.  Though we may never know the truth regarding the existence of free will, chance, and necessity, yet we can at least avoid being deceived.  And the great seducer behind such deception is the consolation that such notions can provide.

If believing in free will allows us to blame the victim as bringing his suffering upon himself by having made bad choices, it also allows us to take full credit for whatever good fortune has come our way.  It is nice to believe that we have prospered because we made good choices in the past, and that we get full credit for whatever success we may have had.  On the other hand, we are loath to invoke free will in the opposite case, usually preferring to talk about chance instead. Confronted with the thought of someone who has been more successful than we have, we prefer to say that he has just been lucky, thereby assuaging the envy in our soul—unless we can attribute his success to lying, cheating, or stealing, in which case we are more than willing to say he acted freely.  As for our own misfortune, we prefer to think of that as bad luck, thereby relieving ourselves of the unpleasant thought that we made bad choices in the past and that we are now getting exactly what we deserve.

If free will and chance can each be reassuring notions depending on the circumstances, so too can the idea of necessity.  If everything happens necessarily, that takes all the pressure off: there is no need to regret the past, because it could not be helped; there is no need to be anxious for the future, because it cannot be avoided.  Compare the tranquility afforded us by a fatalistic philosophy with the stress that comes from a common sense understanding of the world, which tells us there is more than one way things can turn out, and choices sometimes make the difference.  “Do you regret the past?  Well,” says common sense, “you should!  You made bad choices when you were young, and you live with the consequences to this day.  There were so many things you could have done, so many things you could have been.  All those opportunities were lost, and you have no one to blame but yourself.  Do you feel guilty about some of the things you did?  Well, you should!  What you did was wrong, and you knew it was wrong, but you did it anyway, and there is no way to undo it now.  And you will have to live with the knowledge of what you did for the rest of your life.  Are you anxious about the future?  Well, you should be!  However bad things may be now, they can get a whole lot worse.  And a choice you make today may well make the difference.  In fact, you already know what you should do, but you just don’t want to do it.  You would rather tell yourself that everything that happens does so from necessity.  It doesn’t matter whether it is fate, the will of God, or the laws of physics, just as long as it gets the job done, just as long as you are not cursed by the knowledge that choices matter.  You’d rather tell yourself that whatever will be, will be, that the future is inevitable, and there is no point in worrying about it.  Well, go ahead and lie to yourself.  It’s your only consolation for a messed-up life.”  Thus speaks common sense.  Can there be any doubt about the appeal of fatalism as a philosophy with which to hide from such accusations?

Though we may wish to avoid deceiving ourselves in such matters, yet the same considerations can be a guide to polite conversation.  Even if we resist the temptation to believe what makes us feel good, it is only proper that we employ exactly such principles when we wish to make others feel good instead.  A considerate man will praise someone who has been successful by affirming that it is all his own doing, that he earned it through his own wise choices and hard work.  But that same considerate man will realize that if he speaks of his own success in that manner, he will make himself obnoxious to his fellow man, for in so doing he implies that others have only themselves to blame for not doing as well.  Instead, he will speak of his good fortune as just being just a matter of luck, by which he will avoid giving offense.

Knowing how much people love to blame the victim, a victim who is considerate of the feelings of others will be quick to blame himself.  A victim who says, “It’s my own darn fault,” or, “I got what I deserved,” will make his friends feel so good that they will likely reciprocate with equal courtesy, saying, “No, it wasn’t your fault.  There is no way you could have known.” But anyone that insists he is a genuinely innocent victim will make others uncomfortable and even resentful, and they will likely talk about him behind his back.

When it comes to the consolation of necessity, one must act with caution.  If someone coping with misfortune says, “Whatever will be, will be,” or, “It is just God’s will,” etiquette requires that we agree with him, or that we at least not contradict him outright.  But in the absence of his making such a remark, we would be ill-advised to volunteer one.  Otherwise, we may sound smugly dismissive, saying, “You were destined to be poor,” or, “God wanted you to get sick.”

Therefore, when it comes to free will, chance, and necessity, there is the truth, which is elusive; there is the temptation to believe whatever makes us feel good; and then there are the things we say to others in order to be polite. But in addition to these, there are the practical consequences of such notions. As has often been pointed out, a fatalist looks both ways before he crosses the street, seeming to contradict his belief that the time and circumstances of his death will be the unalterable result of an inexorable process of cause and effect; or, if he is religious, that the date and manner of his death have already been ordained by the will of God. On the other hand, the fatalist will answer that he is compelled to look both ways by an instinct for self-preservation, so there is no contradiction.  But if someone so thoroughly believed in a philosophy of fatalism that he behaved like Helena Bonham Carter in Fight Club (1999), who routinely walks out into a busy street without looking, we would be horrified.  Whatever one’s metaphysical views, whatever consolations one embraces, and whatever polite remarks one makes, we know that as a practical matter, it is important for people to give due weight to choice, chance, and necessity in their daily lives.

And this brings us to the subject of women who stay with men that physically abuse them. When a woman is in an ongoing abusive relationship, we never say this happens by chance.  It might have been bad luck on her part that she married a man who would hit her, but it is not bad luck that she stays with him or keeps going back to him.  Chance having been eliminated as an explanation for that, we are left with free will and necessity.  If we say she stays with him of her own free will, we are saying that it is her own fault, and we have thus put the blame on her. Assuming we wish to avoid blaming the victim in this case, the only remaining alternative is to explain her situation in terms of necessity.  The necessity in question is psychological in nature, consisting primarily of fear, love, and guilt.

