Martyrs of the Alamo (1915)

As we know, The Birth of a Nation (1915), directed by D.W. Griffith, justifies the institution of slavery and the rise of the Ku Klux Klan during Reconstruction as the need to protect white women from Negro lust.  Later that year, Griffith also produced Martyrs of the Alamo, which reveals that the war in which Texas declared and won its independence from Mexico was brought about by Mexican lust for white women.  So many white women were being accosted by the Mexican soldiers, it seems, that the white men finally had to take up arms to protect them.  When Santa Anna and his troops come in to put down the rebellion, the Texians took refuge in the Alamo, and we all know what happened next.

As an example of how cruel and ruthless the Mexican soldiers are, we see a scene in which a little boy is bayonetted, his body picked up and flung out of the way.  And when the battle is over, Santa Anna has anyone that survived the massacre executed, except for good-looking white women, of course.  We see an old woman being taken away for execution, while a young, pretty blonde is spared.  The intertitle notes that Santa Anna is an inveterate drug fiend known for his shameless orgies.  Right after that, we see him grabbing the pretty blonde, but she slaps him and gets away from him.  By the way, Santa Anna is played by Walter Long, the same man that played Gus in The Birth of a Nation, the black man that tried to rape Flora.

We have all heard how the Mexican soldiers were caught off guard when Sam Houston attacked at San Jacinto because they were taking their siesta.  But in addition to that, according to this movie, Santa Anna, appearing somewhat stoned, is busy having women dance for him, while a Mexican guard watches the show himself instead of watching for such things as an advancing army of Texians.  So, Mexican lust not only was the cause of the Texas revolution, it was also the cause of Mexico’s defeat as well.

The Lies That No One Believes

The main purpose of a lie is to deceive.  And thus it is only natural to suppose that a lie will fail to accomplish its purpose if the person being lied to does not believe it.  There is a certain species of lie, however, that manages to be successful even though it is not believed and the liar has no expectation that it will be.  A good example would be that in which a husband emphatically insists to his wife that he has not been cheating on her even though she knows he has.  Another would be the man who declares under oath that he does not remember something he could not possibly have forgotten.   And an excellent example was provided recently by President Obama when he stated, “We are determined to realize a world free of nuclear weapons.”

Now, by way of contrast, just imagine if Obama had said, in a very different context, “We are determined to realize a nation free of handguns.”  Such a remark would have caused a frenzy of political backlash by defenders of gun ownership, and that for two reasons:  First, they would believe that Obama really meant it had he said such a thing; and second, they would believe that he might actually take steps to try to bring it about.  After all, we have been reading for some time in the right-wing hysterical press that Obama is coming for our guns, causing gun sales to skyrocket.  If the Republicans really believed Obama when he said he wanted to get rid of nuclear weapons, the uproar would be overwhelming.  Donald Trump is presently accusing Hillary Clinton of wanting to abolish the Second Amendment.  But we don’t hear him saying that Hillary, like President Obama, wants to get rid of nuclear weapons. Trump believes a lot of crazy things, but he is not crazy enough to believe that.

Obama does not believe there will ever be a world free of nuclear weapons.  Furthermore, he knows that we do not believe him when he says that we need to rid the world of nuclear weapons.  In fact, it is because this lie is told with no expectation of its being taken seriously that it is bipartisan.  Ronald Reagan said pretty much the same thing in his 1985 inaugural address, and no one believed him either, nor did he expect them to.

The truth is, the world is a better place with nuclear weapons, but no politician dares to say so.  Without nuclear weapons, the world have undoubtedly fought a major war sometime in the last seventy years on a par with World Wars I and II.  “World War III” has always been understood to mean a war where America’s and Russia’s hydrogen bombs are unleashed.  But a conventional World War III would have undoubtedly been fought by now, possibly on American soil with widespread devastation, had not the existence of nuclear weapons kept such hostilities in check.  Who knows?  We might even have lost that war and our whole way of life with it.

Let’s face it.  To utter the truth, which is that we have no intention of ever giving up our arsenal, but we want to keep other countries from enjoying all the benefits of possessing nuclear weapons, would be a crude assertion of the will to power.  Instead, presidents are obliged to say that all nuclear weapons are bad, even ours, and that we look forward to the day when there are no more nuclear weapons in this world.  No one believes us, of course.  But this lie must be functional in some way, or presidents would not keep saying it.

A similar kind of lie was told by the Bush administration regarding plans to build a missile shield in Poland and the Czech Republic to protect them from an attack from Iran.  You see, if Iran is ever able to develop long-range missiles with nuclear warheads, they will send those missiles flying right over Israel and hit the countries of Eastern Europe, because Poles and Czechs are the ones they really want to destroy.  Needless to say, the Russians did not believe this lie.  Putin knew that plans for the missile shield were being made with Russia in mind.  The American people did not believe that lie.  Our allies did not believe it.  And the Iranians just snorted.  Moreover, George W. Bush had no expectation that anyone would believe it.  I mean, our opinion of Bush’s intellect may be pretty low, but we know he was not stupid enough to expect anyone to swallow that whopper.  And yet, the lie must have been functional in some way or else his administration would not have bothered to insist on telling it.

In part, the functionality of such lies is akin to religious utterances like “He’s gone to a better place” and polite expressions such as “We’ll have to get together sometime.”  We know they are baloney, but somehow they make us feel better anyway.  But another function of the lie no one believes is that it stops things from proceeding to the next step.  If you insist on a lie, no one can make you confront the truth and all its implications.

“Of All the Gin Joints….”

You know what the problem with this universe is?

It has too much synchronicity in it.

