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Reflections on a Progressive Pope

The expression “love of God” is ambiguous:  it can refer to God’s love of man or to man’s love of God.  The expression “fear of God,” therefore, suffers from the same ambiguity, but not heretofore in any practical sense.  That is, since it makes no sense to speak of God’s being fearful, inasmuch as he is all-powerful, the phrase can only refer to man’s fear of God. Interestingly enough, a God fearing man is generally understood as being a man who fears nothing else, though what that fear accomplishes is hard to say, since it is not unusual to see a Western featuring a whiskey drinking, tobacco chewing, woman chasing, two-fisted, God fearing man.  A sniveling coward, on the other hand, who frets and worries over every little thing, would never be called a God fearing man, not because he does not fear God too, but because he is not man enough to qualify for that characterization.

But a remark made by Pope Francis a little less than a year ago introduced the possibility that the phrase “fear of God” might actually refer to God’s fear as well.  In his effort to soften the position of the Catholic Church on divorce and homosexuality, the pope said, “God is not afraid of new things.” Ironically, by denying that God is afraid on these matters, he opens up the possibility of God’s being afraid in other areas. Could the Deity be a man fearing God?

Of course, ever since Feuerbach, or perhaps even Xenophanes, it has been known that talking about God is just an indirect way of talking about man, and that what the pope is really saying is that Catholics in general, and the bishops in particular, should not be afraid of new things. But while we may understand the pope in this manner, surely the pope does not mean to be so construed.  Presumably, then, the idea is that God has the courage to declare that divorce and homosexuality are not sins.

There are only three ways to understand this.  The first is that God changed his mind.  He used to think divorce and homosexuality were sins, but now he realizes he was mistaken.  But that would mean that God is fallible and mutable.  Who wants a wishy-washy God, one who is always changing his mind about whether this or that is a sin, depending on who talked to him last, and, in any event, when he does change his mind, can we be sure if he has it right this time?  The whole point of having God be the foundation of morality is so he can lay down eternal truths about right and wrong.  If God is going to vacillate about such things and have to admit that he was mistaken, people will quit taking him seriously.

A second possibility is that we were mistaken about what God thought was a sin.  According to this way of thinking, God has never been opposed to divorce or homosexuality.  Putting men to death for lying with each other was never his idea, but just the ravings of a bunch of homophobic Jewish priests.  And he doesn’t know why Jesus kept saying that divorce was wrong except in the case of fornication, because he told him and he told him that no-fault divorce was the way his Father in Heaven wanted things all along. But if we were mistaken about what God thought in the past, how do we know we are not mistaken about what God thinks now?

A third possibility is that God does not change his mind per se, but that what is a sin at one stage of civilization may not be a sin at a later stage.  That is, back when Jesus was alive, divorce was pretty rough on women, and thus they had to be protected from being abandoned by men.  But now that we have child support, community property, alimony, and equal rights in the workplace, divorce is no longer the problem it used to be, and thus is no longer a sin.  It is not God that changed, but the circumstances.  In the case of homosexuality, however, most would prefer the second option, which is that this never was a sin, that we were mistaken about what God thought on the matter all along, and not that God once wanted homosexuals to be put to death, but given the different circumstances of the modern world, God is now all right with letting them live.

No matter which option we choose—God changed his mind, we were mistaken about God’s will, or there are different sins for different circumstances—every change is one more nail in God’s coffin, for it is impossible to avoid the impression that it is no longer God who tells us what is or is not a sin, but rather it is we who are deciding whether something is a sin, and adjusting our conception of God accordingly.  It is one thing to say man has free will when it comes to choosing whether or not to sin; it is quite another to say man has free will when it comes to choosing what is and is not a sin in the first place.  Freedom to believe what one wants about God soon leads to freedom from God altogether.

Part of the appeal of religion comes from the sense that there are eternal truths, that they were revealed to man long ago, and that we know what these truths are.  We may smile with amusement when the Catholic Church continues to use the Latin Mass, even though Jesus never spoke Latin, and no one else speaks it anymore either, just as we do when Protestants think that the King James Bible is the only translation that is sacred text.  But using the same words that have been used for centuries gives people a sense that they are receiving the unchanging word of God.  The footnotes provided by a modern English translation of the Bible may reflect the latest scholarship, but they do not inspire much reverence.

The Ten Commandments are revered as being the word of God, in no small part because they were written down over three thousand years ago.  Part of the problem with Mormonism is that it is only two centuries old, and even its founder, Joseph Smith, had to claim that his Book of Mormon was ancient in order to have any chance of being taken seriously.  And if someone comes along today and tells people that he has been talking to God, and has written down everything God said to him and published it in an e-book, he will be dismissed as a crank.  What is modern, up to date, and new is inimical to religious feeling.

Therefore, the Catholic Church faces a dilemma:  either it can refuse to change, thereby alienating people who are divorced and living in sin, or who are homosexuals; or it can change to suit the times, thereby vitiating the feeling that one is conforming to the eternal word of God.  If it chooses to modernize, it will keep more of its members, but will there be anything left for them to believe in?  Being an atheist, I prefer that the Church change its views on divorce and homosexuality, not only because tolerance in these matters is a good thing, but also because the more a religion changes, the weaker it becomes.  The more the Church changes the word of God, the less likely people are to believe that it is the word of God.

So, if God is not afraid of new things, maybe he should be.

As progressive as this pope seems to be regarding homosexuality and divorce, he may not be as progressive as people first thought regarding animals.  One of the things children want to know is if their pets will go to Heaven when they die.  As a bachelor, I am not sure what I would have said if I had had a child who asked me that question, but my guess is that I would have told a bald-faced lie and said, “Yes.”  I suspect many parents do the same, regardless of their religious beliefs.  And thus it was a big story for a while when it was reported that Pope Francis said, in response to that question, “Heaven is open to all creatures.”

However, it turns out that Pope Francis did not say that.  Instead, Pope Paul VI said, “One day we will again see our animals in the eternity of Christ.”  I am not sure what to make of that. When I was a child, I used to imagine Heaven as a place where our souls went when we died, and they were shaped like our bodies, and that my dog’s soul would be there, shaped accordingly as well.  Somehow, I don’t think that Pope Paul VI’s phrase about seeing our animals “in the eternity of Christ” exactly matches my childlike vision.  It sounds more like one of those vague statements we sometimes hear from politicians.

In any event, what Pope Francis said was, “Sacred Scripture teaches us that the fulfillment of this marvelous plan cannot but involve everything that surrounds us and came from the heart and mind of God.”  That is nothing but the usual general statement about God’s divine plan, which is used to justify this world with all of its shortcomings.  And so, the heart-warming story about Pope Francis saying that pets go to Heaven turns out to be apocryphal.

But now it appears that the pope thinks that people are placing more importance on animals than was intended by God in his marvelous plan, according to an article by Thomas D. Williams:

Francis also had strong words for what is wrong with the world and the way people’s values get twisted.

According to the Pope, the worst problems in the world today are poverty, corruption and human trafficking. He also expressed his astonishment when he read about what people spend money on.   “After food, clothing and medicine,” he said, “the fourth item is cosmetics and the fifth is pets. That’s serious.”

In fact, for an “environmental pope,” Francis seems to think that people pay altogether too much attention to pets.

“Care for pets is like programmed love,” he said. “I can program the loving response of a dog or a cat, and I don’t need the experience of a human, reciprocal love.”

The Pope said this kind of trade-off is “worrisome.”

So, not only did the pope not say that pets go to Heaven, but he also seems to think less attention should be paid to them right here on Earth.

At first, being an atheist and in the habit of disregarding the pronouncements of religious leaders, my initial reaction to simply to dismiss the pope’s remarks.  But then it occurred to me that there was much wisdom in what he said.

When I was twelve years old, my parents asked me if I would like to have a dog.  I said, “Yes,” of course.  Then they said, “You will have to be the one who feeds the dog and takes it for a walk.”  I willingly agreed.  This was unfair.  I had no idea what my future life as a teenager would be like, and so I had no idea what kind of sacrifice this would entail.  But my parents knew, and they took advantage of my innocence and extracted from me a commitment at a time when I was hardly of age to enter into a binding contract.

At first, everything was just fine.  I fed my dog and walked him, played with him, and loved him.  But then I went through puberty and discovered the importance of girls.  And then it was that I began to experience a conflict in priorities.  For example, there was this one day in which Charles, one of my friends, pulled up beside me in his car one Saturday afternoon while I was walking the dog.  “Hey, John,” he said.  “Donna’s parents will be gone for the weekend.  She’s going to have a bunch of her girlfriends over there, and she wanted me to get a bunch of guys together and come over so we can party.  As soon as you’re through walking the dog, I’ll give you a ride over there.”

“I can’t,” I said, “because at five o’clock I have to feed the dog.”

“Oh,” he said.  “Well, that’s too bad.  Donna said she had a girl all picked out just for you.  But don’t you let that worry you none.  I’ll be making out with her while you’re still opening that can of dog food.”  And at that point, he peeled out, the tires blowing dust into my face as he sped off.

It was just as the pope said.  I needed “the experience of a human, reciprocal love,” and instead, all I got was the love of my dog when I emptied the can of Alpo into his bowl.  Petting a dog is no substitute for petting a girl.

