Domestic Violence in the Movies

As so often is the case, what we see in the movies tells us something about ourselves and influences our behavior, for movies reflect our values and often shape them. And while we all have had the experience of seeing a movie that expressed values to which we were opposed, for we do not all think and feel the same way, movies must at least be in tune with a significant portion of the populace or they will not make a profit.  In particular, it is interesting to note the way domestic violence is treated in the movies, and how that depiction has changed over the years.  This essay will focus on physical assault, especially in the form of slapping, as opposed to sexual assault, which I have written about elsewhere:  The Forsyte Saga, Rape and Race in the Movies, and Has No Always Meant No?

Let us begin with the situations in which women hit men.  The classic example is that of a woman slapping a man who has insulted her by making a pass, but there are other reasons as well.  In Gone With the Wind (1939), Scarlett slaps Ashley for what she regards as a betrayal. We see this slap as evidence of her passionate love for him, and thus we are sympathetic.  As for Ashley, he simply leaves the room, thereby showing that he is a gentleman. At a later point in the movie, when Rhett kisses Scarlett against her will, she slaps him too.  He laughs when she says he is no gentleman, which only adds to his image as a charming rogue.

Just to name a few of the more well-known films that happen to come to mind in which women slap men, there is The Glass Key (1942), Body and Soul (1947), Scaramouche (1952), The Americanization of Emily (1964), Point Blank (1967), When Harry Met Sally… (1989), and Groundhog Day (1993).  The most recent example I can think of is The Butler (2013), where a mother slaps her son for being disrespectful to his father.  The slap is presented as an expression of her righteous indignation.  In general, when a woman slaps a man in a movie, the slap is typically represented as morally justified, and if the man simply allows her to slap him, he gets points for being manly.

Since women are the weaker sex, it is perhaps not surprising that the movies do not condemn women for slapping men, but actually seem to approve of such behavior.  The idea is that she is too weak to do any harm.  In reality, we do hear of cases where men are physically abused by their wives or girlfriends, but the movies do not seem to be aware of them.  In any event, if we did not know better, we might expect that a man would be regarded as utterly despicable for hitting a woman, owing to his advantage of size and strength, but such is not the case.  Although the attitude toward men in movies who hit women is different from that of women who hit men, it is not totally negative.

The most obvious case that comes to mind is that of the gangster, beginning with Public Enemy (1931), in which occurs the notorious scene where James Cagney pushes a grapefruit into a woman’s face.  There is a misogynist streak in most movie gangsters, and thus we are not surprised when they mistreat women.  What does surprise us, perhaps, is that when the gangster slaps a woman, it contributes to his image as a tough guy in a different way from that of hitting another man.  It may take more courage to hit another man, but in hitting a woman, the gangster shows himself to be without any tender feelings or sentiment, something that Edward G. Robinson in Little Caesar (1931) dismissively refers to as “soft stuff.”

By the 1940s, this trait on the part of movie gangsters had become so established that in Scarlet Street (1945), Dan Duryea figures that the way he routinely slaps Joan Bennett around qualifies him to go to Hollywood and be an actor.  “Why, I hear of movie actors getting 5000 … 10000 a week!” he says.  “For what?  For acting tough, for pushing girls in the face.  What do they do I can’t do?”  At another point in the movie, when Joan Bennett’s roommate says she does not understand how Bennett can be in love with a man like that, Bennett says, “You wouldn’t know love if it hit you in the face.”  To this her roommate replies, “If that’s where it hits you, you ought to know.”

That hitting women adds to a gangster’s macho persona is illustrated by the contrast between Michael and Fredo in The Godfather:  Part II (1974).  When Kay tells Michael that she had an abortion, he becomes furious and slaps her. This is consistent with his character as a tough guy. But when Fredo’s wife gets drunk at a party and becomes insulting and obnoxious, Fredo does not hit her, because he is not man enough.  If Fredo had slapped his wife, that would have been inconsistent with his character, which is that of a weakling.  I hope it is understood that when I say this, I am not speaking of my attitude, but the attitude conveyed by the movie.

Of course, honorable mention goes to The Killers (1964), in which Ronald Reagan slaps Angie Dickenson, thereby letting not only her, but also the men in the room know who is boss.  But it is not only gangsters that look tough when they hit women in the movies.  Private detectives sometimes do it, as when Jack Nicholson slaps Faye Dunaway in Chinatown (1974).  And James Bond even hits one of his “Bond girls” in From Russia with Love (1963).

Toughness is not the only positive trait that is established by hitting women.  In The Moon Is Blue (1953), David Niven plays his usual debonair self.  At one point in the movie, he mentions that his wife divorced him because he hit her.  When Maggie McNamara expresses surprise that he struck a woman, Niven, with a self-satisfied look on his face, says that he seldom strikes anyone but a woman.  The movie would have us think of this as part of his charm.

In The Philadelphia Story (1940), Cary Grant pushes Katherine Hepburn in the face, knocking her down.  But this movie, like The Moon Is Blue, is a comedy and comedies present a special challenge.  On the one hand, it seems stuffy to take them seriously; on the other hand, one has to wonder if they are able to encourage certain behaviors by treating them lightly.  In any event, it is interesting to note that in the remake, High Society (1956), this scene was left out, which was probably for the best, because seeing Bing Crosby push Grace Kelly in the face and knock her down would not have gone over well with the audience.  I don’t think this is due to a change in audience attitudes in the sixteen years that passed between the two movies as to a difference in attitude toward the stars.  Katherine Hepburn had become unpopular with movie audiences in the 1930s, probably because she comes off as being superior, and a lot of people may have enjoyed seeing her get pushed in the face.

The ultimate apology for hitting women is when it is construed as an expression of love, as in Carousel (1956), which romanticizes wife beating and child abuse.  In that movie, a man hits his wife and later hits his daughter.  But since he really loves them, the mother and daughter both agree that sometimes a slap can feel like a kiss.  The last word in this category is Sunrise (1927).  In that movie, a man falls in love with another woman, who persuades him to murder his wife.  He plans to drown his wife in the middle of a lake, but at the last minute, he finds he cannot do it, but not before she has seen the murderous intent in his eyes.  She flees from him when they get to shore, but eventually they reconcile, and the movie would have us approve of her forgiveness, because deep down he really loves her.

When a woman slaps a man in a movie, he usually deserves it, the case of Scarlett’s hitting Ashley being an exception.  Men, on the other hand, are usually not morally justified in hitting a woman.  An exception to this might be James Bond.  If he has a license to kill, perhaps he also has a license to slap. Another difference is that if a man who is slapped just stands there and takes it, he cuts a good figure, but when a woman is slapped, we either pity her, as in the case of Kay in Godfather II, or we regard her as a fool, as in the case of Joan Bennett in Scarlett Street.  In that latter movie, Bennett tells Duryea, “If I had any sense, I’d walk out on you.”  To this, Duryea replies, “You haven’t got any sense,” as he slaps her back and forth across the face. Of course, some women just like being slapped as part of rough sex, as in Charley Varrick (1973), where Joe Don Baker’s idea of foreplay is to slap Sheree North hard across the face, which she seems to relish. This is one case in which being slapped makes a woman look tough.  But most of the time, the woman gets nothing out of it but the slap.

