By pure happenstance of the calendar I always remembered my
parents’ anniversary; it is November 29th, the day after my
birthday. In some years Thanksgiving, my birthday, and their anniversary fall
three days in a row. That tends to impress itself on a child’s memory. I
remember it still. So, my birthday yesterday immediately made me think of their
anniversary today, and I realized that this one would be their 70th.
Somehow that seems improbable, though doubtless not as improbable as it would
seem to them were they here to contemplate it. My dad died in 2000 and my mom
in 2001.
The note on back says "age 15 and 17"
Needless to say, it was a different world in
1947. My mom Robina was 19 and my dad Richard (almost always Dick) was 21.
Today we actively and loudly discourage people that young from getting married,
but back then nearly half of all marriages were among women and men those ages
or younger. They were on the tail end of the GI Generation, but still a part of
it. As a matter of definition, the GI Generation comprises those old enough to
have served in WW2 (even if in fact they didn’t) but too young also to have
served in WW1 or for it to have been their formative experience: i.e. the birth
years 1905 to 1928. (The GIs were preceded by the so-called Lost Generation
[roughly 1884 to 1904] and followed by the so-called Silent Generation
[1929-1945].) My father was born in 1926 and my mother in 1928. They met in
Morristown High School. During the war my dad served in the USMS, aka Merchant
Marine; he and my mom continued to date whenever his ship was in a nearby port.
He was discharged in ’46 and they married a year later. My sister was born the
day before North Korea invaded the South in 1950, which fortuitously gave my
dad an exemption from being recalled to military service.
There are always exceptions to broad generalizations, of
course, but the GI Gens tended to be flawed in characteristic ways that their
kids (Boomers) were all too eager to point out to them. Whatever their flaws,
however, they also commonly had virtues that are sadly uncommon today, such as the
blending of stern values with a ready willingness to give second chances. An
example: my dad was a builder, and one time in the ‘60s some neighborhood teens
slashed tires on construction vehicles on his job site. The damage was $800,
which was a substantial sum at the time. A neighbor had seen the boys and
reported their names to my dad. Today, teens vandalizing a job site this way
almost certainly would be reported to the police in “by-the-book” fashion.
Instead, my dad called their fathers. He didn’t want the kids’ parents to pay
for the tires; he wanted the boys to pay for them from summer jobs. They did,
too, and their parents backed my dad up. No police ever heard a word about it.
My dad shook hands with each of the boys when the debt was paid off, and he
truly regarded the matter as closed. It is so hard to imagine this happening
today; almost certainly there would be cops called, there would be lawyers
hired, and there would be parents vociferously defending their teens regardless
of what they thought the truth might be.
My mom, like my dad, was hardworking, versatile, and
competent without intending any social statement by it. She worked as an
executive secretary (the term was not yet verboten) on Wall Street in the ‘40s,
was a stay-at-home mom in the 50s, and opened her own real estate brokerage in
the ‘60s. A bubbly persona often led people to underestimate her, which always
was a mistake. Despite his tough façade, my dad was a soft touch, while my mom
was anything but.
The combination worked well throughout their marriage as a
small incident illustrates. In 1998 it was their habit to have breakfast at the
nearby Chester Diner. One morning they were chatting away in their usual
fashion when a couple in a neighboring booth got their attention. “Excuse me,”
said the woman in the booth, “but are you two married?” “51 years,” my mom
answered. “Really? We ran out of things to say to each other 30 years ago,” was
the reply. They never did run out of things to say.
The stone chapel off of Bernardsville-Mendham Road
where the wedding took place in 1947 still exists. However, back then it was an
unassuming little structure in the middle of the woods in a municipality not
known for being upscale. Today it is a secondary building on a private 9-acre
estate with a mansion built in 2002. The property happens to be on the market
at this time, but at a price of $4,495,000 and with annual property taxes of
over $83,000 I’m afraid I’ll have to pass. It’s a tad out of my range.
The first wave of comic book
superheroes and their screen adaptations (often as serials) was in the 1930s
and 40s when economic upheaval and the spread of tyranny left ordinary
individuals feeling anything but empowered. It’s hard not to think something
similar is behind the surge in the genre’s popularity in the 21st
century; even though the obstacles and imminent threats (most of them anyway) are
less existential now than 80 years ago, they seem even less tractable. The
heroes and antiheroes of our fantasies tell more about us than perhaps we
really want to know. The latest big budget production in theaters is Justice
League.
