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.

New-World-Order Movies

According to Thomas Hobbes, in a state of nature, each man was a sovereign individual who could do as he pleased. The price of complete liberty, however, was the war of every man against every other man, making life nasty, brutish, and short. For that reason, men agreed to give up some of their freedom in exchange for the security that would come with a state ruled by a sovereign. Though we do not believe this fanciful theory of the origin of society and government, yet we all agree that we are better off with a social contract in which we submit to the laws of a government in exchange for the benefits that government can provide.

Just as there can be such a thing as too much liberty, so too can there be such a thing as too much government. Conservatives especially feel this way. They are more comfortable with power belonging to the states than the federal government, and they are very suspicious of the United Nations as a world government that threatens American sovereignty. Liberals are more comfortable with federal power, but they also find themselves apprehensive about global agreements they fear will put profits ahead of workers, such as those concerning free trade.

These apprehensions are especially aggravated by such things as the Bilderberg Group, the Trilateral Commission, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Bohemian Grove. It is feared that within these groups, powerful people get together in secret and conspire to rule the world. Defenders of these groups argue that they just want to get people together to help smooth things out, to promote better relations among nations, improving economies and reducing the chances for war.

What most everyone agrees on is that a one-world government would be a bad idea (except when George H. W. Bush slipped up and referred to the “new world order”). Hardly anyone forthrightly declares that countries should give up their arms, with only the United Nations having weapons that will enable it to impose its transnational laws and regulations on nations no longer sovereign. The difference is between those who fear such a new world order, and those who say such fears are unfounded.

There are two good things about fear: first, it motivates us to avoid danger, and second, it is often the basis of a good movie. As for the latter, there are, of course, numerous dystopian movies about totalitarian world governments. In Rollerball (1975), corporations have replaced governments, so this is a left-wing nightmare movie in which individualism is suppressed for the sake of corporate power and profits. In Hunger Games (2012), Panem might not be a world government, but it is a totalitarian federal government run by a bunch of decadent elites, which makes it a right-wing nightmare movie.

There are a few movies, however, that actually promote the idea of loss of sovereignty as a good thing, that portray totalitarian power in the hands of a few as desirable, as conducive to peace and prosperity. In Gabriel Over the White House (1933), President Judd Hammond (Walter Huston) is a small-government conservative who thinks crime and unemployment are local problems, best left to the states. Then God intervenes and turns him into a fascist dictator who disbands Congress under threat of martial law. He presides over a command economy that puts everyone to work, and establishes a police state along with military tribunals that allow for the immediate execution of criminals. Discovering that other nations have not paid back their war debts, he tells them they will have the money to pay off those debts right after they get rid of their armies and navies, allowing America to rule the world. When they balk, he puts on a display of America’s “air navy,” in which he threatens to annihilate them all if they don’t do what he says. They capitulate. Having eliminated unemployment, crime, and war, God calls him home, as his job is done. Because America does not have to give up her sovereignty, a lot of neo-cons might like this movie about an imperial presidency ruling over an American empire.

On the other hand, The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) takes loss of sovereignty to the next level. In this movie, a flying saucer lands bearing an alien named Klaatu and his robot bodyguard named Gort. Klaatu says this is a goodwill mission. He refuses to talk to the president of the United States by himself, insisting on the need to talk to all the world leaders at the same time. As it turns out, however, he ends up addressing a body of scientists, because in a left-wing film, scientists are better than politicians. He tells them that he represents an interplanetary government of the universe, and that earthlings must give up their violent ways, or robots like Gort will destroy the entire planet. This is like the conservatives’ worst fears about the United Nations stripping the United States of its sovereignty raised to the next power, with the entire Earth losing its sovereignty to a federation of aliens. The attitude of the movie is that this is a good thing.

I have always fantasized about a sequel, in which Americans capture the flying saucer and subdue Gort. Then they reverse engineer them until we have an army of robots and a fleet of flying saucers of our own, which we then use to destroy all those arrogant aliens who presumed upon us. At the end of the movie, with America triumphant, the president gives a victory speech, saying that our new manifest destiny of the universe has been accomplished, because we are a God-fearing people.

But Things to Come (1936) is the ultimate new-world-order movie. Made before World War II, it envisions the coming war, which wipes out much of mankind, followed by a plague. It spreads throughout the land, and there is nothing doctors can do, because there is no medicine left. A man takes charge, ruthlessly killing those infected and staggering around, until the plague is finally wiped out in 1970. He becomes the leader of Everytown, and is called “Chief” or “Boss.” He wears a coat made of furs, looking like a barbarian warlord, and he is intent on waging war against the “hill people,” just like a typical conservative.

