Opinions Vary on Value of Wikipedia

Posted on 17 Jan 2012 by Frank Moraes

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Over the years, I’ve been highly critical of Wikipedia. In general, I have two problems with them:

Their utter domination of Internet information to the detriment of other sites
Their plagiarization (if not strictly in a legal sense) of other online information providers
Their whitewashing of most historical events
Their large numbers of errors on any subject I know a lot about.

You see, Wikipedia has so many problems that when I try to write a list of two things, I come up with four!

And yet: Wikipedia is a great source of information generally speaking. For example, they’ve done a good enough job of discussing the different English translations of Don Quixote that I have yet to feel the need to do so myself. But I will get to it and I fully expect that it will be stolen by one or more people and put on Wikipedia. But this is fairly minor: I get more from it than it takes. And tomorrow, it is taking a stand.

The English version of Wikipedia is going down for 24 hours to protest SOPA. Good for them! Good for us!

In case you read this while the site is down, here is what they have to say:

To: English Wikipedia Readers and Community
From: Sue Gardner, Wikimedia Foundation Executive Director
Date: January 16, 2012

Today, the Wikipedia community announced its decision to black out the English-language Wikipedia for 24 hours, worldwide, beginning at 05:00 UTC on Wednesday, January 18 (you can read the statement from the Wikimedia Foundation here). The blackout is a protest against proposed legislation in the United States—the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the U.S. House of Representatives, and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) in the U.S. Senate—that, if passed, would seriously damage the free and open Internet, including Wikipedia.

This will be the first time the English Wikipedia has ever staged a public protest of this nature, and it’s a decision that wasn’t lightly made. Here’s how it’s been described by the three Wikipedia administrators who formally facilitated the community’s discussion. From the public statement, signed by User:NuclearWarfare, User:Risker and User:Billinghurst:

It is the opinion of the English Wikipedia community that both of these bills, if passed, would be devastating to the free and open web.

Over the course of the past 72 hours, over 1800 Wikipedians have joined together to discuss proposed actions that the community might wish to take against SOPA and PIPA. This is by far the largest level of participation in a community discussion ever seen on Wikipedia, which illustrates the level of concern that Wikipedians feel about this proposed legislation. The overwhelming majority of participants support community action to encourage greater public action in response to these two bills. Of the proposals considered by Wikipedians, those that would result in a “blackout” of the English Wikipedia, in concert with similar blackouts on other websites opposed to SOPA and PIPA, received the strongest support.

On careful review of this discussion, the closing administrators note the broad-based support for action from Wikipedians around the world, not just from within the United States. The primary objection to a global blackout came from those who preferred that the blackout be limited to readers from the United States, with the rest of the world seeing a simple banner notice instead. We also noted that roughly 55% of those supporting a blackout preferred that it be a global one, with many pointing to concerns about similar legislation in other nations.

In making this decision, Wikipedians will be criticized for seeming to abandon neutrality to take a political position. That’s a real, legitimate issue. We want people to trust Wikipedia, not worry that it is trying to propagandize them.

But although Wikipedia’s articles are neutral, its existence is not. As Wikimedia Foundation board member Kat Walsh wrote on one of our mailing lists recently,

We depend on a legal infrastructure that makes it possible for us to operate. And we depend on a legal infrastructure that also allows other sites to host user-contributed material, both information and expression. For the most part, Wikimedia projects are organizing and summarizing and collecting the world’s knowledge. We’re putting it in context, and showing people how to make to sense of it.

But that knowledge has to be published somewhere for anyone to find and use it. Where it can be censored without due process, it hurts the speaker, the public, and Wikimedia. Where you can only speak if you have sufficient resources to fight legal challenges, or, if your views are pre-approved by someone who does, the same narrow set of ideas already popular will continue to be all anyone has meaningful access to.

The decision to shut down the English Wikipedia wasn’t made by me; it was made by editors, through a consensus decision-making process. But I support it.

Like Kat and the rest of the Wikimedia Foundation Board, I have increasingly begun to think of Wikipedia’s public voice, and the goodwill people have for Wikipedia, as a resource that wants to be used for the benefit of the public. Readers trust Wikipedia because they know that despite its faults, Wikipedia’s heart is in the right place. It’s not aiming to monetize their eyeballs or make them believe some particular thing, or sell them a product. Wikipedia has no hidden agenda: it just wants to be helpful.

That’s less true of other sites. Most are commercially motivated: their purpose is to make money. That doesn’t mean they don’t have a desire to make the world a better place—many do!—but it does mean that their positions and actions need to be understood in the context of conflicting interests.

