Quickthink

Some reflections on the new Ridley Scott, Russell Crowe Robin Hood movie

Those who doubt the link between historical purpose and motivation (see post below), may wish to think for a moment of the story of Robin Hood. It is one of those enduring and inspiring tales … and as Stephen Moss from the Guardian points out, it has become more and more inspiring over the centuries as people embellished it again and again and again. Here is the link to his article, where Moss re-traces the rather peculiar steps he took trying to find the real Robin Hood (who, if he existed at all was most likely a rather nasty bandit who was captured and killed by the authorities).

What I find most fascinating about the serial embellishing of the Robin Hood story is how succeeding generations have changed the story to fit their own needs and interests. Was the real Robin Hood a rebel, a great archer, a disenfranchised nobleman, a returning crusader, a merry fellow, an adventurer who took from the rich to give to the poor, the romantic lover of Maid Merion, defender of King Richard against a usurper … and on and on? Of course not.

But it really doesn’t matter, does it? Robin Hood, the ever evolving story, helps us refine how we justify ourselves in our own lives in light of our perceptions of our own past. That is the real story and the reason why the Robin Hood story has to evolve to meet our needs. It is all about us, and who we are becoming as we re-imagine the past.

Oh … and so will the Scott/Crowe film depict the “true” Robin Hood? According to Moss, Scott/Crowe claim that they want historical accuracy. But it would be absurd to attempt a popular and historically accurate re-telling of the Robin Hood’s story — as such a thing never existed in the first place. Yet one cannot deny that people want to believe in the story, and some are no doubt foolish enough want to believe in the truth of the story too. So Scott/Crowe are being clever rascals to pose as detectives for the purpose of getting us to part with our hard earned money at the tail end of a nasty recession. I wonder — will they give it to the poor?

Some weekend fun with films

 An image from Cool Hand Luke - the egg eating contest. From News of the Boston Becks.

I watched Cool Hand Luke last night on the classic film list. I had never seen it, though it is a movie that guys used to talk about a lot. As I watched, I was thinking what makes this a special treat for men? After all, it is about criminals working in a chain gang. The story line about their daily routine gives new meaning to the word “boring”. They live in a boring little shack. They get up early and do boring work all day, clearing roadside brush. Then they are taken back to the shack where they wash, eat boring food and go to bed early in a dorm room. Ho hum.

So what really happens in the movie? What gives it its interest, aside from boot camp masochism? The story line mostly is about Luke. He is aloof from the rest and ornery. That is why he ended up in the chain gang in the first place. For cutting off the tops of parking meters. That was a declaration of orneriness. A bit like my cat who claws at the wallpaper when she wants to get my attention.

Ok. I should give Luke some credit here. He is more interesting to watch than my cat. He has a certain readiness to do things that the others wouldn’t dare try. He demonstrates this repeatedly. By bluffing a hand in poker, by continuing the fight with the bully even after he is beaten up, by eating 50 eggs in an hour on a bet, and by trying to escape — three times. He inspires others by this readiness to act, even as he remains himself obviously uninspired by the group. In the end, it’s an attitude. A pose  — like Karl Lagerfeld, a poseur?  Here is an image of Karl, for comparison purposes (from Samantha I am).

Ok. Back to the movie. Is Luke’s pose that of leadership? It is almost leadership, but Luke rejects any responsibility for the group. He is too cool for that. In fact, Luke seems to want only to be cool. Thus, perhaps the title “cool” hand Luke. Hmmmm …. Luke and Karl do have something in common, n’est ce pas?

Cool has become such a powerful symbol over the years, perhaps we should take Luke’s declaration of “coolness” seriously. Where does it lead? Well, one thing should be noted. It is not about results. This is where Karl’s sense of cool is different. Karl is very successful at what he does, whereas Luke fails miserably. He tries mightily, but he is unable to escape the authorities who pursue him. Worse still, his fight with authority ends in his own demise. Moreover, it is an utterly pointless exercise. There is nothing to escape to (no girl, family or even pet cat). And the authorities do look rather like they know what they are doing.  Add to that, Luke is repeatedly warned that further attempts to escape would lead progressively to more severe punishment. Yet he keeps at it. He is warned that he would be shot if he tried a third time. He does it anyway. Apparently that is “cool” too. Errr …. to be honest, I’m not sure I get that part.

So we need to ask, why ignore the warnings? Why was it such a big deal? In fact, it was not a big deal at all at first. At first, Luke was content to follow the rules of confinement. He was a model prisoner and had almost served his term. But then Luke suffers an injustice from the system. He is put in isolation for a few days after his mother dies. The authorities have a reason to put him there, but it is an obviously stupid one. To prevent him from trying to escape to attend the funeral. That gives Luke an excuse to put on a show for the group that he previously disdained (but secretly posed for?). To rebel, and to continue rebelling as a mindless obsession. To do what had been prohibited. This is apparently very cool. And very stupid, I might add. But perhaps that is part of being cool too. We might call it the price for achieving ultimate coolness.