My dog died when I was a senior in high school, and it broke my heart.  But a year later, while I was in college, my parents began talking about getting another dog.  Some people may have their values twisted, as the pope said, but mine weren’t.  I laid down the law.  “This will be your dog,” I told my parents sternly.  “You will walk it and you will feed it.”  They nodded in agreement. This turned out to be a much better arrangement.  I could love the dog the way a grandparent loves a grandchild.  But when there was a girl available to give me the reciprocal, human love I needed, I was able to give her my full attention, while my parents were home taking care of their dog.

I never got another dog.  Years later, one of my dancing partners, who had a couple of dogs herself that I would play with when I visited her, asked me why I did not get a dog of my own. “Why buy a dog,” I asked, “when you can pet one through the fence?”  Anyway, as I said, we were dancing partners, and while some dancing partners are also lovers, many are not, as was the case with us.  This did not seem to bother her.  “Dancing is better than sex,” she would often say.  But the two were not mutually exclusive, and besides, such a bold hypothesis should be put to the test, I figured.  So, one night, when the mood seemed right, I sat next to her on the couch while we had a discussion about the meaning of life or some such, and was just about to make my move, when her two dogs jumped up onto the couch and in our laps, demanding attention.

Once again, I found myself in agreement with the pope.  My dancing partner’s twisted values resulted in her caring more about playing with her dogs than receiving some of that reciprocal love she could have gotten from another human being, namely me.  The pope said, “I can program the loving response of a dog or a cat.”  He sounds like a computer geek in saying that, but one thing is for sure, you can’t program the loving response of a woman, and so I have to agree with him on that point.

Anyway, when my dancing partner had to go out of town for a while, she asked me to take care of her dogs while she was gone.  I agreed.  “You can sleep over here, if you want, to keep them company,” she offered.  And so, the only time I got to sleep in her bed was when I slept with the dogs.  But when she returned, she told me she had met someone and had fallen in love. He did not dance, and he did not have a dog, and so I guess without dancing and dogs to distract her, she found the space in her life for love.  Well, three’s a crowd, and it was not long before I was looking for another dancing partner.

One girlfriend I had, after asking me why I did not have a pet, and hearing my tale of woe, bought me a cactus.  It was the perfect gift for a bachelor who does not want the responsibility of taking care of a pet or taking care of a wife and children for that matter.  And so it was that when I saw the final episode of Mad Men, when Pete gave Peggy a cactus, I began to wonder if there were something archetypal involved.  Peggy had given up her baby, had never gotten married, and did not have a pet.  But now she had her cactus.  There was a sense of completion in that.  But then, Matthew Weiner spoiled it by having her and Stan hook up at the last minute. Sometimes a dramatist does not realize when his story has ended.

Well, I found out that the cactus had to be watered once every two weeks, and so I would mark that on my calendar, and then worry whether I would forget to look at the calendar.  And I would have to put it on the balcony in front of my apartment to let it get some sun.  But then I would have to worry if it rained, because it is not good to let a cactus get too much water.  This wore me out.  After three months, I came home one day to find that the cactus had been stolen.  A great burden was lifted off my shoulders.

But I had learned an important lesson.  I will never get another cactus.

Sanders of the River (1935)

The title character of Sanders of the River, Commissioner R.G. Sanders (Leslie Banks), is a British officer who has picked up the white man’s burden and made Nigeria a better place for the Africans who populate it. We know they are happy, because they are always singing. The British do not sing, however, because running an empire is serious business.

Bosambo (Paul Robeson) is a good African chieftain who loves being ruled by Sanders and the British Empire.  He sings a lot.  Mofolaba (Tony Wane) is an evil African chieftain who hates being ruled by Sanders and the British Empire. He doesn’t sing at all.

When Sanders goes on vacation, Mofolaba spreads a rumor that Sanders is dead.  Apparently there is a cult of personality surrounding Sanders, because the place just falls apart as a result.  We see lots of animals running about, so even they are upset.

War breaks out, and Sanders has to return. While he was gone, a couple of smugglers had been selling gin and rifles to the natives, which is against the law. But the rifles don’t seem to do the natives any good, because they continue to use spears. Bosambo is captured by Mofolaba.  As the boat Sanders is on races to save Bosambo, an officer commands an African worker who is operating the boiler to put more wood on the fire for more speed. The African replies that the boiler will blow. But the British officer is not cowed by mere physics, and he contemptuously dismisses the warning. The boiler backs down and humbly submits to British authority, just like everything else.

Thanks to British assistance, Bosambo is able to kill Mofolaba.  Sanders names him King of the Peoples of the River, and they all live happily ever after.

Murmur of the Heart (1971)

Set in France in the 1950s, Murmur of the Heart is a coming of age story about an obnoxious fourteen-year-old boy, Laurent Chevalier (Benoit Ferreux).  He has two brothers almost as obnoxious as he is and a father who is not bad in the obnoxious department himself. His mother is Clara (Lea Massari), who seems to be a nice, warm-hearted, loving person.She needs to ditch that family, but when she gets the chance to run off with her lover, who is just as obnoxious as her family, I guess she figures, “What’s the point?” and doesn’t bother.

There are a lot of miscellaneous plot points involving the First Indochina War, a priest, a brothel, and a heart murmur, all which manage to get Clara and Laurent into a situation where they will have to share a hotel room.  Because Clara is so affectionate and sensual, we quickly figure out that we are being prepared fora little oedipal hanky-panky. Now, if this were a Hollywood movie in which a boy had sex with his mother, he would turn into some kind of Norman Bates psycho.  But this movie was made in France, which means we are watching a weird foreign film, which means the incestuous affair will probably be a deep, meaningful, transformative experience for the lad. I assumed that as a result of this, he would stop being obnoxious and start being nice, warm-hearted, and loving, just like her. Nope. By the end of the movie,he is still his same old rotten self.

Before they have sex, his mother says that they will just do it one time, and then they will never talk about it again. Oh sure! For all her worldly experience, she does not seem to know much about men. You can’t give them a taste and expect them to go away and forget about how good it was.She had a husband who was very jealous when they were first in love, and she had a lover who was very jealous, and now she thinks her son won’t end up being a jealous lover too? Of course, the movie indicates that they will forget about the fact that they had sex, because Louis Malle, the writer and director,wanted it that way. But it’s not realistic, so don’t try this at home.

Not that I would know personally, but I suspect that having sex with your mother would be enough excitement for one evening. But as soon as Clara falls asleep, Laurent gets dressed and heads on down the hall for a little action with someone his own age. He wakes up one girl, comes on to her like an insufferable jerk, and when she runs him off, he heads on down the hall to the next one, where, for some mysterious reason, he actually scores.  The point of this is that he is now a man of the world who has a way with women.  I guess doing it with Mom was a transformative experience after all.

In a time when gender equality is the ideal, the double standard regarding the sexes is looked upon with disfavor. This movie makes us realize that in some respects, the double standard will never be completely eliminated, nor should it. Just imagine a similar movie, but one in which a man has sex with his fourteen-year-old daughter, which the movie would have us regard as being a meaningful act of love. Actually, you don’t have to imagine it, because the movie Beau Pere (1981) is pretty much just that, except that the man is her stepfather.  Needless to say, it was made in France.

Finally, because Laurent is Catholic, I could not help trying to imagine how his next confession is going to go. I wonder how many Hail Marys you have to say for having sex with your mother.

The Hanging Tree (1959)

In The Hanging Tree, a Western directed by Delmer Daves, Dr. Joseph “Doc” Frail helps Rune (Ben Piazza), who is a thief, escape from those he stole from, but since Frail is played by Gary Cooper, who is tall and good looking, we figure that makes what he is doing all right. He then blackmails Rune, forcing him into slavery, but since it’s Gary Cooper, what he is doing must be for the best somehow.

When Elizabeth (Maria Schell) is discovered suffering from exposure and dehydration, needing the attention of a doctor, Frail refuses to leave the bedside of a woman who he knows is going to die in a couple of hours anyway. It is a standard principle of triage that a doctor should help those who can be helped and not waste time on those who cannot, but since it’s Gary Cooper, we figure he must be doing the right thing somehow. Besides, the person who thinks he should leave the dying woman and help Elizabeth is Frenchy, played by Karl Malden in an unsavory role, so he must be wrong somehow.

When Frail finally arrives at the house where the men who found Elizabeth had taken her, Frail expresses his disgust with the fact that the house is dirty, asking the old man who lives there why he doesn’t clean the place up. But that can’t be rude, because it’s Gary Cooper, so we figure the old man deserves to be insulted.

Frail keeps Elizabeth, who is temporarily blind, in a cabin, allowing no one else in except himself and Rune. When ladies from town come to check on her after she has been there for a while, Frail refuses to let them talk to her. And Elizabeth, after finding out that he made the women leave, asks if she is a prisoner. Normally, it would be perfectly reasonable for concerned citizens to be allowed to ask Elizabeth if she is being kept there against her will, if she would like to leave. After all, if it were Frenchy keeping her in a cabin and not letting others talk to her, we would suspect that he was keeping her as a sex slave. But it is not Frenchy, played by Karl Malden; it is Frail, played by Gary Cooper. And besides, the women are really just a bunch of busybodies. And if Elizabeth thinks she is being kept there as a prisoner, that is just too bad, because it’s Gary Cooper who is doing it, and so he must be right to disregard her wishes.

And then, when Elizabeth finally gets her sight back, she goes to a lot of trouble to prepare a special dinner for Rune and Frail, but Frail would rather play poker instead. But we have to overlook this, in part because it’s Gary Cooper, and in part because of some dark secret from his past. As best we can figure from rumor and from what Frail says, he caught his brother and his wife having sex. When he killed his brother, his wife was so horrified that she shot herself and died, after which Frail burned the house down. If it had been Frenchy who did something like that, we would hate him for it, but since it was Frail who did it, we are expected to be understanding.

