Phantom Thread: Fashion is Fascism

art, Movies

 

I must admit that this movie mystified me. I found everything about the film masterful. First of all the acting was brilliant, particularly by the lead actor Daniel Day-Lewis who played wealthy and celebrated fashion designer Reynolds Woodcock. Yet Lesley Manville who plays his sister Cyril with chilling calm that alludes to other cinematic Ice queens, is also sensational. She helps to run the family business, The House of Woodcock, with wooden professionalism and is an able executioner (in the traditional sense) who dispatches her brother’s consorts as soon as he has lost his taste for them. Taste is critically important to this film. Woodcock’s current paramour Alma played by Camilla Rutherford is a surprisingly strong young peasant woman whom he summons to his lair from the hotel dining room where he met her. I call her a “peasant” without derogation, only because she does not fit into the pristine elegance of Woodcock home. She is like a fly on the wall, but she does not buckle in to his cruel disdain. She is not a weak victim of his advances. She is a proper foil to his predations.

The food and clothing, of the finest taste of course, are filmed with leisurely sensual opulence. That was what I liked best about the film, but I don’t know why. For the life of me I can’t figure out why I like that stuff. I think I got sucked in. After all what could be more meaningless than fashion? Fashion is the final refuge of the soul-starved. Fashion is fascism.

Woodcock is a man determined to pursue taste and beauty and demands utter tranquility for that purpose. His wife’s clothes (and his) must be of the finest taste (I presume for I know I confess absolutely nothing at all about good taste) and fashion. His house must be tranquil. That is something Alma cannot provide. She grates and disturbs the tranquility to such an extent that Woodcock asks, “Are you sent here to ruin my evening? And possibly my entire life?” Ultimately Woodcock is right when he says, “There is an air of quiet death in this house,” Reynolds says. That is exactly what it is, but it is of his own making, with able assistance from his sister.

So the movie completely mystifies me. Elegance and skill in service of an illusive ideal. I fail to see its purpose. Probably that is because I am not smart enough to see it. As I keep saying over and over again, life is hard when you’re stupid. What was it all for? Craftsmanship without soul? A phantom no doubt.

The Shape of Water

Movies

 

Mainly, I hate sci-fi, fantasy, and horror movies. The Shape of Water is all of the above–sort of. I have never seen any Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings movies. None. I know that this is an ignorant prejudice, but it is there and it is real. Frankly, the only reason I went to see this move is that I am trying to see all 9 movies that have been nominated this year for Academy Awards Best Picture. I have enough confidence in the Awards to believe that any film nominated for Best Picture will be reasonably good.

Much to my surprise I really loved this movie. The movie was directed by Guillermo del Toro and written by him and Vanessa Taylor. They have crafted a fine story. It is a love story. In addition to sci-fi, fantasy, or horror, we get love. A very strange love story, of course.

The love connection is between a mute cleaning lady at a top-secret government facility in 1962 at the height of the cold war and a humanoid swamp creature. The first time we see the creature is with a sudden shock that is typical of horror movies. Soon we realize that the only horror in the movie comes from the humans. They are the menacing creatures.

The creature, played by Doug Jones, cannot talk but sure can understand. It understands that the villain is a monster and the mute is something to be loved. The villains are General Frank Hoyt (played by Nick Searcy) and a squared-jawed Colonel Richard Strickland, (played by Michael Shannon). They decide to vivisect the creature as soon as its usefulness disappears. To them the creature is referred to as “the asset;” a label as cold and merciless as “resource.”

To the Colonel even love is brutal. Sex with his wife is an act of brutality with missionary position zeal. It is more of an assault than an act of love. Strickland is a cold and cruel representative of that unattractive part of our species that is quick to torture that which we do not know or understand. Rather than trying to respect it as a fellow creature, we immediately chose to poke it, prod it, hurt it, and when done, kill it. We kill for no good reason. We kill just because we lack the empathy to see the other as a fellow traveller on our meandering journey. Humans are the true purveyors of horror. (Of course we have some good points too).

An unlikely squad of misfits protects the creature. A reluctant Russian spy/scientist, Robert Hoffstetler (Michael Stuhlbarg) who has pangs of conscience, an African-American cleaning lady, Zelda, (Octavia Spencer), and a hapless artist Giles (Richard Jenkins).

