Obama as Empire-Builder: Important Words from John Dear

From John Dear: Last week at West Point, President Obama cited his reasons for sending more troops to Afghanistan.  Obama spoke eloquently.  He insisted our cause is just.  It is necessary, it is crucial.  Killing Afghanis is the way to peace.  The oxymorons rolled off his tongue.  Apparently, it does not matter that wars are bankrupting us. Or sending our young to die. Or leaving them psychologically impaired. Or degrading the environment. Or, bitterest of ironies, breeding a new generation of terrorists.

It doesn’t seem to matter that most Americans want the war to stop, that most Afghanis want us out. It doesn’t even matter that only a hundred Al Qaeda members remain in Afghanistan. The rest have taken refuge in Pakistan. Our new war president says the war must continue.

81 Films of the Decade

In the year 2000 I was 25 and single, finishing up a Ph.D., stressed out of my tree, working with a small NGO on peace and non-violence issues, trying figure out what it was that I wanted to be when I grew up.

Now as 2010 approaches, I’m a month away from being 35 and married, I haven’t published the Ph.D., but am less stressed, working as a writer and doing some other things, and trying to figure out what it is that I want to be when I grow up.  The consolations of life this past decade have been the same all along – the richness of friendships old and new, the life-force that is sparked when I look at natural beauty – of mountains or oceanscapes or my lover’s face, the enlightenment or delight that is present when I read a well-calibrated sentence or hear astonishing music, turning over to go to sleep, and the feeling of potential that I still hope for every time the lights go down when I’m at the movies.

This has been a tough decade for many of the people that I presume read this blog – we’ve been confronted by the unintended side-effects of globalization, and taught to see life as a way to be daily afraid; we’ve experienced an economic tightening that came as a shock; we’ve all been angered by this politician or that; some of us have even lost a great deal in the wars that are still being fought.  At the same time, of course, some of us have seen peace come to places no one ever believed were ripe for such change.

Antichrist, John Cusack, the End of the World and the Re-birth of Art

Over at The Film Talk we’ve just posted our next podcast episode in which we discuss three films that I think are hugely important – ‘Antichrist’, ‘Gaia’, and ‘2012′.  If you’re interested in the end of the world and how to stop it; the politics of nation-building; the difference between provocation and mental illness; and in hearing about a film so good it’s close to miraculous, check it out here.

Violence and Sentimentality in the Movies: Which is More Dangerous?

Richard Brody at The Front Row has this interesting reflection on violence and the movies/media in general:

“There does seem to be a great deal of research on the question of violence and of quantity of viewing; but very little, if any, on the subject of treacle. I do worry about the effect of violent films on children, but I worry just as much about the emotional debility, the sentimentalization of kids who watch only child-friendly works. In general, children watch much too much television and see far too many movies in which everyone smiles too much and talks as if they’re on sugar highs—or, simply, where there isn’t enough ambiguity or mystery. The oversimplification of life into tangy bite-sized morsels is as much of a danger, for individuals and generations, as stoked aggression.”

I’m fascinated by the critique of sentimentality – and while some may legitimately suggest that I am guilt of such over-egging the emotional pudding myself, I think it’s entirely appropriate.  At the same time, the way we tell stories in which violence plays a significant role requires sustained attention.  My starting point: Is there a qualitative difference between the violence of ‘Inglourious Basterds‘, ‘The Dirty Dozen’, ‘Lethal Weapon’, ‘Saving Private Ryan’, ‘Home Alone’ and ‘Cache‘?  Of course there is.  What’s the purpose of movie violence?  What are its effects?  Can it be cathartic?  Can it nurture more real-world violence? And I’ve come to the view that the human race can no longer afford representations of the myth of redemptive violence for entertainment’s sake alone.  If you’ll join me in the comments section, let’s talk about why.

The Beginnings of What Happens Next

My friend Dawn Purvis has made a surprising intervention in a debate about the causes of the conflict in northern Ireland.  Henry Kelly writes about it here – if you’re interested in the politics and peacemaking of my home society, I’d encourage you to read this article.  If you’re not, but you care about how we handle history, and especially how it has become almost impossible for truth to get past party interests, I’d recommend it just as much.  Are we willing to remember things that make us look bad if it helps other people to heal?