The fear may be that of economic hardship in the case of a woman with limited resources, who does not know how she can make it on her own, especially if she has children.  Or it may be her fear of even more physical abuse, believing that if she leaves him, he will find her and hurt her even more.  Love, sad to say, can also be a motive.  She may stay with him because she loves him, and because she believes that he loves her.  Finally, there is guilt.  She may blame herself for making him angry.

Having settled on the idea that these psychological forces compel her to remain in such a relationship, we can only hope that a countervailing psychological force added to the mix will be sufficient to propel her out of that trap.  If all we do is offer sympathy and politely tell her she is not to blame for the situation she is in, do we run the risk of weakening her will by inadvertently promoting fatalism and the spirit of resignation that comes with it?  If, on the other hand, we tell her that she does not have to stay with him, that she has choices, and that she and only she can get herself out of that trap, might that not be the spur she needs to leave him once and for all, even if it implies that she has only herself to blame if she stays?

An Ida Lupino Formula

I never really cared much for Ida Lupino, either as an actress or as a director.  As for most of the movies she starred in, I can’t say that it was her fault that I did not think much of them, for her acting was fine, and I doubt that any other actress in her place would have made much difference.  As for the movies she directed, for some of which she also was a writer, her responsibility for their lackluster nature cannot be denied.  Nevertheless, when Turner Classic Movies decided to show a bunch of the movies she directed early in her career in that capacity, I decided to watch them.

The first one I watched was Never Fear (1949), which was just fair.  The second one I watched was Outrage (1950), and it too was just fair.  Neither movie on its own inspired me to write a review.  However, halfway through the second movie, I began to notice a structural similarity between the movies, which fascinated me.  Whether there is an Ida Lupino formula that applies to any of her other movies and whether that formula is significant in any way, I cannot say.

In Never Fear, Guy and Carol are struggling dancing partners.  In order to give her flowers, he has to steal them.  But finally, after a performance that he choreographed, their agent gets them a two-week engagement at a major night club.  They now have enough money not only for him to pay for the flowers he brings her, but to buy her an engagement ring and ask her to marry him as well, which is something she has been hoping for.  In Outrage, Ann and Jim are also in love.  When Jim gets a raise, he tells Ann they now have enough money to get married, something she has been hoping for.

Then tragedy strikes, and the woman in each of these movies ends up regarding herself as damaged goods.  In Never Fear, Carol is stricken with polio.  Guy still wants to marry Carol, but she pushes him away, telling him she won’t marry him, because things would never be the same.  In part, she does not want Guy to marry her out of pity, but she also has lost her sex drive.  She does not say this explicitly (this was 1949, after all), but much later in the movie, she makes a remark about how she finally feels like a woman again.  (Note:  when the doctor offers Carol a cigarette as she lies in bed, she refuses the offer.  This is taken as a sign that she is depressed.  Later, when she starts smoking again, this indicates that she is getting better psychologically.)  In Outrage, Jim still wants to marry Ann, but she pushes him away.  In part, she tells him he would never be able to forget that she had been raped, but she also now regards sex as something repulsive.

In Never Fear, Carol goes to a hospital and then to an institution for therapy.  There she meets Len, played by Hugh O’Brian, who has an even more severe case of polio than Carol.  He is a kind of spiritual figure.  At one point, the doctor that heads the institution says that Len has a special “power.”  In Outrage, Ann runs away from home without telling Jim or her parents where she is going.  She collapses on the side of the road and is rescued by “Doc,” so called because he is a reverend.  He takes her to a house owned by a married couple he is friends with, and they take her in.

In Never Fear, Guy keeps coming around trying to get Carol to marry him.  He has been trying to make a go of it selling houses, but she tells him to forget about her, to find himself another dancing partner.  They have a bitter argument and do not see each other for a long time.  Eventually, Carol begins to feel better about herself, and she has reached the point where she is able to walk with crutches.  She writes him a letter, hoping to make amends.  He shows up at her birthday party with flowers.  At first, she thinks they will be able to get married after all, but then he tells her that he took her advice.  He has another dancing partner, and they will be performing in Las Vegas soon, which is why he cannot stay long.  After he leaves, she throws herself at Len on the rebound, telling him they are alike, and that they will be good for each other (it is here she makes the remark about feeling like a woman again).  But Len knows she still loves Guy.  He tells her that she is just looking for someone to be comfortable with, and that is not enough for marriage.  In Outrage, we never see Jim again, because he does not know where Ann is.  She hopes that Doc will marry her, but Doc knows that she still loves Jim, and that they must go their separate ways.

In Never Fear, when the day finally arrives for Carol to leave the institution, she has progressed to the point where she only needs a cane.  As she walks down the street, she is apprehensive about facing the world alone (except for her father, with whom she will be living for a while).  But then Guy shows up with flowers.  It is clear that they will get married and live happily ever after.  In Outrage, a man starts making advances to Ann at a picnic, and she goes all flashback, thinking he is the man who raped her.  She hits him with a wrench.  It puts him in the hospital and she goes to jail.  However, the man does not want to press charges, and the judge agrees to let Ann go provided she receives psychiatric care for a year.  In other words, Ann receives professional care same as Carol, only hers is delayed.  Doc puts Ann on a bus back to her home where Jim and her parents are waiting for her.  And in case you were wondering, the rapist was caught.