The most important of the rebels is of course Eliza (Sally Hawkins), the mute cleaning lady who comes to identify with the creature–who might be a green god, because he bleeds, he suffers, and like her, he is mute. They are both strange. In more than one way they are one. As she says, “I move my mouth like him, I make no sound, like him, all that I am, all that I’ve ever been, brought me here to him. When he looks at me he does not know what I lack or how I am incomplete. He sees me for what I am as I am.”

Eliza not only identifies with the creature, but also comes to love it. Reading an ancient Persian poem, Giles says of her, as one might say of God, green or otherwise, “Unable to perceive the shape of You, I find You all around me. Your presence fills my eyes with Your love, It humbles my heart, For You are everywhere.”

My Country tis of thy people you’re dying

Fat Opinions, guns, Mass killings, politics, violence

 

On the way home from the theatre 2 days ago, we heard reports on the radio about young students from the school in Parkland Florida where 17 students were killed, allegedly by a young man with an AR-15. They had heard President Trump’s assurances that “they were safe” and were “loved” by people who would do “everything” to protect them. Lies in other words. Fake news. They also heard him offer once again his “thoughts and prayers,” but also noticed that in his talk the word “guns” was never spoken. After all it was not for nothing that the NRA had contributed $30 million to his presidential campaign! It appears that was money well spent.

The newspapers had also reported to the students that “their” Florida Senator Marco Rubio and “their” Florida Governor Rick Scott had both scored A+ in the rating released by the National Rifle Association about the quality of politicians from their perspective. A+ ratings are reserved by them for “legislators who have excellent voting records on 2nd Amendment issues and who vigorously fight to promote and defend the right to keep and bear arms.” I wonder how the students would have ranked them? I believe Rubio and Scott each received $3 million for their last election campaigns. Again money well spent from the perspective of the NRA. From the perspective of the students not so much.

In fact after the 2016 mass shooting at the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando Governor Scott said, “The second Amendment never killed anybody. Evil did.” So his solution for mass shootings is to allow evil to arm itself to the teeth with automatic rifles? Or is it to allow young people to buy them before they can vote or drive a car.

One of the 17-year old students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High in Parkland, Florida, that was interviewed said that Senator Rubio “had blood on his hands.” I concur.

Many of us thought that after the massacre at Sandy Hook School in Newtown Connecticut in December 2012, when Adam Lanza fatally shot 20 children between six and seven years old, as well as six adult staff members, something would be done in the United States to control gun violence besides thoughts and prayers. After all what could be worse than that? We were sadly mistaken. Nothing was done except to make gun ownership easier.

The Florida students who have been casting blame on their politicians who have put campaign financing ahead of the safety of school children have got it right. They do have blood on their hands.

We also heard a college professor talking on National Public Radio. He has written previously on this subject. He says that Americans can expect changes in gun control laws in the next year. I was shocked to hear that. But I had not heard it all. He added, “Americans can expect changes to gun control laws that will make it easier to get guns with silencers.”

On the day of the Florida massacre the school Superintendant said “Today we saw the worst of humanity; tomorrow we will see the best as we move forward together.” I strongly disagree. If nothing is done once again, this is not the best of humanity; this is the stupidest.

How can one deny that this country is sick? It reminds me of what Buffy Sainte-Marie sang “My country ’tis of thy people you’re dying.”

 

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri 

Movies

In this film Mildred Hayes played by Frances McDormand, in a powerful rage as a result of the lack of progress in the investigation of her daughter’s rape and murder, arranges for 3 large billboards to express that rage. She takes out her rage on the police department that she thinks spends too much time torturing black people to do a proper investigation of her daughter’s case. She specifically mentions the local sheriff Bill Willoughby played with typical grinning brilliance by perennial bad boy Woody Harrelson. He too feels anger because he has been diagnosed with terminal cancer. Every character feels anger in the film except one–Pamela the beautiful but air-headed 19-year old girl friend of Hayes’ ex-husband.