First, had any other Republican won the nomination, he or she would probably have stayed away from Bill Clinton’s sexual misconduct.  Instead, we have Donald Trump, who is willing to bring up every scandal connected with the Clintons, especially the ones involving sex.

Second, Bill Cosby has just been told he will have to stand trial for raping a woman by drugging her first, which naturally reminds people about the sexual assault charges made against Bill Clinton, as underscored by Steve Kornacki.

Third, we now have this scandal concerning Ken Starr for his failure to handle sexual assault cases properly as president of Baylor University.  Ken Starr, of course, was the man that investigated Bill Clinton during his presidency.

The occurrence of these three things all about the same time is too significant to be just a coincidence.  It must be synchronicity, that mysterious, meaningful connection between causally unrelated events.

Now, we also have the State Department’s report on Hillary’s improper use of emails, but that doesn’t count, not because sex is not involved, but because there is a causal process that led to this report’s being released at this time.  It’s a problem for Hillary, of course, but we cannot call it a coincidence.

Nor does the documentary Weiner count either.  It will remind us of how Anthony Weiner took pictures of his genitals and sent them to adoring women, which reminds us of his wife, Huma Abedin, the assistant to Hillary Clinton, but a causal analysis can explain why this documentary is being released at this time, so there is no need to invoke synchronicity.

Some might argue that Donald Trump’s attempt to smear Hillary with the scandals of the past will not work, especially the one about Vince Foster.  In fact, it might be argued that by bringing up Vince Foster, the one scandal most people, left and right, are willing to dismiss as a crazy conspiracy theory, Trump is actually undermining the other charges he has leveled against her and her husband.  And others might argue that the scandal concerning Ken Starr undermines his credibility as an investigator of various Clinton scandals.

But just as synchronicity is coincidence between meaningful events not causally connected, so too is the association of ideas a meaningful connection between thoughts not connected by logic.  Logic and causation don’t matter.  True, false, justified, unjustified, fair or foul—it doesn’t matter.  It all adds up to that queasy feeling we get when we think about the Clintons being back in the White House.

I am not given to spooky theories like those involving Carl Jung’s concept of synchronicity or to similar notions of luck or fate, but there are times when it seems that events not causally connected come together in a way that mere coincidence could not possibly support.  And right now, Hillary must be wondering how Donald Trump, Bill Cosby, and Ken Starr have all managed to come together by mere chance, just months away from the presidential election.

To the Last Man (1933)

In Aeschylus’s Oresteia, the point is made that revenge is never ending, whereas justice can bring things to a final resolution.  To the Last Man turns that idea on its head.  In this movie, which is about a feud between two families, whose principal names are the Haydens and the Colbys, the head of the Hayden clan, Mark Hayden, decides to end the feud by bringing in the law, which Granny Spelvin objects to as not honorable, because blood will not be spilled for blood.  Nevertheless, Mark goes to the sheriff and charges Jed Colby (Noah Berry) with the murder of Granpa Spelvin.  Even the sheriff thinks it is a bad idea to let the law interfere with a feud, but he arrests Jed, who is tried and sentenced to fifteen years in jail.  To get away from Kentucky, Mark takes his family out to Nevada.  But when Jed’s fifteen years are up, he and what is left of his family follow the Haydens to Nevada, along with a gang of criminals, headed by Jim Daggs (Jack La Rue), whom Jed met while in jail.

While things are heating up between the two families, Lynn Hayden (Randolph Scott) and Ellen Colby (Esther Ralston) accidentally meet and fall in love.  They plan to marry as the feud swirls around them.  And so, this is a kind of Romeo and Juliet story, except that this too is turned on its head.  Whereas Romeo and Juliet died, leaving their families to regret the feud that led to their deaths, this “Romeo” and “Juliet” survive, get married, and live happily ever after, while everyone else in the two families dies (except for a few women and children on the Hayden side).  Moreover, unlike justice, which ended nothing, revenge carried out to its ultimate conclusion, when there is only one man left, is the only thing that finally puts an end the feud.

The Mark of Zorro (1920, 1940) et al.

We all know who Zorro is, along with his secret identity, Don Diego Vega, his character having been featured in movies going back to the days of silent films.  And so it comes as a surprise when we find out that he was not specifically mentioned in the title of the serialized novel in which he was introduced in 1919, that title being The Curse of Capistrano by Johnston McCulley.  Another surprise that comes from reading this novel is the depiction of Diego’s native servant Bernardo, who is said to be deaf and dumb.  And if you think that expression is politically incorrect, the portrayal of Bernardo is vastly more so, because Bernardo is dumb in both senses of the word.  His value to Diego is such that we wonder why he didn’t just get a dog:

“Bernardo, you are a gem,” Don Diego said: “You cannot speak or hear, cannot write or read, and have not sense enough to make your wants known by the sign language. You are the one man in the world to whom I can speak without having my ears talked off in reply. You do not ‘Ha!’ me at every turn.”

Bernardo bobbed his head as if he understood. He always bobbed his head in that fashion when Don Diego’s lips ceased to move.

While visiting his father, Diego has Bernardo sleep on the floor just outside the door of his bedroom.

The first movie version of this story wisely changed the title to The Mark of Zorro (1920).  The mark in question refers to the scar that Zorro (Douglas Fairbanks) sometimes leaves on the face of an enemy.  As in the serialized novel, the movie begins with Zorro already in existence, and we see a man with a “Z” permanently etched as a scar on his face.  Later on in the movie, he carves a “Z” on the neck of Captain Ramón during a sword fight, and in a subsequent fight at the end, carves a “Z” on his forehead.  The first fight occurs because Ramón was sexually assaulting Lolita, with whom Zorro is in love.

