On the Distinction between Civilians and the Military

The men and women who serve in the armed forces of the United States fight for our rights and freedoms, risking life and limb as they do.  At least, that’s the ideal.  Sometimes we begin to wonder if they are actually fighting for something else instead, for reasons less worthy, such as access to oil.  But even then, the people who do the fighting may be assumed to have joined the military for noble purposes, even if in the end ignoble motives lie behind some of the wars they end up fighting.

We honor these brave men and women with medals for a few and parades for the rest.  Politicians regularly praise their sacrifice in speeches, and we listen to those speeches with approval.  We regret the loss of life that is incurred on the battlefield, and we are heartbroken to see the ones who return physically maimed and crippled, mentally shattered and traumatized.  We are angered when we find that these veterans are not receiving the care that they deserve, and we all agree that more should be done.  Yet through it all, we never question the rightness of the ideal.  Without question we support the notion that fighting for our rights and freedoms, even at the cost of life or physical or mental well-being, is a good thing.  Only when we suspect that they are not fighting for our rights and freedoms do we question the war, do we say their sacrifice was in vain, do we say that they were betrayed, as was the case in Vietnam and in the Iraq War.  But as long as the war is actually being fought for our rights and freedoms, we do not question the rightness of their sacrifice.

It has been observed that only a very small percentage of our population actually makes that sacrifice.  Even if we include the immediate families of those in the military, the percentage of the population directly involved in these wars is small.  For this reason, a few have suggested that we bring back the draft.  Instead of forcing the men and women in the military to serve multiple tours of duty in combat, we could use the draft the spread the sacrifice over a larger section of the population.

Officially, the reason the military opposes the draft is that conscription is not suited to the twenty-first century, where a lot more technological expertise is required, requiring a greater investment in training.  The draftee compelled to serve for a couple of years will be gone before he has learned enough to be truly useful.  More cynically, we suspect that the real reason is political.  It is easier to fight wars with a volunteer army.  There are fewer complaints from the civilian population, fewer and smaller marches protesting the war, and less chance that politicians supporting the war will be voted out of office.  But even if we returned to the draft, most of us would remain unaffected.  It would only directly affect those between the ages of eighteen and twenty-six, leaving a substantial portion of the population immune to the horrors of war.

With the recent terrorist attacks, the one in France and now the one in San Bernardino, a majority of the American people want to send ground troops to fight ISIS.  Moreover, as often happens in such cases, there is a tendency for people to be willing to give up some of their rights and freedoms in exchange for more security.  Donald Trump, who is the leading contender for the Republican nomination for president, has called for a return of waterboarding “and worse,” and has refused to rule out warrantless searches or the identification of people based on their religion.  Since he made those remarks, his popularity in the polls has increased.

It is precisely here that we see that profound difference between civilians and those in the military.  While it is held to be perfectly appropriate for the men and women in the armed forces to risk life and limb fighting for our rights and freedoms, it is not thought appropriate to ask the civilian population to take the same risks for the same reasons.  What is the justification for this distinction?

We sometimes hear the expression “innocent civilians.”  As opposed to what?  Guilty soldiers?  Presumably the idea is that civilians are not combatants and therefore should not be the victims of military action.  Soldiers should kill other soldiers only, the thinking goes.  Of course, there have been many times where we took action we knew would result in the death of many civilians, as in the firebombing attacks in World War II, not to mention the dropping of two atom bombs.  But it is generally agreed that civilian deaths are to be avoided as much as possible.

While that distinction is still worth observing when it comes to how we treat the enemy, is it really a distinction we should be making with respect to ourselves?  When it comes to the sacrifices that are to be made in defense of our rights and freedoms, should we not demand the same from our civilian population as we expect from our soldiers?  Instead of a literal return to the draft, I advocate a figurative return to a draft in which the entire population of the United States is enlisted in the fight for our rights and freedoms.

As we ask our soldiers to risk being blasted to pieces by IEDs, we civilians should risk being blasted by a pipe bomb in a terrorist attack.  As the men and women risk taking a bullet to preserve our way of life, so too should we risk taking a bullet for the same reason.  Those in the military did not put their security first when they signed up, so why should we think our security is more important than theirs?

We should no more give up our rights and freedoms to prevent future terrorist attacks than a soldier should throw down his rifle and flee the battlefield to avoid being killed.  If the men and women of the armed forces have the courage to face down death for our rights and freedoms, we should not act like cowards, giving up those very rights and freedoms they are willing to die for.

Even were we to do as I suggest, the risk we civilians take would still be less than that taken by those who engage in combat.  But it is the least we can do.  We can best honor the men and women in uniform by proving that we are worthy of the sacrifice they are making.

Storm Warning (1951)

If you didn’t know better, you might think Storm Warning was a musical, once you found out that Ginger Rogers and Doris Day are two of the leading stars, but it is actually a film noir about the Ku Klux Klan.  But while the main part of the story involving the Klan is engrossing enough on its own, it occurs within the framework of a morality tale, in which a selfish woman is punished for taking advantage of a man she cares nothing about.  This part of the movie is easily overlooked, and so I will give it emphasis here.

The movie opens with Marsha (Ginger Rogers) and Cliff (Lloyd Gough) on a bus.  They work as a team for a clothing manufacturer, where he is a salesman and she is a model.  They are supposed to meet some buyers the next day, but she says she is getting off at Rock Point to see her sister and will catch up with him the next night, which means she won’t be there to model the clothes as she is supposed to.  She tells him to show them the clothes on hangers.

In real life, stealing a little time from the boss is no big deal, something most people have done at one time or another.  In a movie, however, it often happens that people are punished severely for a mere peccadillo, and so we get a slight sinking feeling at this most venial of sins.  But it gets worse.  She starts taking samples out of Cliff’s suitcase to give to her sister, whom she has not seen in two years, as a belated marriage present. This means she is not just stealing time from her boss, but dresses as well.  Furthermore, she is putting Cliff on the spot.  “What will I tell the home office?” Cliff asks, knowing he has to account for every item.  “Tell them you ran into Jesse James,” is Marsha’s flip answer.  In other words, she is not saying that she intends to reimburse the company as soon as she gets her next paycheck.