The majority of critics have
not been kind to Justice League. The
film undoubtedly has shortcomings, and I’ll address a big one before briefly
explaining why I like it anyway.
In ancient Western culture
the longest-running philosophical war (fought with true rancor) was between the
Epicureans and the Stoics, the former identifying pleasure as the core value
and the latter duty. In reality, the practical life prescriptions of both were
nearly identical. The Epicureans advised moderation and doing the right thing,
for in the long run those are the most pleasurable; overindulgence and bad
behavior lead to pain rather than pleasure. The Stoics advised the same thing but
because it’s your duty, damn it, whether it’s pleasurable or not. The
Epicureans regarded Stoics as joyless and hypocritical. The Stoics regarded the
Epicureans as decadent; they feared that enshrining pleasure as the highest
goal posed a threat to civilization. Neither ever did quite get the hang of the
other, for they had fundamentally different ways of thinking even though they
arrived in the same place.
What on earth has any of this
to do with a comic book superhero movie? The ancient feud links oddly to two
ways to arrive at being a committed hero or villain (or bystander for that
matter) whether in life or the movies. The choice can be made and pursued
earnestly, taking oneself seriously (stoically) along the way. Characters in Zack
Snyder’s films (300, Watchmen, Sucker
Punch, Man of Steel, et al.) take themselves very very seriously even when
they joke, which they do only sparingly. Alternatively, one can pick a side for
fundamentally aesthetic reasons (in epicurean fashion) without taking oneself
seriously or losing a sense of the absurd. Characters in Joss Whedon movies (The Avengers, The Cabin in the Woods,
Serenity, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, et al.) are very much of this type. The
two types tend to regard each other respectively as coldly uptight and dangerously
frivolous – unfairly in both cases. Director Zack Snyder developed Justice League but left for personal
reasons before finishing; the movie then was handed to Joss Whedon to carry
over the goal line. The whole movie in consequence has a split personality. True,
the Flash is very much a Joss character and Superman very much a Zack, but the
others waver back and forth discordantly.
That caveat notwithstanding (and
we even can allow that real personalities are not always consistent), the movie
gives as much backstory and motivation as one reasonably can expect in two
hours for a sizable ensemble of characters. The film even manages to make
Aquaman cool, which is no small feat in itself. Plot in a nutshell: an
ancient enemy named Steppenwolf in the distant past was defeated by an alliance
of Atlanteans, Amazons, and mankind (with some help from the old gods). He is
back and still holds a grudge. He plans to recover three hidden artifacts that
he can use to turn earth into his kind of place, which isn’t a place healthy
for ordinary folks. If this sounds similar to General Zod’s plan in Man of Steel, you’re right. To stop
them, Batman, who is on a guilt trip over his actions in Batman v Superman that led to the death of Superman, teams with Wonder Woman and they recruit the
Flash, Aquaman, and Cyborg. They get a notion about using one of the artifacts
to try to restore life to Superman.
Have we seen all the CGI
wiz-bang before? Yes. In broad outlines, is the plot original? No. But the
elements are handled competently and the characters are better motivated (and
better conflicted) than in the Marvel ensemble movies – though for reasons not
relevant to this review I still give the edge to the Marvel movies. No one
expects a comic book movie to be Shakespeare, but the dialogue has wit, the
action paces well, the plot follows a comprehensible arc, and the imperfect
heroes do what they have to do. Further, in an era when the news is dominated
by the transgressions of dirty old men and naughty teachers, the script isn’t
afraid to acknowledge adult sensuality as not being inherently offensive and
perverse. (When did that become brave?) In short, while not a great film, it is
good for its type. In the DC movie-verse since Nolan’s Batman trilogy, only Wonder Woman is better.
It remains to be seen if
audiences take to it. Ticket sales for the opening weekend are disappointing. My
own experience wasn’t encouraging. While I caught a far-from-prime-time 10 PM
showing on Sunday night, it was nonetheless spooky that I was – no kidding –
the only one in the theater. There were quite a few cars in the lot when I left
so presumably other screens in the multiplex had viewers.