 

Clint Eastwood’s Moral Imagination, Or Why Glenn Beck Should Read More Speeches

It’s that time of year again – you know, when Clint Eastwood releases a trailer for a movie that looks fascinating and completely different from the last thing he did, and your triple reactions run something like this: 1: Hmmm, Clint’s got a movie coming out – didn’t we just see ‘Gran Torino’ five minutes ago?; 2: Hmmm, it’s got Morgan Freeman playing Nelson Mandela in it – how come no one ever thought of that before?; 3: Hmmm, it’s a movie about the 1995 Rugby World Cup - how come no one ever thought of that before?  Well, no one ever thought of making a gripping film out of the ancient ‘old racist bloke in Detroit has his heart melted by a Hmong family and saves the world through non-violent atonement metaphor before singing a jazz song over the early end credits’ plot either.  So I’m rather excited about ‘Invictus’ – biopics are always a risky proposition, but there’s an implication in the trailer that this one might do more than retread what we already know or think we know.

Mandela has rightly become an unimpeachable moral figure, but it’s par for the course to ignore what he actually stood for.  Mandela is more than a mascot, though our culture might prefer him this way; but he actually has things to say.  Icons of moral authority who act toward the common good are often treated this way: I was astonished yesterday to see the digital wall montage that Glenn Beck uses to underline the gravity of what he’s saying – accompanied by the invocation ‘Speak Without Fear’, an image of Dr Martin Luther King, Jr appeared, leading into Beck denouncing (yet again) concerns about climate change, and announcing his willingness to go to prison for the right to eat steak.  We might imagine Dr King would agree that particular cause doesn’t exactly warrant a new letter from a Birmingham jail.

In fact, we might also imagine that a reading of Dr King’s actual thoughts about the actual world would surprise Glenn Beck and his audience.  In fact, and let me not be misunderstood: it’s kind of obscene for a man who recently imagined aloud his fantasy to poison Nancy Pelosi and joked about President Obama setting the people on fire to attempt to inveigle his way into the legacy of non-violence enacted by a man who, there can be little doubt, Beck would be denouncing if he were alive today.  But if his audience were being exposed to what he actually said about the world, I’d tune in every day.  Come to think of it, that’s not a bad idea – maybe we could organise a campaign to encourage talk show hosts only to use images of moral leaders if they’re going to spend two minutes every show actually quoting what they actually said.  Beck could begin with some reference to Dr King’s ‘Giant Triplets of racism, extreme materialism and militarism’; maybe he could just agree to read a paragraph a day from his ‘Beyond Vietnam‘ speech…

Lest I get ahead of myself, let’s get back to the movies – I’m hopeful that the Eastwood/Freeman Mandela is more than a cliche, and resists the urge to laze in platitudes.  Clint’s last movie showed something about quiet authority, and portrayed a radical idea: that justice or peace sometimes costs its proponents a very great deal; it did this without barnstorming speeches or spelling it out; it gets better in the memory the more I think about it.  Eastwood’s Walt Kowalski in ‘Gran Torino’ felt like the culmination of every iconic character Clint has played – a man with no name/Dirty Harry all grown up and full of regret for past mistakes, who makes a choice to invert it all, and live beyond the narrow circle of selfishness.  Mandela made that choice a long time ago – who knows what Clint’s vision of a moment in his life might bring?  We might be about to see a film about an iconic figure that transcends the typical mistakes of making him unreachable to the rest of us; we might actually see a portrayal of Mandela that tells us something about leadership rather than merely represents him as a kind of political pop star.

Restorative Justice Will Change the World: Find Out How

Quick heads-up on a fantastic event taking place north of LA in January.  My friends Elaine Enns and Ched Myers are running their annual Bartimaeus Co-operative Ministries Institute – five days of intensive engagement with questions of spirituality, restorative justice and peacemaking.  Ched and Elaine will be joined by Rev Nelson Johnson of the Beloved Community Center in Greensboro, NC; and Rev Murphy Davis from the Open Door Community in Atlanta, GA.  These are seriously cool people – with huge experience in radical activism for the common good. It’s not stretching a point to say that they are at the cutting edge of civil rights work today.

The Institutes that Ched and Elaine host are renowned for engendering life-altering experiences; axes of change for the participants who find their hopes revolutionised as answers to the questions of how change can be achieved in the world become clearer through a week of interaction with others who are committed to the same path.  The Institute takes place from January 18th-22nd, 2010, in the character-filled village of Oak View, where I have spent many a day soaking up the atmosphere of one of the funkiest neighborhoods I know.  It’s limited to 30 participants, so you know you’ll have a meaningful and very substantial experience – but you probably should apply as soon as possible.  And whether or not this will enhance your visit, I should probably tell you that I may be around for some of the time too – I’m co-facilitating a film & spirituality retreat on the weekend of 22nd-23rd January in Los Angeles, beginning just a few hours after the Institute ends, so you may find that you can go to the Institute and get to the our retreat too.  More information from BCM here.