At this point, we might be wondering if they are in some kind of romantic relationship, in which case it might make sense that she would expect the man who is in love with her to cover for her.  But the movie nips that in the bud.  It is immediately made clear in their conversation that Cliff has been pursuing Marsha for some time, but to no avail, and she is firm in telling Cliff that it is time for him to give up.  In short, she is imposing on a man with whom she will not even go to dinner.

When the bus pulls into Rock Point, Cliff gets off with Marsha just to stretch his legs.  He refers to the town as a “dead end,” as a “wilderness,” but she defends it as a place where the people are nice and everyone goes to church, something her sister must have told her in a letter, since Marsha has never been there before.  It is indeed isolated.  While on the bus, they passed a billboard stating that Rock Point is a community of American homes and ideals, with “American” in large print, bookended by two American flags.  Such fervent patriotism is always ominous, as was the part about everyone going to church.

Marsha heads to a payphone to call her sister to come pick her up.  She tells Cliff to give her a nickel, which he does.  He tries to buy a pack of cigarettes at the counter, but is told to use the machine.  Apparently cigarette machines were new at the time, because Cliff comments that the way things are going, pretty soon they won’t need people.  He returns to the phone booth just as Marsha hangs up.  Because no one answered the phone at her sister’s house, Marsha retrieves the nickel, and, with Cliff standing right there, she opens her purse, holds the nickel about six inches over the opening, and drops it in, ostentatiously not returning it to Cliff.  She could have simply slipped the nickel into her purse while still sitting in the booth, but the movie is going out of its way to make sure we notice this business about her keeping it.

But she’s not done.  She turns to Cliff and tries to bum a cigarette.  As it is a fresh pack, Cliff has trouble removing one cigarette, and because the bus is about to leave, he ends up tossing her the whole pack as he gets aboard.  She is stealing time from her boss, she stole some dress samples, she kept Cliff’s nickel, and now she even has the poor guy’s only pack of cigarettes, all in the space of ten minutes.  Taking it all together, we see that Marsha is the kind of woman who, because she is attractive, believes it is her prerogative to take advantage of men, even men she has no interest in romantically.

None of this had to be in the movie, and it did not get in there by accident.  The script could have been written differently, in which she simply tells a passenger she happens to be riding with that she is going to see her sister, after which she gets off the bus and uses her own nickel to make the call.  The pack of cigarettes could have been left out entirely.  Instead, script was written to make it clear that Marsha is a bit of a chiseler, and that she thinks she can get away with it on account of her looks.  In real life, such women do.  But this is a movie, and all that follows is punishment for her sins.

As soon as the bus pulls out, businesses start closing and turning off their lights.  Marsha finds herself on a dark, deserted street.  She starts walking in the direction where she believes her sister is working, when she witnesses a man being murdered by the Ku Klux Klan.  While hiding in a dark doorway, she sees two of the Klansmen who, thinking they are unobserved, remove their hoods.  Only later does she realize that one of the men, Hank (Steve Cochran), is married to her sister Lucy (Doris Day).

It turns out that the man who was murdered was a reporter from out of town who was secretly investigating the Klan.  When it was discovered what he was doing, he was arrested on a trumped up charge, after which the Klan broke him out of jail intending to lynch him, but in a moment of panic, Hank shot him as the reporter tried to escape.  Later, the county prosecutor, Burt Rainey (Ronald Reagan), reveals that other such incidents have occurred, always when someone from out of town starts snooping around.

In other words, we most emphatically do not see the Klan doing anything bad to African Americans.  Later in the movie, at an inquest, we do see a few such African Americans in the crowd outside the courthouse, but that is the extent of their presence in the movie.  The only people intimidated in this movie are journalists from out of town and all the white citizens of Rock Point who do not belong to the Klan.  Evidently, when this movie was made in 1951, dramatizing the Ku Klux Klan’s mistreatment of blacks was thought to be too controversial, notwithstanding the fact that intimidating the black race was the Klan’s main reason for existing in the first place. Perhaps the producers were afraid that condemning the Klan for mistreating African Americans would have angered southerners, who would have boycotted the movie, assuming theater owners would have agreed even to show it. Apparently, it was all right to make a movie showing that the Ku Klux Klan is evil, but not to make a movie showing that it is wrong to keep black people in their place.

Furthermore, the people who made this movie are at pains to insist that the Klan is guilty of corruption and income tax evasion.  In other words, it would not do to portray the Klan as composed of people who are sincere in their racist beliefs, who lynch people to preserve the Aryan cause of white supremacy.  Instead, the Klan is portrayed cynically.  Some naïve bumpkins might actually fall for all that stuff and nonsense about white supremacy, but they have been duped by the men at the top who care only about lining their pockets.  And so, instead of tackling racism head on and asserting that it is evil, this movie takes the easy way out.  It avoids any explicit mention or depiction of racism and simply faults the Klan for being a racket.  Presumably, the fear is that if the Klan is portrayed as composed of people who genuinely believe in the cause of white supremacy, including and especially its leaders, the sincerity with which they hold their racist views might lend them a certain legitimacy.

A similar way of presenting the Klan occurred in the earlier movie Black Legion (1937).  Actually, the movie is not about the Klan per se, but rather it is about a similarly robed and hooded organization in Michigan.  Again, the victims of this vigilante group are all white:  they are foreigners from countries like Poland and Ireland, thought to be taking jobs away from Americans of white, Anglo Saxon, Protestant heritage.  And again, while the rank and file are true believers, their leaders are corrupt.