My hope is that when Wikipedia shuts down on January 18, people will understand that we’re doing it for our readers. We support everyone’s right to freedom of thought and freedom of expression. We think everyone should have access to educational material on a wide range of subjects, even if they can’t pay for it. We believe in a free and open Internet where information can be shared without impediment. We believe that new proposed laws like SOPA—and PIPA, and other similar laws under discussion inside and outside the United States—don’t advance the interests of the general public. You can read a very good list of reasons to oppose SOPA and PIPA here, from the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Why is this a global action, rather than US-only? And why now, if some American legislators appear to be in tactical retreat on SOPA?

The reality is that we don’t think SOPA is going away, and PIPA is still quite active. Moreover, SOPA and PIPA are just indicators of a much broader problem. All around the world, we’re seeing the development of legislation intended to fight online piracy, and regulate the Internet in other ways, that hurt online freedoms. Our concern extends beyond SOPA and PIPA: they are just part of the problem. We want the Internet to remain free and open, everywhere, for everyone.

I’ve thought of another thing I don’t like about Wikipedia:

Their HTML is terrible.

But I’m being nice today, so I cleaned it up.

Boys Will Be Boys

Posted on 16 Jan 2012 by Andrea English

I don’t enjoy following the douche-baggery we call our political system as it tends to upset me. And generally there’s no reason for me to comment on anything our government tools say or do, as my one and only reader most often agrees with me anyway. However, this morning, as I was scanning the MSNBC news headlines, one in particular caught my attention: Perry: Marines in video are ‘kids’, not criminals.

If you haven’t heard about it, read about it, or worse yet, watched the video of it — we have among our military a few guys who thought it would be funny to piss on human corpses. There are many words to describe that sort of behavior: disgusting, disrespectful, stupid, and criminal. Take your pick. (The correct answer is: Technically, all of the above.)

As stated in the MSNBC article by Anne Flaherty, “A military criminal investigation and an internal Marine Corps review are under way. The Geneva Conventions forbid the desecration of the dead.”

With all the atrocities being committed in these horrible wars, why should we care about this one in particular? The guys are dead, so they don’t even know about it. The peeing Marines don’t care because they’ve been trained not to. And apparently Perry doesn’t care because he believes boys will be boys — what’s the big deal?

“Obviously, 18-, 19-year-old kids make stupid mistakes all too often. And that’s what’s occurred here… What’s really disturbing to me is the kind of over-the-top rhetoric from this administration and their disdain for the military.” –Texas Governor Rick Perry on CNN’s, State of the Union.

Seriously? Marines piss on dead combatants, but what really disturbs Perry is the fact that this administration is critical of them? What is really fucking disturbing to me is that our military trained those “kids” to be brutal and heartless. Who would even think of doing something like that?! Who would think of doing that are young men whom our government have brain-washed into seeing “the enemy” as sub-human. Stupid mistakes are drinking too much, cheating on an exam, taking the car without permission, or being videotaped desecrating a corpse. Seeing another human being lying dead on the ground and choosing to piss on him was not a mistake: it was a choice and a statement that said, “We are Americans and you are worthless pieces of shit.”

I am so very sorry for the families of the men whose bodies were treated with such disrespect. But I’m also sorry for those Marines. They will have to live with the memory of that act, and of undoubtedly far worse affronts to human life and dignity, for the rest of their lives. They are going to come home damaged and deeply scarred by the things they’ve seen and done while draped in a flag that made them less human.

While I am ashamed of those men and their actions, I do agree with Perry on one thing: these men aren’t criminals. However it is hardly “over-the-top rhetoric” to call the behavior of these Marines “deplorable” — over-the-top rhetoric is to say they were just boys being boys.

I am not an investigative journalist and the Geneva Conventions is a very long and complex document; that said this is what I found: “Convention for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded and Sick in Armies in the Field. Geneva, 6 July 1906. Chapter I: Article 3. After every engagement the belligerent who remains in possession of the field of battle shall take measures to search for the wounded and to protect the wounded and dead from robbery and ill treatment.”

Woman in Red

Posted on 15 Jan 2012 by Frank Moraes

Why am I in China? I wish I could tell you. This is not one of those, “If you knew, I would have to kill you.” Although, I will admit that after three days in China, I am inclined to kill just about anyone just because. In America, there is a stereotype of the Chinese being bad drivers. The Chinese are not bad drivers. They are, however, very different drivers from Americans. This is most notable in how close cars drive to other cars, pedestrians, and anything else that native-born American drivers would stay well away from. What’s more, they are very patient. The custom here is that if you are going to make a left turn, the oncoming traffic will slow down for you. And then there is the honking; I’ve know this for years: in China, you can drive a car without breaks, but not without a horn. This is especially important for pedestrians, for whom a honk is just shorthand for, “I’m about to run you over.”

Raining Day Taxis

My co-worker, Jim and I found ourselves a few miles from our hotel on a very rainy day. Just as in America, it is very hard to get a taxicab on a rainy day in China. Why? There are two reasons, one of which is obvious: more people want taxis when it’s raining. But this is not the main reason. It turns out that taxi drivers are contractors, and so they just work as long as it takes to make whatever their standard daily pay is. On rainy days, they reach their quota very early. So, at 5:00 pm, there are more people than usual looking for taxis and far fewer taxis.

Taxi Bikes!

I had no problem walking the whole way to our hotel. I lived in Portland, Oregon for a decade, after all. Just like living in California makes you immune from earthquakes below 7.0, a decade in Portland makes you immune to a rainfall rate of less than an inch an hour. But Jim did not share my history and after a few blocks his only pair of shoes were soaked through. We tried to find a taxi, and they were around, but they were all in use. So Jim mentioned that we could take a bike. These are little motorcycles you ride on the back of (and maybe the back off). And they look something like this:

It took us about 20 minutes to get the three miles to our hotel—although we were told it was only “Five stop lights”! And during the trip, I did wonder if we were going to make it back to the hotel alive. There were, after all, three adults on a tiny motorbike. Jim’s shoes got even more wet, as the driver took us so close to the edge of the road that our feet and legs were brushing the plants that line the sidewalks. And we sped through small lakes upwards of a foot deep. Jim complained the whole way back, blaming me, because I had managed to flag down this product of Chinese laissez-faire capitalism. But I was having none of it. First, as I mentioned, it was his idea. And second, everyone knows I’m a sucker for a woman in a red motorcycle helmet!

Jim had to borrow my blow-drier so he could get double the effect. I am drenched through, myself. But there is no doubt: those were the best twenty minutes of my many trips to China. You go, girl!

Update

Andrea wants to know where in China I am. It took me three days to figure out how to use the shower because everything is in Chinese! Oh! Well, let me just look this information up on the letterhead of the hotel! Oh! That doesn’t work! It doesn’t have any English on it! I’m in southern China, about an hour away from Hong Kong in a city that is almost 15 million today but was much less than a half million 20 years ago. I believe it starts with an S. But I managed to do some research and have come to the conclusion I am in Shenzhen. But it really doesn’t matter, because China may be big, but it isn’t really diverse—at least as far as I’m concerned. Consider: like everywhere else in China, you can’t get a decent beer and no one knows how to make a vodka tonic. And I was stupid enough to ask for an Absolute and tonic!

An Important Point About Lucky’s Speech

Posted on 11 Jan 2012 by Frank Moraes

Lucky’s Speech from Waiting for Godot [1] goes along with my take on the play that the universe is unfathomable and all we have are our relationships. Lucky never says anything, he only starts to and this is why his hat must be removed, because he will simply continue on starting to say something—forever. And Pozzo’s comment that Lucky’s “thinking” used to delight him, I believe says nothing about Lucky and everything about Pozzo. In the end, when you want real answers, there are none to be found. Intellectual discourse only emphasizes that.

There is one part of his speech[2] that is fundamental to Godot, however, and it is at the very beginning. “Given the existence as uttered forth in the public works of Puncher and Wattmann of a personal God quaquaquaqua with white beard.” This is clearly the traditional description of the Christian God: a personal god with a white beard. That, in itself, doesn’t matter; Lucky’s speech is nothing if not cliche after cliche. Where it matters is at the end of Act II, when Vladimir is talking to Boy, who has brought a message from Mr. Godot:

VLADIMIR: (softly). Has he a beard, Mr. Godot?
BOY: Yes sir.
VLADIMIR: Fair or … (he hesitates) … or black?
BOY: I think it’s white, Sir.
Silence.
VLADIMIR: Christ have mercy on us!

Boy is not ever certain what color beard his master has, but he thinks that it’s white. This clear recognition that Godot is probably mythical, and that perhaps Vladimir himself is, makes Vladimir angry. “You’re sure you saw me, you won’t come and tell me tomorrow that you never saw me!” But soon, he is calm like a dog suffering from learned helplessness. Maybe Godot exists, maybe he doesn’t. Maybe Vladimir exists, maybe he doesn’t. Nothing to be done.

[1] Perhaps I don’t need to point this out, but Americans habitually mispronounce “Godot.” It is not pronounced gu-DOE. It is pronounced GOD-oh. I probably make such a big deal about this because I hate the idea of ignorant people snickering behind my back, “He doesn’t know how to pronounce gu-DOE!”

[2] I can’t say a line from his speech, because his speech is only one line—a roughly thousand word line. And again, not a sentence, because a sentence communicates a complete thought.