In one sense, the ending of Never Fear was not far-fetched.  People who don’t dance tend to assume that dancing partners are lovers, but dancers know that very often they are not.  So, Carol would not have had any reason to feel jealous about Guy and his new dancing partner.  However, I still did not like what comes across as an artificial, tacked-on happy ending.  I would have preferred that Carol leave the institution knowing that she will have to face the world alone, except for the support her father could give her, at least for a while.  It would have given the movie a tougher, harder edge.  In fact, I was a little bothered by the way the movie portrayed Carol’s attitude as wrong-headed.  If she wanted to make a clean break with her past, that was her business.  In Outrage, on the other hand, the happy ending seemed reasonable and natural.

 

The Virgin Spring (1960)

Being an atheist, I have always found it challenging to review a religious movie, because I worry that my criticism will be more about religion than about the movie.  This difficulty is compounded if it is not clear what the attitude of those who produced the movie is toward that religion, whether they intended the movie to be a criticism of religion or a defense of it.  In other words, it is not clear to me whether The Virgin Spring, a movie directed by Ingmar Bergman, looks upon the simple faith of some fourteenth century peasants in the same way that parents will smile at their child’s belief in Santa Claus, or whether the movie actually shares that faith in God and encourages us to do likewise.

Anyway, as I said, there is this fourteenth century family of Swedish peasants headed by Töre (Max von Sydow).  His daughter is Karin, who is a blonde virgin.  Well, her body may be pure, but her soul is not.  She is lazy, vain, and spoiled, smug in the fact that she is so cute and adorable that she can do as she pleases.  She has a foster sister, Ingeri, who is a brunette, a bastard soon to give birth to a bastard of her own.  The two of them set out for church to do something or other, and on the way it turns out that the other night Karin was flirting with the man that got Ingeri pregnant.  Though there is no hope that he will marry Ingeri, yet Karin’s dalliance with him infuriates Ingeri.  Just to rub it in, Karin taunts Ingeri for no longer being a virgin, while gloating over the way she will someday be married in all her virginal purity.

They get separated, and soon after Karin comes upon three goat herders that rape and murder her.  The men strip her body of her beautiful clothes.  Later, they ask for lodging at Töre’s house, not realizing he is Karin’s father.  That night, they present Karin’s clothing to her mother as a gift, saying it belonged to their sister.  She tells Töre about it.  He asks Ingeri what she knows, and she admits that she witnessed the rape and murder and feels guilty because she wanted Karin to get her comeuppance.  Töre then murders the three goat herders, one of whom was just a boy, who had nothing to do with what happened to Karin.  Then Töre feels guilty for having committed murder.  The whole family goes out to where Karin’s body lies dead.  When they find her, Töre raises the ancient problem of evil, asking why God let this happen and then let him commit murder, while at the same time saying that he begs God’s forgiveness.

Now, this is what I was talking about.  Are we supposed to approve of Töre’s attitude or should we be disgusted?  I mean, I’m disgusted.  In fact, it is even a little disgusting that he had to wait until his daughter was raped and murdered before questioning how an all-powerful, loving God could let this happen.  After all, God has been standing by and letting girls get raped and murdered for centuries, and it is only now, when his daughter is a victim, that he takes exception to God’s indifference.

It gets worse.  Töre promises to build a church on the spot where Karin died, in hopes of being worthy of God’s forgiveness.  Then, when they lift up her body, water begins to gush from the ground where she lay, becoming a spring.  The family treats the water as if it is a miracle, a replenishing gift from God.  That’s right.  Karin’s rape and murder have been worth it, because now we are going to get a church with a little spring nearby.  Perhaps I should point out that there is no shortage of water in that area, the family having crossed a large stream on their way to get to Karin, so it is not as though the spring will bring needed water to a parched region.  It’s just more water.

Here we go again.  I don’t know whether we are supposed to regard that spring as a real miracle or not.  If it is a miracle, then we have to wonder:  as long as God was willing to perform a miracle, why didn’t he miraculously save Karin instead?  If it is not a miracle, are we supposed to despise or admire the family for thinking it is one?

I give up.  I’ll have to let someone who actually believes in God tell me what I am supposed to make of this movie.

Greedy Geezer Logic

One of the issues that have surfaced in this presidential election cycle is that of the advantages or disadvantages of free trade versus protectionism.  And so it was that a friend of mine and I found ourselves debating the issue.  As an unabashed protectionist, who has been opposed to all these free trade deals starting with NAFTA, I said that I wanted tariffs that will encourage more goods to be manufactured here in the United States, in part because I think it is better if we are self-sufficient in this regard and in part because it will mean better paying manufacturing jobs for the American worker.  And if it be argued that much of that manufacturing would be done with robots, then let them be our robots.

My friend, on the other hand, believes in free trade.  He argues that higher tariffs will result in higher prices, so that any increase in wages will be offset by the increase in prices.  Furthermore, he points out, whereas the increased wages will be taxed, thereby reducing the dollar amount received by the worker, the increased prices will be subject to sales taxes, thereby increasing the amount paid out by that same worker.  Therefore, he concludes, the American worker will be worse off without free trade.

Each of us being unable to persuade the other, we soon moved on to other topics.  It was only later, however, that it occurred to me that as both of us are retired, we would both be better off with free trade.  That is to say, even if I were right and the American worker would make more money in wages than he would have to pay out for the stuff he buys, affording him a higher standard of living, I, my friend, and anyone else that is retired would be worse off.  No longer working, we would not benefit from the higher wages, but we would definitely suffer from the increased prices.

