Perhaps it is merely the fact that the days are now a little bit longer and the depressing sequence of four-day weekends is over for a bit, but I am feeling a good deal more cheerful and my natural Tigger is returning. The special grand jury in Fulton County, Georgia has wrapped up its work and the fact that it has asked for its report to be made public suggests very strongly to me that they are recommending indictments for Trump and a number of his co-conspirators. We shall see in not too much time. The discipline maintained by Hakeem Jeffries in the House and the disastrous decisions by Republicans encourages me to believe that before this 118th Congress has completed its two-year journey, control may actually slip away from the Republicans.
I did want to make one observation about the comments
concerning movies. I have always been rather put off by the snobbish attitudes
of the super sophisticated European left-wing theorists. They all strike me as
a bunch of upper-middle-class overeducated snobs who think that anything more
than a raised eyebrow is an excessive response to the world. They are the sort of people who would consider a belly laugh a sign of intestinal upset. I
have seen virtually all of the movies that Marc Susselman lists in his lengthy
comment and I agree that we should simply allow ourselves to enjoy them without
worrying too much about their ideological significance.
Nevertheless, I would like to point out that the very first
movie on his list – The Wizard Of Oz – derives from a book by Frank Baum that
was a satirical view of the late 19th century conflict over the gold
standard (“oz” is of course the symbol
for an ounce of gold.) The Midwestern farmers who are the heroes of the story
had mortgages on their farms and the steady decline in the value of the dollar
made their mortgage payments progressively less burdensome. The East Coast
bankers, on the other hand, were creditors and pegging the dollar to the price
of gold maintained the value of the
mortgage money they were collecting.
I loved Herbert Marcuse and I admire the work of his
colleagues at the Frankfurt Institute but I do not think it would have been
much fun to live in the world that they sought to bring into existence.
87 comments:
Prof. Wolff,
Bravo!
Professor Wolff,
You've always expressed admiration for Edward Said, whom I had twice as a professor and who I saw a friend in some way.
Said was a great fan of Adorno and I believe prefaced a book of Adorno's essays on literature. He introduced us to the Frankfurt school (to many other interesting "super-sophisticated" European thinkers including Foucault) during a seminar in contemporary literary criticism in 1970.
Maybe you now consider Said to be "an overeducated snob" and he certainly was well educated. I consider him to be one of the few great intellectuals I've ever come in contact and maybe someone willing to take a few more steps in his criticisms of the status quo than you are. To his credit, I believe.
I had and continue to have the greatest admiration and fondness for Ed Said. Whether he was willing to take a few more steps in his critique of the status quo than I is something that I leave for others to judge.
“I have always been rather put off by the snobbish attitudes of the super sophisticated European left-wing theorists. They all strike me as a bunch of upper-middle-class overeducated snobs who think that anything more than a raised eyebrow is an excessive response to the world.”
Didn’t Spiro Agnew say something similar?
It could be said it all began with Marx, I suppose. Though if one looks beyond left-wing theory, given the long enduring nature of educational privilege, which is a feature of education everywhere, not just in Europe, even in the USA, I imagine one could find “overeducated snobs” almost everywhere and everywhen. (One might also ponder whether mathematical elaborations of Marxism aren’t just another case of the super sophistication which has transformed left-wing politics from real politics into something like an academic fad, not just in Europe.)
But the sort of quite typical American contempt for Europeans in the quoted passage is surprising coming from a self-confessed Marxist, albeit one of a mostly academic sort. I’d have expected a rather more analytical approach looking to the problems with the positions those —who are they all precisely?—you condemn in such a blanket fashion. Perhaps, for one, exploring whether their own class positions led them to try to bend their Marxism in certain directions? I suppose it wasn’t just Plato who wanted to live in a world designed to make philosophers happy. But still, it’s surely ostrich with its head in the sand sort of stuff to simply dismiss without argument, in a sort of Trumpian contemptuously insulting way, the attempts of those who have sought and are still seeking to understand how the “culture industry” might be imposing on us all? (As part of such an analytical effort, one might also explore how we’ve all been Trumpised, or do I simply mean “Agnewised”?)
But our origins as well as our present circumstances surely inflect the thinking of all of us, I suppose. I can’t watch “Downton Abbey,” for example, which you praise in a previous post, without being painfully aware of its author’s nostalgia for a snobbery ridden Britain which alas still exists to some degree, and which all those American academics of various political persuasions who boast of their Oxbridge connexions do their own little bit to buttress. Ditto those who go off to Paris for intellectual sustenance.
Agnew may have said something like that, but William Safire wrote it for him.
Agnew didn't refer to European left-wing theorists, afaik, though he did denounce American intellectuals and the press.
By the way, the effete snobbish European leftwing theorists of the Frankfurt School went through hell, lived through experiences none of us have. They saw their careers and their lives destroyed by the rise of Nazism, saw family members who didn't get out and died in Auschwitz. One of their key members, Walter Benjamin, committed suicide because he could not cross the Spanish as he tried to flee from Nazi-occupied France.
So all of us are priviledged effete snobs compared to them.
Finally, as to whether it would have been "fun" to live in the world that they envisioned, as your last sentence questions.
First of all, is "fun" the main criterion for determining whether we want to live under a certain form of society? That sounds a bit frivolous to me.
Second, as Eric pointed out in the previous thread, Adorno and Horkheimer, unlike
Marcuse, gave up almost completely post-Auschwitz and after their experience in and with Hollywood/culture industry, on radical social change. They were content, as far as I can see, to live in a non-fascist democratic order of things, maybe under someone like Biden.
Baum’s book was not interpreted as having anything to do with the gold standard until 1971. Baum said he derived “Oz” from a file cabinet labeled “O–Z.”
"They were content, as far as I can see, to live in a non-fascist democratic order of things, maybe under someone like Biden."
Considering the actual alternatives. When has actual "radical social change" ever turned out well?
Are we back among the trotskyists who in their despair went to the national review and/or became neocons?
aaall asks, When has actual "radical social change" ever turned out well? It seems to me that this question/assertion is stated in a quite ahistorical way. In physics, to every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. In socio-political matters, reaction is almost certain, though I doubt it can be said to be equal and opposite in every case. When the French Revolution was going through its various phases, some of them reactive, there were both internal and international responses that shaped what flowed from the initial storming of the Bastille or the tennis court. When the Russian Revolutions occurred, pick February or October/November as you like, it didn’t proceed to unfold in a passive context. Again both internal and international agents helped shape what came next. Same again for what has happened with the collapse of the Soviet and related regimes following 1989.
In short, it doesn’t make much sense to pose the question as it has been posed, as if responsibility for everything rests on some person or group who acted in a particular way at a particular time.
"When has actual "radical social change" ever turned out well?"
Without emojis or any other visual clues, I can't tell if that is meant to be taken at face value.
I agree with "tankie?" that the question "When has actual "radical social change" ever turned out well?" is simplistic -- to use not the best word, perhaps, but it will do.
Did the French Revolution "turn out well"? It depends on "for whom" and "in what time frame," among other things, but on balance, and recognizing its immediate costs in blood and its giving rise to wars, yes. In the long run, I think France as a present democratic republic is, for all its faults (which every polity has), better than what France would be if the revolution hadn't occurred. (Though counterfactuals are admittedly tricky.)
Also, "radical social change" can mean a bunch of different things. The U.S. civil rights movement is a case of radical social change that turned out well. Ditto for various other 'liberation' movements. Ditto for certain aspects of labor struggles. Ditto for smaller-scale radical social change that worked out well on a "micro" scale. Etc.