Yesterday the New Jersey
Roller Derby (NJRD) went the extra mile – or perhaps 26.2 – and hosted an all-day
derby event at their home track in Morristown including various mixers, a Junior
Division exhibition bout, a men’s match, and their own regularly
scheduled bout. Even a dedicated derby fan doesn’t always have a full day to
commit to spectating derby, so I arrived in the evening in time for the last
minutes of the men’s match in which the New York Shock Exchange (in this
context the “home” team) handily defeated the Quadfathers 280-67, and then remained for the final regular bout of the day.
Recap – New Jersey Roller Derby All Stars (NJRD) vs.
Garden State Rollergirls Jersey City Bridge and Pummel (GSR):
The two teams have very
similar styles and defensive tactics, which showed in a point spread that was
never safe at any point. (Two of the GSR skaters, Voldeloxx and Bitty Boom Boom,
formerly skated for Morristown teams.) In the first jam #44 Maulin Rouge
overcame stiff resistance with her usual élan and put the first 9 points on the
board for NJRD. #394 Voldeloxx scored first for GSR. Both teams were very good
at maintaining blocking walls and breaking up the opponent’s formations. Rarely
did jammers find any holes simply to slip through, though fancy footwork by #11
Tuff Crust Pizza for NJRD and #1865 Ivy Lethal for GSR more than once got them
past on the outside or inside line. More often jammers had to slog through firm
blocking and pick themselves up from knockdowns. In the first half hour NJRD
built and continuously maintained a lead that wavered around 20 points, with
the half-time score at 72-56.
In the second half, GSR
chipped at the NJRD lead with “hit it and quit it” jams until a game-changer power
jam by #12 Tess T Rossa tightened up the score to 89-84. #14 Ragna Rok took
NJRD over the 100 mark and Tess T Rossa did the same for GSR with NJRD keeping
a few point lead. The reversal came when a 14 point jam by Ivy Lethal put GSR
in the lead 122-116 for the first time with 9 minutes left in the game. GSR
added points in hit-and-quit jams. A 20 point by Tess T Rossa seemed to seal
the match, but then was countered by a 22 point jam by Tuff Crust Pizza. It
wasn’t enough to catch up as the clock ran down. GSR took the win 139-153.
There always were pets in and
around the house when I was growing up: dogs, cats, even a skunk. During the
few years of my ill-fated marriage the pet population reached a peak of two
dogs, two cats, one parrot, and six horses, though strictly speaking the horses
weren’t in and around the house. However, none of the animals in my childhood
was mine per se: they were family
pets. Of the marital pets, only one cat was mine: all the other animals were
quite thoroughly hers. Nor did I seek a pet at any time during the long single stretches of adulthood. While I like domestic animals well enough, they struck me from the
beginning as an unnecessary restraint on spontaneity; the needs of a pet must
be taken into account before making any other plans and I figured I had
responsibilities enough. Yet, despite this predisposition, I have owned one or
more cats (to the extent one ever owns cats) continuously since 1985. One thing
just led to another, as so many things in life do, and there they were.
My cabin in the woods 1985: rather less
scary than The Cabin in the Woods (2012)
Once again, it wasn’t my plan
to be a cat person. Back in the spring of ’85 I was living in my cabin in the
woods. It wasn’t much, but it was mine; it was the first real estate that was
in my own name. Meanwhile, my sister Sharon recently had moved back from
California and had rented a little place on a side street in Randolph. A stray
cat showed up at her door in midwinter and she took it in. Sharon’s hippie days
were gone but not forgotten, so she named the cat Dandelion. Two months later when
the cat had four kittens she struggled to find homes for them. She kept one
(Tiger Lily) but found a taker only for one more; so, I pitched in and took
two. (I wasn’t the best of brothers, but I was occasionally not terrible.) So,
I became a cat person. One of those two, a Sylvester-lookalike named Succotash,
was with me for 20 years.
In 1998 my parents were
gifted two kittens, also from a rescued stray. They named the
kittens Maxi and Mini. My dad died in 2000 and my mom in 2001 so the cats
became mine. I flirted with renaming them Charm and Strange just so I could say
“We all have our little quarks,” but in the end I stuck with Maxi and Mini
since the names had become pleasantly ironic: Mini had grown huge while Maxi remained
small and lanky. A miniature table with feeding bowls still says “the three
cats” on it, though Succotash died in 2005 and Mini in 2015. Maxi endures. If
he recovers from his current troubles, he has a good chance of reaching his 20th
birthday next spring.
