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Who needs reality television when we have reality reality?
And so it was, whenever the spirit from God was upon Saul, that David would take a harp and play it with his hand. Then Saul would become refreshed and well, and the distressing spirit would depart from him.
The Fog of War is a very timely exploration of rationality: of its potential to solve our problems and of its limits.
On paper, it is a dry, political interview documentary. On screen, it is an engaging, aesthetically hypnotizing, quick-witted chase through the last 50 years of American military engagement.
The documentary is timely in that it seems obvious that the specific rationalistic, materialistic suite of problem-solving techniques that we inherited from Plato, honed through the industrial revolution, and which is appropriately and compellingly embodied in the personal character of Robert McNamara, saturates the minds of the power-players and the policy-makers in America today.
As the film calls into question the ruling philosophy of our country, it simultaneously exists as a rather experiential take on exploration itself. It’s not a book, after all, but a film, and it makes its points by subtle suggestion and provocative juxtapositions. In this sense, it is a distinctly post-modern comment on the state of our country and world; and there could be no more fitting subject to this visual essay than the very worldwide social disasters that are said to have engendered so much bitter criticism of Modernism’s blind optimism.
But to take it a step further, combining Meyers-Briggs vocabulary with the Feminist jab that violent routines of death and destruction are the result of a political world controlled almost entirely by men, we might interpret Robert McNamara’s 20-20 hindsight lessons as an backhanded admission from one of the most stalwart, coldly-rational, “walking IBM computer” (T) individuals around that perhaps our current political leaders are badly in need of some relational-minded (F) input to help America avoid situations where we find ourselves annihilating 200,000 Japanese civilians in a single stroke or (more commonly) sacrificing innocent lives abroad in the name of our own economic interest.
On paper, it is a dry, political interview documentary. On screen, it is an engaging, aesthetically hypnotizing, quick-witted chase through the last 50 years of American military engagement.
The documentary is timely in that it seems obvious that the specific rationalistic, materialistic suite of problem-solving techniques that we inherited from Plato, honed through the industrial revolution, and which is appropriately and compellingly embodied in the personal character of Robert McNamara, saturates the minds of the power-players and the policy-makers in America today.
As the film calls into question the ruling philosophy of our country, it simultaneously exists as a rather experiential take on exploration itself. It’s not a book, after all, but a film, and it makes its points by subtle suggestion and provocative juxtapositions. In this sense, it is a distinctly post-modern comment on the state of our country and world; and there could be no more fitting subject to this visual essay than the very worldwide social disasters that are said to have engendered so much bitter criticism of Modernism’s blind optimism.
But to take it a step further, combining Meyers-Briggs vocabulary with the Feminist jab that violent routines of death and destruction are the result of a political world controlled almost entirely by men, we might interpret Robert McNamara’s 20-20 hindsight lessons as an backhanded admission from one of the most stalwart, coldly-rational, “walking IBM computer” (T) individuals around that perhaps our current political leaders are badly in need of some relational-minded (F) input to help America avoid situations where we find ourselves annihilating 200,000 Japanese civilians in a single stroke or (more commonly) sacrificing innocent lives abroad in the name of our own economic interest.
A wet blanket
Here's a few related passages from the last chapter of Thomas Merton's autobiography, The Seven Storey Mountain. Most of this chapter is about monastic life. These three excerpts are on the theme of moodiness and how it affects others:
"'Each one of you,' the Father Abbot said, 'will make the community either better or worse. Everything you do will have an influence upon others. It can be a good influence or a bad one. It all depends on you. Our Lord will never refuse you grace...'"
"It can be said, as a general rule, that the greatest saints are seldom the ones whose piety is most evident in their expression when they are kneeling at prayer, and the holiest men in a monastery are almost never the ones who get that exalted look, on feast days, in the choir. The people who gaze up at Our Lady's statue with glistening eyes are very often the ones with the worst tempers."