LFC,
I doubt that Adorno and Horkheimer would have had any problems with the U.S. civil rights movement.
Maybe I should have written "revolutionary utopian social transformation" instead of "radical social change".
A little late but, I wish everyone a happy new year 2023.
"They all strike me as a bunch of upper-middle-class overeducated snobs who think that anything more than a raised eyebrow is an excessive response to the world."
it seems the winter depression is really blown away :)
@marc, wonderfull list of films !
... I must confess that my consumption of movies is comparable to the function of a garbage disposal. About what can be recycled afterwards, I rarely thought about before visiting the cinema.
But of course there are "good" and "bad" movies, just as there are "exciting" and "boring" movies and of course movies that "describe" something and those that "explain" or that "manipulate" something. Most films are really a mixture of all of these. But there are "works of art" that have really changed the way of what cinema can be, much like Caravaggio changed painting with the Chiaroscuro. Orsen Wells "Citizen Kane" for example or for me Kubrick's "Barry Lyndon" or Visconti's "Il Gattopardo". And also cinematic art does not take into account the morals or political integrity of its makers, as can be seen in Leni Riefenstahl's "Olympia", whose aesthetics still influence Hollywood's doomsday movies until today. And because I was talking about garbage, there is also Veit Harlan and films like "Jud Süß" or "Kolberg".
I loved Herbert Marcuse and I admire the work of his colleagues at the Frankfurt Institute but I do not think it would have been much fun to live in the world that they sought to bring into existence.
I'm too old now to be able to appreciate it, but back before the world had gone to hell (or at least back before I had gone to hell) I would have enjoyed (or at least I thought I would have enjoyed) the better world Marcuse was aiming for (or at least hinting at) in Eros and Civilization
talking of film:
https://crookedtimber.org/2023/01/11/film-review-the-american-dream-and-other-fairy-tales/#more-50793
s. wallerstein: One of their key members, Walter Benjamin, committed suicide because he could not cross the Spanish as he tried to flee from Nazi-occupied France.
So all of us are privileged effete snobs compared to them.
s. wallerstein: Adorno and Horkheimer ... were content, as far as I can see, to live in a non-fascist democratic order of things
I really encourage you to read Gabriel Rockhill's essay on Horkheimer and Adorno (The CIA & The Frankfurt Schoo's Anti-Communism).
Here's what Rockhill says about Benjamin's tragedy:
[Bertolt] Brecht’s close friend, Walter Benjamin, was one of the Frankfurt scholars’ most important Marxist interlocutors at the time. He was not able to join them in the United States because he tragically committed suicide in 1940 at the border between France and Spain, the night before he faced near certain apprehension by the Nazis. According to Adorno, he 'killed himself after he had already been saved' because he had 'been made a permanent member of the Institute and knew it.' He was 'flush with funds' for his trip, in the words of the famous philosopher, and knew 'that he could rely completely on us materially.' This version of history, which presents Benjamin’s suicide as an incomprehensible personal decision given the circumstances, was an exercise in mendacity for the sake of personal and institutional exoneration, according to a detailed analysis recently published by Ulrich Fries. Not only were the leading figures of the Frankfurt School unwilling to assist Benjamin financially for his flight from the Nazis, Fries argues, but they also ran an extensive cover-up campaign to disingenuously present themselves as his benevolent benefactors.
...
Horkheimer explicitly told Benjamin around the same time, as fascist forces were closing in around him, that he should prepare for the discontinuation of his sole source of income since 1934. He claimed, moreover, that his hands were 'unfortunately tied' when he refused to fund Benjamin’s journey to safety by paying for a steamship ticket to the U.S. that would have cost under $200. This was literally 'a month after transferring an extra $50,000 to an account at his exclusive disposal,' which was the 'second time in eight months' that he had secured an additional $50,000 (the equivalent of just over 1 million dollars in 2022). In July 1939, Friedrich Pollock also obtained an additional $130,000 for the Institute from Felix Weil, the wealthy son of a capitalist millionaire....
It was political will, not money, that was lacking. Indeed, Fries concurs with Rolf Wiggershaus that Horkheimer’s cruel decision to abandon Benjamin was part of a broader pattern according to which the directors 'systematically placed the realization of their private life goals above the interests of everyone else,' while propagating the false appearance of 'outstanding commitment to those persecuted by the Nazi regime.'
(my emphasis in bold)
Eric,
Could it true.
I'm not defending Adorno and Horkheimer as my heroes, merely as interesting thinkers.
Hannah Arendt, who was a very close friend of Walter Benjamin, detested Adorno for his treatment of Benjamin and because he used the name "Adorno", which was his mother's name instead of his father's name, Wiesengrund, in Arendt's opinion, that being a way of denying his Jewish roots.
Arendt, as you know, was quite anti-communist, but in this whole mess I would tend to take her word for things rather than of Adorno or of some source I've never heard of.
Rockhill largely relies on a paper published a year ago in German by Ulrich Fries. Fries examines Arendt's recollections, and how they have been misused by defenders of the Frankfurt School, in detail. Fries (and Rockhill) also draws on biographies and archival work, some of it only relatively recently published, that were not available to Arendt.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/00168890.2021.1986802
Given Adorno’s and Horkheimer’s craven mistreatment of Benjamin, and their duplicitous efforts to cover it up, why should their claim that Hollywood movies during the 1930’s and 1940’s “basically serves to inculcate the values of the system, of the established order of things” be regarded as having any intellectual validity whatsoever? If they were willing to distort the truth regarding what happened to Benjamin, and their abandonment of him, why should anything they say be regarded as having any merit, particularly when the empirical evidence regarding movies from that era does not support their specious, ideologically driven conclusion? The only reason it has been had any play on this blog is because it confirms the bias of certain commenters who want to believe anything which is negative about capitalism and its role in the United States.
Marc,
You haven't proved that Adorno and Horkheimer are wrong. You'd have to read them first, which you obviously haven't done. You've only produced a cherry-picked list of films from the 30's and 40's, which, you claim, fit your criteria.
As far as I can see, some of those films such as Citizen Kane, Grapes of Wrath and Modern Times don't fit Adorno's thesis.
Others from the era, such as the cowboy movies, always are from the point of view of the white macho individualist hero, never from the point of view of women or Native-Americans or people with a collectivist sensibility. Always seem to promote the individualist and violent ethos which made Amerikka great and which reaches this apotheosis in Trump.
The romantic comedies are always sexist, almost always show well-off elegant people eating at expensive restaurants, well-dressed, an advertisement for a buy-buy-buy spend-spend-spend consumer culture.
The fact that Adorno and Horkheimer lied about a few things hardly means that everything they said was a lie or false.
You, with your constant bullying and insults in this blog, your constant personal disqualifications, have hardly established yourself as a source any of us can respect.
Now I'm sad to see that Professor Wolff defends you with a xenophobic and anti-intellectual discourse about overly sophisticated foreign intellectuals, worthy of the populist right.
It's all very sad.
“The romantic comedies are always sexist, almost always show well-off elegant people eating at expensive restaurants, well-dressed, an advertisement for a buy-buy-buy spend-spend-spend consumer culture.
“The fact that Adorno and Horkheimer lied about a few things hardly means that everything they said was a lie or false.”
