Monday, March 12, 2012
Friday, March 9, 2012
Thursday, March 8, 2012
Wednesday, March 7, 2012
Tuesday, March 6, 2012
Monday, March 5, 2012
Artificial Contraception Part 1: The Limbaugh Effect
By now we all have heard about Rush Limbaugh, his controversial statements, the loss of sponsors and his subsequent apology. That Rush went overboard, I will not dispute. If you listen to him with any frequency you know that he uses absurd scenarios and hyperbole to make his points. Sometimes it works, sometimes the joke runs flat, and in this case it dropped like a lead balloon. I would go further and say that he was ham handed and cruel. All the same, I believe in free speech. I also believe in the marketplace, and the marketplace has spoken. Free speech is not free; there is a cost to speaking your mind, and he is presently paying it. The only question is what the final tab will be.
But lost in the midst of all the furor over the personal attacks on the young woman in question is the larger point he was trying to make, which was correct even if his methods were not. The bottom line question is; what compelling public interest does the government have in subsidizing this woman's, or any woman or man's, recreational activities, which is what sex has pretty much become to many in the 21st century? I've struggled to find a polite way of putting this, and I've failed, so please excuse the crudeness, but since when is getting a little action on a Saturday night a Constitutionally protected right? I was always told that the Church needs to change Her teaching on artificial contraception because there are all these families with too many children who can't afford to have any more (maybe in 1940 you could argue that, but considering present day birthrates it's a hard sell). Now I'm being told that She needs to because hooking up is a human right.
I don't know anything about Sandra Fluke's personal life, and I don't care to know unless she wants to go to confession. She did choose to go before a public hearing and testify, which opens her up to scrutiny, though not insult; remember what I said, free speech is not free. Nonetheless this is not about her, and that was Rush Limbaugh's mistake. This is about religious liberty and freedom of conscience, the government's attempt to dictate and coerce the consciences of its citizens, and as he pointed out, the individual's need to be responsible for their own choices without going to the government to subsidize their private life. This is also about artificial contraception, as much as we don't want to hear it.
We opened a Pandora's Box when that little pill was unleashed on the world fifty years ago. We once and for all separated sex from responsibility. Self control was taken out of the picture. A key incentive to remain faithful, chaste and pure was removed from our lives. Along with helping families regulate births the pill was also supposed to empower women, or so the feminist movement said. But has it? A few questions: On a nightly basis are contracepting women under less pressure from husbands and boyfriends to have sex when they may not want to, or more than before? Are women more respected for their value as person's in the popular culture and less like sex objects than in 1960? In the wider society have we seen a decrease in the number of abortions, as proponents of the pill promised? or in the divorce rate? or in the prevalence of STDs? or in sex crimes against women?
There were people with good intentions, and families in truly dire straits that they were trying to help when the pill came on the scene in 1960 (I would also argue there were more sinister forces trying to pursue social engineering, but that's a story for another time). In spite of all the good intentions in the world once the pill became available it was impossible to limit its use to lawfully married couples. It was the modern day fruit in the garden that could not be resisted. What can't be forgotten in all this is that the sex drive is potent; I forget if it was Aquinas or Augustine who said it was even more powerful than the desire for food and water. The ability to master and direct our drives is part of what makes us responsible human beings. But now there is no apparent reason to develop self discipline in the sexual realm, and there is nothing that makes sexual intercourse something unique in human experience. There is nothing that makes it worth waiting for, saving your self for, or reserving for a privileged relationship. Artificial contraception, along with no fault divorces, have brought us to the disintegration of traditional marriage; we would not be having a discussion about gay "marriage" if the twin hinges of procreation and permanency hadn't been removed from the essential understanding of what marriage is all about. This has also helped contribute to an overall coarsening of the culture. I would argue we are less humane today because we are "free" to be inhuman and exercises even less self control than a dog or a cat, since even they usually wait for their fertile period to mate.
