Like: This Article Absolutely Eviscerating Ayn Rand

I rarely do a quick blurb and link, but I couldn’t resist.

I’ve detailed my dislike of Libertarianism, Ayn Rand*, and even Slate before, but here is Johann Hari’s excellent and scathing evisceration of Ayn Rand based on two new biographies (props to Travis for the find).

Enjoy:

http://www.slate.com/id/2233966/

*I have since attempted to actually read Atlas Shrugged and get halfway through before giving up due to inherent nonsense. Meanwhile I have read all of the fountainhead in sort-of-skimming fashion.

Like: Inglourious Basterds

Yikes. Inglorious Basterds might be my favorite movie of the year (for the record, I’m still deciding between Up, Drag Me To Hell, District 9, and Tetro in some fashion). It is also probably my favorite Tarantino movie since Pulp Fiction.

The revenge picture seems to be making some sort of cinematic comeback. It’s an odd little genre and unlike say Kill Bill, where the revenge is kind of a literal plot level thing, the revenge picture is kind of like a revenge surrogate for the audience in a larger social text. There’s some of the old blaxploitation movies that skewed that direction (eg. Sweet Sweetback’s Badaaass Song) and the rape-revenge movies (like I Spit On Your Grave). The goal of these movies is simple: catharsis. Show the revenge and the audience feels a sense of elation that often don’t get to feel in the reality of those situations. This is not an insidious practice. These movies aren’t advocating revenge in real life or anything (those who say they do, psssh… nonsense), but what does seem to matter is what exactly you’re justifying in revenge.  Racial injustice and sexual assault sure make a whole lot of sense , which is why the aforementioned movies relatively embraced by some critical communities. Meanwhile movies with bad revenge desires, like sayyy Death Wish (paraphrasing: “I’m going to go shoot up random minorities cause I’m sick of their shit!”) are much more problematic. Even something like Crash or Glory which are merely made to appease White Guilt I find kind of distressing. So either way it’s kinda murky territory but the point is there are revenge pictures and they serve a function.

So imagine if you will, a World-War 2 revenge picture.

We forget that we kinda used to make them all the time (Dirty Dozen, etc.), but the last decade or more has featured a lot of sobering, serious World War 2 movies. Don’t get me wrong, these films have varying degrees of  importance and immersion that I greatly admire, but they also made us forget that we can make audacious non-historical WW2 movies too. It’s OK. Not everything has to be Saving Private Ryan. This bears mentioning because I think I saw about 10 films that felt as if they simply had to be SPR, even with having no reason to be.

Enter Quentin Tarantino, who seems to have come at just a perfect time.

Inglourious Basterds is brash, audacious, tense, vibrant, list of great adjectives with wholly cinematic allure. 95% of it’s running time is rich with the highest quality Tarantino dialogue (not what I felt was sometimes a lame imitation in Death Proof) and those moments are punctuated by brief but intensely violent moments; the kind of moments that are well-served and often built up to brilliantly.  The film starts simply “Once upon a time in Nazi Occupied France”, which couldn’t be more perfect because although the settings are often startlingly intimate, the ultimate version of the Third Reich we get here is not all that different from the version we get in Indiana Jones movies; which is to say, the complete encapsulation of movie-time villainy. It’s like we’ve forgotten that you can portray the Nazis that way without turning into an Us vs. Them fascistic dick.  You can. It’s okay. It’s part of an accepted movie and cultural language and in our desire to be thoughtful rounded people we have somehow come into the belief that our villians have to be just as thoughtful or rounded. Nonsense. It’s knee jerk liberalism (and this from a hardcore liberal). God, they’re the NAZIS. They were the most hateful and evil group of dicks in the recent history of western civilization. It’s okay to make them the embodiment of evil. BECAUSE THEY WERE.