Here is one more insult for you s. wallerstein, you are an ignorant jerk. Have you seen any of the movies you generalize about? Have you seen “The Awful Truth” in which Irene Dunne mocks Cary Grant? Have you seen “The Philadelphia Story,” in which Kahterine Hepburn mesmerizes both Grant and Jimmy Stewart? Have you seen “My Girl Friday,” in which Rosalind Russell exchange witty dialogue with Grant? Have you seen “You Can’t Take It With You,” starring Jimmy Stewart and Jean Arthur, in which Jean Arthur’s father, played by Lionel Barrymore, stands up to a monopolistic bank? Have you seen “Adam’s Rib,” in which Hepburn and Tracy are attorneys confronting each other in a criminal case? Have you seen “Born Yesterday,” in which Judy Holiday outsmart her domineering industrialist husband? No, you have not seen any of these movies, yet you are willing to spout off you generalized nonsense about what these movies represent, and continue to endorse Adorno and Horkheimer’s empirically false thesis that these movies “inculcate the values of the system, of the established order of things.” Can you name a single romantic movie you have seen from the 1930s or 1940s which supports this unsubstantiated thesis? No, you cannot, but you continue to stand by this unsubstantiate thesis because it confirms your bias against “Amerikka”, as you spell it.
Does the fact that Adorno and Horkheimer “lied about a few things” mean that they lied about everything? No, of course not, but it certainly is not an endorsement of the validity of anything else they claimed in their ideologically driven socialist philosophy. And why do I get so irritated by the likes of you, and Eric, and aalll, and Christopher Mulvaney, Ph. D., because you all wrap yourselves in your sanctimonious, holier-than-thou moral, intellectual mantle and spout generalizations which you are unable to defend by empirical facts, and then recede into your patronizing, how dare you question me ignorance.
Thanks Eric for reminding me of that Rockhill essay. I only hope that anyone who has looked no further than the passages you quote from the source you identified will take the time to go to that source to see that Rockhill is presenting a much more complex political analysis which puts in question the simplistic, moralistic response of anyone who relies barely on these quoted passages. And thanks, s.w., for your comments.
I should let it pass, for I know the kind of response it will likely provoke. But can one, in good conscience, really let such things pass? Aren't they, in a very, very tiny way, part of the sort of cultural process that always deserves to be explored and challenged?
“Given Adorno’s and Horkheimer’s craven mistreatment of Benjamin, and their duplicitous efforts to cover it up, why should their claim that Hollywood movies during the 1930’s and 1940’s “basically serves to inculcate the values of the system, of the established order of things” be regarded as having any intellectual validity whatsoever?”
Whoever said that intellectual validity depended upon the intellectual being a moral or pleasant person? That’s surely a quite bizarre claim. From intellectual biographies we know that a great many noted, influential producers of interesting ideas and theories were not the sort of people one would applaud for their moral stances. Some of us have even personally known not nice people whose ideas were nevertheless interesting.
Then there’s that second, attached remark, that “The only reason it has been had any play on this blog is because it confirms the bias of certain commenters who want to believe anything which is negative about capitalism and its role in the United States.”
ron desantis? joe mccarthy? huac? hamline university? harvard and human rights advocacy? some points of view are beyond the pale?
And while it may not be directly asserted that some views are beyond the pale, it will be signalled that they ought not be taken seriously. I, on the other hand, am directly asserting that the statements I'm taking issue with deserve to be challenged.
First of all, I've seen a lot of those movies. I lived in Berkeley, California for 7 years in the 70's, a few blocks from the Pacific Film Archive where they showed a different film every night, at a very modest price if you had a student ID, which I got by enrolling in Laney Community College, which was then free. I found those romantic comedies so insubstantial and trivial that I don't remember anything of them except that they were full of well-dressed people eating in fancy restaurants, saying so-called witty things that I didn't find witty.
This all started when Sonic said something about politic critiques of movies. You claimed that there is no such thing as a political critique of movies, just personal tastes.
I cited Adorno and Horkheimer as two people who make a political critique of movies. I am hardly an expert on their work, and you could have shown some curiosity about two famous philosophers which you haven't read, but instead of consulting their works, you, as usual, began a campaign of insults against myself, Eric, Christopher Mulvaney and aaall, in order to defend your own addiction to movies, since, unlike most of us, you are unable to simply say, "hey, I enjoy movies whether they have a political bias or not".
For example, I like Henry Miller. I've been told by feminists that he is very sexist and I reply, "yes, that's true, but I still enjoy him".
But I'm over with this conversation now.
If you have any interest in learning about Adorno and Horkheimer on film, read their work on the cultural industry or one of many texts which explain what they were into. Grand Hotel Abyss by Stuart Jeffries is a good simple explanation, very readable.
I'm out to lunch for a long long long lunch.
oor willis,
Fine, I will take up the challenge. You assert that just because certain intellectuals have demonstrated in their personal lives that they are all too human and have acted deplorably on occasion, it is no reason to reject, out of hand, their political/ social, and/or philosophical views they have expressed in their public statements and writings. This is, of course true, and rather simplistic. By the same token, their failure to act fairly, empathically, or honorably in their private lives, should, at least, stand as a warning that their views should not be accepted at face valuer, without empirical examination. But that is precisely what the usual suspects have done with respect to Adorno’s and Horkheimer’s unsubstantiated generalization that Hollywood movies of the 1930’s and 1940’s were intended to “inculcate the values of the system, of the established order of things.” The fact that they were mendacious regarding the circumstances of Benjamin’s suicide should, I would think, give any rational person pause about accepting, without empirical evidence, a generalization they have made about American cinema, a generalization which is unfounded and unsubstantiated, and amounts to no more than anti-capitalist propaganda, in this case false propaganda.
At the same time that you point out that instances of certain moral lapses are not a basis upon which to judge the merits of a propagandist’s writings, you proceed to cite “ron desantis? joe mccarthy? huac? hamline university? harvard and human rights advocacy? some points of view are beyond the pale?” as flaws characteristic of the deficiencies of the United States in general, contradicting your own word of caution not to judge the whole by certain moral lapses, demonstrating your own hypocrisy.
I'm not that interested in 1930s romantic comedies, otherwise I would have taken steps to see them. I think I might have seen The Philadelphia Story on TV many years ago and I've seen bits and pieces. I associate them with witty, rapid dialogue and, esp when it comes to the characters played by Cary Grant, an air of urbanity, albeit sometimes mixed with cluelessness, and unflappability.
The philosopher Stanley Cavell wrote quite a lot about these movies and while I have no real interest in reading him on this subject, Marc might. OTOH I don't know that his style would appeal.
I also have no particular interest in whether Adorno and Horkheimer were right about the "culture industry" they were criticizing. Btw summaries of their argument in _Dialectic of Enlightenment_ have not persuaded me that it's something I want to read.
“This all started when Sonic said something about politic critiques of movies. You claimed that there is no such thing as a political critique of movies, just personal tastes.”
No, that is not what I said. I was expressing a view about interpreting movies which constitute “character studies,” not all movies, and certainly not movies whose plots are in fact about politics or social issues, e.g., “All The King’s Men”; “On The Waterfront”; “All The President’s Men”; “Twelve Angry Men”; “Platoon”; etc. With regard to such movies, critique regarding their perspectives is perfectly appropriate. As is critique about a generalization made by intellectuals regarding a generalized claim that Hollywood movies of the 1930s and 1940s were intended to “inculcate the values of the system, of the established order of things.” And the fact that you did not appreciate the witty dialogue in “His Girl Friday”; “The Awful Truth”; or “Adams’ Rib” suggests that you do not have much of a sense of humor and/or you do not appreciate creative writing when you hear it.