The movies can treat slapping in this fashion because it never causes serious bodily harm, at least not in the movies.  Of course, by convention, fist fights in movies never seem to cause serious bodily harm either, so all the more so can they represent slapping as ultimately harmless in its physical effects. Now, a gangster in a movie can show that he is tough by going beyond slapping, as in The Big Heat (1953), where Lee Marvin throws a pot of scalding hot coffee in the face of his girlfriend, Gloria Grahame, permanently disfiguring her.  But this makes us dislike him.  When a man only slaps a woman in the movies, however, we are still allowed to like him or admire him, and she is still allowed to love him.

At least, that is the way things used to be.  Whereas movies still show women hitting men as being a positive thing, the situations where men hit wives or girlfriends do not seem to occur so much anymore.  Either men do not slap women at all, or they do more than just slap, as in the movie Enough (2002), so that we will be sure to know that we are not supposed to like them.

An optimist might say that this is progress.  Since movies no longer admire or excuse men who hit women, then to the extent that we are influenced by movies, men will be less likely to hit women in the future.  Alternatively, the fact that movies have changed in this way may reflect a change in attitude of the movie-going public whom the producers of movies wish to please. We no longer approve of domestic abuse as much as we used to, and the movies have simply followed along.

A pessimist, on the other hand, might say that it is easy to censor the movies, but not so easy to censor life.  The tendency to regard slapping women as proof of masculinity, or to excuse it as really being an expression of love, may have been purged from the movies but not from the heart.

Movie Marijuana

Marijuana seems to be on its way to legalization.  Polls indicate a widespread acceptance of medical marijuana and, to a lesser extent, its use for plain old recreation.  Politicians and even presidents do not suffer politically from admitting to having used it, and President Obama has asserted that it is no worse than alcohol.  Of course, our tolerance is limited to past use only. The idea of a president smoking a pot while unemployment remains high or war rages in the Middle East is unthinkable.  Overall, however, the attitude of the public toward marijuana is becoming increasingly positive, or at least mellowing.

Judging by the movies, the surprise is that legalization is taking so long.  We have all heard of Reefer Madness (1936), the most well-known exploitation film depicting the evils of marijuana, leading to rape and murder. Exploitation films justified their existence as being cautionary tales, but much of their appeal lay in titillation, so it is hard to assess what the audience really thought of this movie when first released; but by the 1970s, its popularity in the midnight-movie circuit was strictly camp.

Marijuana was clearly depicted as having baleful consequences in Touch of Evil (1958), where it is used by a bunch of degenerates, while apparently molesting a woman.  And in For a Few Dollars More (1965), a psychopath needs to smoke it after killing a man and his family, causing him to dream of the time he raped a woman who killed herself in the middle of the act.

Starting in the late 1960s, marijuana ceased to be associated with evil and perversion:  people who smoked marijuana in the movies no longer had horns, but haloes. From that time on, in movies or on television, if a character smoked a marijuana cigarette, you knew you were supposed to like him.  In Platoon (1986), there are two sergeants, one good and one evil.  And we know which is which, because one sergeant smokes marijuana, while the other does not.

This leads to a rather startling corollary.  Since the late 1960s, marijuana is so strongly associated with goodness that no evil character has been allowed to smoke it.  When I say “evil,” I am referring to the attitude that the movie has toward that character, and not that he is a criminal.  That is, if a character is portrayed as so unlikeable that the audience wants him to die, or at least to come to a very bad end, then he is evil, as I am using the term; whereas if a character is portrayed as likeable, and the audience hopes things will turn out well for him, then that character is not evil, even if he breaks the law.

For example, in American Beauty (1999), there is a subplot concerning a Colonel Fitts and his son Ricky.  Now, Ricky doesn’t just smoke marijuana—he supplies it.  But that’s all right, because by this time the positive associations with marijuana in the movies is so strong that a marijuana dealer is thought of as promoting the public weal.  We can scarcely bring ourselves to call him a criminal, although technically that is what he is.  But in any event, he is not evil. On the other hand, his father is not only obnoxious in general, but is a homophobe as well. Because he is evil, in the sense that we detest him and wish him ill, it is absolutely forbidden that such a character be seen smoking a marijuana cigarette.

Those who are opposed to marijuana legalization sometimes argue that it is a gateway drug, that it leads to the use of more dangerous substances. Whatever the truth of the matter, this is generally not seen in the movies, especially when the other drug is associated with evil, for that would create cognitive dissonance.  Early in the movie Wolfen (1981), a wealthy couple is seen snorting cocaine, so we know right away something bad will happen to them.  And justice is swift, for their horrible death soon follows.  Therefore, any movie showing someone progressing from marijuana to cocaine would disturb us, because the former tells us to like that character, while the latter tells us he is doomed.

In the end, however, the positive qualities of marijuana will usually trump the negative qualities of a harder drug.  In Breaking Bad (2008-2013), Jesse Pinkman is a user and dealer in methamphetamine, but since he smokes marijuana, all is forgiven.  On the other hand, Gus Fring is the most evil character in the whole series, from which it follows with Euclidean certainty that he must never be allowed to profane that sacred weed by smoking as much as a single joint.

And then there is the element of pity.  While cocaine has an evil taint, especially when indulged in by the rich, other drugs tend to elicit our sympathy.  Heroin is a surprisingly sympathetic drug, and thus we pull for Frank Sinatra’s character in The Man With the Golden Arm (1955), and we feel sorry for Jane in Breaking Bad.  To a certain extent, we also feel sorry for those who use methamphetamine, for the meth addicts in Breaking Bad were pathetic.  But unlike heroin, where people are allowed to keep their good looks, meth addicts are ugly, so our compassion contends with our feelings of disgust.  On the other hand, even when used to excess, we never feel sorry for the pothead. Instead, overuse is more likely to be portrayed comically, as with Cheech & Chong. Regarding Obama’s comparison of alcohol and marijuana, the movies may allow us to feel compassion for someone who drinks, as in The Lost Weekend (1945) or Come Back, Little Sheba (1952), but never for someone who smokes marijuana, unless it be for a totally unrelated reason.  To suggest that the marijuana user is an object of pity would be to imply that there is something bad about smoking marijuana, and modern movies are not about to do that.

Therefore, if the movies are any indication, I not only expect to see full legalization of marijuana, but I anticipate the day when companies like Altria and R. J. Reynolds begin selling it by the pack as well, possibly filter-tipped and with menthol, returning them to their glory days before tobacco began its fall from grace. A drug that the movies depict as having so many morally uplifting qualities cannot long be resisted.