In any event, Marsha gets caught in an Antigone situation, where she must choose between duty to her family and duty to the state.  Because Lucy is pregnant and refuses to leave Hank even when she finds out that it was Hank who pulled the trigger, Marsha remains loyal to her sister and refuses to tell what she knows on the witness stand, not only refusing to identify the two men who removed their hoods, but also refusing to say that the men were dressed in the robes and hoods of the Klan.

Earlier, the leader of the Klan in that town, Charlie Barr (Hugh Sanders), in pressuring Marsha to keep her mouth shut, tries to tell her about the good that the Klan does, saying, “Without us, a girl like you wouldn’t be safe on the street at night.”  The implicit threat he is referring to is that of a black man raping a white woman.  It is ironic, then, that after the inquest, Hank tries to rape Marsha, reinforcing the point that what white people really have to fear in that town is the Klan.

The attempted rape is discovered by Lucy, who decides to leave Hank, freeing Marsha to tell what she knows, now that she no longer has to protect her sister.  But Marsha is kidnapped and whipped by the Klan until Lucy brings Rainey and some detectives to rescue her.  Hank tries to shoot Marsha but kills Lucy instead, whereupon a detective kills Hank.  Charlie Barr is arrested, and the rest of the Klansmen flee the scene in a panic, leaving us with the impression that this is the end of the Klan in that town, punctuated by the collapse of the burning cross.

As the movie comes to an end, we can only hope that Marsha has learned her lesson and will not take advantage of Cliff in the future.

The Holidays with My Favorite Gold Digger

They say life begins at forty, and for me that turned out to be true, because it was around that time I decided to start taking dancing lessons.  In the course of taking these lessons, I met a lot of women also taking lessons with whom I would dance during the practice sessions at the studio, and out of these I soon found one who was willing to be a regular dancing partner.

Now, when it comes to dancing, there are two kinds of men:  those who put sex before dancing, and those who put dancing before sex.  In other words, some men don’t care if a woman has two left feet, as long as they can have sex with her.  But I really enjoyed dancing, and so it was that if a woman and I had dancing chemistry, I didn’t really care if the partnership was strictly platonic.  Well, I cared, but not enough to give her up.

At first, I would pay for her drinks when we went dancing, because that is what a gentleman usually does on a date, but as we were going out three nights a week, it was all getting to be a little expensive, especially as this occurred on top of the cost of the lessons.  After a couple of months, I told her we would have to go Dutch treat from then on, to which she happily agreed.  It was especially easy for me to reach this decision once I determined that we were never going to be more than just friends.  My decision was also facilitated by the fact that she made four times as much money as I did.

Dancing partners come and go, and so the typical partnership would last about two years.  Most of them, despite my most amorous efforts, would end up being platonic, and after a while, I decided to start them right off on a Dutch treat basis, and if that cost me my chances for romance, that was just too bad.  I asked one woman I met in a studio if she wanted to go dancing at the Midnight Rodeo, quickly adding, “But it will have to be Dutch treat.”  She replied thoughtfully, “All right.  We can just be friends.”  I wanted to say, in hopes of being amusing, “Oh, I didn’t say we couldn’t have sex.  I just don’t want to pay for it,” but I decided that she might not appreciate my witticism.

Opposites attract, and so it is perhaps not surprising that one of my favorite dancing partners was a gold digger.  Or, if that seems a little harsh, let’s just say that Sheila was the most expensive woman I have ever known.  Normally, she would never have considered dating a guy like me with my limited income, even if I had been willing to pick up the tab, but she wanted to dance with me as much as I wanted to dance with her, and so she readily agreed to a Dutch treat arrangement.

I should note at this point that when I first started going out with women Dutch treat, I thought it would cut my dating expenses in half.  I was wrong.  It actually cut them to a quarter of what I would have paid.  You see, once these women found out they would have to pay their own way, I was amazed to discover how resourceful they were at finding inexpensive things to do.  And very often, these inexpensive activities were more fun than the expensive ones.

Inasmuch as we are in the holiday season, let me take as an example of this principle one that occurred regarding New Year’s Eve.  Sheila already had a boyfriend when I met her, and as New Year’s Eve approached, she told me about how she and Robert were going to ring in the new year.  They were going to a hotel, where there would be entertainment, a meal, and champagne, along with a room for the night so that they would not have to drive home intoxicated.  The cost for the two of them, adjusted for inflation, was around seven hundred dollars.  Sheila was quite excited about going, and she showed me the brochure.  She knew what a cheapskate I was, and I think she enjoyed making me squirm.  I gasped at the cost, but she assured me it was quite reasonable.

You see, Sheila actually liked me better than her boyfriend, and she often hinted that she would be glad to dump him and become my lover instead, if only I was willing to compromise on this Dutch treat business.  In so many words, she said she would give me a discount.  Robert made twice as much money as she did, but she made twice as much money as I.  Knowing this, she said, “I’m always willing to make allowances for a man’s income.”  But I knew a compromise would not work.  Given the amount I was willing to spend, she would have felt unloved; and given the amount I would have had to spend, I would have felt unloved.  And so, things remained as they were.

Anyway, Sheila and Robert celebrated New Year’s Eve in style.  The next week, while I was trying to figure out where Sheila and I could do some ballroom dancing, I came across a place that seemed suitable.  I told Sheila about it, mentioning that it had a fifteen-dollar cover charge.  “Fifteen dollars!” she exclaimed with alarm.  “That’s too expensive.  We’ll go to the Wild West instead.”  Well, that’s what we did, and we each had a five dollar drink, including tip, which we nursed for a couple of hours between dances.  And that is what I meant when I said that going Dutch cuts your dating expenses by way more than just half.