In the end, Luke seems to acknowledge that it was stupid too. He asks God what he should have done, and what to do, and apparently the response is “F…  off.” Thus, the viewer is left with the impression that Luke had no choice but to be ornery, to show off, to be obsessed, and then to suffer the consequences. It was his fate. Sorry. I didn’t buy that part of the film’s message. Cool or not, in the end, I think Luke was an idiot.

Hmmm … then perhaps Lagerfeld is the flip side of the “cool” coin? Cool, but not so stupid? I suspect that this thought might trouble some of the guys.

FOLLOW - From the movie Eilzabeth - “(Men) must be able to touch the divine here on earth.”

This is the key line of the movie Hud. Melvyn Douglass delivers it to Paul Newman in a deadpan, matter of fact way. Yet it conveys a punch in the face to young Hud, who cares about no one other than himself. Here is the link to the movie. You can see the scene around 5.17.

I was thinking of that line today was we had our first day of negotiation training. Principles play a huge role in how we develop our stories and arguments. But where do they come from? And how do we use them to become more effective in our communication patterns? Good questions — we will discuss them tomorrow.

I was thinking about the actor Heath Ledger the other day. He had such an engaging way of depicting the average guy. Normal. Even his “Joker” depiction in Batman gave an almost normal sort of feel to psychosis (one might contrast it with Nicoloson’s Joker). I read how Ledger found it difficult to adjust back to himself after playing the Joker. Somehow, that reminded me of the film, A Knight’s Tale where Ledger played the heroic lead. That must have been so much easier to come down from. I then found the film in YouTube, put it in the Classic Films List and I watched it last night.

It is a very goofy film, but perhaps because of that, it is worth watching. And BTW, the acting is superb. Also BTW, the script has some gems.  Like Chaucer shouting to a confused mass of people ”We walk in the garden of his turbulence?!” and “I feel like a poet…” “But you sound like an idiot.”

And — now to my main point —  the film is unusual because it offers a relaxed story telling style. It is not trying to be anything but a good time. These days films more frequently attempt to overpower the audience. To somehow make you believe (even if just for a moment) that watching the film is a profound experience. What a pleasant change to escape profundity. Sort of a garden of turbulence?

Check it out!

Paraphrasing Sir Robert Chiltern, I have reflected further about the film Avatar, and would now change my earlier opinion.

I find it rather odd that while huge masses of people are lining up to see the movie Avatar, very few people are discussing the film. It seems to be a mass media event that flies somewhat below the radar screen. Is it because there is really not that much to say? At first I thought so, But now I wonder.

Dave Brooks broke the silence today and wrote that he found the story line in the  film to be offensive. Why?

It rests on the stereotype that white people are rationalist and technocratic while colonial victims are spiritual and athletic. It rests on the assumption that nonwhites need the White Messiah to lead their crusades. It rests on the assumption that illiteracy is the path to grace. It also creates a sort of two-edged cultural imperialism. Natives can either have their history shaped by cruel imperialists or benevolent ones, but either way, they are going to be supporting actors in our journey to self-admiration.

If you take the film literally, Dave makes a good point about the “White Messiah” complex. But in his obsession with the story line as a metaphor for history (taking it seriously), I think Dave misses a more basic idea that is at play in the film.

That more important and less serious idea is better seen in a largely forgotten book called “Keep the River on Your Right” written by Tobias Schneebaum back in the 1960’s. The story line has the same white/non-white theme (with a rather different ending), but it is really about flow and anti-flow. As I think about it, so is Avatar, and BTW so are quite a lot of story lines that we take for granted these days.

Flow is an idea described by Mihaly Csikszentmihalvi in his book with the same name.  It is a feeling of exhilaration one finds in moments of intense immersion. Where do we find this immersion? In the old days, some claimed that it was a by product of religion (e.g. the ecstasy of St. Theresa). Later on, some claimed it was a by product of having sex (e.g. D.H. Lawrence) or status and sex (e.g. Tom Wolfe). These days (at least in the west) we tend to believe it is found in step by step skills building (e.g. sports? aerobics?). Notice BTW, that it is opposed to infatuation with just “being” something or somebody (an idea that the Victorians embraced). It is an infatuation with “doing” things — with process.

Here is how it works. The step by step process must be challenging enough so that we are not bored, but not so difficult that we give up. And the challenges must give us rewards — measurable success indicators (a scorecard). If you think this sounds like gaming, you are right. Producing flow is at the core of the gaming experience.