LFC,
Thank you for your reference to Stanley Cavell. I see that he wrote "Pursuits of Happiness: The Hollywood Comedy of Remarriage." I will check it out.
And I have never asserted that everyone is obliges to see romantic comedy films, or even films altogether. Everyone is entitled to pursue their own tastes. By the same token, however, if one does not wish to engage in such an indulgence, one should not make generalized statements about their merits, or lack thereof, without offering specific empirical evidence to support one’s claims.
No challenge was being uttered.
I did not make a simplistic assertion, I was pointing out that someone else did.
We should take pause regarding everyone’s arguments and assertions, no matter their moral status.
Regarding observations respecting a dismissive view of certain analysts/critics of American cinema, as S.w. suggested, have these analyses/criticisms been read?
It was not the flaws/deficiencies of the United States that were being referred to, it was individual flaws…
"individual flaws"
"huac? hamline university? harvard and human rights advocacy?"
Since when were these entities "individuals"?
I was referring to a certain mode of thought symbolised by the people and institutions I mentioned
I had no idea what the "Harvard and human rights advocacy" reference meant, so I googled and found this:
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/harvard-school-row-over-fellowship-human-rights-advocate-2023-01-10/
I am not a fan of Adorno or Horkheimer's. Frankly, I think their hypothesis to be accepted as anything but a hypothesis, no matter how cogent it may sound to some, requires empirical confirmation, which I cannot see anybody providing.
Having said that, I find Marc Susselman's comment (January 11, 2023 at 2:00 PM) hits a new high in imbecility and self-contradiction.
First of all, Adorno and Horkheimer's alleged (do you, Susselman JD, remember what the word allegation means?) depravity does not prove their hypothesis false.
Second, can you not see any contradiction in alleged opponents of "radical social change" (in M. Wallerstein's apt phrase) as Adorno and Horkheimer are alleged to be, becoming suddenly figureheads for those who do want "radical social change"?
Do you want me to draw a picture, Little Marc?
Eric,
I finally read the article you link to. Thank you.
Probably there is some truth there, mixed in with a lot of exaggerations. The author claims that the Soviet Union under Stalin was not a dictatorship, citing a supposed CIA report that says that Soviet leadership was collective. There are, of course, collective dictatorships, such as the Argentinian military junta during the 1970's. I also disgree with him that the Western German government during the cold war was a U.S. puppet government.
What bothers me is that Marc will inevitably weaponize my comments to you as he did your link and I'm sorry about that. All my best and thanks again for the link.
Little BL Zebub,
Yes, I know what an allegation is. That’s what lawsuits and trials are made of. And during the lawsuit, some allegations are given credence and deemed likely true, and some are disproven and rejected. Here, Eric, whose comments have been generally favorable of Adorno and Horkheimer, stated above;
“It was political will, not money, that was lacking. Indeed, Fries concurs with Rolf Wiggershaus that Horkheimer’s cruel decision to abandon Benjamin was part of a broader pattern according to which the directors 'systematically placed the realization of their private life goals above the interests of everyone else,' while propagating the false appearance of 'outstanding commitment to those persecuted by the Nazi regime.'”
Eric, not a critic of Adorno or Horkheimer, is offering evidence that another authority, Fries, implies that the accusations against Adorno and Horkheimer are accurate, giving allegations credibility. I never said that the allegations “prove” anything. I said that, in light of the allegations, which appear to be accurate, their statements about the character of Hollywood movies of the 1930s and 1940s should not be accepted at face value, and should require empirical confirmation, something you apparently agree they lack.
Got it, Little BL Zebub?
Eric agrees with Prof Rockhill's criticism of Horkheimer and Adorno.
That does not mean that I do not think any of their social analyses were valid.
A discussion about the USSR & US relations with West Germany would take a lot more time than I have, so not going to get into that.
Maybe things were looking up a few days ago, that was before Biden's faux pas of mishandling government documents- to me it is simply a case of crimes and misdemeanors, of Trump's crimes and Biden's misdemeanors- but the wind is no longer at our back- it is blowing in our face, and I am quite sure there will be calls from the hypocritical and hell bent House Republicans for impeachment proceedings
How do people here read the tea leaves?
The movies Hollywood was producing during most of the 1930s and 1940s were under the Hays code, so for anyone to claim that those films were not enforcing a particular ideological and social orientation is remarkable.
If you have only heard about the Hays code and never actually read a version of it, you can find it here
https://www.umsl.edu/~gradyf/theory/1930code.pdf
Here are a few tidbits:
"The courts of the land should not be presented as unjust."
"The treatment of crimes against the law must not ... make criminals seem heroic and justified."
"Comedies and farces should not make fun of good, innocence, morality or justice."
"No plot should be so constructed as to leave the question of right or wrong in doubt or fogged.
"Criminals should not be made heroes, even if they are historical criminals."
"Crime stories are not acceptable when they portray the activities of American gangsters, armed and in violent conflict with the law or law-enforcing officers."
"There must be no suggestion, at any time, of excessive brutality."
"There must be no scenes, at any time, showing law-enforcing officers dying at the hands of criminals. This includes private detectives, and guards for banks, motor trucks, etc."
"No film or episode in a film should be allowed to throw ridicule on any religious faith honestly maintained."
"Ministers of religion in their characters as ministers of religion should not be used in comedy, as villains, or as unpleasant persons."
"Miscegenation (sex relationship between the white and black races) is forbidden."
Eric,
True and the heroes almost always smoke. Did the tobacco lobby have some kind of deal with Hollywood to promote the idea that smoking is glamorous?
Notice how the casual racism and homophobia of several of the films from that period goes unremarked in this discussion.
Sam, the piano player in Casablanca, is a "boy."
The Peter Lorre characters in The Maltese Falcon and Casablanca are arguably racist and homophobic.
Did you miss in Lifeboat where Tallulah Bankhead's character calls the black man, played by Canada Lee, "Charcoal"? (For more of this kind of casual racism, see Mae West's 1933 She Done Him Wrong, where she calls a black person "Eight Ball.")
John Steinbeck was so incensed by the racism and treatment of class in the studio's reworking of his Lifeboat script that he wrote to the studio, saying:
While it is certainly true that I wrote a script for Lifeboat, it is not true that in that script as in the film there were any slurs against organized labor nor was there a stock comedy Negro. On the contrary there was an intelligent and thoughtful seaman who knew realistically what he was about. And instead of the usual colored travesty of the half comic and half pathetic Negro there was a Negro of dignity, purpose and personality. Since this film occurs over my name, it is painful to me that these strange, sly obliquities should be ascribed to me.
He wrote to his agent demanding that his name be removed from the film.
When that didn't happen, he wrote again, with the following:
It does not seem right that knowing the effect of the picture on many people, the studio still lets it go. As for Hitchcock, I think his reasons were very simple.... [H]e is one of those incredible English middle class snobs who really and truly despise working people.
The Searchers? Don't even get me started.
And the fact that you did not appreciate the witty dialogue in “His Girl Friday ... suggests that you do not have much of a sense of humor and/or you do not appreciate creative writing when you hear it.
Here's some of the witty dialogue from His Girl Friday (and the earlier screen version, The Front Page).
His Girl Friday (1947)
Walter: The Earl Williams case.... I'ts pretty bad.
Hildy: What is the lowdown on it?
Walter: ... Poor little dope lost his job and went berserk and shot a cop who was coming after him to quiet him down. Now they're going to hang him tomorrow.