We are used to seeing more consumption of tobacco in old movies than in modern ones, but I admit to being taken aback by its presentation in this movie.  It is one thing to see Don Diego taking a pinch of snuff as part of his routine of being a fop, along with his listlessly performing magic tricks and saying he is fatigued, but it is quite another thing to see Zorro himself smoking a cigarette.  But there he is, wearing cape and mask, taking a big drags on his cigarette, while confronting enemies, smiling broadly as he exhales large plumes of smoke.

The above-mentioned expressions of fatigue, by the way, are an essential attribute of Don Diego, beginning with the novel, where he proposes to Lolita and then says he finds the whole business fatiguing.  Speaking of Lolita, I have to wonder what her marriage with Diego will be like, considering that he thinks Bernardo is an ideal companion.

It’s hard to know what to say about silent films.  It’s almost as if they have to be rated against one another rather than compared to other movies in general.  As for this one, it is a bit corny.  When Sergeant Gonzales (Noah Berry) enters what appears to be a saloon, he is rude and offensive to a degree that is preposterous.  However, the movie does have its moments.  In any event, it made a major improvement on the character of Bernardo.  In the movie, he only lacks the capacity for speech, and he is intelligent enough to help Diego conceal the fact that he is Zorro.

There is one more difference deserving special attention.  In The Curse of Capistrano, the climactic duel is between Captain Ramón and Zorro, whereas in The Mark of Zorro, the duel is fought between Ramón and Diego.  More about that later.

My introduction to the character Zorro was in an old serial they showed on television in the early 1950s when I just a kid, to wit, Zorro’s Fighting Legion (1939).  As serials go, this is one of the better ones, though I suppose that is not saying much.  Set in 1810, Juarez has led a successful revolution in Mexico, which is quite an accomplishment, since he was born in 1806.  Anyway, the United States of Mexico needs gold from the mines, but a mysterious figure, Don del Oro, controls the Yaquis who work the mines, and who is one of the corrupt counselors who want to keep the gold themselves, but….  Oh, it’s all too confusing to go on with the plot.  There is no Bernardo character, by the way.

It was made with a juvenile audience in mind, and so it might seem inappropriate to take it seriously enough to criticize it, but having watched it again recently, I just have to make a brief comment.  Zorro (Reed Hadley) rides a white horse, the only white horse apparently in the entire area.  And so, I found myself wondering where he stabled it.  You can almost hear people saying to themselves, “Gee, Don Diego and Zorro are the only two people that have a white horse.”  Actually, Diego never rides the white horse, riding a black one instead.  Nor does he keep it in his stable.  When something comes up needing Zorro’s attention, Diego rides out to the hills where his white horse is standing there by himself, saddled and ready.   Needless to say, you can’t treat a horse that way.  That aside, it occurred to me that it would have made more sense if Diego rode the white horse, since it would go with his pretense of being a fop, while riding a black horse when he donned his Zorro rig.  Clearly, this juvenile serial wanted Zorro to have the pizzazz that goes with riding a white horse, instead of doing it the way I suggest, which might appeal to a more mature audience.  But I was just a kid when I first watched it, and so the white horse for Zorro was just what I wanted.  Furthermore, I was fascinated by the parts where Zorro was all decked out in his black outfit, complete with cape, sword, pistols, and whip, though it now strikes me that this panoply would be rather cumbersome.

The television station followed up by presenting an earlier serial, Zorro Rides Again (1937), and though I didn’t care for his mask, I still paid more attention to the parts where he was in costume and not so much to the parts where he was in ordinary dress pretending to be weak and lazy.  And I was thrilled when the Walt Disney Studios produced a television series entitled simply Zorro (1957-1959).  As before, it was the parts where I got to see Zorro (Guy Williams) gallivanting about that I was interested in, not so much the parts where he was Don Diego de la Vega.  Bernardo reappears, playing the role of a man who cannot speak and only pretends to be deaf.

Whether I preferred the parts where Zorro was doing stuff was because I was a child, or it was because these two serials and the television series were juvenile in nature, I cannot say.  But it was quite a surprise for me when, as a college student, I saw The Mark of Zorro (1940) for the first time.  Of course, it had the star quality of such actors as Tyrone Power and Basil Rathbone, as well as the production values of a major studio, all of which were bound to make it much better than what I had seen previously.  But what really struck me was the fact that the parts of the movie featuring Zorro constituted a relatively small amount of screen time, which was greatly exceeded by the amount of time devoted to Don Diego.  The emphasis on Diego in this movie even went so far as to have him fight the climactic duel as Diego and not as Zorro, as in the 1920 version.  Most movies do not do this, choosing instead to have any climactic sword fight fought by Zorro in his outfit, just as in the novel.  Notably,  in the 1974 made-for-television production starring Frank Langella, the movie is basically a remake of the version with Tyrone Power, even using the same music.  The major difference between the two, aside from the inferior quality of the 1974 version, is the way the story was altered just enough to allow Langella to be in full Zorro regalia in the final showdown.

The amount of screen time given to Zorro versus Diego determines the kind of movie it is.  A costumed character is exciting to watch, but he is all action and external appearance.  He must be in constant motion, running, riding, and fighting.  If he stands still for too long, he begins to look silly, especially if he is wearing a cape.  In fact, one of the ways the television show Batman (1966-1968) would amuse us was by having Batman and Robin doing just that, standing around and talking in their costumes.  On the other hand, it is with his secret identity, Diego in the case of Zorro movies, that we get to know the man, to learn what he thinks and feels.  Moreover, we get to watch him acting a part in order to keep people from suspecting that he is the one who wears the mask.  In this case, the part is that of a fop.  It is a pretense also used in The Scarlet Pimpernel (1934), starring Leslie Howard as the title character and as Sir Percy Blakeney, but Howard’s performance in that role was over the top.  Diego’s foppery as performed by Tyrone Power, on the other hand, is so good that we find ourselves impatiently waiting for the Zorro scenes to end so that we can have more Diego.