This is not to say that Frail does not do good things. Even if he were not played Gary Cooper, we would still approve of much of his behavior: letting Rune go free after a while; curing Elizabeth; letting some poor folks borrow his cow so their daughter can have milk; secretly funding Elizabeth in her determination to make her own way; and saving her from being raped by Frenchy. But it is still remarkable how much latitude we allow a character in a movie if he is played by an actor with an established persona of moral rectitude, especially if he is tall and good looking.

Magnificent Obsession (1954)

In 1929, Lloyd C. Douglas, a Protestant minister, wrote Magnificent Obsession.  It was made into a movie in 1935, which modified the story in the novel, and again in 1954, which modified the story in the earlier movie.  Of the three, more people are familiar with the 1954 version, directed by Douglas Sirk, than the other two.  For that reason, my review will begin with that movie.  I have not seen the 1935 version, directed by John Stahl, so all I know about that movie is what I have read about it.  I have read the book, however, which will be discussed later.

The 1954 Remake

When the 1954 movie begins, the tone is set for a religious movie of sorts when we hear a choir singing during the opening credits.  Then we see Bob Merrick (Rock Hudson) and a Miss Daniels in a speedboat on the lake.  Merrick is heir to the Merrick Motor Company, and he is testing the motor in the speedboat.  One of the members of his crew comments that he is “doing 150 or better.”  I don’t know whether that is miles per hour or knots, and I didn’t think speedboats could go that fast in any event, but the point is that Merrick is reckless.  So as not to endanger Miss Daniels, he lets her off at the dock, intending to really push it to the limit.  One of his crew advises against it, but Merrick is rude and abrupt, dismissing the advice of a subordinate that apparently does not know his place.  As he pulls away, one of the crew wonders whether he has any brains, and the other replies that he doesn’t need brains because he has “four million bucks.”  (Adjusted for inflation, that would be almost $40,000,000 today.)

Then someone comments he is “doing better than 180 now,” just before the speedboat flips over.  In the next scene, we see Merrick being put on an inhalator, also referred to as a resuscitator.  When it appears that he will survive, someone says, “Bob Merrick just lives right.”  This is clearly intended as ironic, since if Merrick had died, he would have gotten what he deserved.

At that moment, word comes in through a police radio that the resuscitator must be returned immediately to Dr. Wayne Phillips, renowned brain surgeon, to whom it belonged.  But it arrives too late.  Dr. Phillips has died from a heart attack, which he would have survived had his resuscitator not been on the other side of the lake, saving the life of Merrick.  His assistant, Nancy Ashford (Agnes Moorehead), asks the doctor why this should happen to such a wonderful man, who did so much for people.  The doctor says he has been asked that question many times, and he has no answer.  This is the flip side of the situation with Merrick, where Dr. Phillips, a man who really did live right, has died.  The injustice of these events is especially acute, since the one is the cause of the other, creating a feeling of moral pressure that must be relieved.

Dr. Phillips is survived by his wife Helen (Jane Wyman) and his daughter Joyce (Barbara Rush) from a previous marriage.  Helen is inundated by letters from people that admired Dr. Phillips and by visitors that are grateful to him for things he had done for them.  Joyce tells Nancy that these visitors are evasive when asked exactly what it was that Phillips had done for them, “as though they belonged with him to some secret society.”

Meanwhile, a visitor is telling Helen, in the office once occupied by Dr. Phillips, that she wants to repay the money Phillips gave her.  It was given on condition that she keep it a secret, but now that he’s dead, she figures it’s all right to talk about it.  She says whenever she tried to give the money back to him, he refused, saying he’d already “used it all up.”  Helen says that many of the letters quoted him using that same expression.  Since Dr. Phillips did not want the money back, Helen refuses to accept the money too.

Joyce’s boyfriend, Tom, who was Dr. Phillips’ attorney, arrives to give Helen and Joyce some bad news:  there is practically nothing left in Phillips’ estate.  Notwithstanding all the money paid to him through the years as a surgeon, he basically died broke, having used all his money to help all those people referred to above, leaving Helen only the house they were living in.  And the hospital is in financial difficulties too.

Now, let’s stop right there.  Why would a man that was supposed to be so full of goodness leave his family in seemingly dire straits?  It makes me think of those parents in The Boy with Green Hair (1948), who are so determined to help war orphans that they abandon their own son, dumping him on a relative that does not want to be burdened with him.  On the other hand, Dr. Phillips and Helen had only been married for six months.  So, whatever she was doing for a living before they were married, she could just go back to work now.  And Joyce is old enough to get a job of her own.  Furthermore, while Helen is looking for that job, she could let the maid and gardener go, put the house up for sale, which would be worth millions of dollars in today’s market, and get herself a modest apartment.  So, there is no reason to think she can’t get by like most people.  Still, Tom indicates that Dr. Phillips was giving away large sums of money right up until his death.  You would think that a man who had recently married a woman that will be dependent on him financially would give some thought to her situation in the event of his death.

Meanwhile, Merrick has been at Brightwood Hospital ever since his accident, and he sneaks out against doctor’s orders.  Still in a weakened condition, he manages to get a lift from Helen on her way back to the house.  He is immediately attracted to her, but when he finds out who she is, he asks her to stop the car and let him out.  She does, but he collapses.  She gets a passerby to help her get Merrick to the hospital where she finds out who he is.  She is not pleased.

A little more than a week passes.  Enter Edward Randolph (Otto Kruger), a man who explains to Helen, but not us, what all those letters and visitors were about.  And he explains why Dr. Phillips never mentioned it to her:  “You don’t talk much about this belief.  When someone’s ready for it, they accept it.  Perhaps Wayne felt that you weren’t quite ready….”

As Randolph is leaving the office, Merrick comes in with a check for $25,000.   Adjusted for inflation, that would be over $240,000 in today’s dollars.  He wants to make amends for the trouble he has caused.  But Helen refuses the check, contemptuous of the way Merrick always thinks he can use his money to buy his way out of any difficulty he has caused by his irresponsible lifestyle.

That night, Merrick, drunk and despondent, rejects the implied offer of sex from a beautiful woman and leaves the night club he was in.  Driving fast, he plows through some “danger” signs and gets stuck in a ditch.  He goes to the nearby house to get help, which just happens to be the house of Randolph.  Merrick falls asleep on his couch.

The next morning, Merrick admires Randolph’s painting of Dr. Phillips, which we do not get to see.  Randolph tells him that he used to be just a second-rate painter.  But then, Dr. Phillips, his best friend, “unlocked everything,” showing him how to get what he wanted by establishing “contact with the source of infinite power.”  He compares this power with that of electricity.  Most people are like light bulbs that are turned off.  But if you throw the switch, establishing contact with the powerhouse down at the dam, you have light.  By the same token, if a person makes contact with the spiritual powerhouse, he can fulfill his destiny.  That’s what Phillips did for Randolph, allowing him to become a great painter.

The key to unlocking this power, Randolph explains, is to help people in need, but always in secret, never letting the good deed be known, and never allowing yourself to be repaid.  He returns to the powerhouse analogy:  “If the wires in the dynamo are not protected by insulation, the power will be dissipated.  The same thing goes for us.  Most people are just grounded.”  Either they let others find out about their good deed, or they allow the debt to be repaid.

Because Lloyd C. Douglas was born in 1877, he grew up as American cities were becoming electrified, a process still not completed at the time he wrote the novel on which this movie is based.  So, electricity must have seemed almost magical at that time, not the commonplace that it is today.  Hence the analogy with spiritual power.  In fact, there are attempts at various points in the novel to distance this idea of spiritual power from religion, suggesting that it should really be thought of as a science, just as electrical power is a phenomenon studied scientifically.  Bringing the two together, as a result of having expanded his personality through contact with the spiritual power, Merrick is able, in the novel, to invent an electrical scalpel that cauterizes as it cuts, and presumably uses it to reverse Helen’s blindness by doing brain surgery on her with it.

Back to the movie, Merrick seems to understand, saying, “You mean keeping these good deeds secret is like insulating the power of your personality.”  The idea intrigues him.  The only thing he wants, however, is Helen, and he just can’t see how helping someone else will get him in good with her.

Randolph says it can happen, but he advises caution:  “Now, wait, Merrick. Don’t try to use this unless you’re ready for it.  You can’t just try this out for a week like a new car, you know.  And if you think you can feather your own nest with it, just forget it.  Besides, this is dangerous stuff.  One of the first men who used it went to the cross at the age of 33.”

Later on, Merrick finds out that the man that operates the telescope for viewing the lake is in financial difficulties.  His wife lost the baby they were planning on, and the bills are piling up.  Merrick gives him some money on condition that he tell no one about it, and that he never try to pay it back.  He turns around, and wouldn’t you know it, there is Helen.  Full of confidence that what Randolph told him is true, he approaches her, even being so crude as to ask her out to dinner, recent widow though she may be.  He refers to Dr. Phillips’ notions about tapping into that spiritual powerhouse, saying he’s going to go out and find someone that needs a couple of thousand bucks, and his worries will be over.  Helen says he is turning her late husband’s beliefs into something cheap.