Arrowsmith (1931)

The movie Arrowsmith was based on a novel of the same name, written by Sinclair Lewis.  I had read and enjoyed Main Street, Babbitt, and Elmer Gantry, but despite that and despite the fact the the novel won the Pulitzer Prize in 1926, I did not care for it.  And despite the fact the the movie was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture of 1931, I did not care for that either.  The movie took a lot of liberties with the novel, leaving out stuff and changing things around, most of which did not bother me one bit.  However, the movie is better than the novel, because there is an absurd event that is described in the novel that the movie wisely, or perhaps fortuitously, left out.

In the novel, Martin Arrowsmith, who is a medical student, becomes engaged to a woman named Madeleine. During the summer, Martin goes Canada, where he meets a nurse named Leora.  He proposes to her, and she accepts. But Martin is still not sure which woman he wants to marry. So, he invites both of them to have lunch with him, and when they arrive, he announces that he is engaged to both of them, and he will let them decide whom he will marry. Madeleine leaves in a huff, but Leora stays and clinches the engagement.

When I reached this point in the novel, I threw it aside in disgust. It was one of the stupidest things I had ever read, especially in a well-known novel by an otherwise good author. I had no interest in reading a novel about a man who is that ridiculous. I would say the same about Leora, since any self-respecting woman would do what Madeleine did, which is to get up and leave, but I suppose she was so desperate to get married that she was willing to swallow the insult. It was the better part of a year before I could bring myself to finish the novel.  But the damage had already been done and was irreparable.  On account of that scene with the two women, I despise the novel to this day.

Years later, the movie turned up on television, and I remember wondering to myself how it was going to handle this business with the two women. I was pleased to see that the Madeleine character was not in the movie, thereby eliminating the scene that caused me to dislike the novel. As for the rest of the story, Martin (Ronald Colman) is interested in medical research. In testing a new medicine, the standard procedure is to have a control group that gets a placebo to compare with the group that gets the experimental medicine. That way the researchers can tell whether the medicine makes a difference, and whether there are side effects. This is especially emphasized in the novel, where the students are portrayed as being obsessed with controls.

When the bubonic plague hits the West Indies, Martin decides to go there and try out his new serum. This requires the use of a control group. But if the serum is effective, this will mean that most of those in the control group will die on account of having only received a placebo. He ends up giving the serum to everyone. Martin’s humanity triumphs over his desire to establish the efficacy of the serum.

As the movie came to an end, I finally realized the point of the lunch date with the two fiancées. Madeleine was essentially acting as a control for Leora. By comparing the reactions of the two women, Martin was able to assess Leora’s love for him by contrasting it with Madeleine’s. The idea was to show just how obsessed Martin was with the need for controls, that he would even try to apply it to love and marriage.

That may have been the idea, but it is still absurd. And it is unnecessary. A man will typically have enough experience with women in general to be able to decide whether he should marry one woman in particular. Every woman he has ever dated is a control of sorts. Likewise, a woman will have had enough experience with men to know that if the man she is engaged to turns out to be engaged to someone else as well, she can be glad she found out before she married the jerk.

In a similar way, the same could be said about the bubonic plague.  We have had plenty of experience with epidemics involving this disease, so much so that a control group was not really necessary.  If everyone in the West Indies is given the serum, and the epidemic comes to an abrupt end, that is sufficient proof of its efficacy.

It may be that Sidney Howard, the man who wrote the screenplay, left Madeleine out of the movie for the simple reason that most movie versions leave stuff out that was in the novels on which they were based. But I like to believe that Howard thought the lunch date with the two fiancées was as preposterous as I did, and he mercifully gave it the ax.

The Evolution of Torture in the Movies

The public’s changing attitude toward torture over the years is reflected in the movies, and the conclusion, sad to say, seems to be one of increasing acceptance.  For a long time, when depicted in film, torture was portrayed as something evil, something done by Nazis, for instance.  An example of this is the movie Foreign Correspondent (1940).

But eventually, torture came to be seen as justified in certain cases.  One of the earliest movies to represent torture as something good is Dirty Harry (1971).  Early in that movie, the “Scorpio Killer” has buried a little girl alive with only enough oxygen to last her a few hours, and then demands ransom for her release.  Harry Callahan (Clint Eastwood) is a police detective who agrees to deliver the money.  When he does, the serial killer announces that he intends to let the little girl die.  When Harry catches up with him, he tortures the killer until he tells him where the girl has been buried.

Even if we disapprove of torture in real life, we cannot help but approve of Dirty Harry’s actions while watching the movie.  And this for five reasons:  (1) We are certain the man is guilty.  Dirty Harry knows, as do we, that the man he is torturing is the Scorpio Killer.  (2) The punishment fits the crime. The Scorpio Killer is evil, and clearly deserves the pain Harry inflicts on him. (3) There is a time element.  In just a few hours, the girl will die, so the information must be extracted from him immediately.  (4) The situation is ad hoc.  Although early in the movie a doctor jokes about Harry beating a confession out of a suspect, it is our sense that he does not routinely torture criminals.  (5) The torture is effective.  We find out later that the girl was already dead, but Harry does get the information concerning where she is buried.

Perhaps the greatest example of justifiable torture is in Dr. Strangelove (1964). Because no actual torture takes place, but is only feared, and because this film is satirical, it does not come readily to mind as a torture-justifying movie as does Dirty Harry.  But even so, it makes a case for torture that cannot be exceeded.  General Ripper (Sterling Hayden) has decided to launch a sneak attack on the Soviet Union, which will start World War III.  Worse still, the Russians have just activated a doomsday device that will destroy all life on this planet if ever they are attacked with nuclear weapons.  Ripper does not know this, but when his air force base surrenders to the army, he rightly fears he will be tortured for the recall code, which will allow the president to order the bombers to return home.  Again, we have the five elements:  We know Ripper is guilty.  He would deserve what he gets.  There is a time element of about 15 minutes before the planes invade Russian air space.  The army does not routinely torture people.  And finally, it is because Ripper knows that the torture would be effective that he commits suicide.  Anyone who can contemplate the scenario thus outlined and still say it would be wrong to torture Ripper may count himself as being morally pure on this issue.

More recently, we have had the television show 24.  The principal difference between this series and the two movies above is that Jack Bauer usually manages to find someone to torture before and after lunch.  That is to say, torture is not ad hoc for him, but rather seems to be part of his job description.  Still, the other four elements are typically present, and they seem to suffice for showing that torture is good.  The fact that torture no longer has to be ad hoc to be acceptable indicates a growing acceptance of torture on part of the public.

Now, I can enjoy a fascist fantasy just like anyone else, but some people have the unfortunate tendency to confuse art with life, justifying torture by what they see in the movies or on television.  The five ideal elements that justify torture in the movies or on television, however, are not likely to be found when people are tortured in real life.  Sometimes the innocent are tortured right along with the guilty.  Or, if guilty, we must wonder if their guilt is always sufficient to justify the torment they must endure. The presence of a time element is more likely to be an exception rather than the rule.  Nor is the torture exceptional, but is carried out on a regular basis.