Now, I could tell you that notwithstanding this consideration I remain a protectionist owing to the fact that I am high-minded and care more about what is good for this country in general than my own narrow self-interest.  However, the truth of the matter is that my advocacy of protectionism was more the result of a lifetime of working for wages, creating a strong affinity between me and the American worker in general, but that from the moment this evil thought entered my head that without free trade I would have to pay higher prices without any offset from higher wages, the idea of protectionism has been losing its appeal.

What is true about goods is also true about services.  Lower labor costs mean that I will have to pay less for services provided to me.  At the same time, as someone who is retired, I do not suffer from being paid less for the services I might have had to provide were I still a part of that labor force.  And thus it is that while I, along with so many others, suffered from the decline in real income during the years that I was working, now that I am retired, such declines in real income on the part of the American worker will only be to my benefit.  In fact, if I were a cad, I would be hoping there will be even more such declines in real wages in the years to come.  But I am not a cad.  At least, not too much of one.

Inasmuch as the demographic trend is for an increasingly older population, self-interested calculations of retirees will tend to play an even greater role in the future.  That is to say, as the population ages, there will be more political pressure in favor of free trade over protectionism owing to the fact that retired people will receive all the advantages of lower prices without suffering the disadvantages of lower wages.  Add to this the fact that older people are more likely to vote than younger people, and the demographic effect will only be intensified.  Moreover, this reasoning concerning the asymmetrical considerations of prices and wages for those of us that are retired is not restricted to just the question of free trade and protectionism.  It also has implications elsewhere.

Consider the matter of illegal immigration.  One of the arguments for putting a stop to illegal immigration is that it takes jobs away from American workers and forces those Americans that keep their jobs to work for less as a result of having to compete with this cheap labor pool.  On the other hand, these illegal immigrants provide goods and services at a cost much less than would have to be paid if American workers had those jobs.  Once again, for the American worker, there is the symmetrical tradeoff of wages and prices, while for the retired American, there is the asymmetrical consideration of prices only.  As a result, as the number of retired people increases, there will tend to be increased political pressure favoring de facto open borders.  However, unlike the issue of free trade, prices and wages are not the only consideration when it comes to illegal immigration, so this is not a pure case.

We have not heard anything about replacing the income tax with a value added tax in this presidential election cycle, and if the above considerations are valid, we are not likely to hear much about it in the future.  While some retirees are well-off enough to have to pay income taxes, most do not.  As a result, retirees would look with disfavor on any plan that would eliminate a tax they no longer have to pay anyway and replace it with a tax resulting in higher prices on the things they still have to buy.

What we do hear about, however, from a candidate that might just become the Republican nominee if the Stop Trump movement is successful, to wit, Ted Cruz, is a tax plan that is equally unlikely to be regarded by retirees with much enthusiasm.  Without going into all the details of his plan which may be perused here, he wants to significantly cut income taxes.  But, as noted above, paying income taxes is not a major concern for most retirees.  On the other hand, Cruz also wants to reduce the COLA for Security by a percentage point because he believes the CPI overstates inflation by that much.  So, if the CPI says we had 3% inflation, the amount of one’s Social Security check would increase by only 2%.  Needless to say, a retiree with, say, a twenty-year life expectancy would regard such a change in the law with alarm.

Not only are Ted Cruz’s proposals likely to become ever more unpopular as the number of retirees increases (assuming he doesn’t get elected and push it through Congress in 2017), there is likely to be a shift to a very different kind of entitlement reform in the future.  While Republicans have been boldly talking about cutting Social Security in one way or another (reducing the COLA, means testing, raising the retirement age, privatizing), Democrats have been sneaking up on the idea of lifting the cap on the payroll tax as a way of putting Social Security in the black.  I predict that as the number of retirees increases, Republicans will begin to lose their nerve while Democrats will gradually become emboldened.  In short, the solution that logic has called for but politics has forbidden is that of not merely lifting the cap, but of raising the payroll tax itself.  The taboo of raising the payroll tax will diminish in the years to come inasmuch as it is a tax retirees will not have to pay.  They will get all the benefits of a secure Social Security check without any of the costs.

Given my argument that the self-interest of the increasingly large retirement population will mean more political pressure in favor of free trade, open borders, and higher taxes, some might say that I am playing right into the stereotype of the greedy geezer popularized by Alan Simpson.  Well, in the words of Gordon Gekko, “Greed is good.”

Crimson Peak (2015)

How does a movie like Crimson Peak come to be produced?  Well, I cannot say that I actually have inside knowledge of this movie in particular, but over many years of watching movies, I have noticed that a lot of plots seem to be getting more convoluted.  Perhaps it was feared by certain authors that a simple story that might have satisfied audiences in the early part of the twentieth century would have been regarded as too thin by mid-century, requiring additional elements and twists.  But even these more complicated stories may have been thought boring and repetitious as the years wore on, requiring even more stuff to be added.  Not all movies have suffered from this trend, fortunately.  It is still possible to tell a simple story well.  But for some authors, this process of accretion, by which an originally simple plot is given more and more elements until it is bloated with material, continues unabated to this day.  An especially egregious example of this  is Crimson Peak. And so, although I have no specific knowledge of how this movie came about, I suspect it might have happened something like this:

Scriptwriter:  “I have an idea for a story.  An American woman named Edith Cushing, who has a lot of money, marries Thomas Sharpe, a man from England with a title.  But when she gets to England, she finds that Crimson Peak, the house he owns, is a ruin with a gaping hole in the ceiling that lets in the snow and the rain as well as lots of moths.  There are certain parts of the house she has to avoid because of the danger of a collapse.  Furthermore, her husband is a loser, a would-be inventor who spends his time fruitlessly trying to make a machine that will allow him to extract the red clay from the earth in hopes of making enough money to restore Crimson Peak to its former glory.  In the meantime, she must struggle trying to live in a house that in America would have been condemned years ago.”