Now, that is not to say Quentin Tarantino would EVER make the mistake of hollowing out his characters to the point of simplistic archetypes and cutouts. Quite the contrary. For starters Brad Pitt’s Lt. Aldo Raine knows EXACTLY how to march right up to the line of ridiculousness and keep it… well not grounded, but just grounded enough not to lose the audience. Sure Pitt’s chewing scenery, but he’s doing that infamous tight rope walk where it’s all balanced in perfect movie reality. Ebert talked in his review about Tarantino’s uncanny ability for doing this. He can make a line or moment utterly ridiculous and yet finds this unmistakable way to ground it and give it emotion.  Pitt gets to give a tongue thrashing assault and does so with such utter committment I usually find missing in most of his “serious” roles. As a result, it’s probably my favorite Pitt performance. He’s having a ball and so are we; taking absolute delight in every little verbal tick and inversion of his oh-so-balls-out Tennessee diction. It wholly showcase’s Tarantino’s world famous ear for dialogue as it reverberates through and through. He’s a perfect vehicle for the basterd’s grim and unflinching philosophy/behavior as most of them don’t say a word; they’re just an outright presence, scalping their way across the countryside.

As counterpoints, there are the two central females of the film: Melanie Laurant’s Shoshana and Diane Kruger’s Bridget von Hammersmark. I kind of think it’s better to keep their involvement in the plot a secret, not because it’s twisty or anything, but because it’s just no necessary. Suffice to say they are two completely realized characters with vibrant personality, layers, and depth. This bears mentioning because Tarantino is unfairly thought of as a kind of guy’s guys director and instead, looking over his filmography, he’s litered his films with about a dozen+ fascinating female figures.  They get to espouse rich dialogue. They get to perform their butts off. They get to be heroes. He never asks them to get naked. They are more or less treated on an acting level with complete respect. They’re simple characters in other films (ie “the girl”) and here they are something so much more. Let’s stop and think about not only how rare this is, but how incredibly refreshing it is.

This leaves “the bad guy” as a matter of discussion. It has been said many times already but Christoph Waltz as Col. Hans Landa of the S.S., is without a doubt one of the best performances of the year. Probably the best. Landa is such a all encomapassing figure: an authority, a mannered gentlemen, a seething detective, a fucked-up sociopath, a delighted nave, a touch fay, all-together menacing, and yet completely and totally coherent. How can you even do that? It’s a mystery for sure, but it is such a great combination of writing, direction, and performance to be sure. I can’t speak highly enough of it. But it’s one of those performances that EVERYONE gets, like Ledger’s Joker or Day Lewis’s Daniel Plainview; no one misses what’s going on from the visceral forefront to the many subtlties at play. It’s a remarkable achievement.

So as for what this whole freaking movie is actually about (and it is about something given my opening bit about Revenge films). Let’s get into what actually happens in this sucker.

WARNING HUGE FUCKING SPOILERS AHEAD BUT ITS WHAT I WANT TO TALK ABOUT SO TURN AWAY NOW IF YOU HAVEN”T SEEN IT. REALLY… AND IF YOU REALLY DON’T CARE THEN FINE I SUPPOSE… OKAY… Getting back to the Revenge film bit… Basterds is wholly cathartic because you get to see the war you want to happen and not the war that did. We get to see Nazis utterly shot, scalped, beaten to death, scarred, and blown up. And it’s not like some parade of violent delights either. I mentioned the matter of buildup and punctuated violence which gives all of this said violence some hefty weight. The idea is catharsis in every possible form. And if you’re doing Jewish revenge, if you’re going to go ALL THE WAY with that logic. Then your ending is simple (again spoiler, here’s the ending), why not have your jewish ww2 revenge picture end with  Hitler, Goebbles, and all the high ranking nazi officials getting gunned down and burned alive in movie theater? Why not have your more humane Nazis get forever branded with the nazi symbol on the forehead so they “can never take off the uniform.” What the heck is more cathartic than that?

Nothing. It’s the ending we never got. Sure WW2 was born out of revenge for WW1 (more debatable than is commonly accepted by the way), but that’s not a concern. In reality, Hitler was the true to form and cowardly shot himself in a bunker (we’re pretty sure about this). So, in the interest of catharsis, why not shoot him over and over again in the head?