A Tale of Two Constanzes in Amadeus

Posted on 11 Jan 2012 by Frank Moraes

Amadeus Milos Forman’s filmed version of Peter Shaffer’s play Amadeus was a huge hit. According to Box Office Mojo it made over $51 million in the United States alone, and this is just the money it made during its theatrical release. You can imagine the kind of money it made worldwide and via tape and disc sales. And it was better reviewed than just about any film I’ve ever heard of. Rotten Tomatoes gives it a 96% on it tomatometer. Metacritic gives it a score of 93 out of 100.[1] And, of course, it won so many awards that it would be very difficult to list them without being boring. It was nominated for 11 Academy Awards, and won 8. Amadeus is generally considered a great film.

I disagree.

Don’t misunderstand me, however. Amadeus is an excellent film. It just isn’t up there with the very best films—things like F for Fake or Gosford Park or His Girl Friday or Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind or The Conversation (to name just a few). There was always something wrong with it—something not quite right. The surprising thing is that I was not able to explained why Amadeus wasn’t quite great until I saw Amadeus: Director’s Cut.[2]

Differences

The director’s cut contains 20 extra minutes, pushing the already long original to a full three hours. Forman has claimed that he cut the film down for practical reasons because it was so long. I don’t believe this. It was already two hours and forty minutes long. I believe they cut it down to make it a more pleasant viewing experience.[3] And is it ever! At the end of the original, I sympathized with Salieri. Sure, he was evil and pathetic—but aren’t we all? However, in the director’s cut, I hated him easily as much as Constanze Mozart does.

Salieri’s Vow to God

The first change is relatively subtle. We get more back story about Salieri and his relationship with God. In general, it makes him a more pathetic character. In the original, Salieri offers God “the proudest prayer a boy could think of”:

Lord: make me a great composer. Make me celebrate your glory through music and be celebrated myself. Make me famous through the world, dear God. Make me immortal. After I die, let people speak my name forever with love for what I wrote. In return, I will give you my chastity, my industry, my deepest humility every hour of my life.

In the director’s cut, we learn what this means. He asks the priest:

If you had been me, wouldn’t you have thought God had accepted your vow? And believe me, I honored it! I was a model of virtue. I kept my hands off women. I worked hours every day teaching students—many of them for free. Sitting on endless committees to help poor musicians.[4] Work and work and work: that was all my life. And it was wonderful!

Sounds petty, doesn’t it? God makes him the most famous composer of his time and in exchange Salieri gives a few free piano lessons? So in just over ten minutes of film, we already don’t like him.

Salieri Hopes for a Fluke

The film continues on as in the original for a while with a tiny section removed where Salieri reflects that the piece played at the residence of the Prince Archbishop of Salzburg (an abbreviated version of the third movement of Mozart’s Serenade for Winds K. 361) must have been an accident. “It had to be… It better be.” It is important to note that this is the first time that Salieri is sympathetic. He describes the Serenade for Winds so beautifully and with such love, his trepidation in the face of a new perfect art is understandable.

The Rape of Madam Cavalieri

The next change is major, but unimportant. It takes place after the performance of The Abduction from the Seraglio. In the original version it is shown very economically that Mozart has “had” Caterina Cavalieri, Salieri’s student whom he lusts after. It is a fun scene, but it detracts from the film. What’s more, it shows Salieri to be obtuse in a way that is out of character with him throughout the rest of the film. On the plus side, it shows that there was perhaps a chance that Salieri could have accepted Mozart if he weren’t, in his own unique way, a bore.

Constanze!

Now we come to two additions involving Constanze Mozart and I believe their absence from the original release cost Elizabeth Berridge the Academy Award nomination for best supporting actress (and many other awards). Acting awards are given as much for characters as for actors. For example, Dustin Hoffman did not get the Academy Award for Rain Man because his acting was that great. In fact, I would argue that it was some of his worst acting. But the part! It screams “Acting!” It calls attention to itself. What the two scenes removed from Amadeus did was deprive the character of Constanze Mozart of her primary motivation. So her acting in the final scene with Salieri has no context, and Berridge’s acting tour de force seems downright banal.

The first scene is an argument between the newly wed Mozarts. Constanze shows herself to be strong and prophetic. And it leads directly to the second, far more important scene.

This is a five minute extension to the scene in the original when she goes to Salieri to ask for his help in getting Mozart a royal appointment. In the original, Salieri simply walks away. In the director’s cut, he makes a sexual play for her, thinking that she will not go along with his tit-for-tat proposal—sex for the appointment. When she does—but in a way designed to make him feel the cad he appears to be—he humiliates her and breaks the bargain they had struck. From his perspective, God is abusing him; God will allow him Mozart’s wife but not Mozart’s talent. From Constanze’s perspective (the objective one), Salieri is simply cruel.

