Author Archives: disinterested spectator

M (1931 and 1951)

In the original version of M made in 1931, as well as in the remake of 1951, a city is plagued by a man, played by Peter Lorre, who is killing children.  The police become so relentless in their pursuit of the killer that the ordinary way of life of the criminal underclass becomes disrupted.  As a result, the criminals take matters into their own hands, capture the child killer, and have a trial of sorts, during which he tells everyone that he is compulsively driven to do what he does.  Before the mob can do anything to him, the police show up and take him away.

In the 1931 movie, it is never explicitly stated that the children are sexually molested, but it is implied, and in any event, we would automatically assume as much anyway.  In the remake, however, the movie goes out of its way to make it clear that the children are not molested.  While a crowd watches the chief of police on television warning parents about the child killer, played by David Wayne, someone in the crowd asks, “What’s he mean the children were neither violated nor outraged?”  Someone else in the crowd responds, “What’s the difference?  He killed them, didn’t he?”

Well, it may not make any difference to the people in the crowd, but I should think it would have been better for the children if they were simply murdered than if they first raped and then murdered.  More importantly, it must have made a difference to the Production Code Administration.  It was not sufficient merely to omit all reference to sexual molestation.  It had to be explicitly denied.  At the same time, all of the killer’s victims are little girls, which would indicate a sexual preference.  Presumably, just in case the audience refused to believe sex was not involved, the producers went the extra step to avoid any hint of homosexuality.  (In the original, on the other hand, one of Lorre’s victims is a little boy.)  The killer takes the shoes of his victims, which suggests a fetish, which in turn suggests a sexual perversion.  Furthermore, in one scene, a man and wife are informed that their child has been a victim.  As they start to leave, the woman turns around in desperation and says that maybe it is a mistake, that the child is someone else’s.  We can only conclude from this that there was no body in the morgue for them to identify, that the police were only going by the doll and the girl’s dress, which are on the chief’s desk.  He holds up the dress for her to look at, which she recognizes as belonging to her daughter.  From this we can only conclude one thing:  the killer took off the girl’s clothes, and her naked body is yet to be found.  Still, we are supposed to believe that sex is not the motive for these murders.  Censorship can be confusing.

It goes without saying that the original was much better, and one way in which it was better is that the killer simply had an evil impulse that he did not understand.  In the remake, owing to the popularity of psychoanalysis at the time, we are given an explanation for the killer’s behavior as resulting from something that happened when he was a child.  As a harbinger of that explanation, we see him strangling a clay model of a child, with a picture of his elderly mother sitting right beside him, almost as if she were watching him do it.  At the end, when the child killer is surrounded by the underworld figures that captured him, he gives a garbled explanation about how his father mistreated his mother, and how she raised him to believe that all men are evil.  As a result, he reasons that since he is a man, then he is evil and deserves punishment.  So, he has to kill little girls, partly to keep them from growing up and being mistreated by evil men, and partly so he will get caught and get the punishment he deserves.  The explanation comes across as artificial, unsatisfying, and unbelievable. Fortunately, we are not told why he took the girls’ shoes, which would only have made the explanation even more tortured.  The remake was destined to be inferior to the original, but it would still have been a lot better movie had all that psychobabble at the end been left out.

Soylent Green (1973)

From a 1973 perspective, when Soylent Green was made, this movie imagines the world in 2022, where the temperature is stifling owing to the greenhouse effect, eventually to be called global warming, and presently climate change.  Overpopulation has reached critical proportions, there being forty million people in New York City alone, most of whom are in filthy rags, sleeping in the street.  Only the very rich and well-connected eat what for us is ordinary food, while the vast majority must eat crackers of different colors indicating their quality, with green being the most desirable because it is the most nutritious.  Even water is rationed.  And electric power is unreliable.

Detective Thorn (Charlton Heston) shares an apartment with his assistant Sol (Edward G. Robinson), referred to as a “book,” on account of his ability to do research on old written material.  We see Thorn having to struggle to use the steps to their apartment because there are so many people sleeping on the stairs.  Later, when a riot starts because there is a shortage of Soylent Green wafers, we see dump trucks called “scoops” being used to remove people from the streets.

Sol helps Thorn investigate murders.  One murder in particular is that of Simonson (Joseph Cotton), one of the privileged few referred to above, living as he does in a luxury apartment.  We witness the murder, in which Simonson is resigned to his fate, even suggesting that he deserves it, that it is in accordance with the will of God.

Before the murder, we saw that Simonson lived with a woman named Shirl (Leigh Taylor-Young), referred to as “furniture,” essentially a prostitute who comes with the apartment.  Thorn checks Shirl for bruises, to see if Simonson used to knock her around.  When he doesn’t find any bruises, he tells her she was a lucky girl.  We see other women being beaten in this movie as well.

When Thorn investigates the crime scenes of rich victims, he typically loots the place, but this time he really scores, taking items of food like beef, vegetables, and liquor.  He also helps himself to the “furniture,” having sex with Shirl without caring whether she wants to or not.  Of course, it’s Charlton Heston, so naturally she likes it. However, we find that the new tenant that will soon be moving into that apartment is repulsive, telling Shirl that he will be having friends come over, and he expects her to be “fun.”  Gulp.