Suddenly, John Cabal (Raymond Massey) lands in a futuristic airplane in a futuristic flying outfit. He tells Dr. Harding, whom he knew before the war, that a bunch of engineers and mechanics have banded together to form the “brotherhood of efficiency, the freemasonry of science.” Once again, we have the left-wing prejudice in favor of scientists over politicians. When Dr. Harding enthusiastically embraces the idea, saying, “I’m yours to command,” Cabal replies that neither he nor anyone else is in command, that there will be no more bosses. Rather, “Civilization is to command.” Saying that this world government has no leaders makes us suspicious, reminding us of Marx’s communist ideal in which the state withers away. Denying that anyone has power, asserting that one is merely executing the impersonal will of the organization for the good of mankind, sounds like a way of disguising its totalitarian nature.

The Boss is portrayed as a brutish anti-intellectual, who thinks it is just as well they don’t print books anymore, because they muddle thoughts and ideas. He doesn’t trust scientists, but he needs them for his war effort, to make fuel and poison gas. When Cabal goes to talk to the Boss, Cabal tells him the war will have to stop. In the course of their discussion, Cabal says, “our new order has an objection to private aeroplanes” (because airplanes represent power, this is the equivalent of denying individuals the right to bear arms). And when the Boss says that his territory is an “independent sovereign state,” Cabal says, “We don’t approve of independent sovereign states.”

Eventually, the air force of Wings over the World drops the gas of peace on Everytown, which merely puts everyone to sleep, except the Boss, who conveniently dies. Then what follows is a montage of futuristic industry, in which everyone is hard at work. In fact, everyone seems to do nothing but work. We don’t see people playing games, singing and dancing, or going to the movies. We begin to wonder, What is it all for, if all everyone is going to do is work? In fact, my chief objection to a command economy is that it might command me to work a lot harder than my natural preference, which is as little as possible. One thing about free enterprise, a lazy man like me has the option of working less in exchange for lower wages.

In the year 2036, someone called Theotocopulos begins to protest this way of life, arguing that life was more merry and vigorous in the old days. Now, if he just wanted people to be able to have more fun and not work so hard, that would have seemed reasonable. But this movie naturally has to make him into a Luddite who opposes all progress. He addresses the people, who seem to agree with him, but since this futuristic civilization does not appear to be a democracy, what the people want is irrelevant, and they are thwarted.

Oswald Cabal is the great-grandson of John Cabal. Even though supposedly there are no bosses in this new civilization, Oswald Cabal seems to have a lot of hereditary power as president of the council. When an acquaintance says, “Oh God! Is there never to be any age of happiness? Is there never to be any rest?” Cabal dismisses this concern for happiness, and says rest comes soon enough with death. “It’s the all the universe or nothingness,” he declares. Looks like they’ll be putting in some overtime on that one.

Though all three of these unusual movies try to put the idea of a new world order in the best possible light, yet they still come across as creepy. They don’t make movies like this anymore (in the remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still (2008), we only lose our technology, not our sovereignty). I don’t think this is because the country has shifted to the right in this regard so much as, left or right, people are more suspicious of power than they used to be.

On the Question of Fetal Pain

Planned Parenthood has had some bad publicity of late. Doctors who work for Planned Parenthood have been videotaped discussing the selling of aborted fetuses for medical research. There seem to be several aspects of this that people find objectionable.

The first is that what the doctors did or were offering to do was illegal. If it was illegal, then that is a matter for prosecutors to pursue, not me. Apart from the legalities, it would not bother me if the doctors were trying to make a profit for their organization by selling the fetuses. I realize that Planned Parenthood is a nonprofit organization, but you get the idea. Call it “fund-raising” if you like. Whatever words we use, if selling the fetuses would help Planned Parenthood with its finances, and the fetuses that were sold would benefit medical research, I’m all for it. After all, if they make enough money selling fetuses, then maybe the government will no longer have to fund Planned Parenthood, which should make Republicans happy.

Moreover, it wouldn’t bother me if the women who have the abortion get a cut of the take. If it were sufficiently remunerative, some women might purposely get pregnant in order to sell their fetuses. That might strike some as being venal, but if it would be useful for medical research, then it’s all right with me.

