A man of prodigious fortune, coming to add his opinion to some light discussion that was going on casually at his table, began precisely thus: "It can only be a liar or an ignoramus who will say otherwise than," and so on. Pursue that philosophical point, dagger in hand.

--Michel de Montaigne, Of the art of discussion.



Stab back: cmnewman99-at-yahoo.com


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Any time I want...: Alright, that's it from me for the rest of this month. I have way too much to do at work, and if I don't make a hard and fast rule against blogging I know I'll wind up spending time on it I simply can't afford. So I'm going to make like a groundhog now, not to emerge ere he does. I'll pop my head out on my compleanno and see if I still cast any shadow.

If I'm still alive. And I don't forget.
posted by CMN at 7:40 AM
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See, if you wait long enough, old posts become relevant again. Here's a meme I'd like to see propagated to help this issue get talked about honestly:

A "critical mass" is a quota on the lam.

You're going to hear people accusing Bush of misrepresenting Michigan's program by calling it a "quota." But he's not. Not really. It's Michigan that misrepresents its quota by disguising it, making it gain and lose weight like Robert De Niro changing movie roles, bed down in a different place each year like Saddam, travel under the assumed name of "critical mass." But you know and I know that the phrase "critical mass" means bupkiss if not "we need at least X many." Oh, X won't be the same as last year, we'll keep it a moving target to keep the Bakke police off our backs. We'll use plus factors calibrated to diminish with the added marginal diversity of each admittee until we get a number we're comfortable with. One that's "meaningful." Say it with me, boys and girls:

A "critical mass" is a quota on the lam.

If you want to make the argument that diversity is a compelling value that justifies ensuring a certain minimum number of minority students in each class, fine. Be forthright about it. Call for the overruling of Bakke and its replacement with a rule that says quotas are okay as long as they're done in the service of what you regard as a permissible motive. Let's have a real debate about the real issue.

But spare me the smoke and mirrors.
posted by CMN at 4:36 PM
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Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Dunce.
posted by CMN at 5:57 PM
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Seems Hawkgirl's not into weaving. Go figure.
posted by CMN at 3:36 PM
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Nothing starts your day out right like a nice uplifting poem. I told Diane she should submit this to the radio stations over there. I read somewhere that there's an order requiring them to air anything written in his honor.
posted by CMN at 11:48 AM
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Scenes we'd like to see. Last night we went to see Russian Ark. This film is getting a lot of hype from the critics. And as a technical and logistical achievement, it is indeed amazing. One continuous 87 minute shot wandering around the Hermitage with a cast of costumed thousands bringing the place to life. As pageantry, it's amazing. But pageantry isn't really enough to keep you going for 87 minutes, and while they promise you more than that, they don't really deliver. The first person narrator starts some desultory conversation with a time-travelling European ex-diplomat as they wander through about two centuries of Russian history, but aside from a few provocative throw-away assertions this conceit really doesn't add any intellectual tension that might give the film direction. Not only is there no plot, there's no discernible train of thought. I'd be hesitant to render such a judgment on my own, given that I might well simply be missing implications of things I lack the background knowledge to appreciate. But we saw it with a couple of screenwriters, one of whom is a Russian emigre who most definitely does have the background knowledge. She hated it.

Before going to the film, I had an interesting conversation with this woman. She was talking about the Pianist, and saying how tired she is of seeing graphic recreations of Nazi brutality toward the Jews. Of course, upon hearing a statement like this my antennae immediately go up for latent anti-semitism, but on talking to her further I concluded that this wasn't about that for her at least. She wasn't expressing disparagement of the importance or truth of that story, but rather frustration that while there are plenty of good films about it, the equally brutal story of her own country's suffering during WWII hasn't been told. And she has a point. The civilian Russian death toll from WWII is 18 million. And whether you look at it as a tale of suffering or as an inspiring tale of winning against incredible odds, the Russian experience during WWII ought to be a goldmine of amazing films.