Return of the hunter
For most of his life Maxi was
the least affectionate cat I’ve ever owned. He would tolerate without fuss being
picked up or petted, but he never sought it out and would strut off as soon as
you let him go; he wouldn’t run away, but he would go away. He was just barely
tame and would disappear into the woods for up to three days at a time. (Mini,
by contrast, never in her life wandered out of sight of the house.) More than
once I gave him up for lost only to see him trotting back toward the house
carrying a chipmunk or dragging a rabbit. He had a special fondness for
rabbits, some of them almost as big as himself. (Yes, he gets his regular
shots.) As he grew older his disappearances grew shorter. Only once in the past
year did he vanish for a full day, and it has been four years since he brought
back anything bigger than a mouse. It has been two since he brought back
anything at all. He liked to nap next to Mini (who was an expert napper), and
when she died he became much more personable to humans: particularly to me.
Since 2015 he daily has sought out attention.
The troublemaker I've nicknamed Ragamuffin
At 19 he is an old cat – the average
lifespan for a housecat is 16 years – but he doesn’t know it, which causes him
trouble when he encounters other cats. Trouble happened a few days ago when I
left the door open behind me while carrying a bag of trash to the bin next to
the garage. Nothing seemed amiss when I came back in, so I grabbed my keys and went
out to lunch. When I came back, bowls of cat food and water were spilled on the
kitchen floor; I looked for Maxi and found him in a bedroom. When I returned to
the kitchen a (seemingly well-fed) calico cat was standing there; she apparently
had come in during the garbage run. I opened the back door and let her out, but
some drama had occurred around the bowls. I didn’t think much about it until
yesterday when Maxi plainly had an infection from a fight wound above his left
eye. I received a few minor fight wounds in turn while getting him into the carrying
case for the trip to the veterinarian, who drained the infection. I’m still
hot-packing it regularly and Maxi still is lethargic, but he has been through
worse in the past.
Maxi after the vet
I’m hoping Maxi recovers and
shares my company for a good while longer. However, while the felines in my
life have given me more pleasure than pain, I won’t be getting another. After
all, were there a “next one” he might outlive me. Of course, so might Maxi. One
never knows for sure about such things.
Last night the Jerzey Derby
Brigade (JDB) hosted long-time adversaries the Backyard Bullies, hailing from
Westchester County NY, at JDB’s home track in Morristown NJ.
JDB scored the first points
with jams by #235 A-Bomb and #3684 Californikate. #1952 Queen Elizadeath II,
skating with exceptional speed, put the first points on the board for the
Bullies. From the beginning blocking was strong on both teams with a noticeable
difference in styles: JDB somewhat more often held its formations and the
Bullies were somewhat more often flexible – but only somewhat in each case. JDB
gained a substantial, but still vulnerable, lead thanks to a 15 point power jam
by Californikate followed by a 13 point jam by #8 Lil Mo Peep bringing the
score to 50-4. The points were gained against stiff opposition with #1234
Revengela taking down Lil Mo Peep and solid double-teaming by #5 Aldanamite and
#555 Aya Yai. The Bullies added points of their own with #84 Moonie Sweets
scoring against hard blocking. The first half ended with JDB leading 101-32.
The second half began with
A-bomb adding 20 points for JDB in a power jam. Effective blocking on both
sides led to take-downs, pile-ups, and at least one injury. #92 Partygirl
Accelerator repeatedly had successful jams for the Bullies as did #1952, which
finally began to chip at the nearly 100 point lead built up by JDB. Queen
Elizadeath II put the Bullies over the century mark to 190-105. Californikate,
despite a hard takedown, then took JDB over 200 at 206-110. Neither team let up
as the clock ran down. In the final jam of the game #1952 Queen Elizadeath II
broke out to be lead jammer but #8 Lil Mo Peep was close behind; both scored
points against stiff blocking with Lil Mo Peep putting the last points on the
board. Final Score: 254-161 in favor of
JDB.