Now, what do we say about the kind of man who would make torture his life’s work, a man who gets up every morning, goes to his dungeon, makes a few notes on his clipboard, and then proceeds to inflict pain?  The answer is simple.  He likes it.  He enjoys causing pain, or he would not do it day after day.  And such a sadistic monster will not be squeamish about the guilt or innocence of his victims.  In fact, he may even prefer the innocent, for unlike the guilty, they can never give him the information he requires, and thus he gets to keep them longer.

As for the effectiveness of torture, that is debated by the experts.  From a moral point of view, it would simplify things greatly if it turned out that torture was worthless, and that the information sought could more easily be obtained through other means.  But since this goes contrary to common sense (I would certainly talk if I were tortured!), it might be best to concede that torture is useful, and then fall back on the principle that the ends do not justify the means.  To borrow a line from another movie, Touch of Evil (1958), “police work is always easier in a police state.”

The euphemism “harsh interrogation techniques” is used by those who would defend torture under another name.  And, it must be admitted, there is a difference between waterboarding, sleep deprivation, and exposure to uncomfortable temperatures on the one hand, and the kind of torture that mutilates its victims on the other.  Regarding these harsh interrogation techniques, the point is often made that Navy Seals and other soldiers who volunteer for special forces are subjected to the same sort of thing to toughen them up.  And if our soldiers can endure such treatment, the argument goes, there is no reason to spare the terrorists from the same.

However, when our own soldiers are waterboarded and the like, they know that they are among friends, as it were.  They know that things will not be allowed to get out of hand, and the length of time they will have to endure the treatment will be relatively short.  Many others have been through it before, and they may even look forward to the experience, as it will give them bragging rights later on.  The enemy has no such reassurances.  He knows he is in the hands of those who hate him, and there is no telling how far things will go, or for how long.

This psychological difference is not unimportant.  Imagine a man with a knife, telling a woman to undress, after which he ties her hands and feet to the bedposts.  If the man is her boyfriend, and they are playing a game, it may be the best sex she’s ever had.  But if the man is a stranger, who, for all she knows, may mutilate or kill her when he is through raping her, it will be a night of terror so awful that even if she survives physically, she will suffer from the trauma for the rest of her life.

In a recent movie about torture,  Zero Dark Thirty (2012), torture is also represented as justified, only now, another one of the five ideal elements has been dropped.  Just as torture in this movie is routine rather than ad hoc, so too is there no time element, no “ticking time bomb” about to explode any minute.   The man being tortured is definitely guilty, and the torture proves to be effective in getting the information.  There is some doubt as to whether he deserves the punishment he receives, but let us stipulate that he does.

If this movie shows any reticence about torture, it consists in the fact that the protagonist, Maya, does not actually torture anyone herself, and she does not like it.

In conclusion, over the years we have seen torture in the movies go from something done only by evil people, to something done by the good guys, but only if the five ideal elements are to present, to the dropping of first one and then another of these ideal elements.  The net effect seems to be that there is a growing acceptance of torture on the part of the public.  This is an ominous trend.

Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1974)

In the movie Ali: Fear Eats the Soul, Emmi, a German woman who appears to be in her sixties, stops in an Arab bar to get out of the rain. She meets Ali, who is from Morocco, and who is at least twenty years younger than she is. One thing leads to another, and he ends up spending the night with her, and they become lovers.

There have been a lot of movies about couples that have to deal with prejudice and disapproval, but this one seems to be going for the gold. First, Emmi and Ali are a mixed-race couple in which the woman is the one who is white.  Moreover, he is also foreign. And though religion never comes up, we suspect that she is Christian and he is Muslim. And then they are different in age by a generation. Just as society accepts a mixed-race couple better when the man is white, so too does society accept an age difference better when the older one is the man. But just as in this case the woman white, so too is she the one who is older.

Mixed-race couples of the same age can make a go of it, getting married and having children, if that is what they want. But when the woman is much older than the man, even of the same race, it is better for them to treat the relationship as a fling, and that means they should not live together, and they should definitely not get married. As the bartender says of their relationship, “Of course it won’t last. So What?” But this movie manages to get them married anyway.

First, we find out that Ali shares a room with five other men. Since she lives alone, it seems to make perfectly good sense for him to move in with her. But later we find out that as a mechanic, he makes more money than she does as a cleaning lady. So, if she can afford an apartment all to herself, why can’t he? Then the landlord objects to her subletting her apartment. In America, a woman could simply say he was her roommate, but I guess things are weird in Germany. So, she says that she and Ali are going to get married. She is not serious, saying this only to satisfy the landlord about his subletting objection, but Ali thinks it is a good idea. And so, against all reason, the movie contrives to get them married.

The rudeness and bigotry they experience from almost everyone is over the top, with people calling her a whore, ostracizing her, and even kicking in her television set. But let us assume that these vicious extremes of prejudice are the way things would have been in Germany in the 1970s. If so, then the total capitulation that follows is unbelievable. Emmi suggests that she and Ali should go somewhere on vacation, and that things will be different when they get back. It is an absurd prediction, but it comes to pass nevertheless. When they come back from vacation, everyone is nice to them. Granted, they all seem to want something from Emmi. But what a coincidence it is that so many people would want something from her all at the same time, and enough so for them to overcome the vehement prejudice we know them to harbor. But that is not the only change that happened while they were on vacation. Emmi and Ali have changed as well. Ali becomes sullen, cheats on her, and seems to be ashamed of his relationship with her. And Emmi begins to exhibit prejudice against foreigners. She tells him to help carry stuff down to the cellar, as if he were the hired help; she refuses to cook him couscous, saying he should get used to eating German food; and she and her friends talk about him while he is standing in the same room, discussing how clean he is, after which they examine him like some prize bull.

Actually, those who made the movie seem to be as obsessed with the question of Arab cleanliness as the characters in the movie. We have a scene in which Emmi gives Ali a toothbrush, a scene in which we see him taking a shower, a reference to his taking a shower, and a scene in which the female Arab bartender says she is going to get cleaned up before she and Ali have sex.

We expected there to be disapproval from others, and we expected Emmi and Ali to begin to suffer from their differences once the initial passion wore off. But the sudden shift from one extreme to another, separated only by that incredibly transformative vacation that we never see take place, but only hear about, is jarring.

And then, as we wonder how all this is going to work out between them, Ali collapses on the dance floor from a perforated ulcer. It is almost as if the people making this movie did not know how to end it, and so they just threw in a medical emergency at the last minute, leaving us with a final scene in which Ali is unconscious in a hospital bed.