Producer:  “Is that it?  That might have been story enough for the Brontë sisters, but that’s not enough for today’s audience.”

Scriptwriter:  “All right.  The man has a sister named Lucille, who lives there too, and she is overbearing and hostile to Edith.”

Producer:  “Yawn.”

Scriptwriter:  “How about this?  Thomas and Lucille are not really brother and sister.  Actually, they are married, and they have schemed to get their hands on Edith’s money by way of a phony marriage to her.”

Producer:  “That’s better.  But there is no need to get rid of the brother-sister relationship.  That way the marriage between Thomas and Lucille will be incestuous.  Juicy!  Still, you can’t just leave it at that.  We need more.”

Scriptwriter:  “I know.  Their mother found out that Thomas and Lucille were having sex when they were children.  When she tried to stop it, they murdered her.”

Producer:  “Good.  Matricide is a nice touch.  But why stop there?  Let’s have a bunch more murders.”

Scriptwriter:  “Uh, Lucille murdered Edith’s father, who objected to the marriage.  Moreover, Thomas has been married to several other rich women before, all of whom were murdered once he and Lucille got their hands on their money.  And now they are planning to murder Edith by slowly poisoning her.  And Edith’s friend in America, Dr. Alan McMichael, has gotten wind of all this and has come to England to save her.  He and Edith are almost killed, but they get the better of Thomas and Lucille, who are dead by the end of the movie.  Edith and Alan live happily ever after.”

Producer:  “Now we are getting somewhere.  If this were still the late twentieth century, we would finally have enough for a movie.  But something is missing.  I can feel it.  Maybe if we added a plot element that required some special effects, that would get this story on its feet.”

Scriptwriter:  “I’ve got it!  We’ll put ghosts in this story.  Edith’s dead mother can warn her about Crimson Peak.  And the ghosts of some of the other people that died along the way can be added in.”

Producer:  “Ah.  That’s nice.  But there is just one thing that still worries me.  A lot of people don’t believe in ghosts.  They might regard that part of the movie as just so much silly superstition.”

Scriptwriter:  “No problem.  We’ll have Edith be an aspiring author when the movie begins, of whom it is said that she doesn’t write ghost stories, but rather she writes stories that have ghosts in them, as if to say they are not really that important.  And this will apply to the very that movie people are watching.  If they don’t believe in ghosts, they can just disregard them.

Producer:  That’s a little like saying a movie is not a Godzilla movie, but a movie that has Godzilla in it.

Scriptwriter:  Well, she can also declare that the ghosts in her stories are just a metaphor, which means the ghosts in this story are just a metaphor.”

Producer:  “A metaphor for what?”

Scriptwriter:  “Who cares?  Just as long as it flatters the intelligence of the audience.”

Philadelphia (1993)

In the movie Philadelphia, Andrew Beckett (Tom Hanks) is a lawyer with a prestigious law firm.  In the opening scene, he successfully defends a client against what he calls a “nuisance suit,” as “an example of rapacious litigation.”  And so, if you did not know anything about this movie beforehand, you would correctly suspect that before the show is over, he will be bringing suit against someone himself.  And when he does, the lawyer whom he accused of bringing a frivolous lawsuit against his client, ambulance chaser Joe Miller (Denzel Washington), ends up being his attorney.  In particular, the partners of the law firm he worked for say that they fired Beckett for incompetence, but Beckett claims they fired him because he had AIDS, which he concealed from the partners in addition to concealing the fact that he was gay.  Beckett explains during the trial that he decided not to tell the partners he was gay when he heard them telling crude jokes about homosexuals.  Those who produced this movie made sure that the jokes were not funny, lest we get confused and start sympathizing with the partners.  Actually, the movie never makes it clear exactly what happened regarding Beckett’s firing.  Beckett believes that someone figured out he had AIDS and sabotaged his work in order to justify dismissing him for incompetence, but we never find out for sure.

This movie is contemporaneously set in the early 1990s.  It was a transitional period.  During the 1980s, when AIDS was first identified, there was no treatment.  I remember seeing a lot of people whose bodies were ravaged by that disease.  The sight of them filled one with pity and dread (we see examples of such at the clinic where Beckett goes to have his blood monitored).  The dread was especially acute, because at the time, no one knew how contagious it was or what the vectors of transmission were.  Was it airborne?  Could it be transmitted by mosquitoes?  We knew that blood and semen could transmit the disease, but we also wondered about saliva and sweat.  By the 1990s, however, research had pretty much established that AIDS was caused by HIV and that blood transfusions, dirty needles used by drug addicts, and unprotected sex, especially between two men, were the primary methods of transmission.  Today, we seldom hear the word AIDS.  Instead, we speak mostly of HIV, because treatment has advanced to the point that we no longer see those pitiful victims that looked like the walking dead.