Because I had been unable to get Sheila to cheat on her boyfriend, I eventually gave up on that and asked her friend Vera out on a date.  As it was our first date, I decided to be generous and pay for her drink that night.  If things worked out, I could always bring up the subject of going Dutch treat later on.  Vera had a young son, and so there was a babysitter there when I came to pick her up.  On the way to the nightclub, she mentioned that what with the cost of a babysitter, she sometimes was reluctant to go out in the evening.

A few days later, while dancing with Sheila, I told her what Vera said.  “I almost hate to ask her out again, given what she said about the cost of a babysitter.”

“She was hoping you would pay for it,” Sheila replied.  That possibility had never crossed my mind.  Here I was, feeling that I had gone above and beyond the call of duty by paying for Vera’s drink, and now Sheila was telling me I was supposed to foot the babysitting bill as well.  “We have discussed this many times,” Sheila said.  “Vera thinks the man should pay for the babysitter, whereas I say that they are my children, and it is my responsibility to pay for that.”

Now, you may be thinking that Vera was even more of a gold digger than Sheila, but rather, the difference was that Sheila preferred to go for the long play.  She knew that trying to get too much money out of a man early on in the relationship was the equivalent of a man trying to get sex on the first date.  The bum’s rush is shortsighted and seldom succeeds.  She preferred to let a man become enamored of her charms first, after which he would be more amenable to spending his money.  She told me about one guy she went out with who started off taking her out on cheap dates like going to museums, but when Christmas came around, he bought her a fox fur.  “I almost felt bad about that,” she said, “because he spent the next six months taking the bus to work and bringing his own lunch.”

And I have no doubt that she did almost feel bad, because she really did take a man’s wherewithal into account.  For example, she and Robert made plans to go on a trip to Europe, which he estimated would cost about seven thousand dollars.  By this time, I was numb to her stories about what that guy paid out.  In any event, it occurred to her that her kitchen needed remodeling, and she got an estimate that it could be done for four thousand dollars.  So, she told Robert, “If you pay to have my kitchen remodeled, we won’t have to go to Europe.”  He agreed.  “So you see,” Sheila continued, “By not going to Europe, I saved him a lot of money.”

“You could have saved him even more money,” I replied, “by not going to Australia.”

Anyway, as Christmas rolled around, I knew Sheila was looking forward to what she was going to get from Robert.  As he had taken her to a jewelry store to look at a diamond bracelet, which had a five-thousand-dollar price tag on it, she had a pretty good idea that would be it.  I called her Christmas day around four in the afternoon, because we had talked about going dancing.  It had been my experience that a lot of nightclubs were open on Christmas night, but the dance floor was usually pretty empty, which allowed for practicing some of the more complicated dance patterns.

She had indeed gotten the gift she was hoping for, and she was ready to go dancing.  “I have taken down all the decorations and stored them away,” she said, “and the tree is sitting out on the curb waiting to be picked up.”

I was stunned.  “Why did you do that?” I asked.  “Most people leave the tree up at least until New Year’s.”

“I always get rid of the tree on Christmas afternoon,” she answered, “because I find it a little depressing.  It saddens me, because I get to thinking about how we have lost the true meaning of Christmas.”

Hardcore (1979)

Hardcore begins in Grand Rapids, Michigan on Christmas day, where much of the congregation from the Dutch Reformation Church has gathered together in the house of Jake VanDorn (George C. Scott).  Even allowing for the fact that it is a Christian holiday, we see that for these people, religion permeates every aspect of their lives.  And while this movie can be enjoyed by those that know next to nothing about Christian theology, I believe an appreciation for this film is enhanced by an understanding of the particular version of Christianity that these people believe in, especially since the story can be understood allegorically.  For that reason, and because I have always been fascinated by the doctrine of predestination, I shall indulge myself in a preliminary discussion of it.

In one room, some men are discussing the unpardonable sin, rejection of the Holy Spirit.  Actually, the verses in the Bible that mention the unpardonable sin, Mark 3:29 and Luke 12:10, speak of blaspheming against the Holy Ghost, but these men are apparently construing that as rejecting the Holy Ghost. One man questions whether one can be guilty of that sin unwittingly. That suggestion is dismissed by another as verging on the Pelagian heresy.

Pelagius was a British monk who, on his visit to Rome just before the turn of the fifth century, was disturbed by the effect that the idea of predestination was having on people.  It was thought that because of Adam’s original sin, everyone is born sinful.  Only with the grace of God could a person be saved, but man is so corrupt that he cannot sincerely ask for God’s grace unless he already has it.  This is known as the doctrine of prevenient grace.  Then, once one has God’s grace, one’s salvation is assured, and one has no choice but to follow the path of righteousness, known as the doctrine of irresistible grace.  And as God ordained all things in advance, it was already determined before man was born whether he would receive God’s grace and be saved or not.  Pelagius concluded that these doctrines were causing people to become fatalistic.  If everyone is predestined to either be saved or damned, there seems to be little point in trying to be good.

According to St. Augustine, a contemporary of Pelagius and a strong proponent of predestination, man did have free will, but without God’s grace, all he could do was choose one sin rather than another.  Pelagius countered this by arguing that man’s free will was such that he could choose to be good all on his own, and that he could ask for God’s grace freely.  Subsequent Pelagians continued this line of thought, maintaining that Adam’s sin was not passed on to subsequent generations, and that there were men without sin before the coming of Christ.  Of course, this called into question the whole need for Christ’s crucifixion:  if man was not all that sinful, there seemed to be no need for God to atone for man’s sins by suffering on the cross.  As a result, this line of thinking came to be known as the Pelagian heresy.

With the Protestant Reformation, Martin Luther and John Calvin took predestination one step further.  Whereas Augustine had maintained that man had free will, but that it was not worth much unless accompanied by the grace of God, Luther and Calvin rejected the idea of free will outright.  There was no such thing.  All had been ordained by God from eternity, including who would be saved and who would be damned.  As Calvin said, everyone deserves damnation, and all salvation is unmerited, granted by God to a select few, not because they deserved it, but because it pleased God to do so.  It is this Calvinistic theology that Jake’s congregation believes in.