There are those who want to say that the issue is religious liberty, and cynical politicians who are pushing an issue they believe they can use as a wedge to limit other other First Amendment rights. I agree with that. There are those who want to make a villain of Rush Limbaugh. It's your right; condemn his insulting language, stop listening, and stop patronizing his sponsors, for that matter. I believe in the marketplace, it works. But don't ignore his underlying message, which is still true. And don't be so quick to dismiss the long term harm the contraceptive mentality has had on our society.
But lost in the midst of all the furor over the personal attacks on the young woman in question is the larger point he was trying to make, which was correct even if his methods were not. The bottom line question is; what compelling public interest does the government have in subsidizing this woman's, or any woman or man's, recreational activities, which is what sex has pretty much become to many in the 21st century? I've struggled to find a polite way of putting this, and I've failed, so please excuse the crudeness, but since when is getting a little action on a Saturday night a Constitutionally protected right? I was always told that the Church needs to change Her teaching on artificial contraception because there are all these families with too many children who can't afford to have any more (maybe in 1940 you could argue that, but considering present day birthrates it's a hard sell). Now I'm being told that She needs to because hooking up is a human right.
I don't know anything about Sandra Fluke's personal life, and I don't care to know unless she wants to go to confession. She did choose to go before a public hearing and testify, which opens her up to scrutiny, though not insult; remember what I said, free speech is not free. Nonetheless this is not about her, and that was Rush Limbaugh's mistake. This is about religious liberty and freedom of conscience, the government's attempt to dictate and coerce the consciences of its citizens, and as he pointed out, the individual's need to be responsible for their own choices without going to the government to subsidize their private life. This is also about artificial contraception, as much as we don't want to hear it.
We opened a Pandora's Box when that little pill was unleashed on the world fifty years ago. We once and for all separated sex from responsibility. Self control was taken out of the picture. A key incentive to remain faithful, chaste and pure was removed from our lives. Along with helping families regulate births the pill was also supposed to empower women, or so the feminist movement said. But has it? A few questions: On a nightly basis are contracepting women under less pressure from husbands and boyfriends to have sex when they may not want to, or more than before? Are women more respected for their value as person's in the popular culture and less like sex objects than in 1960? In the wider society have we seen a decrease in the number of abortions, as proponents of the pill promised? or in the divorce rate? or in the prevalence of STDs? or in sex crimes against women?
There were people with good intentions, and families in truly dire straits that they were trying to help when the pill came on the scene in 1960 (I would also argue there were more sinister forces trying to pursue social engineering, but that's a story for another time). In spite of all the good intentions in the world once the pill became available it was impossible to limit its use to lawfully married couples. It was the modern day fruit in the garden that could not be resisted. What can't be forgotten in all this is that the sex drive is potent; I forget if it was Aquinas or Augustine who said it was even more powerful than the desire for food and water. The ability to master and direct our drives is part of what makes us responsible human beings. But now there is no apparent reason to develop self discipline in the sexual realm, and there is nothing that makes sexual intercourse something unique in human experience. There is nothing that makes it worth waiting for, saving your self for, or reserving for a privileged relationship. Artificial contraception, along with no fault divorces, have brought us to the disintegration of traditional marriage; we would not be having a discussion about gay "marriage" if the twin hinges of procreation and permanency hadn't been removed from the essential understanding of what marriage is all about. This has also helped contribute to an overall coarsening of the culture. I would argue we are less humane today because we are "free" to be inhuman and exercises even less self control than a dog or a cat, since even they usually wait for their fertile period to mate.
There are those who want to say that the issue is religious liberty, and cynical politicians who are pushing an issue they believe they can use as a wedge to limit other other First Amendment rights. I agree with that. There are those who want to make a villain of Rush Limbaugh. It's your right; condemn his insulting language, stop listening, and stop patronizing his sponsors, for that matter. I believe in the marketplace, it works. But don't ignore his underlying message, which is still true. And don't be so quick to dismiss the long term harm the contraceptive mentality has had on our society.