Some critics seem to have a problem with this. Particularly David Denby of the New Yorker (not even going to bother to link to his knee-jerk nonsense). But to label this kind of revenge film as stupid or insensitive is just as stupid or insensitive. That’s because doing so means you’re mistaking Tarantino for an amateurish idiot who indulges in violence or revenge for revenge’s sake. Sure he’s a brash persona, but he’s no dummy. That kind of indulgent simplicity is what many of his imitators do, but not he. Tarantino is a master of both wholly exploiting a genre for all it’s worth and then subverting or transcending it in the most interesting ways. DFW once wrote a great piece on how his lynchian tendencies are played for “coolness” rather than discomfort and therefore lose effect, but I think his work from Pulp Fiction on works beautifully in terms of transcending that surface coolness. He simply cuts above garrishness. It’s not because he has lengthy dialogue scenes or simple tricks like that, which people often mistake for being smart, it’s because of a much more nebulous tone of intellect and emotional gravity. It’s beyond simple irony or dissaffect. It’s genuine care and love for these, the depraved archetypes and conventions at play.

It’s a wholesale acceptance of the human condition, IE understanding that the desire for revenge (in cinematic form) is cathartic even for the most liberal, a-fascist personalities in the world, which once again I am. I’m practically a freakin pacifist, but I can wholly understand and engross myself in the Tarantino ww2 reality. Yet for some reason it seem to urk other critics, colleagues, and friends who find this kind of treatment of a “serious subject” to be offensive. The same people who find Dirty Harry to be some kind of fascistic guide to life.  I don’t understand that. It’s like they’ve never seen a movie before. Movies don’t have to espouse your sense of politics or life philosophy (hell, we kind of perfer if they don’t). And I don’t say that in a “it’s just a movie don’t take it seriously” kind of way. I say that in the sense that there’s this cinematic social contract that what you’re seeing is a representation of a kind of dream or inner will.  The best directors know what’s happening, acknowledge it, and go past it. But so many people get trapped in Tarantino’s acknoledgement of base tropes, they can’t get past it. Come on! You’re not falling victim to a movie, it’s falling victim to you, ultimately. It’s a such a freaking shame too because they’re missing out on the best kinds of movies. The kind where you get to subvert your own freaking pretentions of what is proper and ride your own id. And unlike most trash, Tarantino guides your id with such utter care and poignancy. God… You’re missing out on those movies.

And missing out on the genius of Inglourious Basterds, probably the best movie of the year.

Like: Infinite Jest (Part I)

So the problem with reading Infinite Jest, a 1000+ page stab at the great American novel by David Foster Wallace, is that when you finish reading it you feel like you’re finally ready to actually read it… and thus want to start over.

It is a wickedly cruel joke on the part of DFW, and on par for a book that features many of these kinds cyclical meta truths both within the reality/plot of the characters and also for you, the reader. There’s a logical reason for this desire, mostly being that the beginning of the book is rather cryptic and features some of the characters at the end of their journeys and the end of the book is where you get much of the no-nonsense factual realities that much of the book is just HINTING at… so yeah… you want to go back.

I’m also not really sure where to even begin with this monster. So this will only be PART I of my take on the book. PART II will come when I’ve had more time to ruminate.  So let’s go stream of consciousness counting:

I loved it for one. Two, it’s dense. Three, the language is beyond anyone but my mom, who knows the meaning of pretty much every word. So I was looking up lots of words, and sometimes too lazy to do so. Four, there’s a lot of Pynchon influence, particularly Gravity’s Rainbow. Five, it’s at times deeply funny. Six, it takes place in Boston, so that’s neat. Seven, it’s odd that for a novel written between 93-95, he accurately predicts the entire future of television, movies, and video gaming that is going on today, including HDTV and digital equipment (the only mistake he makes in these “predictions” is format, saying that digital media would be on cartridges instead of the discs). Seven, it is often profoundly sad. Eight, not to get into literary semantics, but it’s interesting to see him try to break out of the malaise of late modern conceits of both overtly-fractured form and irony. He doesn’t REALLY do it. Part of him can’t do it maybe, but you get the sense he wants to transcend it.  Nine, it is important to transcend it because it is slightly bullshitty after all. Nine, but he understands the problems with culture wanting this kind of bullshitty detachment because they feel anything with real values is in itself, bullshit.

Okay, time out. I have to explain that shit better.