Referring back to the man who wondered whether one could commit the unpardonable sin of rejecting the Holy Ghost unwittingly, he was suggesting that if such a man knew he was doing that, he might choose not to.  But that would seem to suggest that he had the power to choose otherwise, which implies free will.

While the theological discussion among the men is going on in one room, in another room a bunch of kids are watching television with Joe VanDorn, apparently Jake’s father.  On the television, some men dressed in Santa Claus suits are dancing to “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree.”  Joe gets disgusted, stands up and turns the set off, saying that the people who make shows like that are the kids who used to live in Grand Rapids and then left for California (a harbinger of what is to come).  “I didn’t like them when they were here, and I don’t like them out there.”  It seems like harmless enough entertainment, but Santa Claus and Christmas trees represent a secularized form of Christmas, not to mention the fact that a lot of Calvinists regard dancing as sinful.

Jake voices some concern about his teenage daughter Kristen and her cousin Marsha going to a Youth Calvinist Convention in California.  He expresses his misgivings somewhat jokingly, because he knows they will be heavily chaperoned, but as it turns out, such concern was more warranted than he imagined.

The next day at his furniture factory, Jake talks to a woman he hired to design a sign for his business.  He doesn’t quite like it because it is too “overpowering,” although if anything is overpowering, it is Jake’s personality.  The woman says she has worked really hard to get the color just right, but she says she will change it, if that is what he wants.  He says he would not have hired a display designer, if he did not trust her taste.  But he keeps expressing misgivings until she agrees to change the sign the way he wants it.  Once she consents to making the sign the way he prefers it, Jake says, “If you say so.”  This recapitulates the whole business about God and free will discussed above.  The display designer supposedly has free will in choosing the color for the sign, but the color that will end up being on the sign has been ordained by Jake.

Jake gets a call from one of the counselors, informing him that on a trip to an amusement park, Kristen disappeared.  Jake and Marsha’s father Wes, Jake’s brother-in-law, fly out to California, where Marsha tells them that there was a boy there that Kristen met.  At the police station, the detective suggests that Kristen may have run away.  When Jake becomes angry, saying his daughter was not the type to run away, he gets his first of many doses of culture shock when the detective informs him that her being a runaway is the best they can hope for, as he points to pictures of other girls who may never come back at all.

Jake decides to hire a private detective, Andy Mast (Peter Boyle), whose hardboiled, irreligious talk disturbs Jake, even though he realizes Mast is the kind of guy he needs to help find his daughter.  Mast apologizes for offending Jake’s religious beliefs, noting that he is a practitioner of Mind Science himself, as if that is supposed to be reassuring.  Mast tells Jake and Wes to go back home and says he will call them when he knows something.

Several weeks later, Wes tells Jake that we can’t always understand the Lord’s ways, that the Lord his testing him, that he has to have faith.  This is an irritating trait that some people have, presuming to advise those suffering from a misfortune about the mysterious ways of God, but considering the community in which they live, it is not surprising.  In any event, Jake expresses his contempt for the remark about having faith.  As is often the case, it is easy to talk about God’s ways and having faith as long as the bad stuff is happening to others.  But now that something bad may have happened to his daughter, he begins to have doubts.

Mast turns up in Grand Rapids with an 8mm hardcore movie, which he shows to Jake in a “stall” theater that he has use of for an hour.  Today, Jake would be told which adult website to look at, but back in the 1970s, when this movie was made, before cable, video cassette recorders, and the internet, most pornographic movies were seen in adult movie theaters or in adult bookstores with private stalls.  The movie shows two men having sex with Kristen, which has a devastating effect on Jake.  Mast promises he will find her, and he heads back to California.

Jake gets tired of just waiting around, so he drives out to California and surprises Mast while he is in the middle of “doing research” (slipping the panties off a porn star).  Jake becomes so angry, he runs Mast out of his own apartment, and then goes through some of the evidence that Mast has accumulated (pictures, names, addresses) and decides to see if he can find his daughter himself.

The structure of this movie from this point is like that in Dante’s Inferno, where Jake gradually descends into the sex trade, at first by looking at the street prostitutes and advertisements, then by pretending to be a customer in an adult book store where he looks at the various adult novelties and magazines.  He does fine as long as people think he just wants sex, but as soon as he starts asking questions, trying to find out if anyone has seen his daughter, he runs into trouble, at one point being bounced from a whorehouse.

Since that gets him nowhere, he decides he will do better pretending to be a producer of pornographic movies, which will allow him to meet a lot of people in that business.  He goes to see Mr. Ramada, a movie producer whose name Jake got from Mast’s files.  Ramada gives Jake some advice.  “Start small.  Start with the kiddie porn.”  Well, that makes sense.  Children are small.  Ramada is serious, but clearly Paul Schrader, the writer and director of this movie, is making a sick joke, although one with a purpose.  I said that this movie has the structure of Dante’s Inferno, where we encounter increasingly worse aspects of the sex trade as the movie proceeds.  Child pornography is the worst form of pornography, belonging in what would correspond to the lowest circle of Hell.  But Ramada makes it sound as if child pornography corresponds to Limbo, where one finds the unbaptized infants.

The reason Schrader dismissed child pornography in this manner was to get it out of the way.  He wanted snuff films to be the worst form of pornography in his movie, especially since it would directly threaten Kristen.  Technically, the 8mm movie showing Kristen having sex would today be counted as child pornography, because she is a minor.  But what Ramada is referring to, of course, is prepubescent children, which is vastly worse.

Jake does not take the advice about kiddie porn, of course, but he does have some success posing as a producer of smut.  In pretending to interview “actors” for a film, one of the men he saw in the movie with Kristen finally shows up.  When Jake asks him where he can find the girl he was in the movie with, the guy says she abused him in the making of that movie and that he never wants to work with that “freaky bitch” again.  Jake becomes angry and beats the porn star until he gets some information out of him, which leads him to Niki (Season Hubley), whom Jake had already met on the set of a porn film being produced by Ramada.   Niki regularly works at a place called Les Girls, and if you ever wanted to find out just how disgusting the sex trade can be, the scene at that establishment alone is worth the price of admission.  Niki will become his guide into the lower regions of the sex trade, much in the way Virgil was a guide for Dante.  Virgil was a virtuous pagan.  Niki is also a pagan of sorts, referring to herself as a Venusian, as in Venus, the goddess of love.  She agrees to help Jake find Kristen.

Niki is perceptive.  She quickly figures out that Jake is not a producer.  He tells her he is a detective, but she sees through that too.  He finally tells her that he is Kristen’s father and that he is a widower, but later she asks him point blank, “Your wife’s not dead, is she?” to which he admits his wife left him. She is clearly thinking it was for the same reason that his daughter ran away.

In addition to being smart, Niki is likable.  In fact, we begin at this point to compare her to Jake’s daughter, who is a big nothing.  Kristen is so docile and passive that it would be easy to indoctrinate her into a religion, and then just as easy for someone to come along and talk her into running away.  We feel sorry for Kristen, who cannot help being what she is (there is no free will, after all), but we would much rather spend time with Niki.

She becomes curious about Jake’s beliefs, and he tells her they can be summed up by the acronym “TULIP,” which covers some of the things discussed above.  “T” stands for “total depravity,” which is the doctrine of original sin, that man is incapable of good.  “U” stands for “unconditional election, which is the belief that God has chosen a certain number of elect from the beginning of time.  “L” stands for “limited atonement,” which means only the elect will go to Heaven.  “I” stands for “irresistible grace,” meaning that one who has God’s grace cannot choose to reject the Holy Ghost.  And “P” stands for the “perseverance of the saints,” by which is meant that you cannot fall from grace once you have it.

Niki helps Jake look for Tod, the other guy in the film with Kristen.  She learns that Tod has been associating with Ratan, and she becomes visibly shaken, saying, “He’s into pain.”  Of course, the name “Ratan” is only one letter removed from “Satan,” which is appropriate, since he is the most evil man in the entire sex trade.  Mast, who in the meantime has been secretly rehired by Wes, catches up with Jake.  When asked, Mast tells him that Ratan is the kind of man who can supply child whores and sex slaves, and who can have people raped or killed while the cameras are rolling.  Niki sets up an appointment for Jake to meet Tod in an adult bookstore, where Jake says he wants to see one of Ratan’s most recent films, thinking that Kristen may be in it.  It turns out she is not, which is fortunate, because what starts out to be a phony bondage flick turns into a snuff film in which a man and a woman are murdered by Ratan with a knife.  By the time the movie is over, Tod has disappeared.

Just as we compared Niki with Kristen, Niki begins to think of herself as Jake’s daughter, telling Mast that Jake will take care of her, get her out of the sex trade.  Mast ridicules the idea.  When Jake returns, he demands that Niki tell him where he can find Tod.  She is afraid to talk, saying she is afraid Jake will desert her.  He slaps her and threatens to beat her with his fists until she tells him.  Then he kisses her on the forehead and promises he won’t forget her.

Jake catches up with Tod at his bondage business and beats him until he tells Jake where Ratan is.  When Jake finds Ratan in a strip joint, Kristen is with him.  Ratan slashes Jake with his knife and runs out.  Mast had followed Jake, and he shoots Ratan, killing him.  Kristen is hostile to Jake at first. Her rejection of their way of life in Grand Rapids is like the rejection of the Holy Spirit, which is the unpardonable sin.  But the elect can never fall from grace, and Jake makes excuses for her, saying they forced her. Kristen asserts that she left because she wanted to, but there is no such thing as free will in their religion.  Jake admits his failures, however, and they reconcile.  After helping his daughter into the police car (they need her as a witness), he turns and sees Niki.  As he fumbles with his words, she realizes that Mast was right, that Jake has no more need of her.  Jake turns to Mast, asking him if there is something that can be done for her, if money would help.  But in so doing, Jake refers to her as “the girl” rather than as “Niki,” so we know he wants to distance himself from her.  Mast tells him to go home, that he does not belong there.

In his Guide for the Film Fanatic, Danny Peary makes the following observation in reviewing this movie:

By the time Scott [Jake] saves his daughter from the pimp who controls her, he believes he has learned to be a good father to her—but his sudden rejection of Hubley [Niki], as being unworthy to be his daughter’s adopted sister, shows he is a hypocrite.  … [The] ending is not very satisfying because the girl you care about gets the shaft while the other gets salvation.

Peary is right as far as how we feel about the ending, but that is precisely the effect Schrader intended.  Kristen is like one of the elect in Calvinism, someone who has been saved without seeming to be worthy of special consideration; while Niki is like one of the damned, whose exclusion from being one of God’s chosen strikes us as not only unfair, but also heartless.

A Day in the Country (1936)

In the movie A Day in the Country, a man, Monsieur Dufour, his wife, Juliette, his daughter, Henriette, her fiancé, Anatole, and the grandmother go the country for some fishing and a picnic.  Two men, Rodolphe and Henri, take one look at the wife and the daughter and decide to knock off a quick piece, although they have some disagreement as to who gets which one.  They manage to distract the husband and the fiancé by lending them fishing poles while Rodolphe and Henri each take one of the two women out on the river on a couple of rowboats.  Henri, the one who paired up with the Henriette, had some misgivings about getting her pregnant and ruining her life, but he finally decided to screw her anyway.  And it didn’t take him long, about five minutes after he pulled the boat to shore and sat her under a tree.