This scene also sets up the most devastating line in the movie. After Constanze undresses before Salieri, he rings a bell calling his servant who he tells, “Show this woman out.” At the end of the film (in both versions but obviously not with much power in the original), Constanze tells Salieri, “I regret we have no servants to show you out, Herr Salieri.” The restrained hatred with which this line is delivered is annihilating. If looks could kill, Salieri would have beat Mozart to the grave. And Berridge would have beat Abraham to the stage at the 1984 Academy Award Ceremony. Instead, her performance in the original just lays there on the screen, and we are forced at ask, “Why is she so angry?”

We also miss the sweetest scene in the whole film when Mozart comes home to find Constanze in bed, inconsolable. It contrasts beautifully with the end of the film when Constanze comforts Mozart in his death bed. A short, but powerful scene.

Salieri’s Campaign of Lies

There are a number of other scenes that generally establish Sarieri as a villain. He spreads the rumor than Mozart molests his female students. He also sends him to a rich but uncouth family who treat Mozart very poorly. And he even tries to set Mozart’s patron, the Baron van Swieten, against him.

The Director’s Cut is a Great Film

That about sums up the differences between the original and the director’s cut versions of Amadeus. As you can see, most of the differences are in the first half of the film. But they affect the second half of the film, especially the resolution. When I had only seen the original version of the film, the ending just didn’t quite work for me because of the confrontation between Constanze and Salieri. At that point, Mozart is all but dead; he is irrelevant. God is nowhere to be seen; he only exists in Salieri’s mind. So the denouement is really in Constanze’s line, “I regret we have no servants to show you out, Herr Salieri.” And this line, as I indicated above is meaningless in the original. I asked myself again and again, “Why does Constanze hate Salieri so much?” In the original, we really don’t know. In the director’s cut we do. Not only that, we wish that she had a servant who was really big so he could show Salieri out through one of their upstairs windows.

So if you want an enjoyable movie with great characters and music that you can watch year after year, buy the original 1984 version of Amadeus. If you want a great film that will thrill you on each viewing, buy the 2002 Amadeus: Director’s Cut. The director’s cut has another advantage: it is all on one disc. The original is on a double-sided disc that must be flipped over after the performance of Don Giovanni. Or own both—probably the best option!

[1] This is for the 2002 release of the director’s cut. It appears they do not have an entry for the 1984 version. It doesn’t matter. The original was extremely well reviewed.

[2] As I think will become clear, most people will prefer the original released version of the film. I’m talking art here, not diversion.

[3] It also had the advantage of changing the MPAA rating from R to PG—not always a good thing, but for this film, I expect a very lucrative change.

[4] The portrayal of Salieri in the film is almost completely false except for this. By all accounts Salieri was a good man who was involved in many philanthropic activities, especially in relation to other, less successful musicians. In addition, except for one nasty comment in a letter to his father, Mozart seemed to get on well with Salieri. They even worked together. And unlike in the film, Mozart did become Court Composer under Joseph II (although he was paid poorly). Also, Mozart’s financial troubles have been greatly over-stated. Most of the money he borrowed was to pay other money he had borrowed so that he didn’t owe anyone for very long. What’s more, his finances really took off the last two years of his life. If he had lived longer, he would have become very wealthy. And finally, he was not given a pauper’s funeral. He was buried in a communal grave, but that was the fashion of that time. So other than little tidbits like the fact that Salieri did have a sweet-tooth, Amadeus is total fiction.

The Revolution Will Be Televised

Posted on 09 Jan 2012 by Frank Moraes

The French Penalty I had a vision of Charles Koch standing handcuffed on a platform. His brother, David, was next to him, on his knees, his head secured in a guillotine. The blade was released and fell with lightning speed. David’s head tumbled to the wooden planks below while blood gushed from his neck.

Looking away, past the limp headless body, I saw that Charles was only at the head of a line, which seemed endless. Some of the faces were familiar, most not. Men and women. I even spotted Melinda Gates. “Hi, Melinda.” And there was poor William Koch. Talk about having to suffer for your brothers’ sins! It seemed wrong to cut off the heads of Melinda and William. Melinda is so pretty and William has that friendly face. It all seemed wrong. I am not violent. I am not vengeful. But we—Homo sapiens—are very violent and vengeful.

I thought of Howard Zinn, who wrote in The Progressive, back in 2003:

There is a basic weakness in governments—however massive their armies, however wealthy their treasuries, however they control the information given to the public—because their power depends on the obedience of citizens, of soldiers, of civil servants, of journalists and writers and teachers and artists. When these people begin to suspect they have been deceived, and when they withdraw their support, the government loses its legitimacy, and its power.