Nonfiction occupied my
bedside table the past couple of weeks. Brief reviews
are below of four that are worth a read:
**** ****
The Fate of Rome: Climate, Disease, and
the End of an Empire by Kyle Harper
What is there to say about
the fate of Rome that hasn’t been said before? Didn’t Gibbon say it all more
than 200 years ago? He surely said a lot, but not quite all. (The six-volume Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire is
still a superb read though.) Gibbon and two centuries of historians after him
focused on internal social, political, and economic factors in combination with
a rising barbarian threat. Those were indeed crucial ingredients in the
slow-motion collapse, but in 1976 William H. McNeil in Plagues and Peoples argued that microbes gave a final push over the
edge. In the pre-vaccine/pre-antibiotic ancient world, diseases were
demographically devastating.
Kyle Harper reports on recent
DNA sequencing from Roman graves that confirms most of McNeil’s suspicions
about the identity of various ancient epidemics. The Antonine Plague was indeed
smallpox and it ravaged the Empire (Marcus Aurelius himself died of it) at a
time when the barbarians on the Rhine and Danube were on the offensive. Even
more devastating was the Plague of Justinian in the 6th century,
which has been identified as bubonic plague and which killed half the
population. Bubonic plague was particularly deadly because the primary vector
was not person to person but from flea-bearing rats to people. Rats were as
prevalent in the countryside where most of the population lived as in the
cities, so the plague was not, as most plagues were, mostly an urban event. (The
lethality was demonstrated again and for the same reason when it returned as
the Black Death 800 years later.) The demographic and economic destruction
wreaked by it put a permanent end to hopes of recovering the Western provinces.
As his own contribution to
the literature, Harper then tells us that one more pressure on the Empire has
been much overlooked: climate change. The Roman Empire’s great centuries (1st
century BCE through 2nd century CE) were during the Roman Climatic Optimum, an
unusually warm and wet period ideal for expansive agriculture. Climate then
swung erratically due to natural causes (volcanoes, solar variability, ocean
currents, etc.) before settling into the Antique Little Ice Age after 450 CE.
This curtailed agriculture and interacted unexpectedly with diseases: fleas
that died in hot summers, for example, survived when summers were cooler.
Harper explains the various methods including soil, plant, and ice samples by
which ancient climate can be reconstructed. Harper doesn’t make the mistake of
attributing Rome’s decline specifically to climate just because it is his own
special interest, but he tells us it was one more nail in the coffin.
**** ****
Ancient Rome on 5 Denarii a Day by Philip Matyszak
The Roman Empire ended as all
things do but it had a good run. What was it like actually to live there? Books
purporting to explain everyday life in ancient Rome have been around for
centuries, but they typically are such dry reading that it’s easy for one’s
eyes to glaze over. Matyszak gets around this with his travel guide aimed at a
21st century reader who presumably has access to a time machine. He
starts us off not in Rome but in Alexandria in order to experience the trip to
the city. We get all-important practical advice, such as to use traveler’s
checks instead of cash. Yes, really. Shipping companies doubled as banks: their
reps in Alexandria would give you scrip in exchange for your coins and this
could be exchanged for gold at the company’s office in Ostia (Rome’s port
city), thereby making you less of a target for thieves on the trip.
By internal evidence, the
guide puts us in the time of Severus when the city is at its height. Matyszak
tells us how to get a room in Rome, how to buy fast foods, where to find public
toilets, how to use the public baths, where the best brothels are, what
neighborhoods are dangerous after dark, and so on. And, of course, he tells
about the must-see sites, many of them still in existence today in various
degrees of repair, such as the baths, aqueducts, and temples. There are a lot
of them. We are told what is polite and what is rude in Roman society, how the
sexes interact, and how the classes interact. There also is the list of handy
phrases.
All-in-all it is a pleasant
romp and a painless way to get at least some inkling of what it was like to
visit the ancient city. If you do happen to be a time traveler, it will save
you many denarii, too.
**** ****
The Great Leveler by Walter Sheidel
Walter Sheidel, professor at
Stanford, studies economic inequality from Neolithic times to the present. His
book is neither a polemic against inequality nor a defense of it (though his
predisposition to “against” is evident), but rather a well-researched examination
of it over time. It is full of charts and Gini coefficients. In general, he
finds inequality tends to increase over time in any and all types of societies
with any and all types of governments provided economic trends are stable or
trending upward. This, he contends, has to do with the relative scarcity of
capital to labor and with the intertwinement of wealth and the governing
elites. The exceptions to the general rule – the times of great leveling –
involve “the four horsemen”: total war, Revolution, systems collapse, and
plague.