Angel Heart (1987)

Angel Heart is one of my favorite movies.  Unfortunately, I cannot begin to do justice to its style and tone, the music and the imagery, which I always find unnerving.  I might do better discussing the symbolism—the fans, the mirrors, the stairs and elevators—or the clever use of names, but I’ll just stick to the story; for the manner in which it is told can be confusing, and so much so that I was still not sure exactly what happened, even after a third viewing, especially since what we see is not always veridical, owing to distorted memories and perceptions.  For that reason, I believe it will be worthwhile to focus on the logic of the narrative, both as to the sequence of events and the metaphysics of the soul.

One of the problems with the story of Faust, the man in the German legend who sold his soul to the Devil, is that we never understood why anyone would make such a foolish bargain in the first place. A few decades of wealth, power, fame, and sex in exchange for an eternity of suffering the fires of Hell? The story fares much better when understood in the allegorical sense, of course, but it is always better if a story makes sense literally if it is to have much value figuratively.  Angel Heart at least makes an effort to satisfy both requirements.

Johnny Liebling is a crooner who thinks he knows a way to cheat Satan. He makes a pact with him, in which Satan gets Johnny’s soul in exchange for fame as a singer, under the name Johnny Favourite.  Having made the deal and benefited from it, he then performs a ritual that involves cutting the heart out of a soldier and eating it.  By so doing, Johnny is able to get rid of his own soul and replace it with that of the soldier, whose name is Harold Angel.

Let us pause for a moment to consider this.  It is common for those that believe in life after death to suppose that the soul and the body are two distinct entities.  In some versions of Christianity, the soul occupies the body during life on Earth, but when the body dies, the soul goes to an afterworld, like Heaven or Hell, where it will spend eternity.  Some Christians believe the soul will get a new body, others do not.  In either event, the soul is what is essential to the person, so the loss of the body it occupies here on Earth is not lamented.  Likewise, for those that believe in reincarnation, when a person dies, his soul is reborn into another body.  Again, it is the soul that is essential to the person, not the body that it occupies, so that here too the person is said to survive death.

With that in mind, the idea that Johnny acquired Angel’s soul would seem to be the reverse of the usual understanding of the relationship between the soul and the body.  Instead of saying that Harold Angel now has a new body, that of Johnny Favourite, the movie is saying that Johnny Favourite has a new soul, that of Harold Angel.  The identity is a function of the body, not the soul.  But that would seem to call into question the whole notion of immortality.

Let us continue with the narrative before trying to sort this out further.  Since Johnny has gotten rid of his old soul and has now acquired a new one, the one that used to belong to Harold Angel, he has escaped damnation. In addition, he planned to take on the soldier’s identity, allowing him to hide from Satan. As part of the ritual, the soldier’s dog tags are sealed up in a vase. Only if Johnny himself opens the vase himself will the ritual be undone.

Before Johnny can assume the identity of Harold Angel, World War II breaks out. Johnny is drafted and subsequently suffers an injury, which causes him to have amnesia. He spends some time in a hospital, during which he has extensive facial reconstruction.  His friends get him out, but his face is still in bandages, so they don’t know what he looks like with his new face.  They bribe the doctor to falsify records, making it appear that Johnny is still there as a patient. Not knowing what to do with him, they simply drop him off in a crowd of people in Times Square on New Year’s Eve of 1943, hoping that will jog his memory, for it was on a previous New Year’s Eve in Times Square that Johnny had ritually murdered the soldier. As a result of Johnny’s confused memory about acquiring the soul and taking on the identity of Harold Angel, he comes to believe that he is Harold Angel.

Ten years after the war, which is when the movie starts, this Harold Angel (Mickey Roarke), who knows only that he got messed up during the war and was sent home, has become a private detective. As such, he is hired by Louis Cyphre (Robert De Niro) to find Johnny Favourite. Angel does not realize it, but he has been hired by the Devil to find himself. We do not realize it either, at this point, and we are encouraged by the movie to like Angel and to identify with him.  He seems to be a nice guy, and after all, we usually like private detectives in movies.  He even blows bubble gum.

At one point in the movie, Johnny’s daughter Epiphany (Lisa Bonet) says that her mother told her that Johnny “was as close to true evil as she ever wanted to come.”  If this is so, then how is it that Angel is so likeable?  Or, since this is getting confusing, let us say that the when Johnny Favourite acquired the soul of Harold Angel, he became what we shall call Johnny Angel.  Therefore, Johnny Angel is likeable because he has the soul of Harold Angel, who was presumably a likeable person.  But this brings us back to the standard understanding, which is that the essence of the person is the soul, not the body.

Just as an aside, I cannot help but wonder how it makes sense for the Devil to make a pact with someone as evil as Johnny Favourite supposedly was.  Such a person is already destined for Hell, so what does he have to bargain with?  The Devil would naturally want to make a deal for the soul of someone who is a devout Christian, one who believes that Jesus Christ is his savior.  Now, that would be a soul worth the effort.  Why would the Devil waste his time providing all those worldly goodies for someone whose soul he already has in the bag?

Anyway, as Angel starts investigating, he begins experiencing disturbing images from the past. Little by little, he begins to suspect the truth. He is horrified at the idea that he might be Johnny Favourite, and as we have come to like him and identify with him, we are horrified too.

In his desperation to assure himself that he is who he thinks he is, he breaks open the vase, and the dog tags of the real Harold Angel fall out. The spell is broken. At this point, Louis Cyphre appears, announcing that Johnny’s soul now belongs to him.  But wouldn’t the soul to which Louis Cyphre now lays claim be the soul of Harold Angel, not the soul of Johnny Favourite?  The reason Cyphre has been going to all this trouble is that he wants the original soul of Johnny Favourite, not the Harold Angel substitute.

Recent memories that Johnny had distorted are replaced by accurate ones, memories of the gruesome way he murdered people in his effort to keep anyone from finding out that he was Johnny Favourite hiding out as Harold Angel.  And so now we find that this amalgam we are calling Johnny Angel, while being the likeable Harold Angel on the one hand, is also the evil Johnny Favourite on the other, and this evil side surfaces from time to time, something the good side has been unaware of.

Perhaps we are now in a position to interpret what happened in a way that is consistent both with the usual understanding the relationship between the soul and the body, on the one hand, and with the split personality of Johnny Angel, on the other.  When Johnny Favourite acquired the soul of Harold Angel, his own soul did not vanish, but rather remained in Johnny’s body alongside the new one.  When Johnny eventually died, the soul of the hapless Harold Angel would have gone to Hell, while Johnny Favourite’s soul would have passed through the Pearly Gates of Heaven to dwell among the righteous.  But now that the ritual has been undone, Harold Angel’s soul has been released, much in the way the dog tags were released from the vase, and Johnny’s body now has just the one soul, the one he had to begin with.  And that is why he can now remember the murders with such clarity.