We Americans tend to have a thoughtlessly complacent view of WWII, as though we'd gone over there and singlehandedly defeated Hitler. In fact, the lion's share of the work of rolling back Germany was done by the Red Army. (Which of course is why eastern Europe wound up behind the iron curtain.) This Russian friend went so far as to assert that they would have defeated Germany even if we had never shown up at all, that we came on the scene two years too late to make a difference in outcome. There I have to demur. She's discounting all the material we sent both them and England to keep them afloat, the fact that if Hitler hadn't had to worry about us invading he'd have been able to throw a lot more at Russia (including the Luftwaffe--which as Steven Den Beste reminded me in a helpful email response to my query, was too tied up battling the RAF and 8th Air Force to provide any support against the Russians), the fact that we were also doing the lion's share of fighting Japan... Still, she's right that the bulk of the bloody work in Europe was done by Russia. And of course in some sense Russia had itself to blame for that because of the Stalin-Hitler pact, but that's not the point here. The point is that the Russian people went through mindboggling suffering and achieved an incredible victory. That 18 million civilian casualty figure surely includes who-knows-how-many millions that died because of Stalin rather than Hitler. Which makes the story even more striking. They did everything they did knowing they weren't even really fighting for liberty. They were caught between one regime more brutal than another--in fact, some of them actually did welcome the Nazis as liberators. At first. You know you're in bad shape when Hitler looks like the lesser of two evils.

So how come Hollywood has never told us these stories? (Enemy At The Gates is the only one I can think of, and it's not a serious historical dramatization.) Well, one obvious reason is that during the cold war no one was going to make films glorifying the people of the Soviet Union. Which is a shame. But the other shame--and perhaps the less forgivable one--is that at the same time the intellectual climate among Hollywood intelligentsia was such--still is such?--that no one was interested in making films dramatizing the horrors of Stalinist Russia. Hollywood has built up the McCarthy era into this horrific oppressive purge (those poor people who wound up having to work under pseudonyms), and said nothing about the real purges that Stalin was carrying out in the USSR (those poor people who got show trials and bullets to the skull). By any objective measure--if such things can meaningfully be measured--Stalin was many times worse than Hitler, but there is no endless slew of films dramatizing and documenting this. Only one saying how evil and oppressive were the people in this country who persecuted Stalin's supporters and apologists.

Update: Lest I be misunderstood, I'm not condoning McCarthyist tactics or saying we shouldn't be critical of them. We should. I do object to the way that his hamhanded bullying has been used to serve up the package deal called "anti-communist hysteria," which implies that opposition to communism was--still is--nothing more than reactionary hysteria. And confers a mantle of martyrdom and moral superiority on the Stalinists. FDR conducted similar campaigns of smearing and intimidation against the pre-Pearl-Harbor antiwar movement, and we haven't turned them into heroes.

Again, it's the problem of keeping our shortcomings under the microscope without losing perspective on them. In saying we should focus on Stalin's show trials, I'm not saying that we should be complacent about anything that happens here as long it falls short of that. Perish the thought. When we are defending principles against encroachment, we necessarily tend to exaggerate the magnitude of the encroachment as though it were indistinguishable from utter abrogation. And that's as it must be. As Cyrano said, "He bien oui j'exagere!" "Very well then, I exaggerate! For principle, and as an example to others, there are things a man does well to take to extremes." An encroachment of small immediate practical effect may indeed be indistinguishable in principle from an outright abrogation. And it must be analyzed and criticized as such, because precedents tend to get followed to their logical conclusions. But ultimately when it comes down to making moral comparisons and judgments, we have to factor the practice back in and look at what has actually happened. So I'm all for raking McCarthy over the coals. It's an important task, not least because he did so much to harm the very cause he espoused. But let's also not forget that McCarthy was a model of democratic virtue compared to the guy his victims were working for. Or that the martyrs McCarthy created were working toward the absolute destruction, in both principle and practice, of all the values that we seek to protect by condemning him. I think the same dual perspective is required as we continue to assess and deal with Ashcroft's moves in the present situation.