And so, the aversion to touching or being around AIDS victims, a perfectly rational fear in the early 1980s, came to be regarded as manifestations of ignorance and bigotry by the 1990s.  If someone was known to have AIDS, it became almost obligatory to hug him, as a way of demonstrating that one was enlightened on the subject.  And so, throughout this movie, we see Beckett being hugged on numerous occasions, more than you would normally see in a movie.  And we see other people trying to put distance between themselves and Beckett, whom we are supposed to regard as wrongheaded, if not morally bankrupt.

Before taking Beckett’s case, Miller asks a doctor about AIDS.  When the doctor assures him that HIV cannot be spread by casual contact, Miller is skeptical, pointing out that we are still learning new things about the disease every day.  Actually, this is a good point, though the movie allows it to die with this scene.  If even today someone did not want to hug someone with AIDS, just in case doctors turn out to be wrong, I would not blame him.  But the movie would.

In fact, the movie is completely one-sided in this matter.  Beckett is almost righteous in his disregard for people’s fears.  There is a scene in a library where a librarian, realizing he has AIDS, suggests that he move to a private room to continue his research, but Beckett refuses.  People in the immediate vicinity begin moving away.  In another scene, when he tells his family about his plans to sue, he is holding a baby, feeding it with a bottle.  The mother offers to take the baby back, and we suspect she is nervous but too polite to insist.  Beckett seems oblivious to the possibility that she might be worried and continues to feed the baby.

Even if the people in the library and the mother of the baby are being foolish in their fears, that does not mean that Beckett is in the right to refuse to accommodate them.  For example, my mother was a little superstitious, and she used to think it was bad luck to put money on the table.  As a result, I never put money on the table in her presence, even if she was visiting me in my apartment and it was my table.  Despite the fact that she was the one who was foolish and I was the one who was rational, it would have been rude of me to plop some money down on the table.  By the same token, no matter how irrational people’s fears of contracting AIDS through casual contact may be, Beckett should have been sensitive to those fears and allowed people the distance they needed to feel comfortable.  But this movie does not recognize any such obligation on Beckett’s part.

The issue of the case was whether the law firm illegally fired Beckett because he had AIDS or was fired because of incompetence, which would have been legal.  Therefore, the question of how he contracted the disease was irrelevant.  Nevertheless, we are not surprised that the question arises as to Beckett’s behavior, whether he contracted AIDS through reckless actions on his part.  A woman who had once worked for the partner who first noticed Beckett’s lesion is brought on the stand to testify on the part of the plaintiff (Beckett).  She had had AIDS too, but she told her employers.  The point is that the partner would have realized what the lesion meant from his experience with her, in which case knowledge that Beckett had the disease by at least one of the partners would be established, a necessary condition of proving that that was the real reason for Beckett’s firing.

Under cross examination, it turns out that she contracted the disease when she was given a transfusion after giving birth.  In other words, she got AIDS through no fault of her own.  That the occasion was when she had a baby even associates the event with motherhood.  You couldn’t want a more saintly innocent victim than that.  So, we know what is coming:  the old blame-the-victim strategy.  Sure enough, when Beckett gets on the stand, he is asked about whether he had ever been to the Stallion Showcase Cinema, a gay pornographic movie theater where men in the audience sometimes have sex with each other.  Beckett admits to having been to the theater three times in 1984 or 1985, and that he had sex with a man in the theater one time.  He also admits that he knew about AIDS at the time and that his actions could have endangered Miguel Alvarez (Antonio Banderas), the man he was living with at the time and still is.  The point of the defense is that Beckett is not an innocent victim, but someone who contracted the disease in rather seedy circumstances in full knowledge of the danger to himself and his lover.

Of course, the attitude of the movie is that it is wrong to blame the victim, but let us note that the movie also lacks the courage of its convictions.  It establishes that Beckett was and still is in a monogamous relationship, as it were, and that he just had a moral lapse one night.  In other words, the movie did not have the courage to make Beckett a man given to promiscuity, a “degenerate” who had had anonymous sex on innumerable occasions in movie theaters and restrooms for over a decade.  That would really have tested us.  Instead, the movie is saying that it is wrong to blame the victim, especially when the victim, while not being totally innocent like the woman who had a transfusion, is almost innocent.

After much testimony from various witnesses, the case is turned over to the jury for deliberations, if you can call it that.  All we hear is one man, presumably the foreman, telling the other jurors that the case for the defense does not make sense.  That’s it.  No one has a dissenting view.  In fact, no one else says anything, except to mumble agreement.  The closest thing we get to a dissent is when the jurors are being asked one by one how they stand on the issue, and juror number ten says, “I disagree.”  This is not supposed to be a jury movie, of course, like Twelve Angry Men (1957), where an Ed Begley character could express bigotry toward homosexuals or where a Lee J. Cobb character could reveal that his prejudice stemmed from the fact that his son was gay, before finally coming around to the proper verdict.  But surely they could have done better than what we got in this movie.  Alternatively, if time simply did not permit, it would have better to leave out the jury-deliberation scene altogether.  Needless to say, the jury finds in favor of the plaintiff, as if any other verdict in this movie was remotely possible.