"[Simple, easily-contented monks] stood at the mean between two extremes. On one hand there were one or two who exagerated everything they did and tried to carry out every rule with scrupulousness that was a travesty of the real thing. They were the ones who seemed to be trying to make themselves saints by sheer effort and concentration--as if the work depended on them, and not even God could help them. But then there were also the ones who did little or nothing to sanctify themselves, as if none of the work depended on them--as if God would come along one day and put a halo on their heads and it would all be over. They followed the others and kept the Rule after a fashion, but as soon as they thought they were sick they started pleading for all the mitigations that they did not already have. And the rest of the time, they fluctuated between a gaity that was noisy and disquieting, and a sullen exasperation that threw a wet blanket over the whole novitiate."
"'Each one of you,' the Father Abbot said, 'will make the community either better or worse. Everything you do will have an influence upon others. It can be a good influence or a bad one. It all depends on you. Our Lord will never refuse you grace...'"
"It can be said, as a general rule, that the greatest saints are seldom the ones whose piety is most evident in their expression when they are kneeling at prayer, and the holiest men in a monastery are almost never the ones who get that exalted look, on feast days, in the choir. The people who gaze up at Our Lady's statue with glistening eyes are very often the ones with the worst tempers."
"[Simple, easily-contented monks] stood at the mean between two extremes. On one hand there were one or two who exagerated everything they did and tried to carry out every rule with scrupulousness that was a travesty of the real thing. They were the ones who seemed to be trying to make themselves saints by sheer effort and concentration--as if the work depended on them, and not even God could help them. But then there were also the ones who did little or nothing to sanctify themselves, as if none of the work depended on them--as if God would come along one day and put a halo on their heads and it would all be over. They followed the others and kept the Rule after a fashion, but as soon as they thought they were sick they started pleading for all the mitigations that they did not already have. And the rest of the time, they fluctuated between a gaity that was noisy and disquieting, and a sullen exasperation that threw a wet blanket over the whole novitiate."
That troublesome dichotemy
An excerpt from "Sexual Attraction: The Magic Formula":
"Women’s preferences for certain male scents and other male features change over their cycle. Near ovulation, they prefer masculine traits; at other phases of their cycle they prefer less sexiness and more stability."
Tonight I watched "Match Point," Woody Allen's new film. It is certainly a departure from his characteristic style, but definitely worth watching and thinking about. I found that some of the sexual relationships in the film resonated a bit with the comment above (from the full article that I read earlier today--thanks, Linshuang). Most of the film revolves around Chris' inner conflict between the seductive magnetism of Nola (played by Scarlett Johansson) and the "sweetness," niceness and stability of Chloe (played by some other actress), as well as the resources Chloe's family provides him. In the film, this distinction explains the difference between passionate love-making with Nola, who becomes Chris' mistress-muse, and machinistic attempts at producing a child with Chloe, his wife. Here are a couple fragments of dialogue in the film that shed some light on the "sexy" end of the dichotemy.
The first is an exchange between Chloe, Tom's sister, and Eleanor, Tom's mother, in which Eleanor attempts to use Tom's current (and ultimately short-lived) relationship with Nola in order to caution her daughter:
ELEANOR "Be careful. Tom's involved with a woman I have reservations about. Don't rush off."
CHLOE "Tom's happy with Nola! You're prejudiced because she's American."
ELEANOR "She's spoiled. And tempermental."
CHLOE "She's an actress! They're emotional!"
ELEANOR "She's deluding herself. And she's moody--she's not right for Tom."
Later on, Nola speaks with an admiring Chris:
NOLA "You should see my sister, she's very beautiful. But she's lost...drugs...and..."
CHRIS "I'm sure she's not more beautiful than you are."
NOLA "No, what I am is sexy. Linda--my sister--is classically beautiful..."
CHRIS "So you are aware of your affect on men."
And finally this, the same dichotemy restated in a line from a somewhat Feminist film critique of the film:
"So [Allen] grafts an eleventh-hour murder plot onto Match Point, a narrative twist anchored by the fallacious assumption that every woman on Earth is either an alluring cocktease or a needy shrew."
Or in this case, both, since Nola makes a surprisingly quick transition from "cocktease" to "needy shrew" as she becomes controlled by the conditions of her affair with Chris. In this sense she yields much less power as a femme fatale than she might have, had she remained an inaccessible fantasy to Chris or used her seductiveness on him in a more effectively controlling way.