Because Johnny had a way to cheat the Devil, this story works on a literal plane.  But a remark made by Louis Cyphre gives this Faustian story a new twist. Cyphre says that Johnny was doomed the minute he cut that boy’s heart out. In other words, all that dabbling in black magic and making a pact with the Devil was just so much hocus-pocus. In itself, it was harmless nonsense, and Johnny would never have gone to Hell for that. It was only when he did something truly evil, when he murdered that soldier, the very act that was supposed to undo the hocus-pocus, that Johnny was damned. By this remark, Cyphre links the literal understanding of this story with its allegorical one.

Consciousness Naturalized

One of the arguments against the theory of evolution is that the theory cannot account for the existence of consciousness.  No mere essay such as this one could possibly do justice to the mind/body problem, and it must be that extra cup of coffee I had this morning that has led me to this presumption.  However, there is one feature of the debate over the nature of consciousness that I believe is worth calling attention to, even if only in an oversimplified manner, as necessitated by the limitations of space.

The theory of dualism typically attributes to consciousness and matter radically opposite properties.  Among other things, consciousness, thought of as the essence of the mind or the soul, is associated with that which is alive, aware, and active, whereas matter is said to be lifeless, insensible, and passive. Because mind and matter are thought of as distinct substances that interact with each other, it is easy to imagine that the mind or soul can survive the body.  This is most agreeable with religious notions of immortality.  As such, whereas matter is part of nature, the conscious mind is supernatural and destined for some kind of afterlife.  Needless to say, on this dualistic understanding of mind and matter, material evolution cannot possibly explain the existence of the immaterial soul.  And thus it is that the existence of consciousness is often put forward as an objection to the notion that the theory of evolution is sufficient to fully explain life, especially the existence of man.

In response to this, a lot of atheists argue that consciousness did evolve, that it is an emergent property of matter, arising when a certain level of complexity is reached.  They may admit that they are not sure exactly what level of complexity is required, or at what point in the evolution of life consciousness emerged, but emerge it did.  Such a position essentially accepts the conception of matter as formulated by the dualists:  it is lifeless, insensible, and passive. We might be able to understand how complexity of such matter could eventually produce animal life, but it is hard to see how mere complexity could ever bring about sensation or feeling from such an unpromising beginning.

There is no need to accept this conception of matter as laid out by the dualists, however.  In fact, since the dawn of philosophy, a lot of materialists have realized that in order to materialize consciousness, matter must be spiritualized.  Thales, the first pre-Socratic materialist, said that all things came from water.  To this assertion that everything evolved, if you will, from a material element, he added that “things are full of gods.”  Lucretius, another materialist, said that in addition to properties such as size, shape, and weight, atoms also had “inclinations.” Thomas Hobbes, in elaborating his theory of materialism, explained the motion of bodies as resulting from an “endeavor.”

In other words, instead of arguing that consciousness emerged from matter as a result of complexity, one can argue that it was there from the beginning.  Of course, if we are going to attribute consciousness to matter in its simplest forms, in an electron for instance, it must be consciousness in its simplest form as well.  Some people strongly associate consciousness with intelligence, but electrons are clearly not intelligent.  For others, “consciousness” means self-awareness, but that also lets out electrons.  At most, an electron can be thought of as having something like a feeling or an urge.

If we decide to accept a notion of matter that is conscious, we have a choice to make between interactionism and parallelism.  Referring again to the metaphysics of Lucretius, inclination was a property that atoms had alongside material properties, such as size, shape, and weight. Whereas the material property of weight made the atoms fall straight down, in his view, the inclination of the atoms could make them swerve.  And this inclination was the basis of the will in man.  In other words, he had an interactionist view of things.  Material properties of atoms would have them do one thing (fall), while the mental property, the inclination, would have them do something else (swerve).

The problem with this understanding of things is that it seems to be the same old dualism of mind and body shrunk in size to that of the atom.  Alternatively, there is the idea of parallelism, known as the dual-aspect theory.  To go back to the example of an electron, its mental aspect, be it a feeling or an urge, is not a property distinct from its mass and electric charge.  Rather, the feeling it has is the “inner nature” of the material properties, the way the mass and charge are experienced by the electron.  Under this view, there are no Lucretian swerves. If an electron swerves, we can attribute that swerving to such things as an electric or gravitational field, with some kind of sensation present paralleling that swerve.

The first philosopher to propose the dual-aspect theory was Spinoza, whose writing, unfortunately, is more mediaeval than modern.  Schopenhauer is my favorite exponent of this view, although his philosophy is bound up with Kant’s transcendental idealism, which I have never been able to fully understand.  And if I read him right, Shadworth Hodgson, who is mostly known as being the first epiphenomenalist, also espoused a version of this theory. With regard to the last two philosophers, we may discern a debate as to which is causally determinative, the mental or the physical.  In other words, just who wears the pants in this universe?  For Hodgson, it was the physical.  He compared consciousness to the color of the stones on a mosaic, whereas the stones themselves and the cement that holds them together correspond to physical reality. Schopenhauer, on the other hand, opted for the will as being causally determinative, with physical reality being just the outer appearance of the phenomenon of the will.

But to ask which of the two, the mental or the physical, is the more important is like asking of a coin dropped into a slot to buy candy, which was the more important, the head or the tail. Keeping with the coin analogy for a moment, imagine seeing coins on a table, all of which are Indian Head nickels with a buffalo on the back, some of which have the Indian head facing up, with others having the buffalo facing up.  If we had never seen this type of coin before, and we had no way of turning one of them over, we might never suspect they were the same coin.  In a similar way, when we look at a stone, we cannot see its mental aspect, and when we feel a pain, we cannot see its physical aspect.

The head of a coin and its tail never interact.  If we toss a coin in the air, the head and tail move together in parallel, neither one being determinative of the motion of the other.  On the other hand, coins interact with each other.  If we move those hypothetical coins around on the table, still ignorant of the fact that they are the same type, we might see an Indian bump into a buffalo and cause it to move, and we might see elsewhere a buffalo bump into an Indian and likewise cause motion, leading us to conclude that there is interaction between Indian Head nickels and Buffalo nickels as distinct kinds of coins.  In reality, the interaction is between a single kind of coin, viewed differently.

In a similar manner, we know there is a correlation between pain and brain states.  A dualist will say the brain state, which is physical, causes the feeling of pain, which is mental.  In reality, the brain state and the pain are two aspects of a single thing.  In asserting this identity, I am not saying that the mental aspect of this brain state is identical with its physical aspect, any more than I would say that the head of a coin is identical with its tail.  Rather, just as a coin with an Indian head on its obverse side can be identical with a coin with a buffalo on its reverse side, so too can a brain state, observed as physical from the outside, be identical with a brain state, felt as pain from the inside.  In this regard, identity theory is in agreement with the dual-aspect theory, the difference being that most identity theorists believe that such identities are limited to nervous systems, which is a version of the theory that consciousness emerges when there is sufficient complexity, whereas the dual-aspect theory assumes such identities in even the simplest forms of matter.

The dual-aspect theory is not a popular one, and has few proponents.  The main reason, I believe, is that it is counterintuitive to say that matter in general has a mental aspect, and so much so that to advocate such a theory is to open one up to derision.  It is in the opposite situation from dualism, which appeals to our intuition and common sense.  And most of us speak the language of dualism, for it is easily understood and allows for brevity of expression.

My pet theory aside, the main point I wanted to make in all this is that in debating the theory of evolution with those who say the theory cannot explain consciousness, we need not resign ourselves to accepting the impoverished conception of matter provided by dualism, but may avail ourselves of an enriched version more suitable to our needs.  The longer we delay the moment in which consciousness makes its appearance in this world, the more we implicitly concede that there is something mysterious and inexplicable about it.  Better to embrace consciousness as present in matter from the beginning, thereby completely naturalizing it.

Stairway to Heaven (1946)

 Stairway to Heaven, also known as A Matter of Life and Death, begins with a prologue announcing that the movie is a story of two worlds, the first of which is that of our life here on Earth; the second, in the mind of a young airman. This is followed by a disclaimer of any resemblance between this imaginary world and any other world, known or unknown. I guess they didn’t want to be sued by Heaven for slander, which would have been justified, because it is the worst depiction of Heaven ever imagined.

Granted, no depiction of Heaven has ever succeeded in making it look like a place where anyone would want to live. Its minimal appeal is that it is better than no afterlife at all. But this particular Heaven really is the pits. First, it is colorless, both literally and figuratively, with only the scenes on Earth being in color. Second, it is lifeless, both literally and figuratively, for with the exception of the new arrivals (who are in such a jolly good mood, they get on your nerves), everyone else in Heaven is lethargic and dull. Third, souls in Heaven are prudish beyond all reason. We all know that there is no sin in Heaven, which is part of what makes it so boring, but in this Heaven, you are not even allowed to say, “Holy smoke!” Fourth, there is no love in Heaven, but there is hate. Conductor 71, having dismissed love as the feeling of the moment, says that the prosecutor in Peter’s case hates Peter’s guts, as part of a hatred for the British that has lasted for two centuries, on account of his having been an American killed by the British during the American Revolution. This hatred turns out to be petty and spiteful beyond belief.

We don’t get to see God. At least, not the one in Heaven. We do, however, see a godlike human.  There is a doctor that has a strange device that allows him to project onto a table in his attic all the goings on in the town in which he lives, like an all-seeing, all-knowing God. I suppose the purpose of this part of the movie is to mix up Heaven and Earth, fantasy and reality.

Apparently, Heaven in this movie is really caught up in World War II, because they have a special Aircrew Section just for the pilots of the Allied forces. We never get to see the Aircrew Section for the Axis Powers for some reason. The receptionist, or whatever she is, shows a newly arrived pilot where they keep the files on everyone on Earth: Russian, Chinese, black or white, Republican or Democrat. She doesn’t mention anything about the files of Germans, Japanese, or Italians. Gosh! You don’t suppose they all went to Hell, do you?

I suppose one of the reasons for announcing in the prologue that this is just a world of the imagination is to keep us from being critical, as if only reality can be criticized. Well, all I can say is that the guy who imagined this has one of the drabbest imaginations ever imagined. That guy in question is Peter Carter, who bailed out of a burning airplane without a parachute, but somehow did not die. Or he did die, and the movie is mostly his hallucinatory dream on the way down. Well, real or imagined, it is deserving of criticism either way. Or, let me put it this way. The people who really imagined all this were Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, and they are the ones who really get the blame, not the pilot in the movie.

The plot of this movie is the opposite of Here Comes Mr. Jordan (1941), which was remade as Heaven Can Wait (1978). In those movies, Joe Pendleton dies and goes to Heaven before he was supposed to, and Mr. Jordan, who is in charge of these things, has to find a new body for Joe and send him back to Earth. In Stairway to Heaven, on the other hand, a man who was supposed to die and go to Heaven remains on Earth accidentally, and steps are taken to get him to go to Heaven, where he belongs. In the Mr. Jordan movies, we are exasperated that Joe would still care so much about his life on Earth once he knows that all that stuff about God and Heaven is true. That knowledge should be life transforming, but Joe just wants to get back to doing what he was doing before. I guess some people are hard to impress. But in the present movie, once we see what a dreary place Heaven is, we cannot blame Peter for wanting to put off the day when he will have to go there too.

Just about the time we have settled into the idea that this business about Heaven is the hallucination of a man who has jumped out of a plane without a parachute, it turns out that his hallucinations are caused by a brain tumor, the symptoms of which began six months before he jumped. So, is the tumor also the hallucination of a man who is falling to his death, or is the leap out of a burning plane the hallucination of a man with a brain tumor? In either event, the hallucinatory premise for what we are watching probably explains why at times it feels as though we are watching Alice in Wonderland.

Anyway, brain surgery is performed on Peter while his trial is taking place in Heaven. Ultimately, it comes down to a question of which should prevail, the Law of Heaven, or love on Earth. Finally, June, the woman Peter loves, is willing to die in Peter’s place, thereby proving that she loves him, the result of which is that they both get to live. The judge quotes Sir Walter Scott’s poem about how love conquers all, the last line of which says, “For love is heaven, and heaven is love,” an assertion that stands in contradiction to all that has come before. At the same time, the surgery back down on Earth proves to be a success.

So, Peter and June will get married and live happily ever after. Or rather, they will be happy until they die. Then they will go to Heaven and have to exist in that dreadful place for eternity.

Movies That Might Have Been

Throughout the history of cinema, there have been a lot of movies that might have been, but ended up being something else.

For example, even though made in the pre-Code era, Baby Face (1933) had to be edited to make it look as though the title character, played by Barbara Stanwyck, misunderstood Nietzsche’s philosophy, which inspired her ruthless rise to the top, and she is punished by having to return to the industrial town where she began. Fortunately, the movie has been restored, and we see that she understood Nietzsche perfectly, and her punishment is much milder. This is the rare case in which we have both the movie that was and the movie that might have been.

In The Blue Dahlia (1946), Raymond Chandler originally wanted Buzz (William Bendix), a navy veteran with a plate in his skull, to be the killer of Johnny’s (Alan Ladd) wife, but when the Navy found out about it, they objected to the movie portraying a veteran in a bad light, and so the house detective turns out to be the killer instead. Usually, censorship results in an inferior movie, but in this case, I believe that the movie that was is better than the one that might have been.

What these two examples have in common is that had I not seen the restored version of the first, or read about the changes imposed by the Navy in the second, I would have had no inkling of the movies that might have been. But sometimes there is an incongruity that would make us suspicious even without any actual evidence. In Blonde Venus (1932), a woman (Marlene Dietrich) prostitutes herself to save the life of her ungrateful husband, who takes her son away from her. When she becomes famous, she is through with marriage and family life, and even rejects the love of a millionaire (Cary Grant). That is where Josef von Sternberg, the director, wanted the movie to end. But the studio wasn’t having it, and so an ending was imposed where she gives up fame and fortune to return submissively to her forgiving husband and her son. Even without knowing that this ending was imposed, the narrative rupture is so stark that one might have suspected it anyway.

Sometimes you can practically see the movie that might have been right through the movie that actually exists while you are watching it, almost as if the movie were a palimpsest. In the movie Crossfire (1947), a soldier (Robert Ryan) meets a man in a bar, goes with him to his apartment, and then murders him because the man is a Jew. But while I was watching it, I could not help but think that the real motive was homophobia, that Robert Ryan’s character had sex with the man who picked him up, and then, disgusted with himself for what he had done, he beat him to death. As I later found out, my suspicions were correct, that the original story had been about homophobia, but in the aftermath of World War II, people were ready to condemn anti-Semitism, but they were not ready to deal with homophobia, and so the story was changed.

Another movie that I felt as though I was seeing right through it to another movie that might have been is American History X (1998). The movie that might have been consists of the scenes filmed in black and white with all the color scenes left out. That movie is a brutal story about a neo-Nazi skinhead. But apparently, even though neo-Nazis are portrayed negatively, just showing the black-and-white part by itself would have been too much movie. And so, scenes in color are interspersed throughout, which come across as a bunch of Sunday-school sermons for children. I have no independent evidence that the director really wanted to make just the black-and-white version and was compelled to add the color portion, but that remains my suspicion.

Recently, I saw the movie Red State (2011). On one level, this movie is an attack on fundamentalist, homophobic groups that are obsessed with the evils of homosexuality, and an attack on our fascist police state, in which government agents are willing to kill innocent people who might be witnesses to government mistakes and to deprive people of their constitutional rights on the grounds that they are terrorists.

However, there are bits and pieces throughout this movie that hint at a less than favorable attitude toward homosexuality. When three teenagers are planning a ménage à quatre with a prostitute, in which they plan to all have sex with her at the same time, one of them says he wants the ass. Now, anal sex with a woman is not homosexuality, but it is sodomy, a form of sex associated with homosexuality and emphasized as evil by Abin Cooper (Michael Parks), the pastor of Five Points Trinity Church. Of the three teenagers, this guy is the one portrayed in a negative light. He cries for his mother when he is tied up, and then he abandons his friend when he gets free.

The sheriff is also gay, and he is seen having seedy, adulterous sex on the job. He is about to allow himself to be blackmailed by Pastor Cooper, who has incriminating pictures of him, into doing nothing about his murdered deputy. But then the sheriff has a Machiavellian idea: he will sic the ATF on the religious group, hoping a Waco-style massacre will eliminate all evidence of his indiscretions, which is exactly what happens.

Then, at the end of the movie, one of the superiors in the ATF, Agent Hammond (Patrick Fischler), says that the preacher will be raped by other prisoners as condign punishment for his loathing of sodomy, which also puts homosexuality in an unflattering light. It also puts the government in an unflattering light for gloating about it. It saddens me the way so many people delight in the thought that some convicted criminals will be ass-raped in prison, as if prison itself were not punishment enough. I sometimes wonder if future generations will look back at the way we allow such things to go on in prison today, and even revel in it, just as we today look back in horror at the way we used to treat the mentally ill.

In any event, I wondered if I was imagining things, and so I did a little research on the director, Kevin Smith, and found that he has indeed been accused of homophobia in the past. Now, it might be that Smith is not a homophobe, but merely someone who likes politically-incorrect humor, just as some people are grateful for religion, because it allows them the pleasure of blasphemy. Along these lines, I began to wonder if there is a movie that might have been hidden within the movie that we actually see.

In the actual movie, a bunch of college students, who live in a house close to the church, fool the religious group into thinking Judgment Day has arrived by blasting sounds of trumpets through loudspeakers. But we never see these college students, not even in a flashback while Hammond is telling Agent Keenan (John Goodman) about it. Furthermore, Hammond says that the college students had no idea that the ATF agents were at the compound, which means that they never heard the twenty minutes of machine-gun fire that was taking place prior to their playing the trumpet sounds. Because Kevin Smith does not give us visual confirmation of this unlikely story, we have to wonder if he really cared about it, or whether it was just an artificial, tacked-on ending.

I think Smith really wanted to film the movie so that the rapture actually did take place, with Pastor Cooper and his homophobic flock being taken into Heaven, leaving behind their shoes and a bunch of stunned ATF agents. In this version, God really is the homophobic deity of The Old Testament, who commands that homosexuals be put to death. Had Smith made that movie instead, it would have been the most outrageously politically-incorrect movie ever made. If his earlier movie, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back (2001), was a matter of concern for the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, then this might-have-been version of Red State would really have roused their ire. But even more would it have been an offense against Christianity, for in many ways, the Bible is embarrassing to people of that faith, which is why they take care to read only certain portions of it, and they consider it rude to make reference to the parts they would like to forget about.

And so, Smith got right out on the edge in making this movie, allowing us to think that Judgment Day was at hand, and that the members of Five Points Trinity Church were about to be raptured. But then he wisely pulled back, knowing that such a movie would have finished his career as a director, and undid the ending, saying, “Just kidding!”

The Hole (1960)

Asked to categorize The Hole, most people would say it is a prison movie, which it is. And as with most such movies, there is an attempt to break out of that prison. But to me, it is primarily an engineering movie.

Most engineering movies involve building something, such as the title bridge in Bridge on the River Kwai (1957). Another example would be Land of the Pharaohs (1955), in which a pyramid is constructed in such a way that no one can break in and steal all the loot the pharaoh is planning on taking with him to the afterlife. In both those movies, however, engineering only plays a minor role compared to all the other goings-on. Engineering plays a major role in The Dam Busters (1955), but the best engineering movie is Flight of the Phoenix (1965), in which survivors of a plane crash build a smaller plane out of the parts of the larger plane that crashed. In that movie, more than half the time is dedicated to this engineering task.

In The Hole (1960), however, prisoners are not trying to build something, but rather to break through what has already been built and intended to keep them locked up. Perhaps because this movie was based on a true story written by one of the prisoners involved in the attempted breakout himself, what the prisoners have to do to get out is not merely implied or briefly indicated, as in most such movies, but rather is shown in great detail. One of the prisoners has broken out of prisons three times before, and so he knows all the tricks. In addition to seeing just how ingenious and resourceful he is, we also experience the physical effort that goes into breaking through concrete.

As often happens in movies about criminals, you begin to identify with them and want them to succeed. And so, it is a little disappointing that someone rats them out just before they are about to leave. On the other hand, had they escaped, the prisoner who wrote the book would probably not have written it, and then we wouldn’t have had this movie to watch. So, I guess things worked out for the best.