P.P.S.: I went back to check, and I got that number slightly wrong. Circa 16 million Russian civilian casualties during WWII, on top of 8.7 million military. My source is John Pimlott, The Historical Atlas of World War II. I don't doubt that you could argue over the number depending on how you decide to count it.
posted by CMN at 11:15 AM
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I can't believe it took me so long to find this, which is the Tolkien thread to end all Tolkien threads. I'm way late to this party, but I'm going to have to come up with a worthy contribution...
posted by CMN at 7:40 PM
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Maybe next time. Paola and I just went to see Chicago. This film accomplishes something I would not have thought possible--make Catharine Zeta Jones look less sexy than Liza Minelli. Really. I mean, the comparison is inevitable. You've got the Kander & Ebb, you've got the dark bob, the stockings, the almost-Fosse choreography. You just can't watch the opening All That Jazz number without thinking of Mein Herr. And it just isn't up to par. I happen to have the DVD of Cabaret right now from netflix. I only saw it for the first time recently. And I must have rewatched that Mein Herr number 5 or 6 times. It's just so cool. And Liza--who I was first introduced to in Arthur, and who had never struck me as remotely attractive--is riveting in it. And today I'm sitting there watching Cathy ZJ, one of the most unbearably ravishing women on the planet, and I'm like, "eh." If I had the DVD right now, I wouldn't feel the burning need to see any of it again. Alright, maybe the number in the prison with the six murderesses. But I doubt I'd rewatch it more than once. I thought Rene was great, and I enjoyed her performance, but again there was nothing I feel like I have to see again. Paola saw Chicago on stage, and tells me that Bebe Neuwirth was amazing in the role of Velma. And I can imagine that. I've only seen Bebe in one film--that really bad one about the teen who's in love with Sigourney Weaver--and I thought her very sexy. Again, not as beautiful as CZJ, but more intruiging, more alluring, more...vissuta. (And I mean that in a good way.) But they would never cast her in a big movie like this, just like Patty LuPone and Mandy Patinkin would never have gotten Evita. Which is too bad. Cause sexiness is not skin deep. The skin is obviously crucial, but it's what you think you glimpse within that makes the difference.
posted by CMN at 7:23 PM
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Matt Welch thinks the French healthcare system has some "excellent advantages." His French commenters beg to differ.
posted by CMN at 9:44 AM
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I had some trouble really getting into the Christmas spirit this year. If only I'd watched this.
posted by CMN at 1:51 AM
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I didn't mind the elves showing up at Helm's Deep, but Naomi Chana did. She has a good point. More I think about it though, I come to the conclusion that the reason the film needed for Haldir to show up was so that someone resembling a major character could die in the battle. Odds like that and no-one important on the good guys' side goes down? Audiences won't buy it. But who else you gonna kill?
posted by CMN at 10:55 PM
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The Guardian sees a rhetorical equivalence between gangster rap and the NRA. Hawkgirl provides a close textual comparison.
posted by CMN at 8:42 PM
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...DOES NOT GLITTER

Alright, time to get the last bit of Tolkien mania out of my system till next year. Before TT came out, I had been trying to understand the character of Aragorn as portrayed in the first film, the better to appreciate whatever arc the screenwriters were trying to draw for him. I concluded that whereas in the book Aragorn’s character is already formed before the story starts, the filmmakers thought it necessary to saddle him with serious doubts about his two main goals in life: the girl and the throne. So the question is: are these doubts--or possible solutions to them--developed in Two Towers? And how?

As for the first of the two, the answer is definitely yes. Lot o' doubtin' goin' on. In fact, the doubt finally spreads to Arwen herself, or rather is implanted there by Agent Elrond just the same way he did that bug in Neo’s abdomen. He’d first done a similar job on Aragorn, and we now learn that apparently after the love scene in Rivendell where she gave him the evenstar, there was another one in which he tried to give it back. A break up of sorts, though like the noble jilted suitor that she is, Arwen told him to keep the ring. This gives retroactive meaning to the look that passes between them in Fellowship just before the nine set out, and meshes with his conversation with Galadriel in which he tells her he wants Arwen to take the ship to Valinor.