Thorn figures out that Simonson was assassinated, and when he gets too close to the truth, political pressure is applied to get him to end the investigation.  When that doesn’t work, he almost is assassinated himself.

Thorn brings some reference books from Simonson’s apartment for Sol to look into.  From them he learns that Simonson was on the board of Soylent Corporation.  He also learns a terrible secret, the one that led to Simonson’s murder, and he decides to end it all by going to an assisted-suicide center, where he gets to look at scenes of nature as it once was and listen to beautiful music for twenty minutes before dying from some concoction he imbibed.  Just before he dies, he tells Thorn that the plankton used to make Soylent Green is disappearing from the oceans.  As a substitute for the loss of plankton, people that die are secretly processed and turned into the Soylent Green wafers.

For the purpose of this movie, we need to set aside the fact that cannibalism can lead to the transmission of abnormal prions, causing serious neurological disease.  The movie gives no indication of any awareness of this, and audiences watching this movie at the time were doubtless unaware of it as well.  Within this movie, the entire of objection to Soylent Green wafers being made out of people is that the idea is icky.

If disease is not a consideration, then in a world that is overpopulated and in which there is a food shortage, turning people into food is rational.  After all, we are not talking about the kind of cannibalism where we have a bunch of savages standing around a pot with a missionary in it.  The people being turned into food either died naturally or, in the case of assisted suicide, voluntarily.  So, the worst you can say about this form of cannibalism is that the idea of eating people makes us feel queasy.

Neither Simonson’s acquiescence in his own murder nor Sol’s suicide would seem to be warranted, if that’s all there is to it.  However, I have heard of people dying of starvation, even though surrounded by food, when that food is regarded as unpalatable.  For example, I guess one could survive on a cockroach diet, but it would not be easy to pick one up and stick it in your mouth.  On the other hand, if the cockroaches were used to make wafers, then with the proper seasoning they might suffice, especially if the government lied and said they were made out of grasshoppers.

Therefore, in an apparent effort to make this form of cannibalism insidious instead of just repulsive, the scriptwriters have Thorn tell his supervisor, “They’re making our food out of people.  Next thing, they’ll be breeding us like cattle.” Unfortunately, this line, which is supposed to make us even more horrified by what is going on, only makes us groan at its absurdity.

In a world where there are too many people, it makes no sense to breed more.  You just eat the ones you have.

Furthermore, why breed people like cattle instead of just continuing to breed cattle?  Thorn took some beef from Simonson’s apartment, and there is reference in the movie to farms, where cattle are raised.  Why divert resources from cattle breeding in order to breed people instead?

Finally, you would have to feed people more protein to raise them than you would get out of them once you brought them to slaughter.  To put it differently, any person being bred as food would have to be fed the equivalent of several other people over his lifetime.

Because this idea of breeding people is illogical, throwing it in at the last minute undermines this pessimistic vision of the future.

The Final Judgment of Atheism

The unacknowledged but implicit standard about the true and the good belongs to us atheists. All statements about physical reality and moral worth must meet with our approval.  And that means we are also the ultimate arbiters as to what counts as acceptable in matters of religion.

Now, what would most meet with our approval would be if there were no religion at all, but being atheists, we are nothing if not realistic.  Not everyone can live knowing that there is no God that watches over us and cares about us; knowing that there is no immortal soul, but that death is the end; knowing that there is no such thing as karma, but that the world is full of wicked men who live quite comfortably and will never be punished for the evil that they do; and knowing that suffering has no purpose, that there are countless innocent victims whose pain and misery is meaningless and serves no higher good.  We wish that people did not need to believe in God, the immortal soul, karma, and a purpose for suffering, but they do, and allowances must be made for that.

And because of this almost universal need for religion, it follows that atheists must ever be held in low regard.  We must be thought wrongheaded, if people are to believe in what we deny.  Thus it is that our judgment, not only as to what is true and good, but also as to what counts as an acceptable religion, can never be admitted, however much it may be followed in practice.

A religion is acceptable as long as it never contradicts what atheists believe, apart from the supernatural fluff that may be appended.  For this reason, Republican politicians would probably benefit from having an atheist as an adviser.  Consider the case of Scott Walker, who decided to “punt” when asked about evolution.  On the one hand, Walker knew that to do well in certain primaries, he needed the votes of fundamental Christians.  On the other hand, there is no way that in 2016 this country will elect a president who believes in the literal truth of the Book of Genesis.  Since it is better to risk losing a primary to Mike Huckabee than to guarantee a loss in the general election, he should have asked himself (or his atheist adviser), what kind of answer would satisfy the atheists?  Then, without hesitation, he could have said that he believes in evolution, but that evolution is guided by the hand of God.  As long as he was not specific about exactly what that hand of God did, he would have been fine.