Sunday, March 4, 2012
Saturday, March 3, 2012
Hugo: Requiem for a Film Maker
I recently rediscovered an old classic film that I loved in my youth; The Thief of Baghdad. It was one of those movies that used to get shown on local TV on Saturday or Sunday afternoons, and I'd usually stumble upon it somewhere in the middle of its airing. I was fascinated by it from the first time I saw it, not so much for the story, which is fantastical, but for the fact that it had a different look and feel than other movies I had ever seen up to then, old or new. I was shocked to find it was released in 1940, since it was in Technicolor with special effects that seemed incredible to my youthful eyes (even at 12 I was a bit of a film geek). As an adult I came to find out what made The Thief of Baghdad so different, and the story behind how it got made that's almost as amazing as the movie itself. But that is a story for another day.
When I saw it again last month on DVD, in its entirety for probably the first time, it still retained its magic, in spite of the fact that my adult eyes could see the flaws in the late 1930's special effects my child's eyes were oblivious to. I then viewed it a second time a few days later with the commentary track, which features Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese, recorded separately then spliced together in alternating takes. It's an interesting juxtaposition of perspectives; Coppola gushes about the the costumes, the vibrant foods of the marketplace, the spirited music, and the sensuous Technicolor world that reminds him of his mother's gimbot (OK, I made that last thing up). In his comments, Scorsese has no time for zucchini and tomato stew; he's all about tracking shots, crane shots, dissolves, closeups, two shots, blue screens and the metaphorical meaning of the eye, a motif that recurs throughout the movie. Scorsese is, if you haven't figured it out, a film geek extraordinaire. He loves movies, and when he's not making his own contributions to the development of the art form, he's studying film making and its history.
This brings us to Hugo, Scorsese's latest motion picture. Some have billed this as his first "children's move," though I didn't feel like I was watching a movie specifically made for kids. I guess a Scorsese picture without a semi-trailer full four letter words or eyeballs popping out of their sockets must be for kids, right? Whatever its intended audience, Hugo is a Valentine to the movies; to their magic and dream like quality, to their ability to transport us to different worlds, real and imagined. For a film maker known for his grit and realism, Scorsese builds a fantastic yarn, as visually stunning and original as The Wizard of Oz or the fore mentioned The Thief of Baghdad, which he also first saw as a child on weekend TV. In its totality it's not as good as those other two, but Hugo's virtue is in the attempt more than in the final product.
What Scorsese is reminding us of is that film, and I would argue art in general, is meant to bring us to another place. Our educational system today is training our children to find themselves in the books they read or the movies they watch. There is a belief that they will only be interested in stories they find "relevant to their experience." By this way of thinking the intention of the author is not important, only the meaning the reader, or viewer in the case of film, give to it. I was introduced formally to this point of view in grad school as the "reader response" method. What is central is the individual reader's relationship with the written word, not any objective meaning the text may convey. Think of this as the "Sola Scriptura" for the literary set. Just as traditional Protestant theology tells us that I can read the Bible for myself without reference to Tradition, gleaming the meaning that fits me personally, so it is with any other form of reading. There is no doubt that we bring our own experience to the act of reading a book or watching a movie, but if we lose the objective intent of the author we lose dialogue. All we're doing then is talking to ourselves and we run the risk of creating the world in our own image rather than being challenged to see reality in a different way.
As for Hugo, it's main character is an orphan boy who's left to live with his drunken uncle in a Paris train station. He is from a family of clock makers, and the lad lives like a phantom in the walls of the rail terminal, venturing out to steal food and wind the station's clocks each day. When he runs afoul of a mysterious old man, and then strikes up a friendship with his goddaughter, he begins a journey that takes him through the history of early motion pictures, where he discovers the man's identity and comes to find himself as well. Here Scorsese the film geek is proselytising, trying to induct a younger generation into the Church of Cinema. That's all good; a little education while you're entertained isn't such a bad thing, and it's his way of paying back the art form that he made his living on. As I wrote, the movie is visually stunning. It is shot in 3D, and this being my first experience with its contemporary rebirth, I found it superfluous, when not simply distracting. The sets and art direction are outstanding, but I found that the 3D effect actually detracted from them, not to mention the common complaint that the tinted glasses you have to wear dims the screen.