It must have been pretty steamy for the both of them, because they are still thinking about how good it was years later.  For some reason, Henriette marries Anatole, whom she no longer loves once Henri has had his way with her.  In fact, we wonder if she ever loved him, because she sure didn’t seem to.  But maybe she finally had to marry Anatole anyway, for the same reason that Henri feared.

The word is that Jean Renoir, who directed this movie, never got to finish it, so maybe that is why we never find out how Rodolphe made out with Juliette.  But as Rodolphe pointed out to Henri earlier on, when women are married, you don’t have to worry about getting them pregnant.

The Mask of Fu Manchu (1932)

Watching The Mask of Fu Manchu today, one is very likely to wonder if this movie was the inspiration for Raiders of the Lost Ark.  Both movies are set in roughly the same time period, the 1930s.  In the latter, there is an American archaeologist who is searching for an ancient artifact (the Ark of the Covenant); in the former, there is a group of British archaeologists who embark on such a quest (looking for the mask and sword of Genghis Khan).  In the latter, the Nazis are also in search of the Ark, which has (supernatural) powers they believe will be useful to them in the coming war; in the former, an evil Chinese leader, Fu Manchu (Boris Karloff), is in search of the sword and mask for the (psychological) power he believes they will bring him in his ability to inspire hordes of Chinese soldiers by causing them to think he is the reincarnation of Genghis Khan.  The mask and sword are buried in the tomb of Genghis Khan, somewhere in the Gobi desert, where the team of archaeologists must get to before Fu Manchu discovers where it is.  Once they arrive, they are eventually captured, but eventually manage to overpower their captors, kill Fu Manchu and wipe out his followers.  And just as in Raiders of the Lost Ark, where the Ark is deliberately lost again by burying it deep in a warehouse, so too is the sword of Genghis Khan buried again, this time at sea.

One major difference between the two movies is the unabashed racism in The Mask of Fu Manchu.  We are used to seeing racism in older movies, but there are different kinds of racism, and this movie is a good illustration of that.  One way of distinguishing racism is by the type of racial differences assumed to exist, of which there are three:  the physical, the mental, and the moral.

African Americans, who belong to the “black race,” are typically assumed to be physically superior to all the others.  In Donald Bogle’s Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies and Bucks:  An Interpretive History of Blacks in Films, he distinguished different kinds of black stereotypes, the ones referred to in the title.  The “buck” is hypersexual and usually has a powerful physique.  In Gone With the Wind, for example, there is no question about who the strongest man in the movie is, and that is Big Sam, Scarlett’s former slave, who rescues her when she is attacked.

Other than that, Caucasians, who belong to the “white race,” are presumed by most racists to be superior in the other two categories, the mental and the moral, at least with respect the black race.  Native Americans, who belong to the “red race,” are depicted in old movies (movies made before World War II) as being equal to the white race physically and mentally, but morally inferior on account of their being thought of as savages.

The unusual thing about Asians, who belong to the “yellow race,” is that there seems to be an unmentioned fear that they actually have the edge on the white race as far as intelligence is concerned.  When Fu Manchu mentions that he is a doctor of philosophy, of law, and of medicine, each from a different British or American university, he brings to mind that sinister remark often uttered by Asians in the old movies, “I was educated in your country.”  At the end of the movie, he and his followers are destroyed by a machine capable of delivering a continuous stream of a million volts of electricity when the archaeologists get their hands on it.  As this marvelous machine was invented by the Chinese, that is further implicit evidence of their superior intelligence.

Like the red and black races, the yellow race was often depicted as being morally inferior, as is the case in this movie.  But whereas the red race had the excuse of being primitives, as did the black race when encountered in Africa, the immoral nature of the yellow race exists despite their advantages in civilization and education.  This makes them seem especially evil.  And this movie plays that up in a big way, for we witness many scenes of highly imaginative torture.

One aspect of the immoral nature of the so-called inferior races is sexual.  Fah Lo See (Myrna Loy) is the daughter of Fu Manchu, whom the latter offers as a sexual bribe to the kidnapped British archaeologist to get him to tell where the mask and sword are, and she seems most willing to be the sexual reward for his willingness to talk.  In fact, she is portrayed as a woman who is aroused by witnessing torture and likes to have sex with a man just before he is put to death.

As for the men, there is a famous line where Fu Manchu, just before he offers up the sacrifice of a virgin white woman to the gods, as preparation for conquering the world, asks his minions if they would like to have white maidens like her for their wives.  When they cheer in affirmation, he says, “Then conquer and breed.  Kill the white men and take his women.”

Finally, there is the complete contempt for human life attributed to the yellow race in this movie.  Fu Manchu has what appears to be several black slaves, all of whom would fit into the “buck” category:  big, muscular men who mostly stand around with their arms folded.  In one scene, where Fu Manchu prepares a serum from a variety of venomous creatures, he pulls a poisonous snake out of a cask.  We expect him to milk the poison out of the snake by squeezing its glands, but that is apparently too much trouble.  Instead, two bucks hold a third while Fu Manchu lets the snake bite him, after which he draws out some poison with a syringe.  Then, as he continues preparing the serum, the bitten man slowly dies, at which point Fu Manchu waves his hand for the other two bucks to take him away.

But I guess the producers of the movie got to feeling a little bad about portraying all these Chinese people as being so evil and cruel.  And so, while the archaeologists are on a ship heading back to England, dinner is announced by the ship’s steward, who is Chinese.  Corresponding to what Bogle referred to as a “coon” in his book, a black man who is simpleminded and cowardly, this steward might be thought of as a “yellow coon.”  Whereas Boris Karloff and Myna Loy played Chinese characters in yellowface, the producers apparently decided to let this silly character, who looks all the sillier on account of having a missing tooth, be played by an Willie Fung, an actor who was actually born in China.  Commisioner Nayland Smith (Lewis Stone), who organized the expedition, asks the steward if he is a doctor of philosophy, law, or medicine.  When he answers that he is not, Smith extends his hand and congratulates him (for knowing his place, presumably). The producers were no doubt pleased with themselves for making this magnanimous gesture, confirming in their minds the intrinsic nobility of the white race in generously allowing that there is such a thing as a “good Chinaman.”