In general, references to God’s interference with world affairs must be kept to a minimum if they are to pass muster with atheists.  As long as it is not overdone, we do not insist that such claims make sense, for we realize that religion cannot be rationalized.  Saying, “There but for the grace of God go I,” for example, is equivalent to saying, “Thank you, God, for not doing to me what you did to him,” but only an atheist would carry out that implication, and such is not to be expected from the religious person who utters that expression of humility.  Also, saying it was a miracle that a baby survived a plane crash is permissible, even though an atheist would wonder what kind of grudge God had against all the other passengers, who died. With magnanimous self-restraint, we atheists tolerate the characterization of this kind of chance event as a miracle, provided it is about something good, in this case, the survival of a baby. Under no circumstances, however, must God’s interference with the world be punitive.  We atheists do not approve of any remarks by religious leaders that such things as September 11 or hurricane Katrina were God’s punishment for America’s iniquity.  And it is through atheist disapproval of such remarks that people of faith can be sure that these disasters were not the acts of a vindictive God.

Just as we atheists will allow for an occasional miracle, but not for acts of punishment on the part of the Deity, so too do we allow for belief in Heaven but not Hell.  It is for that reason that in the typical movie about Jesus, we almost never hear the Son of God talking about people going to Hell for their sins, even though there are several passages in the Bible where he does just that.  Sometimes the relatively harmless expression “gates of Hell” will be heard when Jesus is giving Peter the keys of the kingdom, but in The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965), even that part of the speech is omitted.   (An exception to all this is The Gospel According to St. Matthew (1964), in which Jesus spends half the movie fulminating about all those who are damned to Hell.)

Regarding movies about Jesus, we atheists are always deeply moved when Jesus saves the adulteress by challenging those in the mob to let the one without sin cast the first stone.  That is the atheist’s ideal conception of Jesus, a man of forgiveness.  And so, no Jesus movie would be complete without that scene.  But we do not like it at all when we read those parts in the Bible where Jesus says that it is a sin to get a divorce, and that to marry someone who was divorced is to commit adultery.  That is why we never hear these words coming out of Jesus’s mouth in the movies (not even in the exceptional Gospel According to St. Matthew).

And that means that in the debate between Protestants and Catholics as to whether divorce is a sin, the Protestants are right and the Catholics are wrong.  In like manner, because atheists believe in birth control, it follows that in this matter too, Protestants are right and Catholics are wrong.  This is why the criterion of atheist sanction is so valuable.  Protestants and Catholics, by themselves, can never solve these problems.  The Protestant believes that God agrees with him just as surely as the Catholic believes that he and God are in agreement.  And as God is not forthcoming on these issues in a way that is acceptable to both sides, they cannot be resolved by appealing to the will of God.  But atheists are forthcoming in these matters, and that gives Christians an objective criterion for determining what God really thinks.

And this leads to the question as to whether ISIS represents true Islam or not. Appealing to the imams and other authoritative Muslims gets us nowhere, for they no more have direct access to the will of Allah than do the members of ISIS.  Nor do we get anywhere by taking surveys of the Islamic countries, for such surveys reveal wide support for practices that people of other faiths, such as Christianity, find abhorrent.  As with the disagreements between Protestants and Catholics, disagreements between Christians and Muslims cannot be resolved by appealing to either God or Allah without begging the question.

Fortunately, the issues can be settled by atheists.  ISIS does not represent true Islam because we atheists disapprove of what they are doing.  True Islam, just like true Christianity, must conform to the atheists’ final judgment as to what is right and what is wrong.

It Came from Beneath the Sea (1955)

Faith Domergue had a cold beauty that made her suitable as female scientist, Professor Leslie Joyce, in It Came from Beneath the Sea.  It also helped that she was a brunette.  The stereotype of the cold, hard scientist whose intellect does not allow itself to be swayed by mere sentiment and feeling was especially prevalent in the old science fiction movies, and thus a beautiful female scientist constituted a special challenge for a macho leading man, used to having his way with women.

In this movie, said macho leading man is Commander Pete Mathews, played by Kenneth Tobey.  Tobey already had experience as Captain Patrick Hendry in The Thing from Another World (1951) breaking down the resistance of science assistant Nikki (Margaret Sheridan), who is referred to as a “pinup girl,” so you might think things would be a little easier for him in this film; but then, Faith Domergue also had experience playing the beautiful, cold scientist, Dr. Ruth Adams, resisting the charms of Rex Reason playing Dr. Cal Meacham in This Island Earth (1955), so I guess that made them even.

A lot of old movies are sexist by twenty-first century standards, but science fiction movies from the 1950s, with their inevitable beautiful female scientists, often have a feminist theme in them, pushing back against that sexism.  As a result, the message tends to be mixed, with the movie expressing a sexist attitude one minute and a feminist attitude the next.  For example, in Rocketship X-M (1950), Dr. Lisa Van Horn is a female scientist who is going to be part of a crew on the title spaceship.  Much is made of her qualifications. But then, when it comes time for the astronauts to secure themselves for blastoff, we see that the men can easily strap themselves in, but one of the men has to strap Lisa in.  This strange combination of sexism and feminism is especially flagrant in It Came from Beneath the Sea.