Smallish wars won’t do it.
Wars with full mobilization do, for they involve intense labor demand in the
military and in industry and intensive taxation to pay for it. Also mass
destruction of property in war naturally costs the people who own the property.
They have more to lose, so massive destruction has a leveling effect.
Revolution on a grand scale as in Russia and China in the last century certainly
lowered inequality but at a staggering human cost. Collapses, such as those of
the Roman Empire and the Tang Dynasty, wiped out the old aristocracies and thereby
increased equality until the new aristocracies built their wealth up. The economic
collapse of the Great Depression also was a leveler by destroying the asset
values of those who had assets. Plagues, which formerly carried off large
percentages of the population (upward of a third of population of Europe in the
Black Death) actually lead to increases in median living standards (rather than
just killing or bankrupting the rich with no benefit to anyone else) by spreading around
the assets of the deceased and increasing the demand for labor. The greatest
leveling in history took place in the time spanning the two world wars, the
Depression, the accompanying Revolutions, the creation of social welfare states
that the crises made possible, and the rebuilding after the wars. Yet, after
the rebuilding was done (the 1970s) inequality again ticked upward including in
social democracies.
Whether one views inequality
as a problem in itself or no problem at all if other incomes are rising or
stable, the book provides a treasure trove of data. Sheidel doesn’t anticipate
change anytime soon and worries what it might look like if it does arrive: “For
thousands of years, history has alternated between long stretches of rising or
high and stable inequality interspersed with violent compressions… All of us
who prize greater economic equality would do well to remember that with the
rarest of exceptions, it was only ever brought forth in sorrow. Be careful what
you wish for.”
**** ****
A Billion Wicked Thoughts by Ogi Ogas and Sai Gaddam
Anyone who ever has, say, looked
up “2018 Silverado” online only to find Chevy ads on the next five websites he
visits knows that Web searches are not secret. In general, only AIs designed
for commercial purposes bother to read them, but they are vast data sources for
anyone who wants to use them for other purposes.
Neuroscientists Ogas and
Gaddam analyzed 55 million sexually oriented search terms compiled by Dogpile,
broke them down into categories, and tried to see what these searches tell us
about human sexuality. The answers are creepy but intriguing. Some of them are
totally unsurprising, such as the conclusions that men overwhelmingly search
for visual porn while online romance novels, albeit raunchier than the
softcovers sold in stores are almost exclusively accessed by women (though
there are female targeted porn sites). The plots of those romances are most commonly
fiercely un-PC, and then there are the female-targeted EroRoms about romances
of gay men. Porn searches – whether straight or gay oriented – are often counterintuitive
to put it gently: Yes, teen cheerleaders are popular searches, but the fifth
most popular male search term is “grannies” and the third is “mom?” Beyond the
(almost mundane) BDSM searches there are amazingly specific fetishes: the authors
only slightly exaggerate when they remark, “Type in ‘Find people who have sex
with goats that are on fire’ and the computer will say ‘Specify the kind of
goat.’” The findings show a divergence in male and female interests greater
than whatever you think it is, and the nuances of straight and gay searches
offer material on which to ponder.
Though the reader may have
the urge to wash his or her hands after putting down the book, it offers a
perspective on and information about our fellow human beings (and perhaps
ourselves) that might never be shared in a public forum. Online, in presumed
privacy, we reveal our wicked ways and thoughts.
Anti-heroes long have
been a staple of literature. Shakespeare is full of them. So, for that matter
is Homer: it’s hard to put Paris in a good light. So, too, in cinema, e.g. the
pre-code Night Nurse (1931) at the
end of which (*spoiler*) Barbara Stanwyck’s likable gangster boyfriend bumps
off the scheming and unlikable Nick (Clark Gable) and gets away with it; in the
context of the film, this is a happy ending. Hitmen and hitwomen have held a
particular fascination for screenwriters. Why? I surely have no definitive
answer, but one may note that even the most committed defenders of the law and
the state chafe under their restrictions. In Civilization and Its Discontents Freud explicitly argues that
thwarting the death instinct’s destructiveness is inescapably a cause of
individual unhappiness but is a price worth paying for civilization.
Identifying with lawless screen characters for a couple hours is a harmless way
vicariously to take one’s death instinct out for a walk.