DFW once wrote in an article about television and modern culture where he explained, to paraphrase [We have gone from a culture that upheld the sanctity of good values to a culture that instead appreciates the rejection of bogus values] Which in my mind, is highly problematic. Sure the reasons, were perhaps valid. It was meant to undermine legitimately corrupt authority. To stem the tide of conformity. To make those outside of conventionality, acceptable. Heck, even Ayn Rand’s philosophy started off as a principled opposition to the dangers of communism. Point being, there was a point to the rejection of the bogus values.

But the problem is our society eventually came to uphold this behavior/pathology as THE great truth.  Believing in anything traditional is considered passe. Hell, I’d go one more and say our society considers believing in things as not only naive, but harmful. They’re idiots who have flocked up to join the masses. And lo and behold, this creates a negative society (well duh). As a result, we can’t really do anything. It amounts to great minds, or even mediocre minds sitting around being self-assured in their own superiority rather than actually doing anything. Sure any system has its deep, inherent flaws, but the absence of a system IS NOT a system. And yet we have a whole part of society, often our best and brightest minds, who abstain from systemic input because that means they would be going against “the rejection of bogus values.” DFW saw this as a big problem and wanted to do something about it.

Then again, Infinite Jest isn’t really about this subject. If you had to be literal, it’s about addictions, film, family, and tennis. But it is also certainly about the modern emotional numbness we can develop in a world that values negativity. A culture who has lived in this cherishing of bogus values for far too long, and renders the big things in life: love, joy, delirium, hate, anger, lust, and desire, all the more difficult to attain… or honor properly… or even just deal with.  And the characters of the novel don’t really have an answer. There’s some stuff there one supposes (perhaps with what happens to Gately and Joelle). DFW talked at length about how he wanted to find an answer to the deadly malaise. To deconstruct and reconstruct the big truths, love, etc. To somehow take love, and build it logically so that those who adore the rejection of the bogus can actually take heed. And be happy. I dunno.

Guess we have to wait until The Pale King to see if he had an idea of what to do… But knowing what happened during the writing of that piece… one imagines not.

Don’t Like: This Asshat’s Logic on “Why Athiests’ Arguments Do Not Work”

First off he never really addresses atheist’s arguments and just makes hilarious statements and conclusions instead. But first, a qualifier!

1) I am somewhat at odds with logic. It’s is an incredibly useful tool of construction/deconstruction and often provides the crux of philosophical theory. But logic itself is not, and has never been, the definitive system for “answers,” philosophical or otherwise. The basic scientific principal of “correlation does not mean cause” prevents it so, and yet most logic depends on that being true. While it may seem that “science” as we know it was invented in the 17th-18th century, really the basic tenants have always been routed in the pillars of observation and appropriation. There’s a timelessness to those qualities, just as their is a timelessness to logic, but they are interdependent on one another and have always been. More so, in the age of increasing scientific propriety, observation, data collection, and technology, we have a legitimate ability to gain actual substantial answers to long theoretical questions and problems. With that, logic has become the currency of the intellectual disaffected and the occasional dead weight of lunacy.(1)

Enter this asshat.

There’s a lot of general stupidity out there with which I have absolutely no problem. I generally like to single out the most amusing or most outrageous in some kind of personal way. So like those, this guy is special (assuming he’s serious. Which I think is true. More on that later). But this seems to think he is the god of logic. But so often the problem with logic is that YOU define the variables and if you define them wrong you can go of an logic bender that leads you to a stunningly crap-tastic conclusion. So let’s go on a journey.

First off, there is his claim that Atheists don’t believe in god, because they can’t see god. He compares this to the fact that we can’t see air, but we know it’s there.  Sigh.  The obvious problem is that we can see air. You use a thing called a “microscope” (well a powerful version of one) or other scientific instruments with which we can look at and analyze the molecules that make up this “air” thing you speak of.  Even better, he then uses the comparative example of “not being able to see your own brain, yet it exists.” Well tell you what, I’ll go grab my dad’s Vietnam era machete and give a good slice across your forehead, grab a piece of your brain and show it to you before you die. Because you’re sitting and talking to a camera, yes, even you have a brain (of course this implies your sliced brain would still have visual functioning capability). See we have TANGIBLE ways of actually seeing these invisible examples you speak of. The atheist argument is dependent on the fact we currently have NO TANGIBLE ways of seeing god. (2)

The next part is equally awesome. Saying that proposition of God’s existence inherently begins as a 50/50 chance is a total falsehood.  Just because there are two possible answers, does not mean there is an equal chance of those answers being correct. It’s like saying there’s a fifty/five chance I’ll be hit by a falling lime green Boeing jet today. The odds are actually dependent on, you know, the probability of said event occurring, not the number of a possible outcomes. It is one of the most basic pillars of logic and one of the first things you learn on the subject: An either/or result does not facilitate either/or logic.