She gets in a taxi, and he gets right in with her.  Exasperated by his importunities, she gets out on the other side, right into the path of an oncoming car, which strikes her, causing her to go blind.  Fortunately, while Dr. Phillips had borrowed against his life insurance policy so he could give the money away, Helen later refers to an accident insurance policy she had, which is enough, apparently, for her to keep that multimillion-dollar house and its servants.

Chastened by the experience, Merrick tells Randolph he is fully committed to dedicating his life to others, in accordance with Dr. Phillips’ theory.  Randolph says that once he goes down this path, he will never be able to give it up, he will be bound by this motive power.  It is will become a “magnificent obsession.”

Merrick befriends Helen while she is sitting alone by the lake, believing him to be Robbie Robinson.  Furthermore, there really was no accident policy.  Through his connivance with Tom, Merrick has been the one supplying Helen with money.  He arranges for her and Joyce to go to Europe to see about an operation on her brain that might restore her sight.  They will think the doctors are doing it out of their respect for Dr. Phillips, but Merrick will be paying for it.  And he will make a generous offer on that house, supplying them with the means to live from then on.

But the doctors are unable to do anything for Helen.  Joyce asks Nancy, “What has she done that all this happens to her?”  Once again, we are reminded of the injustice that Merrick must bring into balance.

To that end, Merrick has gone back to medical school to become a brain surgeon.  He interrupts his studies and goes to Europe when he gets word of the negative prognosis.  Helen is happy to see him.  It turns out that she has realized who he was for some time.  They love each other, and he asks her to marry him.  But not wanting to be a burden on him, she flees with Nancy, asking him in a letter not to try to find her.  I guess she doesn’t mind being a burden on Nancy.  And I guess it didn’t occur to her just to decline the proposal.  Merrick and Joyce try to find her anyway, but to no avail.

Time passes, and we read that some anonymous doctor has donated enough money for a medical center to open a new wing for neurological patients.  So, it appears that Merrick is getting himself charged up with a little more of that higher power.  We also read that he has completed his internship and has joined the staff there.  Next, we see a scene where a grateful mother agrees not to tell anyone about all the help Merrick has given her and her son, but still wants to repay him eventually.  He refuses, cryptically saying it will be all used up in a few years anyway.

Randolph gets word from Nancy that Helen’s health has declined.  She is in a coma in a sanitarium.  He and Merrick fly there.  She must have brain surgery immediately, and Merrick is the only one in the vicinity who can perform it, though he says he does not have enough experience.  Randolph persuades him to use his skill to save her.  He operates on her, not only saving her life, but restoring her sight as well.  They will live happily ever after.

The Novel

All the names in the movie are the same as in the novel, except that Dr. Phillips of the movie is Dr. Hudson in the novel.  Perhaps the change was made because it was feared that when someone referred to Hudson, the audience would think he was talking about Rock Hudson.

The Helen of the novel is different from the Helen of the 1954 remake in three ways.  First, Dr. Hudson of the novel is forty-six years old when he marries Helen, who was a friend of Joyce when she was in college, but a couple of years older.  That means that Merrick and Helen are about the same age.  I believe the author wanted to avoid having Merrick fall in love with an older woman.  In fact, Nancy was in love with Dr. Hudson, and she would have made a more appropriate match for him, being about the same age.

In the 1935 movie version, Helen is played by Irene Dunne, who was 35, while Bob Merrick is played by Robert Taylor, who was 24, a difference between them of 11 years.  In the 1954 version, Jane Wyman was 36 and Rock Hudson was 28, a difference of 8 years.  Furthermore, Jane Wyman is one of those people that always look older than they really are.  This has led some critics to see an Oedipal situation in these two movies.  But I suspect that those that made these movies thought it was a little creepy to have a middle-aged man marry his daughter’s friend in college, so they preferred to make Helen a little older than Merrick, but not by too much, as the lesser of evils.

Second, Helen’s blindness, which occurs toward the end of the novel, is the result of a railroad accident, and it is not Merrick’s fault.  His efforts to help Helen are primarily driven by his guilt at having survived at the expense of Dr. Hudson, whereas in the movie, it is mainly on account of his guilt at having caused her blindness.

Third, she is not in financial difficulty on account of her husband.  She owns stock in North-western Copper that pays a dividend of $6,000 per year.  Adjusted for inflation, that would be over $90,000 per year in today’s dollars.  And if we assume that this income was generated by a 5% dividend, then the value of her stock, adjusted for inflation, would be $1,800,000.  There is no indication that Brightwood Hospital is in financial difficulty.  Nancy estimates that the stock Helen owns in it is worth $20,000, or over $300,000, adjusted for inflation, giving her a net worth based on her stock ownership alone of $2,100,000 in today’s dollars.  The novel indicates that Hudson had both a house in the city and a retreat he called “Flintridge,” which was by the lake.  There is a reference to caretakers for the latter.  One must suppose that these two pieces of real estate would add significantly to Helen’s net worth.

For some reason, she lets her cousin Monty Brent handle her affairs, as if collecting dividends was too much for her to cope with as a helpless widow, so she needs a man to see to such things.  He tells her the dividend has been suspended, but Helen is suspicious, since Joyce is still collecting the dividends from her stock in that company.  (Apparently, Joyce is capable of collecting dividends all by herself.)  Brent had surreptitiously sold the stock and lost all the money on bad investments and loose living.  That is what puts Helen in difficult financial circumstances.  And I guess if she was too helpless to collect those dividends all on her own, she is too helpless to hold down a job.  But in any event, her husband was not to blame for all that.

Merrick finds out about Brent’s malversation.  He forces Brent to write a letter to Helen saying that the money from the stock has been reinvested in Axion Motor Company preferred.  (“Axion” is the name of Merrick’s motor company in the novel.)  The stock is worth over $1,700,000 in today’s dollars.  Brent also writes that he will no longer be handling her investments.  So, as in the movie, Merrick helps Helen out financially, but for completely different reasons.

To get rid of Brent for good, Merrick insists that he move to Buenos Aires.  He gives him a steamship ticket and $2,000, or about $30,000, adjusted for inflation.  Brent is so grateful that Merrick is not going to report him to the authorities for embezzlement, that he says he will try to use the opportunity to start a new and better life.  One thing leads to another, and Merrick ends up telling him about establishing contact with a higher power.

I could have skipped over this part, I suppose, but I couldn’t resist referring to it on account of a theme that intrigues me.  This is the fifth movie or novel I have come across from the first half of the twentieth century in which people decide to go to South America to start a new life:   Stella Dallas (1937), Kitty Foyle (1940), Tom, Dick, and Harry (1941), and Imitation of Life are the other four.  It would seem that with the closing of the frontier at the end of the nineteenth century, famously written about by Frederick Jackson Turner, Americans could no longer move west to start a new life.  So, I suppose all they could do was turn south.  It all ended after World War II, when the Nazis decided to move to South America to start a new life.  That stigma eventually wore off, but the mystique of South America as a place of renewal was gone for good.

Anyway, in watching the movie, we gradually become aware that Merrick is taking the place of Dr. Phillips, becoming a great brain surgeon just like him, and then becoming Helen’s future husband as well.  But in the novel, there is nothing subtle about this idea of replacing the great doctor.  When Merrick tries to write a big check to make amends, Nancy rebuffs him, much in the way Helen does in the movie.  But then she suggests that Merrick go back to medical school so he can replace Dr. Hudson.  As this takes place in the second chapter, the whole thing seems ludicrous, as indeed it would be in real life.

In the novel, Randolph is dead.  Dr. Hudson learned about the secret belief from him.  Then Hudson kept a journal about this belief in code, which Merrick had to decipher in order to read it.  It tells of how Randolph was just a second-rate sculptor, who became great when he discovered his “theory of personality projection.”  The idea is that if you help someone in secret, and you don’t allow him to repay the debt, your personality is expanded by the personality of the person you helped.  As your personality becomes expanded by helping more and more people, you are able to excel at whatever you want.

In the movie, Randolph refers to Jesus only one time, and then without explicitly naming him.  In the novel, he is referred to by Dr. Hudson only as that “Galilean.”  This is bizarre.  Why refer to Jesus with a generic, geographical term when everyone knows his name?  Presumably, it is intended to create a sense of distance between Hudson and Christianity, as if it were something completely foreign to him.

There are passages in the Bible referred to in Hudson’s journal that are suggestive of the idea of giving away one’s money in order to get something of greater value, but we never get chapter and verse.  That I shall supply instead.  There is a story about a treasure in a field, for which a man sold all he had in order to buy that field, which is in Matthew 13:44; and about a man that sold all he had to possess a pearl, which is in Matthew 13:45-46.

Merrick says, “the Galilean had postulated three types of general capacity related to one another as 5:2:1.”  That is an obscure allusion to the parable of the talents, Matthew 25:14-30.  Merrick is like the man who was given five talents, from whom much is expected.

In fact, Randolph shows Dr. Hudson a Bible in which one page has been removed because it is the only page in the Bible that Randolph cared about, the one with the “secret formula for power.”  Of this page, Randolph says it “contains the rules for generating that mysterious power I mentioned. By following these instructions to the letter, you can have anything you want, do anything you wish to do, be whatever you would like to be.”

We are not told which page that is.  I believe the reason for this is to make the reader a participant in solving the mystery.  If he has to figure out for himself which page in the Bible is being referred to, he is more likely to embrace this theory of personality projection as his own; whereas if it were spoon-fed to the reader, he would be more likely to remain aloof.