Willoughby however has learned to get over his anger. He has one last wonderful day, playing hookie and fishing with his two daughters, and keeping them occupied while he and his wife make love one last time. He later says in his suicide note that it was the best day of his life. When his daughter ask if Mommie is drunk, he replies she just has “a Chardonnay headache.”

We got the feeling that the Chief, Willoughby, had no respect for his young deputy, but he urges is young deputy to get rid of his hate. If he wants to be a good detective he must love–not hate. “Hate never solved anything,” he wisely says.

Amazingly, it is Pamela the intellectually challenged girl friend who brings the epiphany that delivers the moral center to the film from words she has read on a book marker while she was reading “that book about polio, you know the ones with horses.” The words that bring thematic focus to the film together with Willoughby’s suicide notes are that “anger begets greater anger.” Friedrich Nietzsche did not say it much better than that when he explored the topic of resentment. She may be dim, but she understands, what so many others fail to understand without great suffering.

The one weakness I found in the film was the religious theme. When a local priest comes to visit her, Mildred angrily and crudely rails at him—comparing the Catholic church to a gang and suggesting that he and every other churchman is “culpable” for the many abuses of children perpetrated by priests. They might be culpable but I did not think this worked well in the movie.

On another occasion Mildred sits by herself mulling things over when she says, echoing Dostoevsky’s Ivan Karamazov, “there ain’t no God, the world’s empty, and it don’t matter what we do to each other.” She noticed a deer near the spot where her daughter and wonders if she is supposed to think her daughter has been reincarnated as a lovely deer.

Mildred and Dixon have an awakening at the end of the film when they seem to realize that revenge is an empty vessel that will bring no nourishment. I don’t know why Mildred would change so drastically after one sleep. I thought it was an unearned, and hence unsatisfying transformation, even though I agree with the sentiment entirely. It was not a hard truth and therefore unsatisfying. Like a cheap thrill.

Recently we celebrated Martin Luther King Day here in the USA. He was not a perfect individual. Few of us are. But he was wise. He said, “I chose love because the burden of hate is too great.” That was a deeply earned insight.

Finally I commend the music in the film particularly the final song written by Townes Van Zandt, one of my favorites, and sung by someone I had never heard of before, Amy Annelle, with her ethereal voice.

Enjoy.

The Post

Movies, politics, Truth Seeking

On a cool day, we decided to see a movie. Like last year, I was hoping we could see as many as possible of the movies nominated for the Academy awards. We saw this one before the nominations came out, as we believed rightly it turns out, that it would be denominated for Best Picture

As a result we went to see The Post, a movie about the Washington Post and its owner, editor, and newspaper people reporting on the Pentagon Papers after the Nixon administration got an injunction against the New York Times who had started reporting on them first.

This was an outstanding movie about the costs, risks, and benefits of standing up to power. As Katherine Graham, the owner of the Washington Post (ably played by Meryl Streep) said, “If we don’t hold government to account why do we have a newspaper?” That is an important question, no more so than now in the age of so-called Fake News. Unfortunately there is a lot of fake news out there but it does not come from the New York Times, the Washington Post, or The Guardian and other first rate media. It comes from “fake news farms,” and other disreputable outlets. It is really sad that Donald Trump has tried to catch on to this issue. He was the primary beneficiary of fake news. He may have even contributed to its emergence (though that at least in the case of the Russian intervention in the 2016 Presidential election that has not yet been proven).

The film is extraordinarily relevant at a time when the current President of the United States, is not just attacking one newspaper, as Richard Nixon, did in the case of the Pentagon Papers, but is attacking an entire industry as fake news.

The Washington Post was threatened with lawsuits including potential prosecutions of the owner, Katherine Graham and the editor Ben Bradlee played by Tom Hanks. The timing is also extreme, because the Post was just in the process of going public on Wall Street at the time and the publicity of these threats could scare off the bankers and potential investors. It took incredible courage for Bradlee and Graham to go ahead with publishing under these circumstances. They might have gone to prison.

The film shows us this powerful jeopardy they experienced. Bradlee, who had less to lose, said bravely, “We can’t have an administration dictating to us our coverage just because they don’t like what we print about them in our newspaper…”

         Until this event, Graham had been considered a light-weight newspaper owner. As one of her colleagues said, “Kay throws a great party, but her father gave the paper to her husband.” This dismissive assessment, not without a large dollop of male chauvinistic prejudice was widely shared in her newsroom.