The second problem that some people have with this is that what the doctors were describing was gruesome, what with all that talk about crunching and crushing the fetuses, which reminded me of some of the Grand Guignol lines in the movie Re-Animator (1985), as when Dr. Hill demonstrates the removal of the scalp while comparing it to peeling a large orange. This is mostly a matter of being squeamish, analogous to the way we feel about corpses. Most people will treat the dead body of a loved one with tenderness and respect until they get it buried. We know it will soon rot, but we don’t want to even think about that, let alone see it happen. One reason a person might be reticent about donating his body to science is the thought of that body being hacked to pieces by a bunch of callous medical students.

But even if we are squeamish about how our own body or that of a loved one will be treated after death, it is none of our business if someone else is willing to let his body be used for medical research after he dies, however much we might be repulsed by a description of what happens to that body when he does. And so, if the woman who has the abortion is willing to let her fetus be crunched and crushed for the greater good of mankind, that is no different from allowing her own body to be subject to its own form of gruesomeness for similar reasons.

Some people further objected to the fact that one of the doctors was seen enjoying a hearty meal while discussing the manner in which the fetus would be handled. There are those who are sensitive to disturbing thoughts while they are eating. In The Canterbury Tales, Chaucer tells of what a pity it was that the cook had an ulcer on his shin, because cream pudding was his best dish. But others would not be bothered at all by the similarity in color and texture of the pus from sore and pudding in the bowl. Furthermore, long experience had probably inured the doctor to the crunching and crushing, which was probably for the best, because if she could eat while discussing such matters, she could probably perform abortions without flinching, which would be better for her patients.

Third, there is the question of the pain that might be felt by the fetus during an abortion. And let me pause here, by way of parenthesis, to comment on a somewhat paradoxical fact about human nature. The feeling of sympathy that we experience when someone is in pain is part of our social nature, its primary function being to motivate us to tend to his needs, to alleviate his pain if we can. But there are some people who care only about eliminating the disturbing feeling of sympathy, and care not one whit about the other person’s suffering as such.

I knew a woman once who was bothered by mice and had set out mousetraps. One night while she was home, the trap sprung. As so often is the case, the trap did not kill the mouse immediately, and it started squealing in pain. She couldn’t stand it. She said she became hysterical and started screaming, so much so that her neighbors came running over, thinking she was being assaulted. As far as she was concerned, that was the end of the story. “What happened to the mouse?” I asked. “Oh, the guy from next door threw the mouse in the trash can in the backyard,” she answered with indifference.

Out of sight, out of mind. It reminded me of my parents. We had mice in the house where I lived as a teenager. I suggested they get one of those traps that does not kill the mouse, but only captures him in a cage. Then he could be released in a distant field the next day. But that was too much trouble, my parents averred, and so they put out the usual sort of traps. Whenever a trap caught a mouse, however, they would hear it squealing and go berserk, running out of the room while yelling at me to get rid of it. Their idea of getting rid of the mouse was for me to put it in the trash can, just like the woman in the story above. But that would mean the mouse would still be in pain for who knows how long. Rather than allow for that, I would cut off its head. My parents not only did not understand why I did that, but they even thought it was cold-hearted of me to do such a thing. In short, there are people who do not mind if a person or animal suffers, just as long as they do not have to see it or hear about it.

Recently, the possibility of fetal pain during an abortion has become an issue. In general, those who are pro-life want to use the possibility of fetal pain to make abortions illegal after, say, twenty weeks of pregnancy. They could argue in favor of mandatory anesthesia, but I figured that they did not want to simply require that fetuses be anesthetized during the procedure, because that would be conceding too much to the pro-choice camp. They would rather use the pain of the fetus to make late-term abortions illegal than have such abortions become more palatable by making them painless. However, I was perplexed that people who were pro-choice were not advocating anesthesia themselves.

Now I know why. Montana considered a bill that would have required anesthesia for fetuses after twenty weeks, which sounds good to me, but a lot of people who were pro-choice objected to this becoming law. They saw it as another instance of politicians coming between a patient and her doctor, of unnecessarily adding to the cost of the procedure, and as based on the unscientific notion that a fetus can feel pain.

As for the part about the existence of fetal pain after twenty weeks being unscientific, that is partly true, but partly beside the point. There is something intrinsically unscientific about pain or any subjective state, because we cannot observe such states directly, save in our own individual case. This fact was the basis for behaviorism: since consciousness could not be observed, it was reasoned, it should be left out of psychology altogether, if that discipline had any hope of being scientific.