The Teeth of Gilgamesh

I saw ‘Jaws’ in a cinema for the first time, having grown up afraid of swimming due to repeated pan-and-scan broadcasts on probably all four of the terrestrial channels granted me in childhood, but never having the opportunity to see it projected on a canvas large enough to do it justice.   I was struck by my friend and co-host’s suggestion that the story of Roy, Ricky, Bob and the shark is a Holocaust film in disguise – evoked by the the city fathers’ refusal to acknowledge the danger, the fleeing of the powerless bathers from the sea, the conversation about the delivery of the A-Bomb, and, perhaps most Freudian of all, the fact that gas is used to kill.  As is often the case, my co-host impressed with his mysterious ability to find things in movies that no one has said before, or that at least don’t show up on the first page of a Google search.  I’m fascinated by his suggestion that the most obvious analogue to ‘Jaws’ in Spielberg’s work may be ‘Schindler’s List’, and I’m sure we’ll talk about this on TFT soon.

It dovetails with the fact that, for me, ‘Jaws’ has become the archetypal film for representing the meaning of violence in our shared culture – there are obvious parallels between the death of the shark and the origin of the myth that order can be brought out of chaos by the application of more chaos found in ‘The Epic of Gilgamesh’.  In ‘Jaws’, paradise is restored through ultimate force; in that regard it looks like the story that catechises pop culture, unquestioned.  So it’s troubling, and philosophically compelling.  It also happens to be crafted from a rock that looks to me like the secret headquarters of perfect film grammar; so it’s an utterly compelling, character-rich tale.

I leave you with three questions:

1: What other films do you, the TFT community consider to be philosophically deeper than their reputation would suggest?

2: What films other films can you think of that end with the opposite of the climax in ‘Jaws’, with a negotiated settlement rather than killing the bad guy?

3: Where did Murray Hamilton (below) get his jackets?  And does anyone know if you can buy them in Tennessee or North Carolina?

Why I Think He (Maybe) Deserves the Nobel Peace Prize

I know it’s been a week and a bit, which in the contemporary mode suggests that ancient history has already passed under the bridge since the Nobel Committee announced its decision, but I wanted to comment about Obama’s Prize.  I think it’s telling that half the country is outraged that their President is well thought of by the outside world; and there’s a lot of obvious projection going on, both from those who miss their fallen emperor – you, know, the guy who invited people who wanted to kill us to ‘bring it on’ – and from those who think his successor is their ideal version of what a man should be.

Now, for me, President Obama is a pretty representative approximation of what kind of good man could possibly be elected to the Presidency; he seems to have made it there with his soul intact, and you have to empathise with him when he is targeted at the hands of the astonishing double-mindedness of his opponents, whose complaints seem to be as follows: He hasn’t saved the world in his first ten months in office, he hasn’t ended the wrong-headed war his predecessor started eight years ago, he hasn’t disavowed his blackness (which some people appear to want him to do), he’s too smart, etc.

I’ve met a few Nobel Laureates over the years – being on the fringes of the northern Ireland peace process meant that you tended to bump into them from time to time.  Between my alma mater and home city, we produced four of them in just over two decades – Mairead Corrigan Maguire, Betty Williams, David Trimble and John Hume.  Very few people would dispute that each of them deserved to be so rewarded.  Mairead and Betty co-founded the Peace People with the journalist Ciaran McKeown, a truly grass roots mass movement that transformed the streets of Belfast in the mid-1970s into space for non-violent public protest against the use of violence.  People mobilised in tens of thousands to make their voices heard, gathered in a movement sparked off by the killing of three of Mairead’s sister’s children.  When they were awarded the Nobel, they had not brought peace to the streets of my home town.  But they had served as a focal point for people’s hope.  Precedents had been set.  And although the Peace People movement came under enormous pressure, and was not helped by either local political parties or the British state, it still works in a grass roots way today.

Two decades later, political negotiators drew up a treaty that offered a structure for relationships in northern Ireland that could be used instead of violence.  Hume and Trimble, the two avatars of northern Irish Protestant unionism and Catholic nationalism, were recognised by the Nobel committee; their political opponents used this as an opportunity to rant then as well.  That was eleven years ago.  Both Hume and Trimble have left the northern Irish political stage, and people who hated either or both of them are now in charge of the government built on the agreement they championed.