It helps to understand what the issue is here. In the books, it is explained that Elrond’s family is half-elf. Which is kind of like having dual citizenship--at some point you have to choose which country you want to hold your passport from. Elrond chose elfhood, and he’s eventually taking the ship back to Valinor, which is a very exclusive retirement home run by the Valar and strictly elves-only. (For all this talk about racism in Tolkien, how come nobody notices that it’s mainly practiced by elves against humans? Except Garrett, of course.) Elrond’s brother Elros, on the other hand, chose to become a human and founded the line of kings from which Aragorn is descended. (If this all sounds vaguely incestuous, remember that Arwen is 2690 years older than Aragorn, which should take some of the curse off it. Anyway, you know how royal families are.) But the thing is, by choosing to be human they don’t really become just like other humans. It’s not like that de-Kryptonizer in Superman II. Ol’ uncle Elros lived another 500 years after he made his choice. So if Arwen chooses to stay with Aragorn and become mortal, she won’t even get to do the whole romantic grow-old-along-with-me-and-eventually-we’ll-be-two-trembling-prunes-sucking-face-on-Golden-Pond-together routine. She’ll age and die, but not much faster than the lettering on Aragorn’s sarcophagus will be done in by erosion. This is why Aragorn’s initial “better to have loved and lost” line doesn’t hold a whole lot of weight for Elrond. The “loved” part will last about a hundred years (Numenoreans are pretty resilient for humans), followed by another four hundred of “lost.” And let us now pause amid the glibness to admire the truly haunting and poignant scene in the film that illustrates this point. Done? Alright, now I can mention the two Questions We’re Not Supposed To Ask.

1) Why does Arwen have to become human to stay with Aragorn? Why not remain elf, stick around with hubby till he croaks, then hitch a ride with Legolas to Valinor and spend etermity dwelling in bliss with the relatives? Obviously it’s not a mating issue, else there wouldn’t be half-elves in the first place.

2) If she does have to assume a mortal coil, why couldn’t she just pull a Juliet and arrange some suitable way to shuffle it off at the same time as her love? If she really misses him that much, I mean. Is it that elves just don’t do this sort of thing? It’s not EC?

I don’t know the answers to those questions, and I suspect Tolkien didn’t either. If someone else does, please let me know. The best one I've thought of is that while she might do either of those things, it would mean abandoning her children and children’s children. I mean, I presume they intend to have children. Otherwise why go to all this trouble of restoring a bloodline to power? But if that’s the case, it was pretty underhanded of Elrond to conjure this image of her alone for centuries rather than a proud (and amazingly well-preserved) great great great grandmother of kings.

Anyway, we’ll take the premises we’re given and run with them. In the film, Aragorn wants Arwen to take the ticket to ride, because Elrond has brought home to him that she’s in for four hundred years of mourning if she sticks around with him, and he can’t bear to let her inflict that on herself. So he tries to break up with her. After the fellowship is gone, she apparently continues to hold onto the idea that things will work out until Elrond finally gets to her with that two-pronged attack all long-distance lovers have to suffer through: “He’s not coming back for you. And even if he is, do you know what you’re giving up by waiting?” (Oh yes, Paola heard a lot of that too.) Eventually she gives in, and we see her leaving Rivendell with one of those elven processions, ostensibly to waft her soft-focused way to the Gray Havens and catch the cruise to Valinor.

Meanwhile, in Rohan, Aragorn has met everyone’s favorite shieldmaiden. Is he interested in her? Is he thinking about it? On the surface he plays it pretty cool, pretty much like in the book. He’s courtly, but he doesn’t court her. He does do one thing though, that makes you wonder. On the road to Helm’s Deep, Eowyn asks him where the chick who gave him the necklace is. He says that she is leaving Middle Earth with her kin. How does he know? She hadn't made that decision when he left Rivendell. (In fact, if I'm following the chronology correctly, she still hasn't made it.) Last we heard, he was telling Galadriel that he "would have" her go to Valinor, and Galadriel said that choice was "still before her." So is this leap from "should go" to "is going" while talking to Eowyn Aragorn's moment of infidelity, his giving of voice to that part of him that would like to say "I'm available?"