Midway through the trial, Miller comes over to Beckett’s place to go over the testimony Beckett will be giving on Monday.  Instead, Beckett wants to talk about the opera music that he has playing.  Like most people, including me, Miller does not much care for opera.  Beckett explains what the opera is about and what emotions are being expressed through the singing.  The intensity of his performance is bizarre.  I don’t know.  Maybe if you are dying from a dreadful disease, you can get a little more worked up about things than the one normally would, but it all seems to be a bit much.  While his overwrought description of the aria was going on, I could not help but think of the movie Pretty Woman (1990).  In that movie, Julia Roberts plays a streetwalker who ends up being the girlfriend of a corporate raider played by Richard Gere.  He takes her to see an opera, presumably the first one she has ever been to, and we see her crying during a particularly moving scene.  In other words, in both movies, a major character practices a form of sex that many regard as deviant and likely to spread disease.  And in both movies, these characters are deeply moved by an opera, as if to say they have such great souls that they can appreciate art in its highest form with a passion that we philistines can scarcely imagine.  It just wouldn’t have been the same if Beckett had been listening to N.W.A., explaining to his lawyer with great emotion, “And here is the part where he gets his sawed off shotgun and they have to haul off all the bodies.”

Lifeboat (1944)

Lifeboat is a movie made during World War II, directed by Alfred Hitchcock.  It begins with a freighter that was on its way from America to England, having been sunk by a German U-boat.  The captain of the U-boat gave orders to fire upon the lifeboats, after which the U-boat itself is sunk.  One lifeboat manages to survive, and one by one it is populated by British and Americans of all walks of life. Finally, Willi (Walter Slezak), a German, is pulled aboard.  Some, such as a John Kovac (John Hodiak), who worked in the engine room, want to throw the German overboard, while columnist Connie Porter (Tallulah Bankhead), radioman Stanley “Sparks” Garrett (Hume Cronyn), and industrialist Charles Rittenhouse (Henry Hull) (i.e., a woman and two weak men, appeasers all) argue successfully that they should let the German stay.

As the movie progresses, we see that while the British and Americans share what they have with the German, he conceals from them that he has a flask of water, some food and energy tablets, and a compass, by which he tries to steer them away from Bermuda and toward an area of the ocean occupied by German ships.  He further conceals that he was the captain of the U-boat.

Of particular interest is Gus Smith (William Bendix), who has been wounded in the leg. When we find out that he loves to dance, we know right then his leg is doomed.  Sure enough, it becomes gangrenous.  As it turns out, Willi was a surgeon before the war and says that he can amputate.  We get the sense that he enjoys the idea of removing Gus’s leg, much like the sadistic doctor in King’s Row (1942), who unnecessarily amputates the legs of Ronald Reagan.  Gus does not want to have his leg removed, saying he’d rather die than live with one leg, because he is afraid that he will lose Rosie, the girl back home whom he loves.  He fears that she might not want to marry him if he comes back without one of his legs, especially since she loves to dance as much as Gus does.  To make matters worse, Gus has a rival, Al Magaroulian, whom Rosie used to date, and who is also a good dancer, even though fallen arches have kept him out of the war.  Gus is afraid Rosie will go back to Al if he has his leg removed.  But eventually he relents, and Willi performs the surgery with no better anesthetic than brandy.

Later in the movie, while everyone is sleeping lethargically from dehydration, Gus catches Willi sipping a drink of water from his flask.  To keep Gus from telling the others about the water, Willi pushes him overboard.  When the others awaken from hearing Gus’s cries for help, they realize Gus has drowned, and they ask Willi why he didn’t do something.  Willi does not, of course, tell them that he pushed Gus overboard to keep him from talking.  Instead, he tells them that Gus voluntarily jumped overboard, and that he thought it would be best not to do anything about it:

You can’t imagine how painful it was to me.  All night long, to watch him turning and suffering and nothing I could do for him….  The best way to help him was to let him go.  I had no right to stop him, even if I wanted to.  A poor cripple dying of hunger and thirst. What good could life be to a man like that?

It probably didn’t help that earlier in the movie, when the passengers in the lifeboat were voting on whether to throw Willi overboard, he heard Gus vote to toss him into the ocean.

Then the other passengers find out about the water and food that Willi has been concealing.  They attack Willi, both the men and the women, forcing him overboard and to his death.  But one person does not take part in the attack.  It is Joe “Charcoal” Spencer (Canada Lee), an African American.  The idea seems to be that killing Willi is essentially a lynching, something that Joe would be sensitive about and find repugnant. He even tries to stop the nurse, Alice MacKenzie (Mary Anderson), from participating in the killing, though she breaks away from him.

More likely, the true motivation was external to the film, in that those who made the movie were afraid that theaters in the South would have refused to show a movie in which a black man takes part in the killing of a white man, even if that white man is a Nazi.  In fact, earlier in the movie, when they were voting on whether to throw Willi overboard, Rittenhouse asks Joe how he wants to vote. Joe asks, “Do I get to vote too?” When told that he does, he says, “Guess I’d rather stay out of this.” This too was probably to placate the South, which would have bristled at seeing Joe get to vote right alongside white people.  Instead, southern audiences were undoubtedly pleased to see that this Negro knew his place.

One of the women brought aboard the lifeboat has a baby that drowned.  Eventually, they decide to give the baby a burial at sea. The passengers know that a prayer is in order, but are not sure which one. Rittenhouse says that any prayer will do, and he begins saying Psalm 23, the one that begins, “The Lord is my shepherd….”  However, Rittenhouse begins to falter after a couple of lines. But then Joe picks up where he left off, for he knows the entire thing by heart, and finishes it reverently.  One might suppose that the movie is depicting this as something admirable, but it is actually condescending.  African Americans in the old movies were always allowed to be more religious than white people, not because they were better than white people, morally speaking, but because their lesser intelligence made it possible for them to embrace their simple beliefs with an unquestioning faith.  In movies like The Green Pastures (1936) and Imitation of Life (1934 and 1959), it is clear that their religious notions are naïve and childlike, something white people approve of in black folks with an affectionate smile, but would be incapable of taking seriously themselves.