Which then brings him to the “51%” thing where he goes from his already incorrect 50/50 probility of god existing to the the long-pause-inclusive “but. there. is. evidence!… of him, existing!” deduction is high comedy. Needless to say said evidence isn’t presented and instead we’re just treated “we exist” followed by a statement which implies 100% of god existing by saying “And if he didn’t exist there would be nothing.” Just awesome. It becomes evident he has no idea where he is in his logistical timeline and is pretty much winging. Then sequeways with a sort of nice equivalent of saying science can’t prove anything “because it’s logic.” Which is oh so failsafe.

The also also best part comes right after that with “the four most evil people in history of human history” (nice repeat) were atheists… followed by the hilarious DOUBLE eyebrow raise (a kind of awesome you get me? you GET me? ATHEISTS ARE EVIL, eh?). Followed by the prefect double hand open of obviousness.

Just Killer.

The also also also best part is his other videos are even more hilarious, offensive, and culturally charged (the one on sex hurting the vagina being okay in particular), but this one highlights his logistical failures much more acutely.

Psychologically speaking, his arguments are oddly solipsistic. He is taking special care to deny almost any other singular influence on his opinions. Most like to reference and support, his logic is instead a wholly insular enterprise. It is an increasingly common behavior on the internet and something I find to be a result of 1) a disconnected society and 2) bad learning habits. But that’s all conjecture. The dude is funny to watch.

There’s a lot of belief that this guy is playing a character and these segments are a joke. Who knows? The problem is that it doesn’t pass my gut test. I look at him and it reads real even if his statements are ludicrious (a good deal of Christians seem to be just as offended by his nonsense giving them a bad name). He’s just too good the personality type. He’s simply too good at playing the self assured, withdrawn, intellectual type who is probably a libertarian, thinks no one is as smart as he is, and dismays that society does not live up to his standards. Which makes me sad… I’m going to hope he really is playing a character.

It should be said there scientific arguments/theories for god’s existence (the big bang, etc) that are at least somewhat interesting. It’s all deeply theoretical and miles away from having scientific legitimacy, but it’s still interesting and enjoy reading about it. And no, I’m not talking about intelligent design. Any scientific theory that is built on “we haven’t figured this shit out yet, so it must be god” is about as faulty in logic/science/basic life skills as you can get.

For those  questioning my motives, as everyone tends to do, I really don’t have a stake in the answer. I might believe in God, but I lean sort of atheist. I’m not sure. I just know that I care about the methods we use to come up with “answers”, because often the methods inform the answers themselves.

Addendum

1- This statement however does ignore the problems created by conflicting data and the mass amounts of misinformation.

2- There are some interesting theories, which I address a bit at the end above.

Don’t Like: #5, Ayn Rand (on the list people, all of whom I would Punch if I saw them)

For a blog where I spend half the time bitching about stuff I don’t like, I do try to avoid careless internet asshatery and needless contrarian bullshit, and instead focus on some kind of minuate, or larger theoretical argument. Let’s be honest, often the internet descends into “I HATE YOU’RE YOUR FAVORITE THING!!!!!!!! RARRRRRRRRR! U R GAY!!!!”. I try to avoid that. But… Occasionally I indulge in my more base tendancies. So for this week:

Here’s a list of 5 people I would punch if I saw them.

#5, Ayn Rand

Reasons: For taking a rational counterpoint to extremism and countering it with a form of opposing extremism. For writing an extremely long and tedious book that makes the same point and over and over for no rational reason other than to make it. Then creating a bogus philosophical theory out of it. Or before it. Or whatever. She sucks.

Judgement: Basic logistical failures across the board.

Punishment: PUNCHED.

Difficulty: Deceased, mysogny.

Look at this asshole: