Glitter and Shine

My first name is Kill and my last name is Joy. Here’s why.

I fret about popular entertainment. I worry that comic-book-style heroes are replacing real-life heroes. I wonder if Hollywood’s imagination drowns out the Abraham Lincolns of the world, and the Martin Luther King, jr’s. As that happens, we as a society, and we as individuals, gorge on mental Twinkies, and we have feeble moral muscles to show for it.

It’s not that I’m particularly bigoted about Hollywood writers. But I’m realistic. The blockbusters that millions flock to see are profit-vehicles. The writers entertain with spectacle, because that’s how you fill seats in the cinema.

It’s laughable to think that most Hollywood writers write movie scripts with pastoral concern about making America better, making its people nobler. Maybe I’m cynical, but it seems that these writers are judged by how much money they make for the studio. And how many studio heads take a long view of America’s future? (My guess: it’s the same number as the number of varieties of fruit can that you buy at a cinema.)

So? Here’s a metaphor. I knew a young prosecutor. He was married to a medical intern, and he had a young son whom he loved. His downfall was consorting with a prostitute. She hooked him by hooking him on crack. One day, he got high with her, and they got into his car, and he drove onto a freeway using the off-ramp. A cop spotted him. Goodbye marriage, goodbye career, goodbye dignity.

Some people compare Hollywood writers to prostitutes. That’s a very loose metaphor, and it over-generalizes. I apologize to the sincere craftsmen among them.

But candidly, their motive is often the same as that category of professional, and so is their pastoral concern for their customers, even if they differ in legality and in method. (By the way, I think the same way about lawyers who talk clients into funding merit-less lawsuits or merit-less defenses to lawsuits. Or about pastors who incubate their own greed with the tithes of their congregation. Perhaps the point is not that Hollywood writers are worse than others; it's just that they're not better.)

To be fair to Hollywood, I know or know of Hollywood craftmen who don’t fit the predatory mold. The writer/director of the indie film Radio Free Albemuth, John Simon, truly believes in the value of the legacy of Phillip K Dick, who wrote the story that the movie is based on. And whatever his merits or demerits, I have heard that Mel Gibson had no idea that The Passion of the Christ would be the blockbuster that it was. He made the movie with his own money, because he believed in its importance.

I don’t know if it’s coincidence, but both of the examples I just gave are movies that have a basis in reality. The Passion of the Christ – of course. But also Radio Free Albemuth. Because the book and movie are a fictionalized account of elements of Phillip K Dick’s life.

But back to the crap. The waste of resources on spectacle is tragic, because a movie can be much more than that. A fine work of fiction can lift up the character. But just like I prefer an analysis of the Bible by a great man, rather than by a great scholar, so great fiction requires a deep writer. That’s why people like Harold Bloom urge the study of the classics over more contemporary fare that will soon fade from memory.

Classic cinema, from when movies were more vitamin and less sugar, often has greater merit than today’s blockbuster: like Robert Bolt's A Man for All Seasons. The history might be doubtful, but the message is great. It’s a cerebral movie.

It has great lines about the rule of law. At one point, Thomas Moore’s son-in-law said, "I’d cut down every law in England to [get at the Devil]." Thomas Moore replied,


Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned 'round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat?

This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man's laws, not God's! And if you cut them down (and you're just the man to do it!), do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then?

Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake!Powerful stuff.

Probably it’s unrealistic to keep our children out of the cinema. But maybe we can make a bargain with them: they can earn a ticket to X-Men. Like this: choose something worthwhile, and make it the price of going to the cinema. Have them read Lincoln's Gettysburg Address or his Second Inaugural Address and talk about it with you before going to a movie. Or the Sermon on the Mount. Or Martin Luther King, jr's Letter from Birmingham Jail. Anything that gives the child a grounding in what is good and real, to counter the tsunami of glitter and shine of the Hollywood blockbuster that he or she craves.

Maybe I’m a crank. Maybe this is an eat-your-moral-vegetables-before-dessert essay. So be it. I dread a generation of children that gets their shallow heroes from today’s Hollywood.

Here is a link to the fine article that inspired this essay: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/09/opinion/09coates.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=x-men&st=cse

Top ten reasons why an adult has to accompany a child into an R-rated movie.