I thought of this as a requiem of sorts, which usually has a negative connotation; it denotes the end of a life. I'm sure Martin Scorsese will continue to make movies; it's in his blood, unlike Coppola who's been content to bottle wine and eat pasta on his vineyard over the last 25 years, working on films sporadically when he needs the dough. All the same, I see this as the work of a man who has traveled a long, intense road and is making time to take stock in what his life as an artist has meant. It is Coppola who is known as the poet and myth maker and Scorsese the chronicler of the mean streets. But here we cut through the grime to see what it was that made Scorsese fall in love with the movies to begin with. It is their ability to take us to other worlds, open up new vistas we could never imagine on our own. They allow us to dream, and the best movies, like a good book, bring us beyond our own experience to realize we are not alone. There are more things in heaven and earth than are contained in our personal experience, to paraphrase Shakespeare, and all we need are the eyes of a wondering child to see them.
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
Film Review: "The Artist"
As I've mentioned in other places my cinema going has been limited of late, so I've only seen four of the nine nominated movies this year. I did manage to catch The Artist, which snagged the Best Picture Oscar this past Sunday. Just a few scattered thoughts.
Many have asked if a movie made in black and white, 99.9% silent, in narrow screen (or what ever the opposite of the standard "wide screen" format is) and with lead actors unknown in the U.S. deserved the top Academy Award. Well, I don't think The Artist was the best picture I saw in 2011, (The Tree of Life was, but it was simply too weird to win), and while this is far from a perfect movie, I can't argue with it taking home the little gold statuette. It's light, whimsical (for the most part) and amazingly irony free. The Artist is well executed, and is saved from being a gimmicky exercises in nostalgia by the surprisingly humane performances of the leads. Also welcome is the fact that it's the rare contemporary movie the entire family can watch that isn't geared specifically to children.
The story is basically a mix of Singing in the Rain and A Star is Born. George Valentin (French actor Jean Dujardin, who also won Best Actor) is a silent movie star in the mold of Douglas Fairbanks. At a movie premiere he "discovers" a young woman (Argentinean Benenice Bejo, whose husband Michel Hazanavicius directed) who eventually becomes a big star in her own right. But this is 1927 and the motion picture industry is being rocked by the sound revolution. The young starlet, Peppy Miller, successfully makes the transition to talkies while her mentor, who stubbornly thinks sound is a passing fad, does not. Everything then goes wrong for Valentin; his movies stop making money, he's dropped by the studio, his marriage breaks up (dramatized by a sequence stolen from Citizen Kane), and the one time star loses his fortune and his fame. Always present in the background is Peppy, helping to keep the proud Valentin from hitting rock bottom while never letting him know of her assistance.
Even though it is key to the plot, Valentin's spiral downward is a drag on the movie. The Artist is only 96 minutes in length, but our hero's decent into alcohol fueled despair makes it seem much longer (I was sort of expecting more Ziegfeld Follies type musical numbers and less existential angst). Being at heart a French movie made in the U.S.A. I should have expected the dark shadows that pervade the middle section of the film.
In spite of the prolonged fall from grace, the movie is saved by the beautiful relationship between the two protagonists; they really do love each other, but not in the gooey romantic language of Hollywood. The first thing is that, while there is an immediate spark between them, they don't sleep with each other (am I the only one who thinks that's refreshing?). I'm not sure they even say (or, in this case mouth) "I love you"; Peppy lets her selfless actions speak for themselves. It is her devotion and gratitude toward the man who gave her her start that ultimately saves the day and redeems our fallen hero.
So, by all means, see The Artist. Is it worthy of the hype or it's multiple Oscars? I'll let others fight over that. But in a era when so much that hits our local movie screens is nihilistic and cynical it's nice to see something life affirming and, yeah, a bit charming.
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