The issue was whether or not these two would have the courage (or lack of sense) needed to publish the Pentagon Papers while facing the President of the United States through his Attorney General, in court? It amazed me that even though I thought I remembered the result, the tension was palpable. No doubt this is the sign of craftsmanship in  film-making.

Finally the film gives a nod to the United States Supreme Court who ruled “the founding fathers gave the free press the protection it must have to fulfil its essential role… to serve the governed, not the governors”

Regulations Stink

Fat Opinions, politics, Social democracy, Trump

Many Americans in the west hate government regulations. That is one of the reasons Donald Trump is so popular, he has declared war on government regulations. He said that for everyone added, 2 would have to be removed. He seems to think most of them are bad because they interfere with the God-given right of American businesses to despoil the earth and exploit their workers and everything else in sight.

On a small scale–but a stinky one–that has become an issue in San Tan Valley where we live here in Arizona for 3 months.  Johnson Utilities a corporation I assume is connected to the company that developed much of this area including the community we live in, controls things like water and sewage. Water is an important asset in the desert and it controls it here. They have just announced that they are raising water rates by 23%. What would you do? Would you pay or go without water? They do have a pubic utility board here like we do back in Manitoba, but I am not sure how much clout they have. I will have to wait and see.

There is another related issue however that has many residents riled up, particularly those who live close to the water treatment plant run by Johnson Utilities. The locals can’t stand the smell. They say it is so bad they often have to stay inside. Reminds me of complaints back home about hog farms. It seems though that that the objectors are out of luck even though Johnson Utilities had been found to have violated regulations for emitting hydrogen sulfide more than 100 times. It was fined $20,000. Unfortunately, the people living next to the plant have not been helped, even though as one resident described the situation in a local newspaper, “the stench is like the inside of a porta-potty in the heat of summer at the end of a 3 day music festival.”

It seems that it is not just government regulations that stink. Maybe not all regulations are bad.

Why are so many children and young people taking guns to school?

Extremism, Mass killings, politics, religion, Truth Seeking, violence

 

Chris and I were talking about the latest shooting in the United States on February 14, 2018 in Florida. A young 19 year old former student allegedly walked into his old school, turned on the fire alarm so that students would rush out of building where he was waiting with an AR 15 automatic rifle. At  least 17 students were murdered  and 15 more were injured.

The latest shooting raises many important issues and I want to comment on them later. Today I want to concentrate on one issue? Why are so many young people in America the richest country in the world taking guns to schools to shoot students?

On the 24th of January 2018, I heard on the radio that the United States had experienced its 11th shooting at a school this year. 11 in 24 days! I guess there are just not enough guns in schools yet to deter shooters. In fact, so far in the US there has been a shooting at a school every 60 hours!

This issue is particularly important because of where we are now living for 3 months: Arizona. One of those school shootings occurred here in Arizona. I learned this week that Maricopa County, where we spend a lot of time when we are here, has more guns shops than any county in the United States. A gun shop is a place where guns can be purchased. In fact, Maricopa County has more gun shops than MacDonald’s Restaurants! Added to that,  the United States has more gun shops than there are Starbucks on the planet! So guns are part of the problem and I will discuss that on a later blog.

But what about the uncomfortable fact that so many of these involve school shootings? Yesterday right after we heard about the shooting, we stopped at a pizza restaurant for supper and asked Maya our young waitress who is a high school student what she thought of it. I asked her if she felt safe in school. She said she did. Of course she said, her school had a hired security officer on duty every day. The school in Florida, I was told, also had a security officer. That did not solve the problem. Maya, contrary to arguments of the National Rifle Association, did not think more guns in school were a good idea and would not make her feel more safe. On the contrary, she said, she feared if the security had guns they might be trigger-happy and makes things a lot worse. That was an astute comment. American soldiers for example, are famous for killing their own soldiers or soldiers of their allies in “friendly fire.”  That is because they are trained to be trigger happy.