I’ve no doubt my vision will be realized. There is no amount of money or guards or political power that will save the elite[1] from thousands of angry, hopeless peasants. The question is not if, but when and how.

Be assured, however, that I will be there to protect these people. I will say that violence is not the way. I will physically get between the angry and the “Winners!” And also be assured that I will be as impotent in these endeavors as I now am to stop the cruel injustice that leads there.

But I will not shed a tear for them. Any of them.[2]

[1] Amazing how conservatives have managed to redefine “elites” as college professors rather than Presidents and billionaires!

[2] Paul Krugman has an excellent column today, America’s Unlevel Field. In it, he discusses how America is now more class-constrained than Europe and how all the Republican Party talk of evening the playing field is bunk.

True Grit: Post-Art Coen Brothers

Posted on 09 Jan 2012 by Frank Moraes

The Coen Brothers’ True Grit is a huge disappointment. To start, did we really have to make this tiresome film again? To end, did we really have to do it so badly? So unartfully? Have the Coens taken the advice of the Mothers of Invention’s third album: are they only in it for the money?

However, I did like some of the film. Without a doubt, the best scenes in the film are the two between Mattie Ross and Col. Stonehill. In particular, their second meeting is hilarious:

Mattie: You have not traded poorly.

Stonehill: Oh, certainly not! I’m paying you for a horse I do not possess and have bought back a string of useless ponies, which I cannot sell again.

Mattie: You are forgetting the grey horse.

Stonehill: Crowbait![1]

Mattie: You are looking at the thing in the wrong light.

Stonehill: I am lookin’ at it in the light of God’s eternal truth.

Mattie: Your illness is putting you down in the dumps… You will soon find a good buyer for the ponies.

Stonehill: Oh, I have a tentative offer for ten dollars per head from the Pfitzer Soap Works of Little Rock.

Mattie: It would be a shame to destroy such spirited horseflesh.

Stonehill: So it would. I am confident the deal will fall through.

Mattie: Look here. I need a pony, and I will pay ten dollars for one of them.

Stonehill: No. That is the lot price. No, no, it’d… Wait a minute… Are we trading again?

Unfortunately, that is about all that is good about it. However, somehow critics and audiences alike thought it was a great film. Has everyone forgotten when the Coens made art instead of entertainment? Of course, I understand that they have always been uneven. They sandwiched the dreadful Raising Arizona between two excellent films (Blood Simple and Miller’s Crossing) followed by the great Barton Fink. But Raising Arizona is not bad for lack of trying. True Grit is a workmanlike film that could almost as easily have been directed by the horrible Jon Favreau. Good job Joel and Ethan: you can make successful tripe with the best of them!

I must admit, however, that I am tired of the Rooster Cogburn form of lovable rogue. He is a homicidal psychopath. Popularly, people have the wrong idea about psychopaths. They don’t go around hurting people willy-nilly. They find ways to manipulate their culture into accepting or even celebrating their propensities. The first thing we learn about Cogburn is that he suffers from constipation. The second thing is that he has murdered 23 people in the previous four years. I do not mind when the main character of fiction is an evil person. I do mind when the creators of that fiction are not aware of this fact. And the Coens are not. To them, Rooster is just a lovable rogue.

Of course, none of the three main characters are without problems. LaBoeuf (well acted by Matt Damon), the character we are supposed to like the least, is a good man in the universe of the film. Mattie is wonderful in her intelligence, but her Old Testament religiosity is abhorrent. She’s a Deuteronomy girl all the way: vengeance is mine!

Even as entertainment, the film fails. Jeff Bridges can barely be understood. After they leave town, the movie is predictable and boring. This I will say, however: at least it doesn’t star that great Academy Award winning actor John Wayne!

Update (8 February 2016 3:30 pm)

I think I was too hard on the Coen Brothers here. But I stand by the main point.

[1] Crowbait is a term from western America in the mid-nineteenth century. It means an emaciated, worn-out horse. Think Don Quixote’s horse Rocinante and you’ve got it. Great word!

Falstaff Dies a Broken Man

Posted on 08 Jan 2012 by Frank Moraes

Over at Shakespeare Geek, the question is asked if Falstaff dies a broken man. I respond with my usual love of That Bard:

Beware Welles’ Shakespeare for it is more Welles than That Bard! Welles’ take on Falstaff is quite different from any other I have seen or from what one would take from the text. There is really no buffoon in the character here. Falstaff seems quite intelligent, using what gifts he has to make his way in life.