But – and this really is the heart of why I think the Nobel Committee got it (mostly) right – the totem for the northern Ireland peace process is not the fact that we now have a broadly stable government, that violence has all but disappeared (with awful, but thankfully rare exceptions), that all the major paramilitary organisations have decommissioned their weapons, or begun the process of doing so, that the police are more accountable than ever and have an enviable (albeit imperfect) record on human rights, and that the opportunity to deal with the past without vengeance exists, even though all these things are true.  No, the totem for the northern Ireland peace process is that, after decades of using violence or belligerence as a political first resort, people decided that negotiation was not a sign of weakness.  Four years of talking got us an agreement.  Nine years of still talking got the agreement implemented.  In the past, there were years when people were killed for political reasons in northern Ireland every single day.  Since 1994, when we started talking, the death toll has reduced to a tragic handful each year.  It is undeniable: a vast number of people are alive today because sworn violent enemies talked to each other.

And this is why President Obama may deserve the Nobel Peace Prize.  Because he is willing to talk first.  Now, he has been saddled with a legacy of war and presides over a nation which has grown too fond of a ’shoot first’ attitude.  He cannot easily extricate himself from business as usual.  But I agree that the Nobel Committee gave him the award because they want to help him.  Complaining that he doesn’t deserve it is both sour grapes, and a misunderstanding of why the Prize is given – sometimes you get it because you’ve done something amazing (Mandela, Mother Teresa, Wangari Maathai, Jose Ramos-Horta), sometimes you get it because you maybe did something that could have been amazing and might have covered a multitude of sins (Henry Kissinger), and sometimes you get it because the Norwegians think you might be something some day.   I think President Obama already is something – just take today, for instance.  His representatives are talking to Iranian diplomats about diverting their uranium to another country for processing.  His predecessor appeared more willing to drop bombs on Iranians than to talk to them; it may only have been the US election cycle that prevented another insane war in the Middle East.  Obama’s presidency, on the other hand, is offering a teachable moment to us all; we might learn that scapegoating our leaders ends up delivering only more violence.  Alternatively, we might give them a chance to take the high road, and to avoid the mistakes of history by doing what we deeply know, but often deny, to be true: talking is better than fighting.  Doing that might mean that we deserve a peace prize one day too.

*Caveat: Because I know some folk might want to take issue with me, let me say this:

1: I don’t think Obama is perfect.  He is not the Messiah.  He is not the Antichrist either.  Neither is George W Bush.

2: There are plenty of areas where I think he is either moving too slowly, or has given no indication that he is going to change some of the wrong directions set by the Bush administration.

3: Obama is not responsible for my choices or behaviour.  I hope we can agree to disagree about whether or not he deserves the Peace Prize.  But I hope we will not disagree that we both have a responsibility to reduce violence wherever we are, including when we’re having a conversation on a blog.

What I Learned from the Devil at the Movies

Yesterday I spent a monumentally pleasurable afternoon in the presence of Satan; in the form of the ridiculous and wonderful performance that Walter Huston (above) gives in ‘The Devil and Daniel Webster’, a film about American history and the mythopoetics of the Yankee soul that deserves to be compared with ‘Citizen Kane’ (and not just because they were both edited by Robert Wise and released by RKO within a month of each other).  It’s an astonishing movie, of the kind that evokes an utterly romanticised vision of pastoral, political and religious life but manages to appear even more realistic for it.  (Story hook?  Poor farmer sells soul to the Devil in exchange for money and crops.  Doesn’t make him happy.)

There’s a hell of a lot more to it than the soul-selling plot point, and I’m writing something more extensive about the whole film, but for now I thought I’d post about what the movie devil looks like.  (I’m also honored to be currently involved in a project with Walter Wink, a theologian and writer who has done more than anyone I can think of to develop an understanding of the concept of Satan as a projection of human evil that is both psychologically healthy and intellectually rigorous, and avoids not only the neurosis that some religious practices can reinforce but also the societal resignation that results when people don’t think clearly about evil.  The fruits of that project should be published in the next year or so; I’ll post details then.  In the meantime, some of you may be interested in Wink’s incredible book ‘Engaging the Powers’, which describes the way in which story/myth is manifested in real-world violence, and how ending the cycle of oppression depends partly on finding a new way to tell stories, and meeting violence with its opposite, rather than pouring gasoline on a fire; this book will, I believe, be read, and its themes practised, for generations to come.)