The occasion for the above prelude is a DVD spin
yesterday of a commercially successful 2008
flick about an organization of assassins. I missed it back when it was in
the theater. Before visiting it, however, I decided first to revisit a film noir classic of the genre.
**** ****
This Gun for Hire (1942)
Though gangsters who count
murder among their crimes long had been stock figures in movies, this is one of
the earliest films to make a specialized hitman the central character. Philip
Raven (Alan Ladd) delivers his lines and his bullets deadpan. Unlike what the
trailer for the movie indicates, he doesn’t kill for the love of it or for no
reason, but when he has a reason (usually it’s just a job) he is utterly
ruthless and has no hesitation at all about eliminating witnesses who just
happen to be in the wrong place; in one scene he reaches for his gun when a
little girl speaks to him as he leaves a job, but then puts it away when he notices
she is blind. Yet, real human beings – even psychopaths – are not robots and we
quickly see that there are some emotions behind the expressionless face. He
likes cats, for one thing.
Willard Gates, a corpulent
personal representative of a corrupt and treasonous wheelchair-bound
industrialist, hires Raven for a job but pays him in marked bills so he’ll be
arrested. Raven evades arrest but then seeks out Gates for revenge. Gates is a
curiously drawn character who behaves outwardly as a womanizer, though his
relationship with his chauffeur/aide is plainly the closer one. Raven’s path
intersects that of nightclub performer Ellen Graham (Veronica Lake) who is
working for the feds undercover, a job she must keep secret even from her
policeman boyfriend. She, too, is after Gates. The feds suspect that Gates’
boss is selling secrets to the Japanese – this is 1942.
The modestly budgeted movie in
so many ways is incredibly hokey and timebound, and yet it has flashes of
deeper sophistication than most recent films of its type. It’s a very 1940s
combination of opposites, and it’s an appealing one. Some critics dislike the
way Raven opens up to Ellen in one scene, giving us a Freudian partial
explanation for his nature: he was severely abused growing up. I think it’s a very
useful scene that helps put his odd relationship with Ellen in context; despite
her youth he relates to her (again, the trailer misleads) as someone maternal,
not romantic, which is why he seeks her approval at the end.
Still a Thumbs Up.
**** ****
Wanted
(2008)
The movie adaptation
balks at the full nihilism of the source. In Mark Millar’s extremely violent
comic book series “Wanted” (2003-2005) Millar confirms every nightmare you ever
had that the world at the very top is run by a sociopathic criminal elite. The
members are unabashedly self-serving. They assassinate for their own selfish
motives. The narrating character enjoys his psychopathy, his criminality, and
his membership in that elite. He scoffs at the reader for being a sucker.
In the movie “Wanted”
the assassins are an ancient order working on behalf of Fate, whose designs can
be deciphered from the weave of fabric. (This presumably is from classical
mythology’s tapestry of the Fates.) They might not understand why certain targets
are chosen for them to kill, but they assume they are serving some higher
purpose. Nonetheless, they have no qualms about criminal activity or collateral
damage while doing it. The movie is almost as brutal as the comics, but the
change in motivation changes everything. I still liked it despite its
philosophical timidity, but it requires a high tolerance for movie
violence.
Wesley (James McAvoy) is a meek
nobody in a nothing job with an abusive boss. His girlfriend is cheating on him
with his best friend, and he pretends not to know it rather than face the
reality. He encounters Fox (Angelina Jolie) who tells him he is the son of an
elite assassin and that he has inherited many of his father’s innate
abilities. She introduces him to the order of assassins presided by Sloan
(Morgan Freeman) and takes over his training. Wesley no longer is a nobody. Bullets
fly, cars crash, trains wreck, fists swing, and blood flows.
Despite the alterations from
Millar’s comic, I’ll give it a cautious Thumbs Up. While the movie got mostly
positive reviews from mainstream critics, Peter Bradshaw (“You
could gargle bitumen and bin-juice for half an hour, and it couldn't leave a
nastier taste in your mouth…”) at The
Guardian was not alone in his reaction.
**** ****
After watching both movies I
still don’t have a definitive answer about their appeal to audiences, but they
are cathartic in their own way. For the next few days I have no wish to see
anything more savage than, perhaps, Disney’s Tangled.