However, not wanting to depend on the reader’s familiarity with the Bible, Douglas does provide chapter and verse for a prefatory quotation:  “‘Let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth,’ Matthew 6:3.”  Undoubtedly, the first page of Matthew 6 is the page Randolph thought was special, especially the first four verses:

6:1 Take heed that ye do not your alms before men, to be seen of them: otherwise ye have no reward of your Father which is in heaven.

6:2 Therefore when thou doest thine alms, do not sound a trumpet before thee, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.

6:3 But when thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth:

6:4 That thine alms may be in secret: and thy Father which seeth in secret himself shall reward thee openly.

This last verse, in its reference to being rewarded “openly,” suggests that the reward will be granted while one still lives and not only when one dies and goes to Heaven.

Merrick finds from Dr. Hudson’s journal that Jesus practiced what he preached when it came to keeping things a secret:

He noted, also with keen interest, the numerous occasions when the Galilean, having performed a service for someone, would ask him, as a special favour, not to tell anybody about it.

Presumably, he is referring to passages like that of Matthew 9:30, after Jesus has just restored sight to two blind men:

9:30 And their eyes were opened; and Jesus straitly charged them, saying, See that no man know it.

So, let’s say we buy into this theory of personality projection, in which keeping the doing of alms a secret is essential to expanding one’s personality.  But is there a need to keep the theory itself a secret?  In one sense, there does not seem to be such a need.  After all, the verses from Matthew 6 are part of the Sermon on the Mount, in which a multitude is told to give alms in secret.

But in another sense, it is as if the theory of personality projection itself must be kept a secret.  After all, why would Dr. Hudson keep a journal in code?  Merrick makes reference to the way this Galilean had shared certain mysteries only with his intimates:

He had been entirely frank about saying to his intimates, in an intensive seminar session, that there were certain mysteries he could and would confide to them which he had no intention of discussing before the general public for the reason that the majority of people would be unable to understand.

Presumably, he is referring to passages from the Book of Mark:

4:10 And when he was alone, they that were about him with the twelve asked of him the parable.

4:11 And he said unto them, Unto you it is given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God: but unto them that are without, all these things are done in parables:

4:12 That seeing they may see, and not perceive; and hearing they may hear, and not understand; lest at any time they should be converted, and their sins should be forgiven them.

There is something selfish about all this.  It’s as if Jesus is saying, “We know the mystery, so we will go to Heaven; but we won’t tell anyone else, so they will go to Hell.”

And there is something a little selfish about keeping the theory of personality projection a secret as well.  The reward for those that practice this theory is excellence.  Whatever they really enjoy doing, in that they will excel, being a great sculptor or a great brain surgeon in the novel.  But in order to be great in any such endeavor, it is necessary that others be mediocre.  Had Randolph told everyone about his secret, the world would have been full of other sculptors equally great.  Had Dr. Hudson told everyone he knew of this secret, there would have been a glut of great brain surgeons.  In a world where everyone is great, no one is.

This selfishness even reaches the point of being hateful and meanspirited.  Randolph tells Dr. Hudson of the time he helped a man who was down on his luck find a job, even to the point of buying him a wardrobe so that he could make a presentable appearance in an interview.  But the man broke his promise to keep it a secret, blabbing about it to a neighbor.  The man got the job, but as far as Randolph was concerned, the money was wasted because he didn’t get to benefit from his act of charity, saying “that didn’t do me any good!  You’d better believe—the next time I made an outlay I informed the fellow that if I ever heard of his telling anybody, I would break his neck.”

After Jesus told those two blind men, whose sight he had restored, to let no man know about what he did, they went ahead and told anyway:

9:31 But they, when they were departed, spread abroad his fame in all that country.

One wonders if Jesus was as irked about that as Randolph was when his good deed was spoiled by the faithless recipient of his largesse.

Of course, Randolph is at pains to say that you can’t use this theory for crass, selfish reasons, to get lots of money, for example.  You can’t do the right thing for the wrong reason.  So, in using this theory to become great at something, it must be for the sake of some “higher altruism.”  I’m not sure how his becoming a great sculptor is some kind of higher altruism, however.  In any event, there is an inherent element of selfishness in this theory of personality projection that cannot be dispelled merely by saying it cannot be used for selfish purposes.

There is something paradoxical about being rewarded for being good, whether in regard to this theory of personality projection in particular, or in regard to religious beliefs in general.  Whether it is the idea that one will go to Heaven, or one will be rewarded with a better life when one is reincarnated, or that our good deeds will benefit us within our lifetime, such beliefs undermine the moral quality of what we do, for they transform the categorical imperative into a hypothetical one.

Consider Matthew 25, the chapter alluded to above that includes the parable of the talents.  Jesus talks about how those that have fed the hungry, clothed the naked, given shelter to the stranger, and nursed the sick will be rewarded by God.  But of those that did not do these things, he says:

25:41 Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels:

25:46 And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal.

Does this not make it a matter of mere prudence to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, etc.?  The most wicked man on Earth would do that, if he feared that Hell awaited him if he did not.

Likewise, if you believe that you will be rewarded or punished when you are reincarnated, depending on what you do in this life, is it not again a matter of mere prudence to do good and eschew evil?

A similar paradox arises with karma.  In a simplistic understanding of this principle, good things happen to good people, and bad things happen to bad people.  In the television series My Name Is Earl (2005-2009), the title character wonders why bad things always seem to be happening to him.  He wins the lottery, but while jumping for joy, he gets hit by an automobile and winds up in the hospital, with the lottery ticket lost in the process.  But while watching television, he hears a man talking about karma, and Earl realizes that’s what his problem is.  He has bad karma, on account of all the bad things he has done in his life, though none of them worse than petty thievery.  He makes a list of all his misdeeds, intending to make amends.  No sooner does he make up for one of his sinful acts than he finds the lottery ticket.  And so it goes.  As he makes up for the things he has done wrong, crossing them off his list as he does so, his life continues to get better.

But we have to wonder.  If Earl’s only reason for “trying to become a better person” is so that good things will happen to him, does he really deserve the reward he seeks?

Now, My Name Is Earl was a successful comedy.  And since it was funny, all sins are forgiven. We are not concerned about the logic of the karmic principle that motivates Earl, because we are too busy laughing.  But Magnificent Obsession is a serious novel, and so the idea of using the secret karmic principle for selfish ends is problematic.

Let us consider a man who has no religious beliefs.  His irreligious nature may be summed up in four principles:

1. There is no God.

2. There is no immortal soul.  There is no Heaven or Hell, and there is no reincarnation.  Death is final.

3. There is no karma.  We do not live in a just world.  Bad things happen to good people, while there are wicked men who live quite comfortably and will never be punished for the evil that they do.

4. Suffering has no meaning.  The world is full of pain and misery that serves no purpose, ending only in death.

What should we say of a man that embodied these irreligious principles, if he fed the hungry, clothed the naked, and nursed the sick, a man that helped others because he cared about them?  Would not this man be more deserving of praise for what he does than one who expects to be rewarded because of some religious belief that he holds?

Only if there is no expectation of a future life can our actions in this life be truly moral.  Only if we have no illusions about living in a just world can our good deeds be truly praiseworthy.

The Last Hurrah (1958)

John Ford directed a lot of good movies in his time, but even his best movies were flawed by his penchant for scenes that are corny and silly. He probably thought of those scenes as providing comic relief, but none of them ever made me laugh. Instead, they usually made me wince. The Last Hurrah is no exception. In fact, it has an excessive amount of such silliness.

Also in excess is the sentiment. Frank Skeffington (Spencer Tracy) is running for a fifth term as mayor of an unspecified New England city, probably Boston, and he is an old-style Irish politician who uses political muscle to do good things for the people of the city, especially those who are needy. Too much goodness, however, can get on your nerves. After a while, we begin to wish for some hint of corruption, that maybe he lined his pockets once in a while. But this is not a subtle movie, where characters have both good and bad traits. The characterizations are simplistic and there are no deviations from type.

There are flaws in Frank’s character actually, but they don’t count because the movie doesn’t want us to think of them that way. For example, when we first meet Frank’s son, Junior, he is portrayed as a worthless playboy who cares so little for his father that he did not watch his father’s speech on television, but rather was out on the town with a couple of beautiful women. Frank is disappointed with his son’s lack of interest in his campaign, and the movie wants us to be disappointed with Junior too. And just to help us out, Junior is played by Arthur Walsh, a dorky-looking actor. But there is no reason why Junior should be interested in politics. He has his own interests and is entitled to live his life the way he wants. Frank is in the wrong for thinking his son has an obligation to be interested in what his father does for a living.

As a substitute, there is Frank’s nephew, Adam Caulfield, who is the son Frank wishes he had, someone who is willing to follow him around and listen to his speeches. And just to make sure we regard this as admirable, Adam is played by the good-looking Jeffrey Hunter. It would have been more interesting if Arthur Walsh had played Adam, while Jeffrey Hunter played Junior, but John Ford wasn’t taking any chances.

Another flaw in Frank’s character that the movie wants us to admire is revealed during a wake. Frank is critical when he sees the expensive coffin. And then we find out that the entire funeral is quite elaborate, involving limousines and a choir as well. Through the conversations, we find that the deceased did not arrange for such a funeral while he was alive, and what is more, the mortician admits that he did not discuss it with the widow either. And since the widow is destitute, the mortician is depicted as being irresponsible for making such decisions as to the obsequies. And so, when Frank threatens to have the mortician’s license revoked if he does not reduce the charge to a pittance, we are supposed to admire Frank for this.