Or neither, since Chloe is remarkably un-needy. However she is extremely stable, which bores Chris for most of the film, until he realizes how comfortable stability can be and how much of a pain in the ass sexiness can be.
Regardless, to return to the first quote, the core issue for me here is the pure irony of two attractiveness criteria, sexiness and stability, which seem essentially and irreconcilably at odds (for both men and women): Isn't it true that stability is necessarily practical and sexiness is by definition impractical, and that we all want them both?
This dilemma is alternately funny and frustrating. Woody Allen, always the pessimist, poignantly reminds us of the all-too-common tragedy of those who, asphixiated by their own selfish idealism, refuse to give up either passion or practicality and instead try to invent hackneyed schemes where both can be maintained at once. However, obnoxious infidelities aside, the dilemma stands.
"Women’s preferences for certain male scents and other male features change over their cycle. Near ovulation, they prefer masculine traits; at other phases of their cycle they prefer less sexiness and more stability."
Tonight I watched "Match Point," Woody Allen's new film. It is certainly a departure from his characteristic style, but definitely worth watching and thinking about. I found that some of the sexual relationships in the film resonated a bit with the comment above (from the full article that I read earlier today--thanks, Linshuang). Most of the film revolves around Chris' inner conflict between the seductive magnetism of Nola (played by Scarlett Johansson) and the "sweetness," niceness and stability of Chloe (played by some other actress), as well as the resources Chloe's family provides him. In the film, this distinction explains the difference between passionate love-making with Nola, who becomes Chris' mistress-muse, and machinistic attempts at producing a child with Chloe, his wife. Here are a couple fragments of dialogue in the film that shed some light on the "sexy" end of the dichotemy.
The first is an exchange between Chloe, Tom's sister, and Eleanor, Tom's mother, in which Eleanor attempts to use Tom's current (and ultimately short-lived) relationship with Nola in order to caution her daughter:
ELEANOR "Be careful. Tom's involved with a woman I have reservations about. Don't rush off."
CHLOE "Tom's happy with Nola! You're prejudiced because she's American."
ELEANOR "She's spoiled. And tempermental."
CHLOE "She's an actress! They're emotional!"
ELEANOR "She's deluding herself. And she's moody--she's not right for Tom."
Later on, Nola speaks with an admiring Chris:
NOLA "You should see my sister, she's very beautiful. But she's lost...drugs...and..."
CHRIS "I'm sure she's not more beautiful than you are."
NOLA "No, what I am is sexy. Linda--my sister--is classically beautiful..."
CHRIS "So you are aware of your affect on men."
And finally this, the same dichotemy restated in a line from a somewhat Feminist film critique of the film:
"So [Allen] grafts an eleventh-hour murder plot onto Match Point, a narrative twist anchored by the fallacious assumption that every woman on Earth is either an alluring cocktease or a needy shrew."
Or in this case, both, since Nola makes a surprisingly quick transition from "cocktease" to "needy shrew" as she becomes controlled by the conditions of her affair with Chris. In this sense she yields much less power as a femme fatale than she might have, had she remained an inaccessible fantasy to Chris or used her seductiveness on him in a more effectively controlling way.
Or neither, since Chloe is remarkably un-needy. However she is extremely stable, which bores Chris for most of the film, until he realizes how comfortable stability can be and how much of a pain in the ass sexiness can be.
Regardless, to return to the first quote, the core issue for me here is the pure irony of two attractiveness criteria, sexiness and stability, which seem essentially and irreconcilably at odds (for both men and women): Isn't it true that stability is necessarily practical and sexiness is by definition impractical, and that we all want them both?
This dilemma is alternately funny and frustrating. Woody Allen, always the pessimist, poignantly reminds us of the all-too-common tragedy of those who, asphixiated by their own selfish idealism, refuse to give up either passion or practicality and instead try to invent hackneyed schemes where both can be maintained at once. However, obnoxious infidelities aside, the dilemma stands.
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