There is no Bernardo in the 1940 remake of The Mark of Zorro, although there is a gesture in his direction.  When the movie starts, Diego is enjoying himself as a military man in Spain, where his only problem is having his love life interrupted by the need to fight duels with men that are trying to prove themselves with a sword.  He gets called home by his father, who Diego believes is still the alcalde of a town in California.  Before he finds out otherwise, everyone recoils in fear of him when he says his father is the alcalde, including a coachman who says nothing when Diego speaks to him.  Angry, Diego threatens to cut out his tongue if he doesn’t answer him, but he is told that his father already had that done when the man spoke out against the taxes at a meeting, after which the coachman makes unintelligible sounds with his mouth.  At the time, I thought he would be the Bernardo of this movie, but we never see him again.

Perhaps the reason for this also has to do with the maturity of the intended audience.  The function that Bernardo serves in The Curse of Capistrano is that of allowing Diego to reveal his thoughts.  He has someone to talk to who isn’t able to say anything in reply, which Diego would have found irritating, because he doesn’t care for what most of us would call a conversation.  He prefers to be the only one to do the talking.  I suppose we’ve all had the misfortune of knowing someone like that.  In any event, this allows us to know what Diego is thinking.  Of course, McCulley could have told us what Diego was thinking, but that is an inferior solution.  It is better if we learn what someone is thinking by seeing or hearing what we would if we were in the room:  observing his body language and facial expressions; listening to his dialogue with others.  In the case of the novel, it is not so much a dialogue that Diego has with Bernardo, but a monologue in the presence of a dimwit.  But in any event, a mature audience will have no trouble understanding what Diego is up to without someone like Bernardo for him to talk to, and he is certainly not missed in this 1940 remake.

In addition to allowing Diego to reveal his thoughts, Bernardo also seems to exist to provide for some silly humor.  We no longer laugh at people that are mentally impaired, but I suspect that a hundred years ago, those that read The Curse of Capistrano thought Bernardo was funny.  In the 1920 version of The Mark of Zorro, Diego uses a fake mustache as part of his Zorro disguise.  At one point in the movie, he puts the mustache on Bernardo while he is sleeping.  And his character in the Disney production of Zorro was just the sort that would amuse children.  Therefore, such a character is not really suited for a movie intended for a mature audience.  Hence his absence in the 1940 remake.

The 1940 remake of The Mark of Zorro, then, is the only serious Zorro movie intended for an adult audience, and it is the best Zorro movie of them all.  Of course, Zorro: The Gay Blade (1981) is intended for an adult audience too, but it is a parody.  With that qualification, however, I would rate it as the second best Zorro movie ever made.  A Bernardo character belongs there, of course, though under the name “Paco.”  Early in the movie, while Diego (George Hamilton) is sword fighting with a woman’s cuckolded husband and his five brothers, Paco hand-signals what is in a letter that just arrived ordering Diego to return to California.

Other than that, it is standard for Zorro movies to appeal to juveniles.  The Mask of Zorro (1998), however, takes this to the next level.  Not only is it intended for children, it has children playing roles in the movie as well.  This is in keeping with the unfortunate trend, beginning in the 1980s, of thrusting children into movies that would once of have been made with adults only.

Eyes Without a Face (1960)

In Eyes Without a Face, mad scientist Docteur Génessier, whose specialty is transplanting tissue from one person to another, is working to overcome the tendency of the recipient to reject the foreign tissue.  He also has a practical purpose, which is grafting a new face on his daughter, Christiane, who was disfigured in an automobile accident that was his fault.  His Igor is Louise, played by Alida Valli, whose disfigured face was restored by Génessier, for which reason she is extremely loyal to him and willing to aid him in his evil doings.  In particular, Louise picks up young women who look the way Christiane did before her disfigurement, takes them to Génessier’s house so he can remove their faces and transplant them onto Christiane.  Unfortunately, he has thus far been unsuccessful, the result of which is that a bunch of dead women’s bodies without faces keep turning up, all of whom seem to be of the same physical type.  In fact, we see Louise dump one such woman into a river at the beginning of the movie.  One way in which all the women are similar is that they all have blue eyes.  Now, this makes no sense, because Christiane’s eyes are fine, hence the title:  she has the eyes; what she needs is a face.  So why the women whose faces are being removed have to have blue eyes is a mystery.

Génessier identifies the woman found in the river as his daughter so that people, including her boyfriend Jacques, a doctor who works in Génessier’s clinic, will think she is dead and not wonder where she is, for only Génessier, Louise, and Christiane know of her horribly burned face.  In the meantime, Christiane wears a mask around the house so as not to gross everyone out including herself.  The mask is an immobile version of what she used to look like.  One of the amazing things about this mask, which allows us a clear view of her eyes, is how expressive her “face” is.  We have all heard the expression, “The eyes are a window to the soul.”  This movie really demonstrates it.  We get a good sense of what Christiane is feeling and thinking as she walks around the house owing only to the expressiveness of her eyes.

Louise’s next victim is Edna.  She tricks her into getting into the car with her, and the next thing you know, Edna is strapped to the operating table having her face lifted, so to speak.  We actually get a glimpse of her face after the skin has been removed, squarely placing this film into the category of Grand Guignol.  At first the transplant seems to be a success, but eventually it becomes necrotic and has to be removed again.  Back on goes the mask.  For some reason, Génessier keeps Edna alive, as if he is doing her a favor, but she leaps to her death.  Adding to the creepiness of this movie are all the big, howling dogs Génessier has locked up in small cages to be used for his transplant experiments.