Bruce: Your paper, you've been taking his side, haven't you?
Walter: Mm-hmm.
Bruce: Well, if he was out of his mind when he did it, why doesn't the state just put him away?
Walter: Because it happened to be a colored policeman. You know what that means, Hildy.
Hildy: Mm-hmm.
The colored vote's very important in this town [Chicago].
Walter: Yeah, especially with an election coming up in 3 or 4 days.
-----
Reporter: Emil, I got a good feature on the manhunt. Ready? Mrs. Phoebe DeWolfe, colored, gave birth to a pickaninny in a patrol wagon, with [Sheriff] Hartwell's rifle squad acting as nurses....
When the pickaninny was born, they checked to see if it was Williams. They know he's hiding somewhere.
Here's the payoff: They named the kid "Peter Hartwell DeWolfe."
The Front Page (1931)
Sheriff [up for re-election]: Can we help it if the people rise up to support this administration's stand against the Red menace?
Reporter: Personified by Mr. Earl Williams, a guy who loses the job he's held for 14 years, joins a parade of the unemployed and, because he's goofy from lack of food, waves a red undershirt?
Sheriff: Williams is a dangerous radical! And he killed a policeman!
Reporter: Williams is a poor bird who had the tough luck to kill a colored policeman in a town where the colored vote's important.
____
If these had been antisemitic slurs, would that have gone unremarked?
Eric,
Another one of your unfounded assertions, rebutted by empirical evidence. The Hays Code was in place from 1934-1968. It was honored more in the breach than in its observance. “The Grapes of Wrath,” made in 1940, graphically depicted social injustice and the poverty caused by capitalism. “The Oxbow Incident” (1943), castigated mob justice and the lynching of three innocent men. :Bonnie and Clyde,” released in 1967, glorified the exploits of two bank robbers, and depicted the lawmen who finally apprehended and killed them as brutal and sadistic. “Call Northside 777,” (1948), related the true story of an innocent man who was sent t prison based on a lying witness, Although the romantic comedies of the 1940s avoided nudity, the dialogue was often very risqué, with multiple double entendres. In “Gilda,” Rita Hayworth performed a semi-strip tease as she sang a very risqué song, “Put The Blame On Mame, Boys.” If the Hays Code was being enforced, these movies would never have been released. As you usually do, you will ignore the actual evidence which refutes your ideologically driven opinions.
I could name numerous movies which rebut your false thesis, but I have to get to court.
But focusing on the problems with individual films is kind of beside the point. The main argument is that the social product of Hollywood during that period served to maintain the existing social order and a vision of what social relations should be like.
I linked to a Michael Parenti lecture on the propagandistic nature of entertainment media already in this discussion.
Since the one who keeps claiming nobody has provided examples to substantiate the argument apparently is not going to actually listen to that lecture, or read Parenti's book Make-Believe Media: The Politics of Entertainment, which goes into even greater depth on the subject, let me quote here from the lecture, which someone fortunately happened to have partially transcribed on their blog. (Parenti covers similar material on the opening of the book.) The lecture was focused more on tv and films from the late 1970s and the 1980s, but the principles are clearly also applicable to earlier films.
(1) Individual heroics predominate over collective action. There’s almost no collective action. There’s almost no story or drama where people organize together and do something for themselves. There are one or two exceptions. When they do and there is collective action, they are usually led by some hero who has to spur them on and really do the whole thing himself.
(2) Free enterprise is the best economic system in the world. That’s a message which is not necessarily telegraphed so much as it is presumed. Certainly there’s nothing positive ever uttered about alternative systems in the entertainment media.
(3) Private monetary gain is a central and worthy objective of life, although those who are too wickedly greedy—the Dynasty guys and Dallas fellows—they can meet with disapproval....
(4) Workers are beer guzzling regular Joe’s. I mean they’re good-natured and all that, but really not very bright, ... they’re almost always incapable of leadership and of acting as agents of their own lives. One wonders really where labor unions came from class bigotry is a very common form of bigotry, and it remains totally unchallenged, unlike gender bigotry or race bigotry which at least is challenged today. The practices and forms of class bigotry go on in abundance in the media and remain unchallenged.
(5) Affluent professionals in almost all programs are considered much more interesting than blue-collar or ordinary service workers. There are many more of them as principal characters.
(6) Women and ethnic minorities are really not as capable, effective or interesting as white males.
(7) In cop shows, the police and everyone else should be given a free a hand in combating the large criminal element in America using generous applications of force and violence without too much attention to constitutional rights.
Btw, if LFC is still here,
I had forgotten about this info on the production of The Caine Mutiny (Bogart version).
From Wikipedia:
"The film differs from the novel, which focused on the Keith character, who became secondary in the film. The film instead focuses on Queeg. Kramer 'mollified the Navy' by modifying the Queeg characterization to make him less of a madman, as portrayed by Wouk, and more a victim of battle fatigue. Studios did not want to purchase the film rights to Wouk's novel until cooperation of the U.S. Navy was settled. Independent producer Stanley Kramer purchased the rights himself for an estimated $60,000 – $70,000. The Navy's reluctance to cooperate led to an unusually long pre-production period of fifteen months."
...
"The Navy was initially uncomfortable with both the portrayal of a mentally unbalanced man as the captain of one of its ships and the word 'mutiny' in the film's title. After Stanley Roberts' shooting script was completed and approved by the Navy after 15 months of negotiations, the Department agreed to cooperate with Columbia Pictures by providing access to its ships, planes, combat boats, Pearl Harbor, the port of San Francisco, and Naval Station Treasure Island for filming. Dmytryk recalled in his memoir that after 'noisy' protests from the Navy subsided, the film production received wholehearted cooperation. This included the conversion of two soon to be decommissioned destroyer/destroyer minesweepers....
An epigraph appears on screen immediately following the opening credits that reads: 'There has never been a mutiny in a ship of the United States Navy. The truths of this film lie not in its incidents, but in the way a few men meet the crisis of their lives.'"
The fact that there were a few films that did not strictly adhere to all of the requirements of the Hays code does not mean that the vast majority of the thousands of films produced in that period also did not follow the rules. (And we are talking here about the 1930s and 1940s, not the 1960s when the code's influence had significantly ebbed.)
Eric
I have some thoughts on certain of your points but they'll probably have to wait until tomorrow as I'm quite busy today.
Eric,
Really interesting what you've dug up and it seems accurate to me.
One or two more points: women in the 30's and 40's Hollywood films can be "bitchy", can be treacherous, or can be sweet and submissive, but they almost never are executive or brilliant. There are no Hannah Arendts portrayed and there are no Michelle Bachelets (twice Chilean president, ex UN Human Rights Commissioner). I'm sure Marc will dig up a few exceptions, but 95% of the movies were like that.
I suspect that there was a lot of placement (hidden advertising) in those movies, not only of cigarettes as I mentioned previously but also of certain cars, of certain fashions in clothes, especially women's clothes. If my suspicion about hidden cigarette promotion is true, then Hollywood is responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths from lung cancer.
s. wallerstein,
I am a film fan. I have seen most of the films Susselman listed.
Over the years, I have included several of them among my favorites, even top 5.
However, I am also able to see their shortcomings, and see the role they were playing for the establishment.
It's possible to marvel at the majesty of the Vatican, Versailles, the Schönbrunn, and The Hermitage (all of which I have visited) while also being horrified by the human suffering on which they were built and by which they have been maintained.
Eric,
I hear you.
Marc's attitude and that of Professor Wolff puzzle me.