But this is preposterous. Undertakers do not simply make arrangements without talking to anybody about them. In fact, they typically get some family member to sign a contract stating the nature of the funeral, stating its cost, and requiring payment in advance. And so, when Frank puts pressure on the mortician to charge significantly less than what somebody must have approved of, he is simply being virtuous at someone else’s expense. Just because a man is an undertaker with a creepy personality, that does not mean he is not entitled to make a profit just like other businessmen. But the movie apparently wants us to think otherwise.

The editor of a newspaper, Amos Force (John Carradine), refuses to say why he hates Frank so much. Frank tells Adam that his mother, Adam’s grandmother, was a servant in Amos’s house, and he fired her when he caught her stealing a few pieces of fruit (excusable because she was underpaid), after first humiliating her in front of the other servants. And now Amos just can’t stand it that her son became mayor. The fact that we never hear Amos’s side of the story is characteristic of the entire movie: it is completely one-sided in every way.

For just a moment, it looks as though the movie might become interesting. Another of Frank’s adversaries is a banker, Norman Cass, who is played by Basil Rathbone. Norman comes across as an intelligent man, in complete control his passions, capable of acting in a cold, calculating manner. He and other bankers refuse to approve the loans needed to improve the housing conditions of the poor, probably for the simple reason that the bankers are afraid the loans will not be paid back. But as with the mortician, making a profit in this movie is an unworthy motive, which must give way to the public good. In any event, we look forward to how things will develop between Frank and Norman.

But then the movie takes another dive into silliness. Norman has a son, another Junior, who is even more simple-minded and dorky-looking than Frank’s son. Frank threatens to make a laughing stock out of Norman’s son by offering him a position as Fire Commissioner. As a result, Norman agrees to approve the loans for Ward Nine in exchange for getting back the absurd photographs and having Frank agree not to go ahead with the appointment.

Finally, an important theme of this movie is that the old ways are obsolete and must give way to the influence of television in future political campaigns. And then Frank is defeated by a politician who looks even worse on television than he does in real life. No one would vote for such an obvious phony. And since Frank, played by Spencer Tracy, is nothing if not telegenic, his losing the election because of the influence of television makes no sense at all.

It’s Alive (1974 and 2009)

It’s Alive (1974) is so pro-choice that it approves of infanticide. A woman gets pregnant and the possibility of abortion is contemplated but ultimately decided against. Then the woman has the baby, and it is a monster.

No sooner does the horrible creature exit the birth canal than it kills every doctor and nurse in the delivery room. It escapes from the hospital and starts killing everyone it meets. At one crime scene, a detective mentions that his wife is upset because she is eight months pregnant, and his being on the case bothers her, especially since she lost their first baby. To this the other detective, who is obviously lacking in tact, says that people who don’t have children don’t know how lucky they are.

Lenore, the woman who has the baby-monster, was taking birth control pills for thirty-one months before she got pregnant, and the suggestion is made that the pills were what caused the baby to develop into a monster. This might seem to be a disconnect. How can the movie be both pro-abortion and anti-birth control at the same time?

The answer is that it is not birth control that is evil, but rather it is the pharmaceutical company that manufactured the pill. The company representative is worried about a possible lawsuit, and he convinces Lenore’s doctor that he too may be in jeopardy, and therefore it would be better if the baby-monster is killed so that it cannot be studied for medical purposes, which might reveal the company’s and the doctor’s culpability.

Frank, Lenore’s husband, comments that when he saw the movie Frankenstein, he thought the monster’s name was Frankenstein, but when he read the book, he realized that was the doctor’s name. In other words, it was not the monster of that book who was the cause of all the evil, but the doctor. And that is the case with this movie: the baby may be the monster, but the doctor and the pharmaceutical company that created the monster are the villains.

The baby-monster instinctively tries to make its way back to its parents. Lenore loves the baby-monster, and eventually Frank does too.  They want to keep it and raise it. This is reminiscent of Rosemary’s Baby (1968), in which Mia Farrow is raped by Satan, but when she has his baby, her maternal instincts take over, and she has deep affection for it.  That movie, however, is pro-life, saying that if a woman is forced to have a baby, then even if her pregnancy was the result of a rape, she will love it.  But, as It’s Alive points out, love is not an unqualified good. In fact, sometimes love is evil.

Anyway, Frank tries to escape with the baby-monster to keep the police from killing it, and then, when surrounded, tries to talk them into letting it live. But when that fails, he throws the baby at the evil doctor. When the police let loose with a fusillade of bullets directed at the baby-monster, they end up killing the doctor too.

In the last scene, the police detective gets word that another woman has had a baby-monster.

In the sequels, It Lives Again (1978) and It’s Alive III:  Island of the Alive (1987), more baby-monsters are born, while their parents love them so much that they do everything they can to protect and nourish them.

It’s Alive was remade in 2009.  It is interesting to note some of the changes that were made.

The Birth of a Nation (1915)

Most of the time, we watch movies in order to be entertained.  And The Birth of a Nation is entertaining, in a disturbing sort of way.  But its real value is anthropological.  That is, it is an artifact that can tell us something about the culture that produced it.  And what it tells us is not just that this country was extremely racist a hundred years ago, but that it had a clear conscience about it.  For the most part, today’s racists know that their views will meet with disapproval from the majority of Americans.  Some will openly flaunt their racism, reveling in the outrage they arouse.  Others will conceal their animosities, disguising their bigotry as something else, yet knowing that their like-minded fellows will correctly decipher their coded language.  But a hundred years ago, racists had every expectation that their views would have the sanction of God and society, that what they believed was just common sense and right-minded thinking.  This is the attitude that is on full display in The Birth of a Nation.

A lot of apologists for the South claim that the Civil War was not about slavery, but about states’ rights. There is a hint of that in this movie, with the head of the Cameron household expressing alarm that the sovereignty of the individual states is being disregarded by Lincoln’s administration. But the main thrust of this movie is that the mixture of white and black is evil, and that is the ultimate cause of the war. The very first scene depicts the first Africans being brought to America, which was the first step toward disunion. The suggestion is that it would have been better to leave the Africans in Africa.

But it is too late for that, so the next best thing, according to this movie, is white supremacy and segregation, especially in the form of slavery. This is shown as being a workable solution, for we see how happy the black slaves are, dancing a jig for their white masters, whom they adore. The black slaves are depicted as being content with their lot, lucky to be so well cared for.

If the mixing of black and white in a general sense is bad, the mixing of black and white in a sexual sense is a great evil. This movie is positively obsessed with the horror of miscegenation. And the mulatto, the offspring of such an evil union, is naturally the embodiment of that evil. Furthermore, the mulatto, being half black, is legally a “Negro,” and thus his lot is cast with that race. But being half white, he has some of the intelligence and the ambition of a white man, and thus he cannot be satisfied with the black man’s lot. He knows that the only way his position in life can be improved is if the position of blacks in general is improved, if they can become equal to whites, and thus the mulatto becomes a rabble rouser and a sower of discord. The result is that he becomes a traitor to both races.

There are two mulattoes in the movie. The first is Lydia, the housekeeper of Austin Stoneman, a powerful member of the House of Representatives. She is made miserable by the fact that she is almost white, so close to being white that it tears at her soul. She is Stoneman’s mistress, and as such has influence over him, leading us to suspect that she has been instrumental in goading him to help bring about the Civil War to free the slaves and in encouraging him to impose harsh terms on the defeated South at the war’s end.

A second mulatto, Silas Lynch, heads to Piedmont, South Carolina at Stoneman’s request, in order to oversee Reconstruction. When Lynch gets there, he finds the former slaves contentedly continuing to work for their former masters, and even worse, still doing the jig and eating watermelon, so he knows he has his work cut out for him. Soon, Stoneman decides to go to Piedmont for his health, taking his daughter Elsie (Lillian Gish) with him. This suits Lynch just fine, since he has designs on her.

The blacks come to dominate the courts, both as judges and jurors, so that whites are always at a disadvantage, and the blacks win a vast majority of the seats in the state legislature after the election. One of their first acts is to pass a law allowing blacks and whites to marry. In response, Ben Cameron realizes that whites can regain power by forming the Ku Klux Klan.

Meanwhile, Gus, a black captain the in army, has taken a fancy to Ben’s sister Flora (Mae Marsh). He follows her into the woods and begins making advances. She runs to the top of a steep cliff, and when Gus refuses to stay away, she leaps to her death, thereby saving her honor.

Now hostilities break out in a big way. But it is not simply black against white, for many blacks are depicted as loyal to their former masters. Nor is the wartime animosity between North and South of significance compared to the all-important cause of protecting white women from black lust. When a bunch of mostly Southern whites take refuge in a small house where Yankee veterans live, the intertitle says the former enemies are united in defense of their “Aryan birthright.”

Lynch wants to marry Elsie. He says he will preside over a black empire, with her as his queen, but she is horrified. So, he locks her up and prepares for a forced marriage. But then Stoneman, who was temporarily away, returns. When Lynch tells Stoneman that he wants to marry a white woman, Stoneman congratulates him, for he thinks that is a great idea. But when Stoneman finds out it is his daughter Elsie that Lynch wants to marry, he is outraged. The hypocrisy is simplistic and ridiculous.

Meanwhile, back at the house where the Yankees have taken in the Southern whites, the blacks have surrounded the house, trying to break in. When the people inside the house run out of bullets, the men prepare to bash the brains out of two women and a little girl rather than have them suffer a fate worse than death. At the last minute, the Ku Klux Klan rides to the rescue.