To answer your question: Falstaff dies a broken man. It is because he is broken that he dies. “I shall be sent for in private,” is said only to save face. But I think it must be remembered that that is all Falstaff has done from the beginning of the film. When last we see him from the rear in long shot, he is hunched over walking awkwardly with a cane. He is tiny as he passes under the arch, but his shadow is enormous. (Very similar to The Third Man.)

Shakespeare was not big on writing pleasant characters. Falstaff, with all his faults, is as close as we get. And even that depends upon the performer. No writer in the history of the English theater has had more and better editors and directors and actors to fix his oh so many problems.

I too consider myself something of a Shakespeare geek, but that doesn’t mean I hold him in that high a regard. In many ways, he is like Orson Welles (although without the excuses—I think Welles did very well given his obstacles). Neither man created a perfect piece of narrative art. Both have loads of brilliant moments, but nothing works completely.

Shakespeare never wrote a decent comedy. The histories are dreadful. He was best at tragedy. Still, Hamlet is a mess: hands down the most over-rated play of all time. Despite the amazing amount of creativity that actors and directors have put into it, it is always un-watchable. I’m kind of fond of Richard III, but I have a real problem with Shakespeare’s constant use of villains who make Sweeney Todd seem realistic. “Since I cannot prove a lover, to entertain these fair well-spoken days, I am determined to prove a villain and hate the idle pleasures of these days”! How many times in his plays do we hear similar speeches by his villains? Richard’s a villain because he’s lame? Don John is a villain because he’s a bastard? Iago is a villain because he was fired? Please!

The most fulfilling play is Macbeth. And I believe it is not over-performed the way others of his plays are because modern artists don’t feel the need to fix it. Everyone is so determined to make Shakespeare into the greatest writer ever (an amazing, but preposterous claim), that they can’t help but try to fix the train wrecks that define his catalog.

As for Welles, at least we do have one perfect and unique film, even if it is a documentary: F for Fake. Most of his other films are quite watchable. In fact, most are quite good. And the scenes that have been released of The Other Side of the Wind are some of the most exciting film I have ever seen.

Prince Hal is a villain. Falstaff is a complex and troubled man who dies broken. And Orson Welles, once again, gives Shakespeare better than he gets.

If the Shakespeare Geek notices the comment, I suspect he will not agree!

The Good Christian

Posted on 08 Jan 2012 by Frank Moraes

Jesus Wanted Poster I don’t hate Christians. I have little tolerance for stupid Christians. In fact, my spiritual beliefs[1] fit in rather well with New Testament dogma. Unfortunately, David Byrne[2] was far more profound than almost any Christian I’ve met when he wrote, “Heaven is a place where nothing happens.” One Christian I like is Bruce Cockburn, who you may remember from his hit in the late 1970s, Wondering Where the Lions Are. That’s a take on the Roman’s feeding the Christians to the lions. Every time I’ve seen him do the song (well over a dozen times live), he shows such joy in doing it. I think the idea is about sacrificing. I don’t know if he really believes he is going to heaven, that place that doesn’t actually exist, or if he is of the Terry Eagleton school of Christianity, which has everything to do with politics and almost nothing to do with God. I tend to think the latter, because Cockburn is a smart guy. Certainly it is the case that he has spent his whole life working to make the world more just, forgiving, and above all, humane.

Here is Pacing the Cage, which he told me, “It’s about feeling trapped.” As I often say, artists should never explain their work because they usually don’t get it. Sure, it is about being trapped. But it’s about a lot more than that. I could go on about learned helplessness and things like that, but it’s better to listen to a master:

[1] As Denys Turner speaks about beautifully, there is only one question: why existence? It is a profound question and one that gives me great pleasure because I like mystery. It is a thrill and a gift to be alive and to wonder about the universe and eternity. But it is hubris to think that you matter in a cosmological sense. We do not exist, then we exist, and then we do not exist. That’s it. I’m with Carl Jung when asked, “Do you believe in God?” He responded, “I don’t need to believe; I know.” But “God” is a very bad word for what I know, because of the way almost all religious people define the term, which is utterly at odds with my own.

[2] When I was young, I loved Talking Heads. Their first album was good and the next three were great. And then there was Speaking in Tongues which was okay, the way a sunny day is on the edge of a hurricane. Bad things were coming. Stop Making Sense was a live album — not bad, but it’s hard for me to be objective since I saw them on that tour twice. Then the ax fell: Little Creatures was released and I knew (to quote Beckett) beyond all doubt that David Byrne was a sham. The great music of Talking Heads was due a lot to Byrne, of course; but it was also due to Tina Weymouth, Chris Frantz, Jerry Harrison (pity the man who had to put up with the delightful but crazy Jojo), and especially Brian Eno. And given that all indications are that Byrne was and most likely still is a complete jerk, I can’t listen to any of those three great albums without some sadness. Here’s Heaven from Stop Making Sense:

Notice a little trick here. Only two people on stage. Weymouth doesn’t have a mic. Who is singing backup on the chorus? It sounds like Byrne (I don’t think they had the autotune software for doing background singing live back then), but it could be someone off stage. Regardless, it strikes me as a little disingenuous. If you’re going to slowly build up your band, then really do it. Otherwise, you’re nothing more than The The or Howard Jones.