I am quite capable of recognizing that Heidegger was a Nazi and valuing Being and Time (insofar as I understand it) as great work of existential philosophy.
My favorite thinker is Nietzsche, but I will not deny that he justified slavery and scorned democracy.
I read Schopenhauer, but recognize that he is a misogynist and that the only "generous" gesture in his life was to lend his opera glasses to Prussian snipers who were firing at demonstrators during the 1848 Revolution.
I can't see why Marc can't recognize the obvious defects of classic Hollywood films and at the same time enjoy them and why Professor Wolff has to put down critics of the same films
instead of recognizing the validity of much of that criticism and at the same time sitting back with his popcorn to enjoy the movies.
To s wallerstein and oor willie:
Thanks to s wallerstein and oor willie for their comments in this thread. The comments were measured and reasonable and were nonetheless meet with blatant anti-intellectualism and an unrelenting hostility to the political left. Go figure.
Thanks, Christopher. I guess a side benefit of risking remarks on a largely unmoderated blog is that it affords one a little insight into what it must be like to engage in a political career.
By the way, it's oor wUllie, i.e., a "u" not an "i", like a favourite cartoon character of long standing in a certain part of the world.
Well, it’s not Hollywood, but it is the BBC. Anyway, I’ve just come across this, which I imagine is not something most of the readers of this blog would ordinarily encounter, but which does seem relevant to this particular discussion. (To pre-empt triumphant claims to be exposing its origins, Conter is an explicitly left-wing site.)
In one place, the critic of the production says,
“How do we explain the strange reversal of the historical record in MQS, where Knox, the real agent of social transformation, is usurped by a reactionary? And why is there so little appetite for telling Knox’s own story in modern Scotland.”
More largely, it has something to do with how Presbyterianism has tended to be presented to the world, especially in a place where it had a very large role.
And so, for what it’s worth:
https://www.conter.scot/2023/1/12/knox-was-right/
Christopher Mulvaney,
Thank you for your kind words of encouragement.
“There’s no such thing as an anti war film”
s. wallerstein,
Edward Bernays, the evil genius of propaganda/marketing (and nephew of Sigmund Freud) played a pivotal role in the campaign to get the majority of Americans smoking.
This interview by Bob Garfield of Harvard historian Allan Brandt discusses this:
"Bernays went to the Hollywood studios and asked them to portray characters that smoke and brought cigarettes into the movies in an intense way. It didn't just happen. It’s just an unbelievable story. Almost no one smokes in 1900, especially not cigarettes, and by 1950, 1960, we're very close to a majority of all adults smoking."
https://bullypulpit.substack.com/p/bully-pulpit-crime-of-the-century-b26#details
The following quote is from
https://smokefreemedia.ucsf.edu/history/timeline
"From the late 1930s through the 1940s, two out of three top adult movie stars advertised cigarettes while also smoking on screen. In one year alone, tobacco companies agreed to pay stars at least $3.3 million (in today’s dollars) for their advertising services.
Most of these cross-promotion deals were brokered by the large movie studios, which held their stars under ironclad contracts. In return, the movie studios gained national ad campaigns promoting the studios’ stars and plugging their latest movies — all paid for by the tobacco companies."
Here's vintage Ronald Reagan advertising Chesterfields. There are plenty of similar ads featuring other big stars.
https://tobacco-img.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/20084607/slideshow_7-1024x710.png
The tobacco companies even enlisted large numbers of doctors and medical school faculty, as discussed in this public health journal article co-authored by Brandt:
"In the 1930s and 1940s, smoking became the norm for both men and women in the United States, and a majority of physicians smoked....
By the mid-1930s, Philip Morris, a newcomer to the market, took the use of health claims a step further, designing a campaign that used a new strategy of referring directly to research conducted by physicians. Both in magazines targeted to the general public and in medical journals, Philip Morris claimed that their cigarettes were proven to be 'less irritating.'
...Philip Morris—armed with papers written by researchers that the company had sponsored—attempted to use 'clinical proof' to establish the superiority of their brand. Specifically, Columbia University pharmacologist Michael Mulinos and physiologist Frederick Flinn produced findings ... although other researchers not sponsored by Philip Morris disputed these findings....
[S]ocial commentator Bernard Devoto described the exhibit hall of the 1947 American Medical Association (AMA) convention in Atlantic City, where doctors 'lined up by the hundred' to receive free cigarettes. At the 1942 AMA annual convention, Philip Morris provided a lounge in which doctors could relax and socialize."
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1470496/
Eric,
Thanks. That confirms my intuition.
“The 16-year-old girl’s once-beautiful face was grotesque.
She had been disfigured beyond all recognition in the 18 months she had been held captive by the Comanche Indians.
Now, she was being offered back to the Texan authorities by Indian chiefs as part of a peace negotiation.
To gasps of horror from the watching crowds, the Indians presented her at the Council House in the ranching town of San Antonio in 1840, the year Queen Victoria married Prince Albert.
‘Her head, arms and face were full of bruises and sores,’ wrote one witness, Mary Maverick. ‘And her nose was actually burnt off to the bone. Both nostrils were wide open and denuded of flesh.’
Once handed over, Matilda Lockhart broke down as she described the horrors she had endured — the rape, the relentless sexual humiliation and the way Comanche women had tortured her with fire. It wasn’t just her nose, her thin body was hideously scarred all over with burns.
When she mentioned she thought there were 15 other white captives at the Indians’ camp, all of them being subjected to a similar fate, the Texan lawmakers and officials said they were detaining the Comanche chiefs while they rescued the others.
It was a decision that prompted one of the most brutal slaughters in the history of the Wild West — and showed just how bloodthirsty the Comanche could be in revenge.
S C Gwynne, author of Empire Of The Summer Moon about the rise and fall of the Comanche, says simply: ‘No tribe in the history of the Spanish, French, Mexican, Texan, and American occupations of this land had ever caused so much havoc and death. None was even a close second.’
He refers to the ‘demonic immorality’ of Comanche attacks on white settlers, the way in which torture, killings and gang-rapes were routine. ‘The logic of Comanche raids was straightforward,’ he explained.
‘All the men were killed, and any men who were captured alive were tortured; the captive women were gang raped. Babies were invariably killed.’
. . .
‘One by one, the children and young women were pegged out naked beside the camp fire,’ according to a contemporary account. ‘They were skinned, sliced, and horribly mutilated, and finally burned alive by vengeful women determined to wring the last shriek and convulsion from their agonised bodies. Matilda Lockhart’s six-year-old sister was among these unfortunates who died screaming under the high plains moon.’
Not only were the Comanche specialists in torture, they were also the most ferocious and successful warriors — indeed, they become known as ‘Lords of the Plains’.
They were as imperialist and genocidal as the white settlers who eventually vanquished them.”
From “The truth Johnny Depp wants to hide about the real-life Tontos: How Comanche Indians butchered babies, roasted enemies alive and would ride 1,000 miles to wipe out one family.”
No doubt Eric, s. wallerstein, Chrisopher Mulvaney, Ph.D., will exonerate the Commanche - they were just defending themselves against American imperialism, after all.
there are contradictions everywhere?
"Were the globalists racist? In a fascinating chapter, Slobodian reports
how someone like Wilhelm R ̈opke, who was an outspoken opponent of Nazi
Germany’s anti-Semitism and who had to emigrate after Hitler’s Machter-
greifung (seizure of power), after World War II identified with the most
disgusting racist tropes to justify South African apartheid and denounce de-
colonialization and majority voting in the United Nations." (streeck)
"As far as I can see, some of those films such as Citizen Kane, Grapes of Wrath and Modern Times don't fit Adorno's thesis."