We can reason by analogy, of course. If my pain correlates with certain neurophysiological states, then if those same neurophysiological states occur in someone else, we may infer that he is in pain too, especially if he says, “Ouch!” But the more difference there is between me and some other organism, the less confidence I have in the analogy. For a long time, it was thought that babies did not feel pain and thus did not require anesthesia for surgery, only a paralytic to keep them still. It has only been since the mid-1980s that anesthesia for infants has become universally standard practice in America. In centuries past, vivisectionists experimented on animals by cutting them open without any kind of anesthesia either. No matter how much that animal struggled or cried, many vivisectionists maintained that animals did not feel pain, that their responses were merely reflexive. In other words, if you cannot utter the words, “I am in pain,” you may be in for a rough time.

Ernst Mach once noted that in studying physics, one ingests a lot of metaphysics. He could have said that about science in general. Many a metaphysical belief has been mistaken for a scientific fact, and claims about whether an animal, a baby, or a fetus can feel pain is just such an example. In some cases, assumptions of convenience may play a role. People tend to assume as true whatever suits their purposes. When Congress was considering the banning of incandescent bulbs, to be replaced by CFLs, which contain mercury, the question arose as to whether the disposal of CFLs would result in a harmful accumulation of mercury in landfills. The answer given to this concern was that people would take the burned out bulbs to a recycling center. Oh sure! Some people may do that, but most do not. The only reason anyone would believe something so unrealistic is that it was convenient to assume as much.

I fear that many people who are pro-choice believe that fetuses feel no pain during an abortion because it is a convenient assumption. Just as pro-life people don’t want to say that abortions are all right if fetuses are anesthetized, pro-choice people are afraid that certain abortions will become illegal if they concede that fetuses can feel pain. What we are likely to end up with is a standoff, in which neither side gives way. The losers may be the fetuses that are denied the anesthesia they deserve.

Always (1985)

At the center of the movie Always (1985) is David (Henry Jaglom), who will make your flesh crawl. He is whiny, icky, and creepy. He likes to wallow in his feelings, and worse than that, he wants to share. When the movie begins, David does not understand why his wife Judy (Patricia Townsend) left him and wants a divorce. We, on the other hand, do not know how she stood it as long as she did. But then, she is not much better than David, nor is anyone else in this movie, and so for almost two hours we suffer through watching a bunch of people who want to hug, feel, and communicate. By the time the movie is over, you will want to spend time around some real men, who don’t even know what feelings are, let alone talk about them.

When the movie begins, David’s wife Judy comes over to his house to sign the divorce papers. Right then, we know something is wrong with that setup. This is the sort of thing you do at your lawyer’s office. In any event, David has decided that he will surprise Judy by fixing dinner for the two of them. At first we wonder why he didn’t realize that she might have other plans, but we soon discover that he does not care if she does. When she finally relents and agrees to stay for dinner, she says she wants to call someone and let him know she won’t be able to keep their date. But he doesn’t want her to do that, because this is their special divorce dinner, and he doesn’t want it spoiled by her making a phone call. Although this is incredibly selfish and immature, the movie does not want us to react to it that way. We are supposed to think it is warm and cuddly the way he wants to have their last dinner together be just so.  We know this because in addition to starring in this movie, Jaglom also wrote the screenplay and directed it, so he obviously wants us to agree with David.

By the time the notary gets over to the house for the signing of the divorce papers, David and Judy are acting like two people who have just fallen in love and cannot get enough of each other, cuddling, kissing, and whispering sweet nothings. The notary tells them to think it over and leaves, figuring they really do not want to get divorced. After that, people start showing up at David’s house for one reason or another, culminating in a barbecue on the Fourth of July, and we get to witness the many different ways people can be obnoxious, blathering pop-psychology and superficial philosophy.

The only good thing about this movie is that it is just a movie, because if you have ever had the misfortune to wind up around a bunch of people like that, you know that they want you to discuss your feelings too.

200 Motels (1971)

Apparently a lot of people think that the movie 200 Motels (1971) shows what it is like to take LSD. If so, I’m sure glad I never dropped any acid, because then I would have been bored.

Alternatively, some people say that this is the movie to watch while you are tripping out on acid. Well, if you have to watch a movie like this to enjoy being on LSD, it’s not worth it.

Speaking of drugs, if you have ever been around some people who are drunk or on drugs and think that everything they say or do is just hilarious, then you know what it is like to watch this movie. The problem is not that the potty-mouth humor is not funny, which would be bad enough, but that the people in the movie obviously think they are being so cute and clever and witty, and that makes the movie especially irritating.