I think that traditional media is largely silent about Avatar because none of the commentators are gamers. Dave Brooks included. But Avatar gives a very nice illustration of the allure of gaming. I offer three initial ideas about the effects of gaming on modern culture.

First, to see what games are “on”, you should not take their story lines too seriously. For example, you don’t understand why people get excited watching football by trying to understand what the game means. Another example. Don’t take the lyrics from rock or pop or punk or whatever music too seriously (remember McArthur’s Park?)

Second, you need to look at the intensity of the experience as a value in itself, rather than just its mechanical aspects and outputs. You don’t produce flow from follwing instructions and you don’t “get” the value of rave dancing by asking what it produces for society.  These types of insights (both positive and negative) were at the root of Woody Allen’s comedic genius before he started to take himself seriously and betrayed his great gift.

Third, and perhaps most important. We should understand that gaming may be either very useful or very harmful depending on how the success indicators (incentives) in our games produce “value” in society.  Hint hint — that was the story line problem in “Keep the River on Your Right”, and in the film Avatar, and in our real world financial meltdown/messtoid problem. But we don’t fix those types of problems in the real world by going anti-game. That won’t work. To the contrary, we need more and better games.

So, Dave lighten up. Avatar is just a gaming experience. Not a distillation of history or even a commentary on white/non-white culture clashes. But not nothing either.

More about gaming and the movie Avatar over the next several days.

Hitchcock had a great gaming sense. His films can be seen as a celebration of the key elements of games. These elements are (1) addressing crisis, (2) building identified skills, (3) mastering risk/reward strategies, (4) glimpsing grand perspective, and (5) measuring success. These come out beautifully, for example, in the first sequences in To Catch a Thief.

Paul. Newman usually played nice guys (for example Butch Cassidy). But in the film Hud, he took a turn on the bad side. I watched the film last night from the Classic Film List and liked it. If you’re in the mood for a serious film about how a festering family conflict can bring out the devil in a person, check it out!

This line from Melvyn Douglas stuck in my mind

It don’t take long to kill. Not like it does to grow.

Amen, brother.

P.D. James thinks that Agatha Christie was over-rated. I’m not sure I would agree with that. I like Christie’s devotion to conventions. One of my favorite was Christie’s worship of the eccentric detective genius. Poirot, and Mrs. Marple were descendants of Holmes. Nothing new really. But how marvelously nuanced they are as examples of a character type.

It is a character type I don’t see much in contemporary writing. And so, I took a lot of pleasure in watching Jimmy Stewart play the sly country lawyer in the film “The Anatomy of a Murder”. You can watch it from the Classic Film list on the right.

There are really only three important aspects to this character. First, he/she has to be a connoisseur of people. To be able to see the beauty behind the mask. Second, he/she has to be ready to defend the community. This means being locally rooted. Third, he/she has to be able to see things as they happen. That means a quick mind and slow talk.

Indeed. A nice model, n’est ce pas?

This is the first part of a two part series on the idea of “escapism” and “truth”. The idea for this came when I began to think of a “manifesto” made back in the 1940’s by Emeric Pressburger. Read on!

QT will start looking into the films of two classic British film makers, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, and if possible place them on the Classic Film List. Why? Well, I was impressed by this editorial by Maureen Dowd that discusses their style. I was especially interested in this quote

In a letter to (Deborah) Kerr in the early ’40s, Pressburger laid out their manifesto, including: “No artist believes in escapism. And we secretly believe that no audience does. We have proved, at any rate, that they will pay to see the truth, for no other reason than her nakedness.”

Hmmm …. I was a bit shocked when I first read this. I could not grasp immediately why artists would have to keep their beliefs about their audiences “secret”. It suggests a tension between artists and audiences that I had not thought about before. According to Pressburger, art then is a type of game played between artists advancing secret agendas about life and their audiences with the audiences themselves (and with history too no doubt). It is elitist. Non? Pressburger claims that he and Powell mastered the game as they “proved” that people will pay to see the truth. They have won the game. Bravo! It will be interesting to see how. BTW, this was a claim made by Joyce as well after he completed Ulysses. As an aside, I wonder also whether winning the game is just about selling tickets to the show. For example, were Van Gogh’s paintings trash until they began to sell? Is their trashiness related to the fluctuations in their valuaction on the market?

Back to the manifesto — I also began to wonder exactly what is wrong with ”escapism”? Putting the “ism” at the end makes it sound ugly, and it must be a terrible thing indeed if “no artist” worthy of the name could believe in it. But what is the difference between “escapism” and “truth” in art? Are they opposites? Is Hitchcock’s work escapist? Are Wilde’s plays? Neither offer any obvious truths about life. So should they be considered trash? On a deeper level, doesn’t any good story help us escape to a higher level of truth?