Nosferatu (1922)

Nosferatu has the most horrible looking vampire of any movie ever made. It is hard to believe that when they made Dracula in 1931, they just picked Bela Lugosi and let it go at that. The connection between the Black Death and vampires, which antedates this movie, is emphasized. It suggests either that vampires were a supernatural explanation for the plague or that deaths from vampires were dismissed as being the result of disease. This combines ominously with the movie’s suggestion that there is a connection between the vampires’ need for blood and sexual desire, in which case vampirism might be a metaphor for syphilis. Count Orlok (Max Schreck) gets very excited when he sees a picture of Ellen (Greta Schröder) and speaks of her beautiful neck. The fact that she is a “sinless maiden” makes her especially erotic, so much so that she is able to keep Orlok drinking from her neck when he knows he should be getting back to his coffin where he will be safe during the day.  As a result, he gets caught by the rising sun and is destroyed.

A point of trivia: this vampire casts a reflection in the mirror, unlike in Dracula, for we see his reflection while he is drinking Ellen’s blood.

Wings (1927)

Except for Clara Bow, I did not recognize the main actors in Wings, but that is not unusual for a silent film. So when I saw Gary Cooper, I was stunned, especially when it turned out that he only had a bit part. It is hard to believe that the producer of this movie did not immediately see his star quality and make more of it.

In any event, the story is about a couple of fighter pilots during World War I, plus a complicated side story of unrequited love involving a couple of women, one of which is played by the above-mentioned Clara Bow. The pilot named Dave (Richard Arlen) is obviously doomed. The sad farewell to his parents is the first clue. Then he tells his friend Jack (Charles Rogers) that he thinks the next flying mission will be his last, and asks him to see that his parents get his medal. Finally, he forgets the teddy bear that is his good luck charm. I’d call them clichés, but for all I know, this may be the first movie in which they occurred.

The only serious flaw is a scene in Paris where Jack starts seeing bubbles. It goes on way too long, almost as if the director, William Wellman, was so excited by this gimmick that he just could not get enough. There are plenty of action sequences to make up for this, however, much of it quite graphic, including a pilot spitting up blood, and another with blood spurting from his chest, something normally not seen in movies until the 1960s.

And, of course, no World War I movie would be complete without men climbing out of their trenches, charging the German lines, and being slaughtered by machine-gun fire. Has there ever been a movie in which the Germans get out of their trenches, charge the Allied lines, and get slaughtered in that fashion?  If you went by the movies, you’d probably think the Germans never made that mistake, in which case you have to wonder why they didn’t win the war.  In one scene, a soldier who has been blinded carries another soldier who cannot walk. Together, they continue to move toward the Germans along with the others. I don’t know what they thought they would do when they got there, except die, which is what they did. I guess we are supposed to admire their dedication.

White Squall (1996)

In the movie White Squall, which is based on a true story,the captain (Jeff Bridges) of the Albatross tells his crew, mostly boys of high school age, that the ship is not a toy, and sailing is not a game. But that is exactly what they are. These people are not sailing for some practical purpose like earning a living by fishing. They are going sailing for the fun of it. Of course, the fun masquerades as a rite of passage for the boys that will turn them into men, but whom do they think they are kidding? If they want to play sailor instead of staying in school and then getting a job, fine, but don’t insult our intelligence with a bunch of macho malarkey. When the title storm comes along and kills a bunch of them, I suppose the ones who survive get extra manliness points, but they still need to finish school and get a job.

Three Colors: Blue (1993), White (1994), and Red (1994)

Director Krzyszt Kieslowski decided to make three movies, one for each of the three colors of the French flag—blue, white, and red—and for each of the three basic ideas of France’s national motto—liberty, equality, and fraternity.  To drive the point home, he titled them Three Colors: Blue, Three Colors: White, and Three Colors: Red.  If the three movies were any good, this organizing scheme would be fine, but as it is, the whole thing just seems like a gimmick.

The first one is Blue. It’s about this woman Julie (Juliette Binoche), who turns her back on the world after a tragic accident. And that would be fine, except the camera keeps following her around, forcing us to be with her. I don’t begrudge anyone a little time to be depressed and grieve, but let her do it alone. Why do we have to be there? Of course, the movie wants us to think that all the strange things she does are evidence of a profound, suffering soul, thereby justifying all the screen time she gets. But I kept wishing the camera would follow someone else around for a while.

The next movie is White.  In that one there is this guy Karol (Zbigniew Zamachowski), who is a real loser. It is not just that he is impotent, for which reason his wife, Dominique (Julie Delpy), divorces him. He acts like a worm. Because he keeps stalking Dominique, she finally has to drive him out of France.

Back in Poland, he inexplicably changes from being a loser into an entrepreneur, and becomes quite rich. But he is still small in spirit, because he still holds a grudge against his ex-wife. He leaves everything to her in his will, fakes his death, and fakes evidence to make it look as though she murdered him for the inheritance, resulting in her being sent to prison. But just before the police come to arrest her, he shows up in her bed, and they have sex. It must have been pretty good sex too, because when he goes to the prison and looks at her with binoculars behind the bars, she signals that she still loves him and wishes they were still married. And then he cries.

And people wonder why so many Americans hate foreign films.

Anyway, Red, the third film of this trilogy, is the best of the lot, but that is not saying much. Blue was irritating and White was dumb, but Red was sort of pleasant to watch. There seems to be some business about parallel lives, fate, and precognition, but to what end I do not know. Some people like the idea that everything that happens is destined to happen, and so I guess a movie like this will make them feel good.

Fortunately, there are only three colors in the French flag.