Joyce’s colleague is Dr. John Carter (Donald Curtis).  Other than when first names are being used, he is always addressed as Dr. Carter, never as Mr. Carter, but while Joyce is frequently referred to as Professor Joyce, she is often addressed as Miss Joyce as well, presumably because her status as a nubile maiden takes precedence over her professional qualifications.  They have both been called in to investigate a hunk of mysterious substance that got caught in the diving plane of Mathews’ submarine.  After an initial inspection, however, Joyce is not willing to spend any more time studying the specimen, because she has more important matters needing her attention elsewhere.  In other words, she is just as hard to get as a scientist as she is as a woman.  However, her expertise in marine biology makes her indispensable, and she is forced to continue with the investigation.

Of course, once Mathews has seen what Joyce looks like without her protective radiation suit on, he is especially glad she will be forced to continue on, and he wastes little time making his moves on her.  He wants to know if there is anything going on between her and Carter. “Oh, you mean romance,”  she says, as she picks up a foot-long test tube.  While gently holding this scientific prop with phallic significance, she teases him about the lack of women aboard a submarine, but she refuses to say whether there is anything between her and Carter.  Later, when Joyce definitively determines the nature of the substance, Carter kisses her on the cheek, and then she nestles in his arms as Mathews calls Naval Intelligence.  If they were actually involved romantically, this would not be so strange.  But they are not.  As a result, we once again get that strange mixture of feminism and sexism:  on the one hand, she is the expert in her field and has found the solution; on the other hand, she is a pretty girl that men just naturally kiss and hold in their arms, even when that man is a colleague in a professional setting.

Anyway, the substance turns out to be a piece from a giant octopus.  The octopus has been exposed to a lot of radiation owing to tests of the hydrogen bomb.  Radiation did not make the octopus big as it did the title character in The Amazing Colossal Man (1957) or the ants in Them! (1954), because this octopus has always been big.  However, the fish it was used to eating have natural Geiger counters in them that make them avoid the octopus, forcing it to leave its natural habitat and seek food elsewhere.  It is amazing what lengths these 1950s movies would go to in order to make radiation the cause of whatever monster they had to deal with.

Joyce and Mathews are somewhat contemptuous of each other’s profession.  She says to Mathews, “my mind just isn’t attuned to discuss things on your level, Commander.”  Later, hearing that Joyce and Carter will be meeting in Cairo to investigate the sinking nature of the coast of the Red Sea, Mathews says to Carter, “Sounds ideal.”  When Carter refers to it as mixing work with pleasure, Mathews responds, “Work?  Oh yes, that is your work, isn’t it?”

On their last night in Pearl Harbor, they all decide to have dinner together at a restaurant.  Mathews is bossy, practically pulling Joyce out of her chair while announcing they are going to dance and even telling Carter to order her a steak.  She refuses to dance, says she does not want a steak, and sits back down.  But she agrees to his suggestion of lobster and finally agrees to dance with him.  While discussing the weather in Hawaii, which is always balmy, she says she likes the winter and the snow, which naturally suggest frigidity on her part.  At first, we think that Mathews is going to try to kiss her, but she moves her head forward and kisses him instead, and then puts her arms around him.  So, contrary to appearances, she is a sexually aggressive woman.  Then they return to the table and have their meal.  When Mathews realizes that Joyce still intends to go to Cairo, he is shocked.  Presumably, he thought that since they kissed, she was going to give up all this foolishness about a career, marry him, and have babies.  He leaves in a huff.

Their plans to go to Cairo, however, are foiled by the occurrence of another incident.  It seems a tramp steamer has disappeared at sea, and Admiral Norman has rescinded their release so they can investigate to see if there is any connection to the previous one with Mathews’ submarine.  Fortunately, they find a few survivors.  In order to get the facts, a doctor examines them.  After the first survivor tells his story, in which it is clear that the giant octopus attacked the ship, the doctor indicates that he does not believe him, starts humoring him, and tells him in an ominous manner that he is to be taken down the hall to talk to another doctor about what he thinks he has seen.  The other three survivors are not fools.  They realize the other doctor is a psychiatrist and that their mate is likely to be diagnosed as mentally ill and confined to an insane asylum.  So, they deny having seen anything.  They are given lie-detector tests, which show that they are lying when they deny having seen anything.  And then the first survivor recants his story so that he can be released from the infirmary.  Mathews and the other officers are exasperated and just don’t understand why they can’t get the truth out of these guys.

Professor Joyce rises to the occasion.  Removing her coat so as to expose a little more of her soft, warm flesh, she tells the officers she will talk to the first survivor when he is released, and then contrives to be alone with him in a room.  Using her womanly wiles—giving him sexy looks, touching his hand, showing a little leg—she gets the man to admit he saw the sea monster, which the officers hear through the intercom.  So, you see, that’s why we need female scientists, because they have special ways of getting to the truth.

Mathews and Joyce decide to investigate reports of poor fishing along the northwest coast, because it may be that the octopus has been eating all the fish.  They spot what might be called an octopus footprint on the beach and they send for Carter.  Meanwhile, they decide to check out the fish population in the area, which they do by putting on the swim suits they just happened to have with them.  No fish, so they do a little hot necking on the beach.