One of Edna’s friends reports her missing.  She tells the police about the woman that Edna said she was going somewhere with, but all she can say by way of identification is that Edna said the woman wore a pearl choker (Louise wears a choker to hide the scar on her neck).  Later, Jacques receives a strange phone call from Christiane, who misses him terribly.  She only utters his name, but he recognizes her voice.  He goes to the police, and when Inspector Parot mentions the pearl choker in passing, Jacques thinks of Louise.  As a result, she and Dr. Génessier become suspects.

A woman named Paulette, who fits the profile of missing girls, blue eyes and all, is picked up by the police for shoplifting.  Parot and another inspector threaten her with prosecution unless she acts as a decoy.  She agrees to go to Génessier’s clinic and fake an illness.  And here is the point in the movie where police incompetence becomes so absurd that it is laughable.  Do they have a plainsclothes officer watching the clinic to see what happens to her when she is discharged?  No.  And so, when Paulette is released late at night and walks down the street to get a bus, she is offered a ride by Louise and accepts.  Too bad nobody is around to see her get in the car.

Jacques calls Inspector Parot to let him know Paulette has left the clinic.  Parot concludes that this puts Génessier and Louise in the clear, since they obviously did not kidnap Paulette, but let her leave the clinic instead.  However, Parot decides to make sure she got home all right.  Gosh!  She never got home.  So the two inspectors drive out to Génessier’s clinic just to be sure.  They ask Génessier if Paulette was released from clinic.  Yes she was, he tells them.  The inspectors shrug and go home, concluding it was just a false trail and the choker was just one big coincidence.

Before Paulette’s face can be peeled off, Christiane releases her from the table, stabs Louise in the neck right through the choker, and releases the dogs, who then go after Génessier, ripping half his face off.  Christiane wanders off into the woods with one of the doves she also released perched on her hand, just to give the movie a little symbolism.  You see, this is a French film, so you can’t expect it to make sense the way a Hollywood production would.

Defending Your Life (1991)

Defending Your Life is a new-age reincarnation movie, which means it has a sappy premise that only someone that has led a pampered existence could possibly relate to.  Daniel Miller (Albert Brooks) is an advertising executive who buys himself a BMW as a birthday present to himself.  Then, when trying to pick up a bunch of CDs that have fallen on the floor while driving, he runs head on into a bus, dying instantly.  When he wakes up, he finds himself in Judgment City, where a tribunal will decide whether he will be able to “move forward” (presumably to some higher plane of existence), go back to Earth to be reincarnated so he can try to do better next time, or be discarded as so utterly worthless that he is not worth saving.

Now, you may think this tribunal would be concerned with Miller’s self-centered attitude or his thoughtlessness.  Or possibly it would be concerned with some darker sins, like being mean and selfish.  No, the only thing the tribunal cares about is fear.  According to prosecuting attorney Lena Foster (Lee Grant), Miller cannot be allowed to move forward, because he never overcame his fears.

Let’s stop right there.  Fear is a normal, healthy reaction to danger.  It is the emotion that makes you take precautions to avoid dangerous situations, and when that is not possible, to hide or run away.  The absurd premise of this movie, that fear is something that must always be overcome, makes sense only in a world where one is sheltered from danger.  This is a movie for people who live in the nice part of town, not in the bad part where gangs terrorize the neighborhoods.  It is a movie for people who have never been to war, who never had to fear having their legs blown off by an IED.  It is basically for people who have lived relatively healthy lives in middle-class America.

During the trial, we see scenes from Miller’s life of which every second has been recorded.  We see, for example, a scene in which he is being harassed by a bully when he is in grade school.  This is presented by prosecuting attorney Foster as evidence that Miller has not overcome his fears.  The idea, presumably, is that he should have fought that bully instead of backing down and being humiliated.  Fine.  But what I want to know is, When the bully died, did he get to move forward?  One would think so, because the bully sure wasn’t afraid.  And as I noted above, the tribunal in Judgment City seems to care nothing about moral worth, only whether one has overcome fear.

This is not addressed in the movie, no doubt because of the self-satisfying myth that so many people cling to, which is that bullies are cowards.  But this is just an imaginary revenge against bullies.  I knew a few bullies when I was young, and none of them were cowards.  Sure, they often picked on kids who were smaller and weaker, but they were just as likely to take on someone twice their size and even beat the crap out of him.  So, from what I could tell, these bullies would definitely have been allowed to “move forward,” because they had undeniably overcome their fears.

In contrast to Miller, there is Julia (Meryl Streep), who breezes through her trial, during which we see her getting her children safely out of a burning house and then rushing back in to save the cat.  Needless to say, she gets to move forward.

Meanwhile, back in the jungle.  That is, Miller and Julia go to a place where they can see what they were in their past lives.  Miller sees himself as a black African primitive who is running through the jungle from a lion.  I guess that is why Miller had to be reincarnated instead of being allowed to move forward, because when he was that primitive man in Africa, he was unable to overcome his fear of lions.  He should have stood his ground and kicked its ass.

Foster presents more evidence against Miller.  A friend of his once gave him some inside information about a new watch company, telling him to invest $10,000 in the company, which is all the money Miller had at that time.  We won’t quibble about the fact that it is illegal to profit from inside information, because most people don’t really regard that as a crime, especially when they stand a chance to take advantage of such information.  More to the point, when someone gives you some “inside information” about a company and tells you to invest all you have in it, that is a damn good time to be afraid.  Sure, the company turned out to be Casio, so with hindsight we can see he would have made 37 million dollars on the deal, but most of the time such information turns out to be worthless.  Nevertheless, Miller is accused of letting his fear keep him from making a killing in the stock market.