In the end, the Klan is victorious, disarming the blacks and disenfranchising them on election day. White rule has been reestablished, and all is well.

Where Danger Lives (1950) and Other Movies about Doctors, Women, and Money

Recently, I decided to watch Where Danger Lives again.  It’s only a minor film noir, but nevertheless entertaining.  This time through, however, I noticed an attitude often found in the movies toward doctors that choose to go into private practice, especially as it regards their relationship with female patients.  But first things first.

Where Danger Lives begins in a hospital where Jeff Cameron (Robert Mitchum) works as a doctor. He is dedicated to his profession, and so much so that a nurse reprimands him for working too hard (fifteen hours a day). To underscore what a good man Jeff is, his patients are children, with whom he has a terrific bedside manner. He tells a story about Elmer the Elephant to a girl in an iron lung to help her fall asleep, which she does before the story is finished.

Then he chats with a boy, promising that they will have more baseball discussions in the future.  The boy mentions that he knows Jeff will be going away.  The nurse says, in an apologetic tone, that she told him that Jeff will be going into private practice.

We get the sense that there is something wrong with Jeff’s going into private practice, that it means that he values making money more than caring for people. This seems to be what those who produced this movie wanted us to think, for they clearly put in the scene about Jeff’s intention to go into private practice for a reason, even though we never see it come to fruition. Remove that one brief scene with the boy, and the rest of the movie could have been exactly the same, without anyone thinking there was something missing. The point is that Jeff is guilty of shirking his duty to serve the public good for the sake of private greed.

Julie Dorn (Maureen O’Sullivan), a nurse, is Jeff’s fiancée. We know that their relationship is wholesome because he regularly gives her a white rose. But that is about to change.  As he is leaving the hospital for the night, he is delayed by an emergency.  A woman has attempted suicide, presumably by taking sleeping pills, since she is unconscious.  The woman is Margo Lannington (Faith Domergue), and when she wakes up, she sees Julie’s white rose and thinks it is for her, saying she likes red roses instead. When Margo grabs Jeff’s hand to thank him for pulling her through, Julie senses something, raising her eyebrows and glancing at Jeff.

As it turns out, Julie’s doubts and suspicions are justified. Just as Jeff is abandoning the children in the hospital, so too does he abandon Julie, breaking a date with her one night so he can be with Margo.  On another night, as he is leaving the hospital, Julie tells him the girl in the iron lung wants him to finish the story about Elmer the Elephant.  He says he doesn’t have time for that girl, and that he hates Elmer the Elephant.  He tells Julie that she should just make up something to end it, like Elephant gets Elephant.  He doesn’t have time for the girl because he has another date with Margo, bringing her a red rose, red being an obvious symbol for lust, the new sin added to the previous one of avarice.

Jeff doesn’t know it, but Margo is married.  He only finds out about this later because Margo has lied to him, telling him that her husband, Frederick Lannington (Claude Rains), who has been away fishing, is her father.  This lie leads to a confrontation between the two men when Jeff shows up one night unexpected. Frederick says, “Margo married me for my money.  I married her for her youth. We both got what we wanted, after a fashion.”  This eventually leads to blows and ultimately to Frederick’s death.

Jeff, who was hit with a fire iron during the fight, believes he accidentally killed Frederick, and he is now suffering from a concussion.  Unable to think straight, he lets Margo talk him into fleeing with her. From that point on, everyone they come into contact with wants money from them. By the time they get to the border, they are broke. But then Margo reveals that for years she has been squirreling her husband’s money away in a Mexican bank in her maiden name. Jeff realizes that it was Margo who murdered her husband, smothering him with a pillow while Jeff was out of the room. She then tries to smother Jeff. Later she shoots him. Then the police shoot her.

Her dying confession exonerates Jeff, who wakes up in a hospital.  It is clear that he and Julie are going to get back together, white rose and all. While nothing is said one way or the other, we can’t help but believe that once he recovers and is no longer a patient in this hospital, he will return to the hospital where he works as a resident much in the way he is returning to Julie. He has presumably learned his lesson about wanting to go into private practice.

As a general rule, movies tend to look favorably on doctors that work in hospitals. That is why we feel good about Dr. McKenna (James Stewart) in The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956) when we find out that he practices at the Good Samaritan Hospital back in Indianapolis.  This is reinforced when we are informed that he and his family traveled to Paris so he could attend a medical convention, definitely a sign of dedication.  After that, they traveled to Morocco for reasons of nostalgia, for he served at an army field hospital during the war and is proud of the contribution he made there.  There are exceptions, of course.  For example, even though Dr. George Harris (Richard Widmark) works in a hospital in Coma (1978), he turns out to be a villain.

With some movies, it is not a matter of working in a hospital as opposed to having a private practice; it is working in the public sector rather than the private sector. In Panic in the Streets (1950), for example, Dr. Clinton Reed (Richard Widmark) is an officer in the U.S. Public Health Service.  Like Jeff in Where Danger Lives, he works hard.  In the first day he’s had off in six weeks, he gets a call from someone at his office.  It seems that a man who was murdered had the pneumonic plague. Needless to say, this is a serious matter.  The killer needs to be tracked down before he spreads the disease.

However, Reed’s family is struggling financially, owing money at the grocery store, and he is tempted to take a job with an oil company as a medical advisor.  His wife Nancy (Barbara Bel Geddes) admonishes him for thinking about such things, telling him how important his job is right now, that he is doing exactly what he planned on doing when he was still in school.  We know he will do the right thing, continuing to work as a dedicated public servant rather than take a job in the private sector, even though his family can barely make ends meet, which isn’t going to get any easier since Nancy is going to have another baby.

In some cases, a doctor gives up a lucrative private practice so he can do medical research, which is what Dr. Steele (George Brent) does in Dark Victory (1939), after performing one last (unsuccessful) brain surgery on Judith Traherne (Bette Davis). It will be less remunerative than his private practice, but he believes his research will be of greater benefit to humanity.

So, what is it about private practice that is so rewarding financially? According to the movies, it is rich women who are hypochondriacs.  And it is always women, mind you, never men.  There is the occasional movie, of course, where a man is a hypochondriac, but I have never seen a movie where a doctor makes a good living by regularly treating rich men who are hypochondriacs.  It is the women that are as foolish as they are wealthy that provide the doctor with a rewarding practice, the reason being that they enjoy the attention of the male doctor with whom they are infatuated.

This is played for laughs in A Day at the Races (1937), where Dr. Hugo Z. Hackenbush (Groucho Marx) manages to make the wealthy Mrs. Emily Upjohn (Margaret Dumont) dependent on him by convincing her that she is suffering from obscure illnesses and in need of his care.

This is such a cliché that if a doctor is in private practice, the movie will sometimes make it clear that he is nevertheless more interested in contributing to the public good than in making money off such women. In Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931), for example, we learn early in the movie that Dr. Jekyll (Frederic March) has chosen to forgo catering to the Duchess of Densmore, who is a hypochondriac, so he can attend to his charity cases in the free wards.  In the next scene, we see a little girl struggling with her crutches. Thanks to Jekyll’s treatment of her, however, she has been cured, and with a little coaxing, he gets her to give up her crutches and start walking on her own, much to her delight.  This is to show us that Dr. Jekyll is a good man in his role as a doctor before the evil Mr. Hyde shows up.

In Arrowsmith (1931), the title doctor, played by Ronald Colman, wants to be a research scientist like Dr. Gottleib.  When Dr. Gottleib offers to take Arrowsmith with him to the McGurk Institute, Arrowsmith has to turn him down.  He is getting married to Leora (Helen Hayes), and he needs to go into private practice to support the two of them.  Dr. Gottleib is disgusted, saying, “Practice! To give pills to ladies, to hold their hands for them, to make their diets for them.”  Eventually Arrowsmith is able to do the medical research he always wanted to, but only after Leora loses her baby and learns that she can never have children.  Had the baby lived, one suspects that Arrowsmith would have had to continue in private practice.  Later, when Leora dies, this really frees him up to do the research he has always wanted to do, all for the greater good of mankind.

Green for Danger (1946) takes place in a British hospital that treats casualties during WWII.  A nurse reminds the surgeon, played by Leo Genn, how nice he had it in private practice before the war: “Rolls-Royce, lovely ladies.”  She notes that the ladies were happy to be in his consulting room on account of his “wounded stag look that no woman can resist.”  Later she refers to the women “who used to dither in and out of your consulting room in a flutter of checks and eyelashes.”  He says he misses the checks.

In Bad for Each Other (1953), Dr. Tom Owen (Charlton Heston) is pushed by Helen (Lizabeth Scott) to give up public service as a full colonel in the army to become an associate in a health clinic in Pittsburg that treats wealthy women.  As an indication of their strong sexual desires, all the rich women in this movie seem to be having adulterous affairs on a regular basis.  Having gotten a look at what a hunk Tom is, they can’t wait to make an appointment, get naked, and be examined by him.

After examining Lucille, one of his patients, she asks him if she will see him at a social function on Friday.  He says she will, and she says, “I hope you’ll recognize me with my clothes on.”  There is nothing wrong with her, of course, but to play along with the charade, he says he is prescribing “something to quiet your nerves.”  Tom’s nurse, Joan, gives Lucille a knowing look.  She is idealistic and doesn’t approve of Tom’s clientele of wealthy women who have nothing wrong with them.