When Carter arrives with the deputy sheriff, Mathews asks Carter to help him persuade Joyce to leave and let the Navy take over the job.  When Carter asks what Joyce has to say about that, Mathews responds, “What’s the difference what she says?”  At that point, Carter proceeds to lecture Mathews about women:  “There’s a whole new breed who feel they’re just as smart and just as courageous as men.  And they are.  They don’t like to be overprotected. They don’t like to have their initiative taken away from them.”

Joyce picks up the argument:  “A, you’d want me to miss the opportunity to see this specimen, one that may never come again. B, you’d be making up my mind for me. And C, I not only don’t like being pushed around, but you underestimate my ability to help in a crisis.”  Carter says that he is entirely on her side, as she nestles into the arm her puts around her.  Mathews concedes to having lost the argument.

Suddenly, the octopus appears and kills the deputy, causing Joyce to scream like a girl.

The octopus starts wreaking havoc on San Francisco, Mathews and Carter take turns saving each other’s lives, during which Joyce screams again, finding solace first in Carter’s arms and then Mathews’, until at last the octopus is killed.

They have dinner again.  Mathews, noting that women can change, says he wants Joyce to marry him and start a family.  She says she hasn’t time for that, indicating that she is an independent, career-minded woman, who wants nothing to do with a life of domesticity.  But then she offers to collaborate with him on a book, How to Catch a Sea Beast, a title that lends itself to more than one meaning, inasmuch as Mathews, as captain of a submarine, is something of a sea beast himself.  From this we gather that her ultimate goal is to trap a man.

Clash of the Titans (1981)

Ray Harryhausen has provided the special effects for many movies, some of them quite good.  In Clash of the Titans, however, one gets the feeling that instead of the special effects being used to dramatize the story, the story is guided by the desire to display some special effects.  The result is rather lackluster.  The story in the movie, however, such as it is, is a big improvement over the original myth.  In fact, this movie, when compared to the source material, provides an excellent example of the need to modify ancient tales in order to make them suitable for modern audiences.

As for the story in the movie, much is driven by the lunacy of the gods.  When the unmarried Danaë (Vida Taylor) has a child (Perseus) out of wedlock, her father, King Acrisius (Donald Houston), feels that he and all of Argos have been dishonored by her sin.  He is especially put out by the fact that he had locked her in a room where no man could get at her beautiful body, but she got pregnant anyway.  (In the original myth, Danaë’s son was destined to kill Acrisius, which was his motive for trying to keep her away from men, but in the movie, Acrisius is simply jealous of her beauty.)  To purge the dishonor, he condemns his daughter and her child to die in a coffin set adrift at sea.  Zeus (Laurence Olivier), it turns out, was the father, having visited Danaë as a shower of gold.  Zeus is horrified that Acrisius of Argos would commit a murder, so to punish him, he has Poseidon (Jack Gwillem) unleash the Kraken, a sea monster, to wipe out the entire city of Argos.  At the same time, Danaë and Perseus are saved.

When he grows up, Perseus (Harry Hamlin) falls in love with Andromeda (Judi Bowker), who is under the spell of Calibos (Neil McCarthy), the hideously disfigured son of Thetis (Maggie Smith).  Perseus chops off the hand of Calibos, who then begs his mother for justice. She is reluctant, because she suspects her son wants revenge rather than justice.  But when Queen Cassiopeia (Siân Phillips), the mother of Andromeda, dares to claim that her daughter is more beautiful than Thetis herself, that is just too much.  As punishment for insulting her beauty, she demands that Andromeda be sacrificed to the Kraken.  Almost as an afterthought, she says that this will give her son justice too.  So, Andromeda must be punished for what Perseus did to Calibos as well as for a remark made by her mother, a remark, by the way, which happens to be spot on.  A running theme through all this is that guilt and punishment are not individual matters; instead, punishment may fall on anyone who is associated with the person who committed the misdeed.  Unfortunately, this insane notion of justice is frequently found in the myths of ancient religions, and there are still vestiges of such even today.

Anyway, Perseus has to figure out a way to kill the Kraken and save his beloved Andromeda.  After much to do, he learns that he must obtain the head of Medusa, a gorgon whose look will turn any living creature to stone.  Perseus chops off her head and returns in time to let the Kraken get a good look at it, turning him to stone.  Andromeda is saved, and she and Perseus marry and live happily ever after.

Now compare that with the original story. When Perseus set out to get the head of the Medusa, he didn’t know Andromeda from Adam.  He just needed a wedding present for a king who was getting married.  Perseus got the head, put it in a bag, and headed for home, hoping he would be in time for the nuptials.  On the way there, he saw the beautiful, naked Andromeda tied to a rock, while being threatened by Cetus, the other name for the sea monster.  He decided to save her, but first he made sure nothing happened to his wedding present by putting it behind some rocks for safekeeping.  Then he killed Cetus with his sword.  Having seen Andromeda naked, he just had to have her, so they got married. Then he grabbed the bag with the head in it and headed off for the wedding that started it all.

The story is vastly more complicated than that, especially since different versions stand in contradiction to one another.  But the point is that the story in the movie is a definite improvement, and so much so, that it proves that we should not be terribly concerned with how faithful a movie is to the source material, so long as the movie is enjoyable.  Unfortunately, Clash of the Titans, while an improvement over the original myth, is only fair.