It gets worse.  It is pointed out that Miller subsequently invested the $10,000 in cattle and lost it all.  But does he get credit for having the courage to invest the money in cattle?  No.  Apparently, you only get credit for having the courage to make good investments, not for having the courage to make bad investments.  Well, I’m glad they cleared that up.  Now we all know how we should invest our money.

As the pièce de résistance, Foster presents a scene from what Miller did while in Judgment City.  In particular, on the previous evening, Julia and Miller confessed their love for each other.  She invited him to spend the night with her.  But he didn’t want to, because he believed their relationship was just perfect the way it was, and he was afraid that sex would spoil it.  Once again, Foster points out, Miller has failed to overcome his fears and he does not deserve to move forward.  Well, all I can say is that I have known several women who did not want to have sex with me because they said it would spoil our friendship, so I guess they will not be moving forward either.  I, on the other, was fearless in the matter, more than willing to risk the friendship to satisfy my lust, so I guess I will be moving forward.

On the Need for Separate Restrooms

Back in the 1970s, I used to read “Dear Abby” in the newspaper.  On one particular day, someone had written a letter to her saying that he was a transvestite.  He asked her which public restroom he should use when he was dressed as a woman.  Abby’s answer was short and to the point: “Use the ladies’ room.”  That made sense to me.  I figured that was all there was to it.  I guess I figured wrong.

Now it is a big political issue.  I have noticed that those defending the rights of transgender people always talk about restrooms only, whereas those who want restroom use to be determined by anatomy also talk about locker rooms and showers.  After all, restrooms have stalls for privacy, whereas all is exposed when people shower together.  I suppose it’s just a matter of time before some smart ass in high school says, “Coach, I feel like a female today.  I guess I’ll go shower with the girls.”  But for now, let’s just stick to restrooms.

I said that there is privacy in the restrooms on account of the stalls.  Actually, that is not always true.  I have been in several department stores where the doors of the stalls had been removed, presumably to discourage shoplifting (i.e., with doors on the stalls, a man could stuff items into his pants or under his shirt without fear of being seen).  That meant that if you went into a crowded restroom and sat down on a toilet, the next guy in line would be standing right in front of you waiting his turn.  Those in line were always polite enough to look the other way, but it really puts you out of the mood.

In fact, I used to work in a department store where the doors on the stalls had been removed.  In front of the stalls, just above the sinks, were mirrors, and to the left of the stalls was the door.  That meant that if you were sitting on either of the first two toilets when someone opened the door, you could see the people out in the store reflected in the mirrors.  And that in turn meant that the people out in the store could see you sitting on the toilet.  Granted, they could only see you from the chest up, given the angle of reflection, but it was still a most unpleasant experience.

One day, I happened to pass by the ladies’ room just as a woman was coming out.  I only got a brief glance of the interior, but I was able to take in the essentials.  Instead of seeing the open toilets, as was the case with the men’s room, I saw an antechamber consisting of a vanity, at which one woman was putting on her makeup, and a couch, on which another woman was lying down.  There was even a nice rug on the floor.  In the present debate about restrooms, it is said that forcing a person to use one restroom rather than another is discrimination.  I have to agree.  Though we seldom get a chance to compare them, restricted as most of us are to one or the other, there is no separate-but-equal when it comes to men’s and ladies’ restrooms.

Still, as envious as I was of the women who got to use the nice ladies’ room, I would never assert my right to use that restroom on the basis of discrimination were I to find myself in that situation today, because there are some things it is better not to know.  The romantic idealization of the eternal feminine does not stand a chance in the face of bathroom sights, sounds, and smells.  I once knew a guy, somewhat older than I, who had grown up on a farm where they still did not have indoor plumbing.  His conception of women was such that he just could not square it with the excretory functions he knew they must have just like men.  It bothered him and bothered him until one day he decided he just had to know.  He finally got his chance when his girlfriend came over to visit one night.  For a while, she, he, and his parents sat around conversing until at one point she said she had to use the privy.  She was gone for fifteen minutes.  When she came back, my friend excused himself, went outside, picked up the flashlight he had secreted away for just this purpose, and headed for the outhouse to have a look.  It was many years later that I knew him, but his face still looked strange when he told the tale.  “Oh God, John,” he said, shaking his head.  “It was awful.  Just awful!”

Well, they never got married, and I cannot say that that was the reason, but it would not surprise me if it were.  I remember being at a family reunion when I was sixteen, where I happened to be sitting next to my cousin, just a year younger than I.  I know she was my cousin, but I still thought she was cute.  Then, suddenly, someone farted.  It was silent, but deadly.  Rationally, it was impossible for me to know who the culprit was, but the olfactory sense is most primitive and visceral.  Something deep inside me was convinced that she was the one.  I am an old man now, but whenever I have seen her or talked to her in the years that followed, I always think of that fart.

Actually, the whole problem concerning privacy and separate restrooms in America is nothing compared to France.  A woman I knew said that when she was in France back in the early 1960s, she once had occasion to use a public restroom, which was open to both sexes.  There were no stalls, only toilets without so much as a cubicle.  She was the only one in the restroom at the time, so she sat on one of the toilets.  To conceal herself as much as she could just in case a man should walk in, she used the newspaper she had bought to form a kind of cover over her body below the waist.  Sure enough, a Frenchman walked in and had a seat on the toilet next to hers.  After he got himself comfortable, he looked over at her, smiled, and gently tugged at the newspaper, as if to show his amusement at her modesty.  Then as now, I found the story hard to believe.  All I can say is that she was not the type to make up stuff, and so I pass this on as she told it to me.