Part of this movie is set in a coal-mining town, Coalville, to be exact.  Tom’s father and grandfather worked as coal miners.  In some movies about coal miners, like How Green Was My Valley (1941), one gets the sense that there is something honorable about continuing to work in the mines, even when there is a way to get out, so it’s no wonder that Tom’s mother disapproves of the way Tom’s older brother didn’t want to work in the coal mines too.  She doesn’t expect that of Tom, but she believes that, at the very least, he should live in Coalville and be a doctor for the coal miners.  One night there is a big accident in one of the coal mines. After working to save lives, Tom sees the error of his ways, breaks off his engagement with Helen and opens up an office in Coalville.  It is still private practice, but since he intends to treat poor coal miners rather than rich women, that makes it all right.  Joan approves of this change and continues to be his nurse.  We gather they will eventually marry.

In The Citadel (1938), on the other hand, coal mining is depicted quite differently. Dr. Andrew Manson (Robert Donat) starts out with noble aspirations about helping Welsh coal miners with lung conditions, but these miners are an ignorant, ungrateful lot.  They don’t mind having him for a doctor, but they don’t like the medical research he tries to do on the side, so they destroy all his notes and laboratory equipment.  He and his wife Christine (Rosalind Russell) give up and move to London.  He has a hard time making it, but one day he is called upon when a woman’s regular doctor is away.  He is brought to a room where Miss Toppy LeRoy, a rich, beautiful woman, is lying on the floor screaming.  He immediately diagnoses her problem as willful hysteria and slaps her until she stops.  His prescription for her is to get a husband and have children.

As he leaves, he runs into an acquaintance from medical school, Dr. Frederick Lawford (Rex Harrison), who invites him to come with him while he visits Lady Raebank, a rich hypochondriac at the most expensive, snob nursing home in London.  It isn’t long before Andrew himself starts making a lot of money by also treating rich women who have nothing wrong with them.  Another doctor who is in on the scam, Dr. Charles Every (Cecil Parker), points out while he and other doctors are playing golf that whenever Lawford speaks in general terms about patients, he always uses the feminine gender.

In addition to all the money that can be made off rich women, doctors that treat them have plenty of leisure time, and nothing says that better than a game of golf.  Unlike Jeff in Where Danger Lives, who works fifteen hours a day, or Dr. Reed in Panic in the Streets, who gets one day off every six weeks, these doctors in The Citadel don’t have to put in the long and hard.

Christine does not approve of Andrew’s unethical behavior, billing patients for doing nothing, prescribing treatments that don’t cure ailments that don’t exist.  It doesn’t help when she reads in the society page about Andrew being entertained by Miss Toppy LeRoy on a night when he said he would be home late on account of business.  Christine eventually tells Andrew that his work isn’t supposed to be about making money, but about helping his fellow man.  He tells her he doesn’t want to discuss it.

When Andrew’s best friend is hit by a car and needs surgery, Dr. Every, who only knows how to cater to rich women, botches the operation, and the friend dies. Andrew has a revelation.  Christine was right.  He is not supposed to make lots of money.  He is supposed to serve mankind.

There is a famous quotation from Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations recognizing the social good of the free market, where people seeking after their own interests end up providing benefits for others:

It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages.

Well, this may be true of butchers, brewers, and bakers, but not of doctors, if the movies are any indication.  Those movies do indeed address the humanity of doctors, expecting them to act from benevolence rather than from self-love, and working long, hard hours when they do so.  And that means they must leave those silly, rich women alone with their imaginary ailments.

On the Need for Public Displays of Grief

From a sentimental point of view, the death of Beau Biden makes it more difficult for his father, Joe Biden, to run for president.  From a cynical point of view, it might make it easier.

Joe Scarborough once said that a prominent Republican told him that he wanted to run for president in 2012, but to be successful, he would have to defeat America’s first African American president, and he didn’t want to be that guy.  That person is probably one of the candidates now running for the Republican nomination.  Along similar lines, in order for Joe Biden to become the next president, he would have to defeat Hillary Clinton, who is set to become America’s first female president.  And that would be a most dastardly deed.

This same reasoning probably lies behind the reticence of other prominent Democrats to run for president this year.  Martin O’Malley, Jim Webb, and Lincoln Chafee are not serious contenders. They are probably running for vice president or some other place in a future Clinton administration, or they may just be hoping to get more name recognition.  And sometimes candidates run not so much with the expectation of winning as to promote their favorite cause. It might be that Lincoln Chafee just wants to promote the use of the metric system.  Bernie Sanders might have originally decided to run for that purpose, to advance his populist agenda, although by now he probably figures he really has a chance at winning.  Though his winning would deprive America of its first female president, yet it would give America its first socialist president, and that would be just as significant, if not more so.

If Joe Biden were to enter the race, he would be a serious candidate with a chance of winning both the nomination and the presidency, so he is not like Messrs. O’Malley, Webb, and Chafee. In fact, as the sitting vice president, his gaining the nomination of his party is almost obligatory.  One has to go back to the Truman administration to find a sitting vice president, Alben W. Barkley, who wanted the nomination but did not receive it.  However, Biden is a white male with mainstream political views, so his election would not constitute, in itself, some kind of progressive breakthrough the way electing a woman or a socialist would.

Furthermore, while sitting vice presidents usually get the nomination, they typically fail to win the election.  George H. W. Bush was an exception to this, of course, but you have to go all the way back to Martin Van Buren to find another.  So if Biden were to run, not only might he spoil America’s chance at having a woman for president, but he might also fail to win in the general election besides, thereby ending his career as a loser.

But the death of his son changes Biden’s prospects, and not necessarily for the worse.  Just before he died, Beau told his father that he wanted him to run for president.  I admit to being a cynic of sorts, but I would never go so far as to say that Joe Biden made up this death-bed request.  That would be something you might see in a bad political melodrama.  The story is undoubtedly true. But he didn’t have to make it public.  That was a deliberate choice.

Granted it was a choice, the question remains what the motive in making it public was.  As we all know, people grieve in different ways.  It might have been a natural impulse on Biden’s part to tell others what his son’s last words to him were.  But the political implications of relating that information is undeniable, and it may have entered into his political calculations.  In other words, interfering with Hillary’s hopes seems more justifiable if Biden’s run for the presidency can be cast as the fulfillment of a dying son’s last wish.

To say that there was a political calculation in making that story public is not to say his grief was not genuine, for love and selfishness can coexist in the mind at the same time.  My mother was devastated when my father died, and it took her a long time to get over it.  But she later confessed to me that when the doctor at the hospital informed her that her husband had passed away, the song “Ding Dong!  The Witch Is Dead!” popped into her head.

A couple of days ago, Biden appeared on the Late Show, and he spent much of the time talking of Beau’s death, during which he became emotional.  Again, cynic though I am, I do not doubt that the emotion was genuine.  Much was made of Bill Clinton’s calculated display of grief at Ron Brown’s funeral almost twenty years ago.  He was laughing at something when he saw the camera was on him, and then he tried to recover by looking sad and wiping away a tear. But then, I have done as much myself.  To refer again to my father’s death, from the time he died until his funeral a few days later, I drifted in and out of grief, so that at times I was in a perfectly good mood.  On the day of the funeral, my cousin started talking to me, and she told me about something amusing that happened to her at work, and I was laughing at her salacious account when I suddenly heard my mother call out to me, letting me know that the minister was ready, and it was time for us to be seated near the grave.  Like Bill Clinton, I immediately did a face swipe, displaying a mournful countenance, while kicking myself for being distracted by my cousin’s ribaldry.  Therefore, I have no doubt that Bill Clinton was genuinely saddened by the death of Ron Brown, despite the fact that he was caught laughing and then tried to cover it up. By the same token, I do not doubt for a moment that what we saw of Biden’s heartache on the Late Show was genuine.

But once again, it is the public display that inspires cynicism.  Because we all grieve in our own way, perhaps some people just need to grieve on television. Perhaps it is because I never had the opportunity of using a television appearance as an outlet for my own bereavement that I fail to appreciate just how cathartic it can be to have millions of people watch as you get choked up talking about the death of a loved one.  Still, allowing as best I can for the relativity of it all, the idea of doing something like that simply does not appeal to me.  And so, once again, a cynical interpretation naturally presents itself. Again, I do not doubt that the emotion was genuine.  It is the motive for making it public that makes me think there was a political calculation behind it.

Suppose Biden had not told us about his son’s wish that he run for president, and suppose further that he had grieved in private all this time. Then, about a month from now, Biden suddenly declares he is running for president.Though months would have passed between the death of his son and his announcement, yet in the public’s mind there would be an incongruous lurch from anguish to ambition.  It is not Biden alone who must be prepared emotionally to run for president.  The public must be prepared for it too.  We must see the sorrow and the struggle.  Then, a few weeks from now, when Biden throws his hat in the ring, we can be satisfied that a proper period of mourning has elapsed, buttressed by comparisons to the past. We are told that he considered resigning from his recently won senate seat on account of an automobile accident that killed his wife and his daughter, and that injured his two sons. However, he was persuaded not to resign and threw himself into his work instead.  As a result, the public is ready to believe that Biden will deal with his grief by running for president.

It does not follow from this that Biden will actually run.  Hillary’s numbers in the polls might start to improve, and all the ordinary calculations that might deter him from running may be decisive.  But if circumstances prove to be propitious, Biden has prepared the way for his candidacy through these calculated, public displays of grief, genuine though that grief may be.