10. To make sure the child doesn’t sneak into a G-rated movie.

9. It’s a form of public shaming for the adult.

8. So they can both be embarrassed.

7. To increase ticket sales.

6. To encourage quality "together time".

5. Because it’s cheaper than a brothel.

4. It’s the Motion Picture Association of America’s gift to pedophiles.

3. So the adult can explain the finer points of what they saw to the child.

2. So the child can explain the finer points of what they saw to the adult.

1. Because after the cow is out of the barn, it’s not too late to close the barn door.

Dickish Me

Am I a dick? Let me count the ways.

I put a circle in the middle of a sketch-pad sheet of paper. I labeled that circle "Dickishness". I spent ten minutes jotting down my every negative trait that came to mind. Every time a fresh one popped into my mind, I drew a spoke away from the circle, and I labeled it with that trait. Some spokes had little spokes extending from them, fleshing out the faults. Whenever I stopped writing because fresh faults stopped popping into my mind, I just sat until more came.

This was not a time to mitigate, justify, or excuse. It was not a time to balance the unhappy traits of my character with the happier traits. It was a time to express my inner dickishness, which otherwise I express only with conduct. It was a time to inventory my faults, lest, overlooking them, I over-esteem myself.

This is what I came up with. In the limited time that I set aside.

I'm impatient with people in grocery-store lines who don’t pull out their cash-cards until the checker finishes scanning their groceries. You can pass the card through the card-reader after the first grocery item is scanned. People who wait hold up people in line. Of course, impatience is a form of greed – greed about time.

That one maybe isn’t so bad.

On the way out of the grocery store, I never say "hello" to the security guard. He has a terrible job. I don’t know how he bears standing there doing nothing for hours on end. I assume that a cheerful greeting would break the stultifying monotony. But I withhold greeting. I withhold greeting because I don’t want to feel obligated to greet him every time I pass by. I cherish my obliviousness.

Now, he might not welcome my greeting. For all I know, he cherishes being lost in his own thoughts from the beginning of his shift to the end.

But that’s not why I walk past him and say nothing. It’s all about me.

I get irritated with people in the swimming pool where I do laps. Especially when I do laps in the deep end where the lanes aren’t separated by lane-lines. When someone from another lane swims into mine, I fume.

I fume instead of putting up with less skilled swimmers for the sake of having a clean, well-kept, convenient pool to work out in, for a reasonable yearly fee. That thought should make me patient. But it doesn’t.

I don’t like young children, particularly. Maybe I like pictures of young children that can’t scream in restaurants or interrupt adults. Even as a young man, I didn’t enjoy teaching swimming lessons to the three-and-four-years-olds.

A few years ago, I paid a modest fee to upgrade to a first-class seat for a Mexico City flight. The stewardess plopped into the empty seat next to me a woman and her crying infant. It was a free upgrade for the woman. Done for kindness’s sake.

I hated it. Hated it. But I was the only one who did. All of the Mexican men in the first-class cabin spent the flight looking over at the crying infant and grinning. I spent the flight wishing that I could separate the infant’s vocal chords from his lungs.

Woah.

I flip off other drivers. There’s a hierarchy to my dickishness on the road. If I'm slightly vexed, I'll look at the other driver as I pass him (to see what kind of person does what he did). If I'm more vexed, I’ll glare at him. If I'm really vexed, he gets my middle finger.

Real mature.

I file my tax returns late.

I sometimes wait to pay utility bills until I get a shut-off notice. It’s not that I don’t have money. I just can’t be bothered.

On Facebook, sometimes I just have to correct other people. As if the world were waiting for me to deliver to the discussion-thread my highly-principled insight, like Moses delivering the Ten Commandments to the Israelites. Sometimes, it seems like bullying.

I have angry discussions when I’m alone in my car. With other lawyers – who aren’t there. With my brother/law partner – who isn’t there. With judges – who aren’t there. With the lady who told her little child to get a bag of potato chips from the grocery-store shelf, then put it back after the little child shook the bag like a toy, so the chips inside became crumbs – who wasn’t there. Come to think of it, my car is my rage room.

Some things maybe I should fault myself for, but I don’t. I don’t fault myself for talking back to cops who I think have stepped over a line. I don’t fault myself for not giving to beggars, unless they look like they really need a handout.

There were three faults that I thought of but didn’t write down.

So this was the product of ten minutes reflection. A good start.

I wish others would get the habit of making these lists.

I think we need humility – which is the gift of seeing ourselves as we really are. The worse society gets, the more we suffer from an optimistic view of our own character. And society is sinking.

Part of me wants to look at other people’s lists, hoping that I won’t measure up so bad.

But maybe that’s a false hope.

In the meantime, there’s no reason that I can’t add to and refine this list from time to time. Maybe it will keep my pride in check.