The Evil Philosophy of William Lane Craig

Posted on 07 Jan 2012 by Frank Moraes

Andrea’s been writing a bit about religion recently. Just yesterday, she wrote Speaking of Jesus… about the vile practice of Christians trolling for converts at hospitals. And before that, she created a hilarious cartoon (for want of a better term) Jesus is getting pissed. Even before that, however, I had been doing a lot of atheist research and reading what people such as Robert M. Price and Richard Carrier have written on the subject. Today, Sam Harris is probably the most famous of these public atheists. Frankly, I don’t think he is quite of the intellectual caliber of Price or Carrier (which is not to say he isn’t brilliant). But I don’t think anyone comes close to him in laying out the atheist case and arguing against religious dogma—especially Christianity. He is an American treasure as I think you will see from the following video clip (of very poor quality, but it’s the content that counts).

Speaking of Jesus…

Posted on 06 Jan 2012 by Frank Moraes

As a one-time missionary (Believe It or Not!), I have legitimate reasons for my mild contempt toward evangelical religions in particular. It’s a simple and uninspiring tale of a young woman with low self-esteem trying to fill a void with a belief. (Spoiler alert! It didn’t fit.) After years of careful observation of Baptists in their native habitat and much rational contemplation, she abandoned the excruciating anxiety of living under the faith vs. works conundrum. She chose instead to stoically face a cruel and random universe, armed only with her cynicism and doctor-prescribed meds. Anyhoo, one result of this voyage of nonbelief is that things like this tend to irritate me:

Click on the images if you care to read the text of these pamphlets.

These pearls of Good News were carefully and conspicuously placed on the visitor check-in desk of the New Jersey hospital to which my mother-in-law had just been admitted. My husband and I were a little worried—his mother had suffered a major stroke only hours before and been airlifted from her local hospital to this one. You can imagine the sense of peace and comfort that washed over me when I read, “Death: It Happens Every Day”. What a compelling yet reassuring title. And it was only the gateway to a tiny trilogy of enlightenment! I had to have them—a voice was urging me, “Take these My child. Please”. (The voice was mine—I often think to myself.) So I stuffed the bits of Biblical condensation into my purse. I couldn’t bear the thought of them being carelessly tossed into a convenient recycling bin. If anyone were to deliberately throw them into the trash, or worse yet, burn them, I wanted to make sure it was done right. As it turns out, these tiny pieces of Western religion have become the pithy souvenir of the only time I’ve ever watched a loved one die.

Published by Fellowship Tract League, which happens to be a Baptist endeavor, these pamphlets have had a powerful impact on my life. Maybe I should let the Fellowship Baptist Church know that their pamphlets have removed any possible doubt I may have had that there is a god, while their logo has proven that it doesn’t take talent to get work from people who can’t tell their ass from a hole in the ground. It’s like a Rorshach test: is it a pitcher (jug perhaps?) inside a hamster ball? Is it a poorly drawn silhouette of a rodent in a hamster ball?Is it a globe with all the continents smooshed together by God’s love? Like God Himself, graphic designers work in mysterious ways.

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Please do not misunderstand me. I am in no way mocking a true personal belief in God (or ethnic equivalent). My mother-in-law was a devout Catholic and she drew considerable comfort from her beliefs. Just as I would never have tried to dissuade her from her convictions, she never once criticized or condemned me for my views. She never tried to get me to go to church, although I am sure she prayed for me everyday. For that kind thought I am grateful. However, had she been born into a different belief system, I know she would have been the same generous and kind person. Her faith did not define her and it did not create her. If there is a heaven, and for her I hope there is, I know that she was welcomed—not because of the church she attended, but because of the person she was. If everything she was died with her, I know that she will never again suffer and will always be loved by those who knew her.

That being said, I think that Catholicism—as an entity—and every other known religion that ruthlessly indoctrinates their followers and aggressively proselytizes the ignorant, are a blight on humanity. The fact that the dispenser of these tracts would attempt to take advantage of people, who were very likely emotionally fragile, was insensitive and utterly lacking in empathy. If you really want to be a positive ambassador for Christ, show some compassion. WWJD? Not be a dick.

Jesus is Getting Pissed

Posted on 05 Jan 2012 by Frank Moraes

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