Studs Lonigan:  The Book and the Adaptations

In the 1930s, James T. Farrell wrote the trilogy Studs Lonigan.  There have been two adaptations of this book, both with the same title, but neither of which is readily accessible for viewing.  The film adaptation made in 1960 invites comparison with Rebel Without a Cause (1955), since both movies are about troubled youth.  Because this movie is only 95 minutes long, it is a much abbreviated version of the story as told in the book.  In 1979, a TV mini-series was produced whose length of 360 minutes stood a much better chance of faithfully representing the book, but it failed to do so.

It would be tedious to enumerate all the differences between the book and the two adaptations, but there is one difference that stands out from all the rest, a change in the very essence of the central character.  Both the movie and the mini-series make Studs out to be a much better person than he was in the book, more likable and sympathetic.  And this is too bad, because it is the only novel in which the central character is a bully, and it would have been nice to have this defining trait preserved in either adaptation, which could easily have been done, even in the 95-minute movie.  This is not to say that Studs Lonigan is the only novel featuring a bully, but typically, it is the character who is bullied that is central, not the bully himself.  In Farrell’s trilogy, we are always inside the head of Studs.  We get to see what it is like to be a bully, how he thinks and feels.

A lot of people might not even think of this as a novel about a bully. Certainly, the title character never thinks of himself in that way.  But then, you will not hear many people say, “I am a bully.”  Oh, sure, one might admit to having been a bully on one or two occasions, for which one is ashamed. But we seldom encounter anyone who will characterize himself as a bully, as if it were his essence.  And yet, we have scarcely reached the third page, when Studs refers to “goofy Danny O’Neill, the dippy punk who couldn’t be hurt or made cry, no matter how hard he was socked….”  A minor character, it was the bullied Danny O’Neill with whom Farrell identified.

The day never passes that Studs does not think about beating someone up, although it is something he thinks about more than he actually does.  Studs does have his moment of greatness when he beats up Weary Reilley, who is an even worse bully than Studs.  But throughout the novel, Studs finds plenty of glory in pushing others around who are smaller, weaker, or more timid than he is, especially when he and his pals outnumber their hapless victims.

One of my favorite parts of the novel occurs when a priest gives a passionate sermon attended by Studs and his gang.  We hear Father Shannon warn against the evils of smoking, drinking, and necking.  And for a brief moment, we allow ourselves to hope that he will admonish the young toughs about fighting.  We don’t expect him to say they should turn the other cheek. That would be asking too much.  But perhaps the priest will at least urge them not to be so quick to throw the first punch, especially if the boy being punched is weaker and smaller.  It is not to be.  In fact, Father Shannon tells them that if they catch some college atheist making a play for their sister, they should beat him up.  Later, Studs and his gang talk about the sermon, and it is clear that they are glad they have sisters, because beating someone up always feels better when you can be righteous about it.

At the end of the novel, Studs regrets the fact that he never kissed Lucy when they sat in that tree, that he dropped out of school instead of continuing his education, that he didn’t save his money, and that he ruined his health with all the smoking, drinking, and carousing around.  But he never regrets being a bully.

On the Failure of New Year’s Resolutions

Celebrating on New Year’s Eve is just harmless fun, even if what is being celebrated is the mere passage of time.  All our other holidays honor something or someone that is important in some way.  Never mind that we usually forget about what we are honoring and simply think about getting the day off, especially when we observe that holiday on a Monday so we can have a three-day weekend; we still have the excuse that the holiday means we care about whatever it is.  But when we take the day off in honor of the fact that another year has passed, we have to admit that we are being just a little bit frivolous, though there really is nothing wrong with that.

And when we kiss someone at midnight, when the New Year begins, the kiss is likewise meant to be somewhat frivolous.  Of course, for me, a kiss is never frivolous.  I have on several occasions excused myself just before midnight and hidden in the restroom until it was all over, because I fall in love too easily.  Not that there is anything wrong with falling in love, but I don’t want to become some woman’s love slave just because she happens to be in my vicinity when the New Year is being rung in.

Finally, the resolutions we make on New Year’s Eve are likewise best thought of as frivolous, sort of like reading your horoscope or indulging in your favorite superstition.  In other words, I find it is best if make a resolution that I really do not care whether I keep or not, like resolving not to call in sick so often just to get the day off, or resolving not to flirt with married women this year, a resolution that might be broken just seconds after midnight, if I forget to hide in the restroom.

But just as some people take astrology or some superstition too seriously, so it is that some people take the resolutions they make on New Year’s Eve too seriously as well.  In such cases, these silly notions stop being harmless fun and begin causing trouble.  Now, I have no doubt that there are people who, having read their horoscope, acted on it to their advantage, or who have had bad things happen to them on Friday the thirteenth.  And by the same token, I suppose there are people out there who have resolved to quit smoking or lose weight on New Year’s Eve and then succeeded in doing just that.  But just as astrology and superstition, when taken seriously, are more likely to cause harm than work to our benefit, so too are New Year’s resolutions more likely to result in failure.