After they kill Willi, they realize that he was the only one who knew enough and had strength enough to row them to safety. Rittenhouse says, “When we killed the German, we killed our motor.”  But Joe says, “We still got a motor,” as he looks up toward the heavens.  Rittenhouse is dismissive when he realizes Joe is talking about God.  Here again, religion enters the movie through an acceptable vehicle, through a black man, while the white people remain skeptical, thereby retaining their dignity.  All this is a prejudice of the movies I’m talking about here, not necessarily how things were in real life.

Joe is only one of two people on the boat that is married, the other being Mrs. Higley (Heather Angel), the woman with the dead baby. That leaves the way open for romantic possibilities.  Sparks ends up proposing to Alice, who had been having an affair with a married man and was miserable on account of it.  She accepts his proposal.  Kovac seems to be angry at the world, especially at Rittenhouse, who is a capitalist, while Kovac is a prole.  And he resents the fact that Connie is high class.  Little by little, she loses the symbols of her wealth, her mink and her diamond bracelet, for example.  As a woman stripped of such adornments, she might be suitable for Kovac.  Finally, it turns out that she is from the same side of the tracks as Kovac.  She uses her lipstick to put her initials on his chest, right alongside all the other initials of women tattooed on his torso.  We wish Sparks and Alice happiness with their marriage.  As for Kovac and Connie, they’d better just make it a fling.

Eventually, there is another sea battle, and it becomes clear that they will soon be picked up by an Allied ship, but not before they pull another German aboard who proves to be just as bad as Willi, though he is weak and soon overpowered, leaving the survivors to wonder, “What are you going to do with people like that?”

Yes, Nazis are evil, but are we all that good?  Consider Willi’s justification for letting Gus drown.  The lie that Willi thinks will be an acceptable justification for “allowing” Gus to drown is actually repugnant to the other survivors, who listen to his words in horror. And we who watch this movie are likewise repulsed by Willi’s callous remarks.  But now let us ask ourselves why those who made this movie (John Steinbeck, Jo Swerling, and Alfred Hitchcock) put this into the story.  We already knew Willi was evil before he killed Gus. When Mrs. Higley tells Willi he killed her baby when he ordered the lifeboats to be fired upon, Willi is so bored that he yawns and lies down to get some sleep.  She becomes so distraught that she drowns herself. But if a murder on the lifeboat was needed to really drive home the point that Willi was evil, it was not Gus that had to be killed.  It could have been Connie who saw Willi sneaking a sip of water.  When she confronts him, he snaps her neck and dumps her overboard.  That would certainly make it clear that Willi was evil!  But I suspect people would have hated that movie.

The point is that those who made this movie had a special reason for killing Gus off beyond making it clear that Willi was evil, which was overdetermined in any event. They did it to make those in the audience feel better, believing that the audience would have been uneasy if the movie had ended with Gus still alive in that lifeboat.  (It is for a similar reason that the mother with the dead baby had to commit suicide, because it would have been depressing to still have her alive at the end of the movie too.)  Sure, Rosie might not have cared about Gus’s leg, marrying him anyway because she truly loved him.  In a movie like The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), Hollywood could make sure that things would turn out that way.  In that movie, Cathy O’Donnell marries Harold Russell, despite the fact that both of his forearms have been replaced by prostheses, and despite the fact that her parents wanted her to break off the engagement.  But in real life, we know things do not always work out that way.  Rosie and Gus were not even engaged.  Instead of being like O’Donnell, Rosie might have tried to put a good face on the situation for a couple of months and then broken up with Gus and gone back to Al Magaroulian.  Since this movie is limited to what happens in and about that lifeboat, Hollywood could not guarantee a happy ending for Gus and Rosie, leaving the audience with dark forebodings as to what will happen when Gus gets back home.

Furthermore, the movie even indicates that Rosie will not remain true to Gus.  When Kovac and Connie try to convince Gus he needs to have his leg amputated, he refuses, saying he doesn’t want to live with just one leg.  (In a way, he is in agreement with Willi.)  Connie gives Gus a long, sentimental talk about how women are, how Rosie would be heartbroken to find that Gus allowed himself to die because he didn’t have faith in her.  Gus finally seems persuaded, but Connie turns away, saying, sotto voce, “God forgive me.”  By this we are to understand that she knows Rosie will not stick with Gus, and we know we are supposed to agree with her assessment.

And so, rather than leave the audience suspecting that Rosie would desert Gus, which would have been depressing, those who made this movie killed Gus off, allowing the audience to leave the theater feeling much better about the movie than if Gus had lived.  You might even say that Gus’s death was necessary for there to be a happy ending.  But does that not imply that those who made this movie were essentially in agreement with Willi when he asked, “What good could life be to a man like that?”  If they were right in their assessment of the audience’s reaction to an ending in which Gus is still alive, then does that not imply that the audience at that time felt the way Willi did?  Of course, there is a big difference between saying a man is better off dead and saying that the death of that man made the story better.  But both stem from the same sentiment.

And so, just as the audience gets the consolation of religion through Joe, while not being guilty of indulging in his silly superstitions, so too does the audience get the benefit of evil through Willi, while not being guilty of consciously wanting it.