Chris mentioned something very important. That is the startling extent to which extremism is rampant here. People here can’t talk to people they disagree with politically. Extremism is prevalent everywhere, but in few developed countries if any, more than the United States. Extremism is as American as apple pie. It always has been and as a result perhaps always will be. After all the country was born in an ugly holocaust against the indigenous people and that was quickly followed by centuries of importation of black people from Africa to be enslaved in support of America enterprise. Those were certainly extreme events and as we all know, extremism leads to  extremism.

The Great Divide is not a geological phenomenon; it is a social phenomenon. Liberals/Democrats can’t fathom the idiocy of Conservatives/Republicans. Conservatives and Republicans return the sentiments. They can’t stand each other. The statements about the others are astonishingly  extreme. No the word “extreme” is not extreme enough.

In America, and much of the modern world, but most spectacularly in America, there is a profound gulf between people. Often it seems that opposing sides come from different planets. This became pronounced  during the 2016 American presidential election campaign, in which a blatant extremist—Donald Trump—got elected and half the country loved him and the other half hated him. There was little in between. As Bill Maher said, “each half of society does not want to live with the other half.”

According to a PEW study, “81% of Americans can’t agree with the other side on basic facts.” How is it possible to have rational political debate in such circumstances? And if rational political debate is no longer possible, what is the alternative? Violence is the obvious answer. And America is a very violent society.

In politics people seem to be driven not by support for their own party so much as hatred of the other side. Increasingly they voice that hatred. And guess who is listening? The young people are nourished in that environment of corrosive hatred. Is it surprising that some mentally unbalanced youth resort to violence?

At the Republican National Convention, in 2016 a senior member of Donald Trump’s campaign said that Hillary Clinton, the Democratic Party presumptive nominee at the time, “should be put in a firing squad and shot.” CBC radio went to Virginia to talk to Trump supporters. They were treated to many extreme statements. One said that “Hillary is a murderer and a liar I can’t even see how she is eligible for President.” One said this about Trump, “Donald Trump may be a loose cannon but perhaps that is what the country needs.” Another said that ‘she is the closest we will get to a civil war if she pushes her agenda. Can things get more extreme than this? Trump himself suggested that American gun supporters should take care of her.

Of course Democrats were no  better. They compared Trump to Hitler. Some called him a fascist. Many have called him a pathological liar.

How much more extreme can things get?

Jonathan Haidt was one of the speakers at the Arizona State University’s year long exploration of truth seeking, politics, and freedom of speech that Chris and I have been following. We missed his talk but caught it on TV. He is a social psychologist and had fascinating things to say about the state of America. He pointed out that “the more angry you are the more pleasing it is to encounter fake news. Even if part of you doubts it is true, it just feels so good.” We want it to be true and desire is always the enemy of truth.

Haidt puts the blame on the strong American tendency to make politics religious. American politics is about the sacred. And this polarizes. This creates “our side” where all good resides, while all the bad resides with “the other side.”

As he said, “when you start to think like this, then anyone who disagrees, anyone who challenges, anyone that leaves your group, they are apostate, they are heretics, they are blasphemers and the most satisfying thing to do with them is not to lecture them, or ground them, or spank them, it is to burn them. It just feels so right to burn them at the stake.” Strong words.

Again is it surprising that the children of the partisans, who see the hatred, reflect that same hatred in their disputes with their “enemies”? People can’t talk with those they disagree with, so unsurprisingly they resort to violence. After all when the other side is evil, a refusal to use violence against them seems like a breach of trust, a sacrilege. Hatred breeds monsters and our children are the first victims. Both the children who became killers and the children who are killed.

Which Hell makes more sense?

religion

 

Today I learned what Hell is like. Our television recorder for some mysterious reasons I could not fathom, but I considered divine or satanic intervention, was not working. Amazingly all the shows that I had recorded like important basketball games, nature shows, and comedy news could not be accessed. Yet mysteriously Chris’ Hallmark love stories were all available. If I could have found a bridge in southern Arizona I would have considered driving up to it and pitching myself off the bridge. This was unbearable pain. Is that what hell is like?

Or is like a cartoon that someone sent on the Internet. It showed a Sunday School teacher teaching a class of young students one of whom had a hand up in the air. The caption read: “So the God who teaches us to love our enemies will torture his enemies in hell forever?”

Which vision of hell makes more sense?