And so, however this issue for transgender people works out, I hope that I never have to use the same restroom that women do, because I do not want my romantic illusions contaminated by intimate knowledge of harsh reality.  Of course, as a confirmed bachelor, who has never even lived with a woman, I have been able to hold on to these illusions longer than most.  As a married friend of mine once said, “You know the honeymoon is over when you are in the bathroom brushing your teeth, and your wife comes in, sits down, and takes a dump.”  For that reason, I think separate bathrooms for the sexes would be a good idea even in private residences.

I said that I have never lived with a woman, but there were times when I let a girlfriend spend the night.  I prefer to sleep alone, sprawled out in the bed like a big old swastika, but I figured that letting her sleep over was the least I could do.  However, she had a bad habit of getting up in the middle of the night, using the toilet, and then leaving the seat down.  That was inconsiderate, because later, when I had to go myself, I ended up peeing all over it.  I didn’t realize it at the time, of course.  But in the morning, being the gentleman that I am, I would always let her go first.  As soon as I heard her scream, I knew what had happened.  Well, it was her own damn fault for not lifting the seat when she was through using it.

With separate restrooms, that would never have happened.

The Perfect War for an Antiwar Movie

I didn’t raise my boy to be a soldier,
I brought him up to be my pride and joy,
Who dares to place a musket on his shoulder,
To shoot some other mother’s darling boy?

Well, it is Mother’s Day, after all.  And since we naturally think of mothers as being opposed to war, this seemed like a good day to reflect on antiwar movies.  But while I was pondering which antiwar movie was the best one I had ever seen, it occurred to me that some wars are more suitable as a setting for an antiwar movie than others, and this led me to wonder what the perfect war is for an antiwar movie.

First of all, the war should take place since the Age of Reason, which began in Europe in the 17th century.  Though wars were probably more ghastly in ancient times, what with Joshua’s genocidal slaughter of everyone in Canaan, the routine putting-men-to-the-sword in the Peloponnesian War, the destruction of Carthage, and many other atrocities too numerous to mention, yet we just have a hard time working up antiwar sentiments when watching movies set in those days.  There are a few antiwar movies set in the ancient world, such as The Trojan Women (1971), which involves mothers again, but they are the exception.  More common is a movie like 300 Spartans (1962), in which we enjoy watching some real manliness in the face of overwhelming odds.  When King Leonidas is told that so many Persian arrows will fill the sky that they will blot out the sun, he calmly replies, “Then we will fight in the shade.”  But what really sets the mood is when a Spartan mother tells her son, “Come back with your shield or on it.”  Now, how are you going to have an antiwar movie when Mom has an attitude like that?

The Mediaeval Period is not much better, perhaps because romantic figures like King Arthur, Richard the Lionhearted, and Charlemagne are not conducive to making a good antiwar movie. Apparently, we need to be in the Modern Period, where men are expected to be a little more civilized and educated, in order to find wars suitable for the making of an antiwar movie.

The second thing that is needed is a war in which many people were killed. It is fortunate that since World War II, the number of soldiers dying in American wars has been decreasing, but the fact remains that the relatively fewer casualties make these recent wars less than ideal for an antiwar movie. It is not that I have forgotten about MASH (1970), Apocalypse Now (1979), Full Metal Jacket (1987), Black Hawk Down (2001), and others, good antiwar movies all.  But the wars in which these movies were set just don’t have the numbers needed to make it to the top of the list.

At this point, I cannot help but think about the Civil War.  It certainly has the numbers, for with 620,000 deaths, it by far is the deadliest of all the wars America has fought in.  Deadliest for Americans, that is.  America has fought in wars where many more people died, such as World Wars I and II, but American deaths were less than that of the Civil War.  This American element is important.  Hollywood still dominates the movie industry, and is primarily geared toward an American audience.  Therefore, a good war for an antiwar movie should be one in which Americans are involved, or failing that, Europeans.  In other words, no matter how many people might be slaughtered in a war in Africa or Asia, if neither Americans nor Europeans are involved, it just will not hold our attention.  So American or European involvement is the third condition that must be met for the setting of a good antiwar movie.

The fourth ingredient for a perfect antiwar war is that there should be a lot of naïve optimism and dreams of glory on the part of the young men in the beginning, only to be crushed as the war progresses.  And here again, the War Between the States would seem to be a good candidate, as in Gone With the Wind (1939).  Several scenes come to mind:  The Tarleton twins becoming horrified when Scarlett tells them there isn’t going to be any war; the talk about licking the Yankees in six weeks; the young men hollering with glee when news comes that war has finally broken out; Scarlett in the hospital, where a woman writes a letter dictated by a dying soldier to his mother (mothers again); and Scarlett walking across the railroad yard to find the doctor to help deliver Melanie’s baby (another mother), as the camera pulls back, revealing a panorama of wounded men.

But while the Civil War meets all the conditions considered thus far, it has one unfortunate flaw.  It had a noble purpose, which was ending slavery.  A perfect war for the setting of an antiwar movie must be one that is pointless. Of course, it was pointless from the southern point of view, which is why the antiwar theme works in Gone With the Wind, but the larger context of ending slavery makes the Civil War less than ideal for an antiwar movie. Wars that either were fought for a noble cause or had a beneficial outcome just do not make for good antiwar movies.  Correct me if I am wrong, but there has never been an antiwar movie set during the American Revolution. I guess the British could make one from their point of view, but even so, if there is such a film, I have never seen it.