If representative movies of the era like Citizen Kane, Grapes of Wrath, and Modern Times don't fit Adorno's thesis, then why should we take the thesis seriously? So some (many?) movies of the era served to inculcate the values of the system in which they were made. So what? That's a thesis so boring as to verge on tautological. Was there a film industry at the time, has there ever been a film industry at any time, that wasn't guilty of making movies that did that?
GJ,
It's boring because in the almost 80 years since Dialectic of Enlightenment first appeared, it's become almost common sense.
The U.S. was a much much more innocent society 80 years ago and people trusted the authorities and the powers-that-be in a way that is difficult to remember today.
Marc, check out Sand Creek, the Wiyot massacre, and the California Genocide for a start. Back in the day when the Comancheria was a thing a distant cousin took off for Texas and disappeared.
aalll,
I am fully aware of U.S. atrocities committed against Native Americans, including the Sand Creek and Washita massacres, the Trail of Tears evacuation of the Cherokee from Georgia, and Wounded Knee. My comment about the Comanche was in response to Eric’s comment about the Searchers, and John Wayne’s remark that the Comanche were not even human. The movie was based on actual events which occurred in Texas, and Wayne’s view was shared by other Native American tribes, including the Sioux, who despised the Comanches for their cruelty. The history of the Indian Wars was not all one-sided, and tribal warfare and rivalries between different tribes had occurred for centuries before Europeans began immigrating to North America.
By the way, my wife and I saw the Fogelmans last night. At the end of the movie there is a cameo with David Lynch playing John Ford, the director of The Searchers, as well as other classic films - The Grapes of Wrath, Stagecoach, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Mr. Roberts, and The Quiet Man (John Wayne’s best performance, as a retired boxer returning to Ireland). The Fogelmans will probably win Best Picture at this year’s Oscars.
Correction: The Fabelmans
A short anecdote about human nature and biased opinions we sometime have and do not question. On Friday night, the potluck group that my wife and I belong to had a “movie night” which I proposed in order for members of the group to see the movie “Nine Days” which I have been praising on this blog. In the movie, there are two Black characters, the protagonist and another character. After the movie, I was speaking with one of the members of the group, a professional photographer whom I have referred to in prior threads. He told me that he grew up in central Detroit, and he was the only Caucasian in his classes. He became friends with a Black student in one of the classes and they were friends for several years, until around 1967. One day the Black student told him that they could no longer be friends. He asked, Why? The Black student told him that his parents were prohibiting him from being friends with any Caucasians. He responded that they could still be friends, he should just not tell his parents. The Black student told him that if he tried to continue to be his friend, he would beat the crap out of him, and would have his Black friends beat the crap out of him as well. That ended the friendship. He told me that despite his emotional pain at being judged based on his skin color, he never held it against any African-Americans in his private life or his work.
I was frankly stunned by this story. I am not so naïve as to be unaware that there is anti-Caucasian hostility among some African-Americans. And I can fully appreciate its genesis. But, when it comes to parents forbidding their children to associate with other children based on their race, I always assumed this would only occur with Caucasian parents against Black children, not Black parents against Caucasian children. Now, some may rationalize this and say in light of police brutality against innocent Blacks, the institutional racism which exists in our society, etc., that the Black parents in this case had good reason to forbid their son from socializing with a fellow Caucasian student. But the Caucasian student had as much right to be judged as an individual, and not based on the color of his skin, as any Black person, and generalizing about a person’s character based on the color of their skin is wrong and indefensible, no matter who does. it. I was surprised to learn that these two Black parents did something that I had assumed only Caucasian parents did.
It doesn't surprise me at all.
Check out Bertrand Russell's "Fallacy of the superior virtue of the oppressed".
Or W.H. Auden's lines:
"those to whom evil is done
do evil in return".
s. wallerstein,
I guess, but it is still disappointing. I expect people to learn from their mistreatment and oppression - and the truth is that many do, but not all, which portends a never-ending cycle of oppression and retaliation.
Something else happened at the movie night that surprised, and to some extent disappointed me. I had been praising the movie “Nine Days” for several months as one of the most creative, imaginative movies I had seen in several years. I was even so impressed by it - which I had randomly selected from our library - that I purchased several copies on Amazon and sent them to relatives and friends as Christmas and Hanukkah gifts.
All of the members of our potluck group are well-educated and generally well-read individuals. Several are business people, one is a retired automotive engineer, one is the professional photographer I have referred to, who has had shows exhibiting his photography. I warned the group that the opening of the movie is very enigmatic and that it will take awhile for them to figure out what is going on, and I was looking forward to discussing the movie and its plots and themes after it was over. The movie has no violence, no nudity, no profanity, but has what I thought was an intriguing plot. Well, to my surprise and disappointment, only one of the viewers – the photographer – figured out what the movie was about, and he figured it out rather early. None of the others understood the movie, what its point was, if any. Several were bored. The retired engineer said the he thinks in linear, straight forward terms, and he found the movie confusing and too convoluted and aimless. One of the business women, even by the end of the movie, had no idea what the protagonist was doing. I did not think that discerning the plot was rocket science. I have known these people for over 30 years and I would never have anticipated their reactions to this movie. This experience has changed my perspective about art and communication, and how different individuals, even intelligent individuals, interpret the same experience. And I still think that “Nine Days” is a great, thought-provoking move, but you have to be patient and open to its avantgarde approach.
The s. wallerstein comment to which my last comment was a response has mysteriously disappeared.
Here's the comment again.
"A never-ending cycle of oppression and retaliation".
Yes, that's the history of humanity.
Maybe it’s because you’ve caught me reading—again—some of Sheldon Wolin’s pro-democracy essays in his “Fugitive Democracy,” but it seems to me that by defining human history as “A never-ending cycle of oppression and retaliation” what’s erased from that history are all the moments of innovative liberatory effort, efforts which again and again elicit retaliative oppression from the politically, economically, and culturally powerful. Yet surely it’s because people again and again have sought to make their world better that constitutes the only grounds there are for optimism of the will despite the pessimism of the intellect?
oor wullie,
I don't deny that some social systems are more decent than others and that Denmark is a more decent place to live than North Korea or Qatar.
My point is that people being people cycles of oppression and retaliation will reoccur under the best of circumstances and that no "innovative liberatory effort", in the practice, not in theory, is free from elements of oppression and retaliation.
Who would have imagined in 2008 when the U.S. and much of the rest of progressive humanity
was celebrating the election of Barack Obama, the first non-white U.S. president and probably in his original intentions (judging from his book Dreams from my Father) a genuine
progressive that he'd be followed in office by Donald Trump and all he represents?
And there's plenty of retaliation behind Trump, that's clear. I also note that when progressives, as I see them here in this blog, speak of their dreams, they're not dreaming of Medicare for all, but rather of Trump in jail, that of, their own form of retaliation aka justice, but of course everyone considers their retaliation to be just.
Admittedly, s.w., it’s hard to avoid pessimism. Who’d have thought that the Barack Obama (a genuine ‘progressive’?) would have started his days as President picking targets for drone attacks? And who’d have thought that so many ‘progressives’ would have spent the last many years so narrowly focussed on the awful trump? But there are surely those who don’t think of droning others and who are into such things as medicare for all, or from my perspective, saving the NHS from the Tory govt., from the actually existing Labour govt. in waiting, and from privatisation/americanisation. And so much else. Who do not define themselves or their goals as retaliatory?