There are three reasons why this is so.  First, when you decided you wanted to, say, quit smoking, the time to quit was right then.  By waiting until New Year’s Day to quit smoking, you are as much as admitting that your intention to quit is as frivolous as the holiday itself.  If you don’t take yourself seriously when you decide to quit, you will not succeed.

Second, New Year’s Eve happens only once a year.  To continue with the example of smoking, most people quit for a couple of weeks or months, and then start up again.  If you were counting on the magic of the New Year to help you out, you are likely to give up when it doesn’t, as if you have to wait until another magic moment comes along to try again.  But if you quit on some ordinary day for the simple reason that that was the day you realized you needed to quit, and then you relapse, you only need to try again a few days later, because one day is just as good as another.

Third, New Year’s resolutions are made public.  You announce to everyone that you are going to quit smoking.  On the one hand, this may help.  By making your resolution to quit smoking a social fact, you will be more motivated to stick with it, lest you look like a loser if you start up again.  But if you do fail after having socialized your decision to quit, your failure becomes socialized too.  Now you have to put up with everyone kidding you or reprimanding you about how you have started smoking again, and rather than risk such humiliation in the future, you are likely to just keep right on smoking and give up on quitting.

That is why it is best not to tell anyone you are quitting smoking.  As important as it may be to you, you will be amazed at how hardly anyone seems to notice that you have quit.  If someone does notice and asks you about it, you can simply say, “I am trying to cut back a little.”  But even if you admit that you are trying to quit, the fact that you did not make a big deal out of it, but only acknowledged your attempt to quit upon being asked, means that your failure will not be the occasion for mirth and ridicule.

The result is that if you do start smoking again after a couple of weeks, you will not be reluctant to try quitting again a few days later.  Because most people will not even be aware of what you are doing, your relapses will seem to be just temporary setbacks and not outright failure.

And there is one more thing, although it has nothing to do with New Year’s resolutions.  Some people will wait until they have finished smoking the carton they have just bought before quitting.  Alternatively, they will throw away what cigarettes remain.  Either way is a mistake. Don’t finish the carton and don’t throw it away, because not having cigarettes in the home will not save you.  Keep that unused carton in the cupboard.  That way, if you relapse, you won’t feel as though you have to finish the new carton you will end up buying before you try quitting again, and you won’t feel like a damn fool for having to buy more cigarettes if you threw a lot of them away.

Let your New Year’s resolution be, “I will no longer wait until New Year’s Day to make an important change in my life, nor will I make a big public announcement about it when I do.”

On Donald Trump’s Threat

From what I have seen on talk shows and have read online, it seems that most people think that Donald Trump is threatening to bring up Bill Clinton’s adulterous affairs if Hillary attacks Trump for sexism.  A few have noted that Trump’s divorces can be thrown back in his face if he makes such an attack.

But let us not forget the kind of man Trump is.  He will not be content to talk about Monica Lewinsky, Paula Jones, Kathleen Willey, and the related charges of sexual harassment, perjury, and obstruction of justice, though he will probably mention these women and those charges as a way of warming up his crowd.  If Trump gets the Republican nomination and Hillary accuses him of sexism, he will go for the jugular.  He will bring up the rape of Juanita Broaddrick.  And as he recounts what Broaddrick alleged, it will lose nothing in the telling.  He will go into graphic detail about the way Bill Clinton allegedly held her down, biting her lip to keep her from trying to get away, and then telling her to put some ice on her swollen lip as he walked out the door.

Many have argued that Hillary should not be held accountable for the sins of her husband.  But the association of ideas is a more primitive form of thinking than reason and nice moral distinctions, which is why Caesar’s wife must be beyond reproach.

However, there is a deeper problem that Hillary must confront that cannot be dismissed simply by saying that it is unfair to hold a wife responsible for her husband’s behavior.  At some point during the campaign, Hillary will be asked this question:  “Do you believe Juanita Broaddrick?”  It is unthinkable that she will say, “Yes, she is telling the truth.  Bill raped that woman.”  Therefore, she must say that Broaddrick is lying.  This will put her in an untenable position.

One aspect of the war on women with which Republicans are often charged is their tendency not to take women seriously when they claim to have been raped.  We Democrats often argue that women are afraid to come forward when they are raped, fearing they will be vilified, accused of being a slut, of wanting attention, of lying.  We further argue that we must encourage women to come forward when they have been sexually assaulted and not let the men who violated them go unpunished.  And I am sure that Hillary would agree with all that, in general.

But what will she say when asked, “Why don’t you believe Juanita Broaddrick?”  And I don’t mean, what will she say if asked that question on Meet the Press?  I mean, what will she say when Donald Trump asks her that question during a presidential debate?

Hillary should back down from Trump’s threat and refrain from accusing him of sexism, however deserved the charge may be.  He is too dangerous.