The Napoleonic Wars might be a good candidate.  Americans were not involved, but Europeans were.  There was an enormous loss of life, the most pointless of which was the invasion of Moscow, where Napoleon started out with 500,000 men, was easily victorious, and then lost all but 50,000 men trying to get back home in the freezing weather.  And in War and Peace (1956), one of the many screen adaptations of Tolstoy’s novel, Prince Bolkonsky (Mel Ferrer) says of his participation in the Battle of Austerlitz, “I delayed, for ten minutes, a retreat in a battle that was lost, in a war that was lost.”

There is just one problem.  Because the Russians and the British were victorious in their war against Napoleon, who was clearly an aggressor, the war seems morally justified from their point of view.  The war is more suitable for antiwar treatment from the French point of view. But that won’t work either. Remember earlier when I said that even if a war did not have American involvement, it might still be worth considering as a good antiwar war if it involves Europeans, because we readily identify with Europeans? Well, that is certainly true, unless they are French.  Then we just don’t identify so well.

I must no longer tax the reader’s patience.  He or she has known for several paragraphs running where we would end up.  The war to end all antiwar wars is obviously World War I. Set in the Modern Period, on the European continent, it involved a great slaughter, and even though I have read several books on the subject, I still can’t figure out what the fighting was all about. It had something to do with entangling alliances, imperialism, revanchism, and assassination, as best I can tell.  But it all adds up to one big pointless mess. Woodrow Wilson said it was to make the world safe for democracy, but the Europeans didn’t know what he was talking about.  I sometimes think that is why they changed the name from the Great War to World War I:  by making it seem like a prequel to World War II, which had the noble purpose of defeating the Nazis, it seems to acquire some purpose and justification by the association of ideas.

Furthermore, WWI began with the required naïve optimism and dreams of glory.  I remember reading somewhere that one of the generals observed that there had been a definite change in attitude on the part of the troops from one world war to the next, saying, “The doughboys sang songs, but the GIs made wisecracks.”  If that is true, then this cynicism is another reason why the Second World War is not suitable for an antiwar movie.  And it is also a reason why the Vietnam War cannot be the perfect war for an antiwar movie either.

In All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), we see young men being inspired to go to war by their teacher.  Since they are WWI Germans, it is all right for Americans to identify with them. In Gallipoli (1981), the main character sees the war in terms of a great moral purpose, and he is most apprehensive lest he will miss out on something that is larger than life.  Since he is an English-speaking Australian, we even more easily identify with him.  Paths of Glory (1957) is a good antiwar movie, but since all the soldiers are French, identification is difficult.  This difficulty is overcome by having the bad officers played by actors that are obviously French or at least foreign, while having the good officer and the unjustly accused defendants played by American actors.

Actually, this brings out the fact that some distancing is a good thing.  A good antiwar movie must be full of fools and knaves.  In particular, the fools are the young men who vaingloriously march off to war, while the knaves are the officers who send them to their death.  Americans don’t like to think of themselves as being either fools or knaves, so it is better to let the Europeans take those roles.  That is why the best WWI antiwar movies do not involve Americans at all.  Regarding All Quiet on the Western Front, Danny Peary makes the following remarks in his Alternate Oscars:

My feeling is that the film has always been well received in America because it shows Germans—our enemies in World War I—coming to their senses in a losing war effort. (Importantly, none of their victims is identified as an American.)  … I doubt if American audiences would have received it so well over the years if, with few script changes, these soldiers who question giving up their lives for uniform, flag, and country were Americans.

In other words, one of the things that makes WWI the perfect antiwar war is that Americans were involved, but only as reluctant warriors, as in Sergeant York (1941), while it is the Europeans who get to play the parts of idealistic young men being sent to their death by callous officers.

Finally, since we are talking about movies, there must be memorable imagery. It is not enough to just pile up the bodies.  The destruction of human life must have cinematic value.  The Crimean War provides us with the Charge of the Light Brigade, giving us one poem and two movies.  But while the imagery is right, its significance varies from being noble and glorious to being insane and futile.

The imagery in WWI, however, is unequivocal:  men climb out of their trenches, run toward the enemy line, and are cut down by machinegun fire. When it comes to antiwar movies, it doesn’t get any better than that. In Gallipoli, my favorite part is when the commanding officer tells the soldiers to remove all the bullets from their rifles before they charge. “Bayonets only!” is the command.  I guess the idea is that if you have bullets in your rifle, you might want to take aim at the people who are shooting at you, thereby slowing down the charge.  But with an empty rifle, your only hope is to run as fast as possible toward the machine gun and stab the man who is firing it.  That was the plan.  I don’t suppose I need to tell you how the plan worked out.

By the way, just as a side note, has there ever been a movie set in WWI in which it is the Germans who climb out of their trenches, run toward the French or English positions, and get massacred by machineguns?  The Germans in the movies never seem to do that, not even in All Quiet on the Western Front.  Surely they must have actually done so from time to time, but not on the big screen.  Presumably, because the Germans were our enemy, watching them get killed in great numbers might not instill the same antiwar feeling that we have come to expect from a WWI movie.  And so, when it comes to the movies, it is the fate of the Allies to climb out of their trenches and charge toward the Germans, never the other way around.

In any event, World War I is the perfect war for an antiwar movie.  And so I’ll end where I started, with a mother’s lament in fearful anticipation of that war:

What victory can cheer a mother’s heart,
When she looks at her blighted home?
What victory can bring her back
All she cared to call her own?
Let each mother answer
In the years to be,
Remember that my boy belongs to me!

Happy Mother’s Day.

Executive Action (1973) and JFK (1991)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What’s the Bilker report?” you ask.

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

“Who is that?” you foolishly ask.

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

That is what it feels like watching JFK.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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