If so, it doesn't last long. Next thing you know, we're smack into the single biggest departure from the book—the warg battle. What is the point of this? Well, it's easy enough to see what the point of the battle itself is. We haven't had any real action since Gandalf smote the Balrog, and there are women out there in need of biological fulfillment. So to be more precise—what is the point of Aragorn's clifffaller? I mean, even people who haven't read the book know he's not really dead. He can't be. He hasn't even done that impression of Jim-Morrison-opening-the-doors-to-the-keep yet. So it's not about suspense or grief. Not really. I think it's really about Arwen and Eowyn. The payoff of having Aragorn nearly die is the two scenes that follow from it. First is Aragorn's wet dream, in which he gets mouth-to-mouth from both Arwen and his horse. It's not clear whether she (Arwen, that is) is all in his head, or whether she really is appearing to him through some sort of elvish love magic. (We see her suddenly wake up back in Rivendell, as though she had been sharing the same dream. And as we recall from Fellowship, their whole relationship has been pretty dreamy.) I think the point, though, is clear. When he's about to snuff it, the thought that gives him will to live is that of Arwen's love. Which ought to worry him, because he's done everything but pack her bags to get her out of Middle Earth. But whether she leaves or not, she's in his soul, and not to be supplanted. Not even by the availability of a lissom princess who wants to show him how good Rohirrim are in the saddle. (See that, Diane? Blondes don't always have more fun.)

The second, very well-done scene is when he makes it to Helm's Deep and Legolas gives him back the evenstar as Eowyn looks on. No words pass between them, but it's all clear. He still belongs to Arwen. Eowyn knows it. He knows she knows it. Though their mutual admiration and attraction remains, the frisson of imagined possibility is gone. What remains for the last film is an explanation of why Arwen decides to stay, now that we've seen her setting out to leave. He won't be able to send her away again, though the pain of knowing what awaits her will remain. I'm not sure how the horse feels about all this.

Next (and last) installment: Theoden and Aragorn--Is it good to be the king?

posted by CMN at 12:33 PM
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What's it going to be then, eh? Oh, my bog. Tonight American Cinematheque is doing an Eastwood/Leone double feature. Including the spaghetti western of all spaghetti westerns, Il Buono, Il Brutto, Il Cattivo. (You don't really need a translation, do you?) But then the Nuart is doing Clockwork Orange at midnight. With some razovat one might viddy all three, though wheeling it to the Egyptian and back of a Friday nochie'd be a sodded bellywelly full of yeckating, what with all those goober mucked ptitsas goolying about Sunset with their sharry squeezing platties and kupetted groodies, fillying the gloopid panhandled nazzes to leave all their gollies in some shoomy peetmeet in hopes of scoring some of the old in out in out.



(Oh, alright. This should help.)

Speaking of the Nuart, I see that the Sins are going to revive their famed Andrew-Lloyd-Webber-meets-Rocky-Horror floor show for one night on the 11th. I once viddied a taped version on their website, droogs. Real horrorshow.

posted by CMN at 12:10 PM
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The blogburst is underway.
posted by CMN at 10:36 AM
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Sorry folks, no porn links in the archives that I'm aware of. But thanks for stopping by anyway. I have to say, though the blogosphere is quite saturated with Tolkienitis these days, I think Andrea wins the prize for sheer number and variety of Tolkien related posts. And lots of other fun stuff, too. She is verily a blogging Valar Queen.
posted by CMN at 8:15 AM
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Josh Marshall asks:

Think of it this way: when was the last time one of our friends -- or someone friendly, rather than unfriendly, to our current policies -- won an election in a major country around the world?

Um, I tend to be pretty shamefully tuned out when it comes to following politics, but even I can come up with an answer to that one. May, 2001. Berlusconi. Or isn't Italy a "major country"? I still think he's making a valid point, though.
posted by CMN at 4:44 PM
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