Perhaps there is a difference between the need to escape and escapism. After some thought, I came up with this formulation. Escape is needed when we are held back. It may be an essential tool for living to cope with the uncertainties that time imposes. But escapism is a fetish. It takes us … nowhere. There is no unveiling of truth. It may offer a temporary sense of excitement, but it does not inspire us to act. It is a waste of time, or worse. Perhaps it is even an affirmation of the prison that we cannot escape.

So we might reformulate Pressburger’s statement this way. The artist’s secret belief is that the audience secretly wants to escape from worn out or contrived aspects of themselves in order to go somewhere new, where they can see the “truth”. One presumes this is where the artist has already happily escpaed to. But the audience is nervous about it. Sceptical. Perhpas even trapped by their own conventional beliefs. The artist must coax them forward using subtle tricks. The more difficult the truth, the more dangerous the game. I am intrigued to see this subtlety in action.

But what type of truth? Pressburger’s last line gives us a hint, but in the end I think it is unsatisfying. He suggests that where there is a veil, there is a truth behind the veil. Art then is a great unmasking process. No doubt Mr. Scorsese would agree (for more on Scorcese on Powell and Pressburger, you might take a look at Dowd’s article. The link is above).

Here I am not totally hostile. But I am a bit lost. Isn’t the act of veiling as potentially interesting as an artistic truth as the act of unveiling? Gide thought so. Wilde thought so. I do too. But these days, unveiling does seem to be the fashion in art, in culture, and elsewhere. We worship at the altar of prohibited nudity (and basic instincts that translate into thrill seeking), rather than of connoisseurship.  So, I am intrigued to go back to a time when there were more veils, and the process of peeking was more innocent.

The film credits at IMDb are impressive. Here is Powell’s. Here is Pressburger’s. BTW, here are Wikipedia’s entries on Powell. And on Pressburger.

So time to explore! And perhaps escape from escapism?

FOLLOW - Here is a link to a site dedicated to Powell and Pressburger films.

2d FOLLOW - Errol Morris also is concerned about how easily one may be manipulted by images. He just completed a series on photos that might be seen as art, phot-journalism or propoganda depending on the context.

I added two films to the Classic Film List yesterday, both from Hitchcock: To Catch a Thief (1955), and Rear Window (1954). Last night I watched To Catch a Thief.

The film is essentially about how to live the good life. Of course, there is that vexing question of who is stealing all that jewelry. But it is hard to get overly worked up over the thievery. One knows that Cary Grant will figure it out in the end, and one hopes that he will take his time about it, so that we can see more of him, Grace Kelly, Cannes, the villa, the cars, the sea …. well, you get the picture.

The good life oozes from Cary Grant in this film.  He tells the insurance agent over lunch on the terrace that it is something he acquired. To be graceful?  Perhaps. But one doubts if Grant’s slow and graceful manner can be purchased.  BTW  “graceful” is a word I do not hear very much these days. In our lust and exuberance, have we lost something? Dave Brooks thinks that we have.

FOLLOW - One odd aspect of the film — it seems that Cary Grant is the only person in Cannes with a deep sun tan. George Hamilton would arrive much later.

2d FOLLOW- I wonder if Grace Kelly blushed when she read the script and found out that she had to say to Cary Grant ”… I won’t pardon you. I’m in love with you.” Cary Grant gives her a quizzical look and answers “Now that’s a ridiculous thing to say.” Many years later, Ali McGraw would say in another film “Love is never having to say you’re sorry.” Ok… so …. which is it?

3rd FOLLOW - There is an  irony in the film. Cary Grant’s main criticism of Grace Kelly is that she is superficial. Yet Hitchcock readily admitted that his films were intended to be superficial — to tease and reward the audience for their curiosity. So can Grant escape the medium in which he is depicted? Isn’t his sophistication just a clever illusion designed to trap the curious? So perhaps his criticism is more about skill than authenticity. Or does one become more authentic by playing the game better? And on a deeper level … is curiosity a vice? Prof.  Stanley Fish shares his thoughts on the matter.

4rth FOLLOW- Back to the all important lunch scene on the terrace. It is intended to reinforce Cary Grant as a man of exquisite taste, and so of course, the meal starts with soup (though Cary does not say what type). Then the main course. Cary serves Quiche Lorraine … but get this — the insurance agent says he has “heard of it, but never tried it.” Harumph! Obviously pre Julia Child! Didn’t they have food bloggers back then?

5th FOLLOW - This link provides some interesting reviews of the film that appeared when it first came out. This quote caught my eye

… Mr. Hitchcock has used (Cote D’Azure) to form a pictorial backdrop that fairly yanks your eyes out of your head