PS I’ve long ceased to understand what progressive now means.
Best wishes.
In the period between Obama's election and his inauguration I read his autobiography (in Spanish, it was in the public library in Chile) and as I recall, he talks about the struggle of the Palestinians, about that of the Vietnamese, about his anger about racism in the U.S. (he narrates how he broke up with his white girl friend because she questioned why blacks are always so angry), and about U.S. imperialism in Africa, using the term "imperialism".
That was a while ago and as you said, he became Mr. Drone as president.
The pressures on a president are incredible. I can see how Gabriel Boric, the current Chilean president and ex radical student leader and congressman, has tried to be "reasonable" and "moderate" and is constantly attacked from the right as if he were Hugo Chavez. If the president of a minor country such as Chile is subject to such pressures,
one can imagine the pressures that the president of the U.S. faces.
Boric was elected one year ago with 55% in the second round and now is down to 30% support in the polls. The ability of the powers that be to manipulate public opinion far outweights that of the left to convince people through rationality. The right has invented a "crisis of security", crime, crime, crime, crime, crime, illegal immigration, illegal immigration, illegal immigration, Mapuche terrorism, Mapuche terrorism, Mapuche terrorism and drums that in very effectively until it becomes common sense and anyone who questions that is in favor of social breakdown.
What is the top best-seller in Chile? Prince Harry's autobiography of course, which appeared translated in Spanish the same day that it was launched in English.
The left has to start from there and it's not easy.
s.w.,
There is a vast difference between Black parents retaliating against decades of institutional racism by prohibiting their son form being friends with a Caucasian fellow student and Americans seeking what you refer to as “retaliation” against Trump. One can support Medicare for all at the same time as demanding that justice be done by proving that no person, even an ex-President who sought to bring down our democracy,, is above the law.
Amazing what a distraction two natural disasters in a month
can be! Given the examples on "radical social change," I'd point out that given a century or so and five republics, things may work out but the connection between numerous heads rolling as well as decades of war and reaction and Macron seems a bit tenuous. Ditto the assertion about Civil Rights which has seesawed for a few centuries. The gains of the 1960s began in the 1930s and are still not secure (Shelby County, 303, etc). Ditto labor. Pinochet and the Chicago Boys did some radical things but hardly for the good (IMO). Brexit seems radical, how's that working out? Even the hardly radical New Deal and Great Society (as well as the ACA) provoked quite a fascist reaction.
Marc, Alan Ladd's "Proud Rebel" was on Comet last night and the Lost Cause ideology as subtext is obvious and typical of most of the westerns I've seen that reference the CW. The problem with any list is that the relative handful of standouts to folks like us tend to be the exception to ~40 - 50 K films produced in the time period represented by your examples.
The Comanche Nation consisted of a number of bands and one being enslaved adopted or murdered was somewhat random (e.g. war leader Quanah Parker's mother was abducted as a child and Quanah adopted a white child who had been abducted by Apaches and who was then taken by Parker's band. BTW, Parker was wounded at Adobe Walls, the battle where Billy Dixon made his famous 1500 yard shot with a .50 cal. Sharps, killing one of the attackers and ending the raid (Bat Masterson was also there).
Of course the problem with the sentiment expressed in The Searchers is that the Comanches' response to their lands being invaded by pesky white folks is all too human - e.g. consider the current behavior of Russian forces in Ukraine (and the Russians weren't even provoked. We are the species that we are, not the one some of us would prefer.
s.w. I think this piece, especially the bit on "Cloudsplitter," speaks to some of your concerns.
https://scheerpost.com/2023/01/16/russell-banks-john-brown-and-the-american-soul/
aalll,
I find it absolutely incredible that you could complain about “The Last Rebel” as a “Lost Cause” movie. There is absolutely no racism in the movie; no manifest destiny propaganda; no anti-Native American message. It is a story about a father seeking to find a medical cure for his mute son. It is amazing how some ideologues will find something to criticize in just about anything. Next, you will claim that “Bambi” was intended to promote gun rights of hunters.
Marc, I never asserted racism, Manifest Destiny, or anti Native American memes in the film, just the nobility of the South and the churlishness of Northerners. The scene near the beginning of the film could have been done in ways that made the point without the Lost Cause subtext. Southern nobility and suffering at the hands of mendacious damn Yankees is a constant in American film from the beginning.
(BTW, my fifth great grandmother as a young woman was captured by Shawnee Indians during the French and Indian War but managed to escape after a few weeks (I hold no grudge). Fifth great granddad served in that and the Revolutionary Wars and got a land grant.)
You might want to read the various antebellum slave codes to get a better sense of life for Black (totalitarian)and white (authoritarian) folks back then. Also bear in mind that Dunning, et al had won the day prior to film being a thing so most folks didn't know better and, of course, Northerners didn't care and Southerners wouldn't have paid to see films that were more accurate. Writers began glorifying the West before it was "old." Wyatt Earp was friendly with early film producers and stars and Bat Masterson had a newspaper column in a New York Paper. The last to die often get the last word; Elizabeth Custer died in the 1930s and Josephine Earp died in the mid 1940s.
aaall,
The Virginian, by Owen Wister, which I had to read in high school, promotes that myth you speak of, the Southern gentleman, always courteous with and attractive to the ladies,
courageous and manly.
I see that they made several movies based on the novel and even a TV series, none of which I saw after having been exposed to the book at an early age. I have no idea if they rectified the stereotypes in the movies or TV show.
aalll, s.w.
So, there were no courteous Confederates, or churlish Northerners? All Confederates were sinister, and all Northerners were humanitarian, and a movie or book which says otherwise is promoting a “Lost Cause” agenda? Give me a break.
There were polite Nazis too, even polite SS members, but you'd be a bit suspicious about a whole genre of fiction and movies featuring polite SS members.
Several people who comment on this blog offer their superficial perspectives on matters of art and history as deep thinking. But, as Groucho once said, “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.” And sometimes a novel or movie about a former Confederate soldier, who moves to Wyoming and becomes a rancher – written by a novelist who grew up in Philadelphia - is just about a fictional former Confederate soldier who moved to Wyoming and raised cattle.
It's a basic principle of literary and film criticism that the meaning of a work transcends the author's intention and thus, whatever Owen Wister intended when he wrote the Virginian,
that is not the only meaning of the work.
s.w.
Wister's The Virginian (which I have pb copy of but have done no more than dip into) virtually created the archetype of the strong, chivalrous, laconic Western hero.
Wister was a good friend (and, if I recall correctly, Harvard classmate) of Theodore Roosevelt. Among Wister's novels is something called _Philosophy 4_, set at Harvard and with a quite blatantly anti-Semitic theme. (Haven't read it.)
Just as you have a feminist criticism of Jane Austen (who had never heard of feminism or that women had rights) or a Marxist criticism of Balzac (who had never heard of Marxism or probably of the idea of class struggle) or a psychoanalytic criticism of Hamlet (although Shakespeare did not "intend" to portray Hamlet as ambivalent about his father's death), so too you can
criticize the concept of the Southern gentleman in early 20th fiction and movies and analyze the stereotypes about the North and South and indirectly about the Civil War the works portray.
Bourdieu’s Refusal
John Guillory
"And this is that famous human freedom which everyone brags of having, and
which consish only in this: that men are conscious of their appetite and ignorant of the causes by which they are determined." -Spinoza
Maybe this has something to do with how we engage with movies, etc.?
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