Reflections on the Trojan Horse

The story about the Trojan horse, as it comes to us from various sources, is basically this.  After ten years of failing to conquer Troy, Odysseus came up with a plan to get inside the walls of that city.  He had the Greeks build a giant wooden horse, in which thirty or so Greeks hid themselves.  The rest of the Greeks then pretended to sail away, leaving only Sinon behind, who pretended to have been abandoned.  He then told the Trojans that the horse had been built as an offering to Athena, so that she would provide the Greeks with safe passage home.  Sinon then went on to explain that the horse was purposely built too big for the Trojans to take into their city, lest Athena would favor the Trojans instead of the Greeks.  After dismissing a few doubters, the Trojans tore down part of their wall so that they could get the horse inside.  That night, Sinon signaled the Greeks with a beacon that the horse was within the walls, and the Greeks returned.  Meanwhile, the Greeks within the horse slipped out, killed the guards, opened the gate, and let in the rest of the Greeks, who then sacked Troy.

This story is completely messed up.  I am not worried about what really happened at Troy, whether the so-called wooden horse was really a battering ram as some have speculated.  Rather, it is the story as such that confounds me.  Now, I do not claim to have done exhaustive research on this subject, but I have yet to find anyone who addresses the absurdity that has bothered me since I read The Odyssey and The Aeneid when I was in college.  I have finally decided to spell out what troubles me and then to give my version of how the story came to be in its present form for the perusal and consideration of those who might read this.

In a nutshell, the problem is this.  If the Greeks wanted the Trojans to drag the horse within the walls, would it not have made more sense to make sure it was small enough to pass through the gates without difficulty?  Alternatively, once the Trojans tore down part of the wall, the men inside the horse became superfluous.  Once a portion of the wall was torn down, the Greek army could have entered through the breach without waiting to be let in by the men hidden inside the horse.

In casual conversations with some of my friends, a couple of solutions have been offered.  One is that the wall was repaired right after it was torn down.  However, it is unlikely that there would have been enough time for the Trojans to do that.  The other is that it was only the arch over the gate that had to be torn down to let the horse’s head through.  But if it was only the arch, why wasn’t it stated that way in the story, instead of misleading us by referring to the wall?  In any event, that brings us back to the original question: Why make the horse too big to get through the gate in the first place?

It is my hypothesis that there were two stories.  In the original story, the Greeks simply built a big wooden horse.  There was no one hidden inside.  Their idea was that by building the horse too big to get through the gate, the Trojans would have to tear down part of the wall to get it into the city, especially when Sinon explained the reason for the horse’s size.  “We’ll show those Greeks,” we can almost hear the Trojans saying as they proceeded to demolish enough of the wall to get the horse through.  That night, the Greeks returned and marched right in through the opening.  What I like about that plan is that there is no risk, except perhaps to Sinon.  If the Trojans did not fall for it, the Greeks could simply return and continue the war.

Later, another poet came up with the idea of having men hidden inside the horse, who then slip out and open the gate.  In this version, the horse is not too big to get through the gate.  Although the first version made for a good story on its own, once the idea of having men inside the horse was introduced, with the risk that the Trojans might set fire to the horse instead, which they almost did, there was no going back to the original tale.  Unfortunately, the part about tearing down a section of the wall was already part of the tradition and could not be purged from the story as it should have been, the result being that it remained as an accretion to the second story, notwithstanding the inherent inconsistency.

If this theory about there being two versions is not original with me, I would be interested in knowing who first came up with it.  If it is original with me, I can live with that.

Fellini Satyricon (1969)

There are certain works of fiction, be they in the form of novels or movies, that are much acclaimed by critics and connoisseurs of the avant garde, but which leave most of us completely bewildered as to what those people see in them.  We don’t enjoy them, and we don’t learn anything from them.  We force ourselves to get through them just to see what the big deal is all about, and we end up feeling we have endured an unpleasant experience that has wasted our time.  Whenever you come across a novel or a movie like that, ask yourself this question, “Does the work of fiction involve a lot of sex, especially the kind that is vulgar and obscene?”  If the answer is “Yes,” then the mystery is solved, especially if the work of fiction was censored or banned somewhere.  In this lies the reason for all the undeserved praise for novels such as James Joyce’s Ulysses, Marcel Proust’s In Search Lost Time, and Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer, and for movies such as Man of Flowers (1983), Belle de Jour (1967), Last Tango in Paris (1972), and, of course, Fellini Satyricon.

Why do some people praise novels or movies like these?  One reason may be that they actually enjoyed them or learned something from them.  That’s a horrible thought!  The other may be that expressing their appreciation for these novels or movies gives them a feeling of superiority over those of us who condemn them:  they come across as enlightened, cosmopolitan aesthetes, while we look like prudish, parochial philistines.

Fellini Satyricon is mostly about a couple of pederasts fighting over a catamite, who silently sits there with a big, shit-eating grin like Harpo Marx.  The catamite is Gitone (Max Born), who prefers Ascilto (Hiram Keller) over Encolpio (Martin Potter) for his lover.  And this is only the beginning of Encolpio’s woes in this picaresque tale in which Encolpio always ends up as the butt of whatever deviance is at hand, while Ascilto is there to gloat and have a laugh at Encolpio’s expense.  Interspersed with that story is a lot of other stuff that will make you want to take a bath when the movie is over.  Even the way these people eat is perverted and will leave you feeling queasy.

So, you know who you are.  If you are the type who loved reading Ulysses or watching The Last Tango in Paris, then Fellini Satyricon is the movie for you.  If not, then you have been duly warned.