CHARLES SNOW RESPONSE TO HAROLD AND MAUDE COMMENTARY

Blog-mate Charles Snow posted the following response to my Harold and Maude commentary.  My  response follows his.

“Ron could be a professional film critic. His reviews not only capture the essence and quality of a film, but he is also able to validly place a film's message in its historical context.

Regarding his review of Harold and Maude, I would like to comment on his point about anti-war movement violence. He says that at the time (early 1970s), he became disillusioned with the anti-war movement's preoccupation with violence and death. I was in Berkeley during the late 1960s and early 1970s, and I witnessed first-hand many incidents of violence during political protests. There were violent incidents involving the bombing of Cambodia during the Vietnam war, riots over People's Park near the Berkeley campus, and so on. Usually, protesters' violence was directed at inanimate objects not people (even the police).

My observation at the time was that change did not occur unless there were violent protests. Peaceful protest was not seriously listened to by the power structure, whether it be politicians, university administrators, or businesspeople. Protests were routinely and appropriately allowed, but meaningful change seldom resulted. Only when peaceful protests escalated into unruly crowd behavior and violence did the protests succeed in gaining the attention of the people in charge and perhaps in influencing them to pause and consider the arguments being made.

Thus, based on my personal experience, some of the things we value in America today would not exist without violent protests. America of the sixties was not ready for peaceful protests, and violence was the main weapon used to achieve desired change.”

Fox Response:  I don’t deny the utility—even imperative--of violence when it is used in a purposeful way.  Trouble is, as the social movements of the 1960's evolved, a growing number of activists began to deploy violence as an end in itself, which in my view harmed the cause.  Sadly, one of the blow backs from the violence and anti-American bashing during this period was an invigorated extreme right-wing movement, which rose from the ashes of the Goldwater defeat in 1964.  This culminated in a shift of white working class voters to the Republican Party, where they have largely resided ever since.  For an excellent treatment of this history, see Geoffrey Kabaservice’s book, Rule and Ruin: the Downfall of Moderation and the Destruction of the Republican party, from Eisenhower to the Tea Party.

As the anti-war movement evolved, the love, compassion, humanity, idealism, and simple good cheer I found among its followers began to erode.  It was this erosion  I  believe Harold and Maude spoke to.

HAROLD AND MAUDE: A FILM COMMENTARY

By Ronald Fox

 

 

When I first watched Harold and Maude, shortly after it was released in 1971, I recall it triggered a full range of my emotions, from side-busting laughter to profound sadness when Maude died. Like other counter-culture adherents, I was in the midst of a value crisis, which found me questioning the values of our materialist consumer culture. I had also become disillusioned with the preoccupation of the anti-war movement with violence and death. It seemed that Harold and Maude, which offered viewers an alternative vision of life and living, was speaking directly to me. Watching it again recently, I found it to be just as timely today as it was in 1971. It remains one of my favorite films.  

 

Harold and Maude is a simple story about a young man, Harold Chasen (played by Bud Cort), living an affluent life with his materialistic, controlling single mother. Harold so hates his materialistic life, he becomes obsessed with death. To entertain himself and aggravate his patrician mother, he regularly stages fake suicides, which are notably creative and hilarious, especially when his intent is to frighten women his mother has arranged for him to meet, and hopefully marry. His suicide acts include self-immolation and self-mutilation, which, as predicted, causes the potential brides to flee in horror. To further exasperate his mother, Harold converts the XKE car his mother bought him (he did not ask for it) into a hearse-- all the more to connect to his morbid fascination with death.

 

Harold’s preoccupation with death leads him to attend the funerals of people he doesn’t know. It is at one of these funerals he meets Maude (played by Ruth Gordon), a vivacious 79-year old woman who also has a hobby of going to funerals, except she goes to celebrate life, not death. Maude is everything Harold isn’t: she is perky and carefree, has a sunny outlook on life, refuses to conform to society conventions, and disdains holding on to material things. Strangely the pair bond and as their relationship progresses, Maude teaches Harold to respect living things, place less emphasis on material possessions, enjoy the pleasures of music (she gives him a banjo), art, and nature, and cherish each new day. Mainly, she teaches him to love life and living.  

 

MARCH 2014 BONEHEAD ABSURDITY OF THE MONTH







We have three candidates for the March Bonehead Absurdity of the Month award:


1.  The annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) convention offers numerous opportunities to find bonehead absurdities, though with the heavy media presence, comments usually lack the off-the-cuff spontaneity that makes for a good bonehead absurdity. Nevertheless, one can always count on conservative favorite, Ann Coulter, to offer some worthy morsels.

Amnesty for immigrants was Coulter's venting topic this year. Here is a compilation of her venom:

Republicans who support [amnesty] are basically telling people, “Screw the country! We want our low-wage workers!” And: “ …… on top of that, something I think people haven’t really noticed — well, certainly they’ve noticed on MSNBC where they are celebrating the browning of America, but if you don’t celebrate it you’re a racist.”  Coulter of course turned her wrath on Democrats: "You want the Democrats who want more immigrants, particularly illegal immigrants, because they need brand new voters, just warm bodies, more votes . . . . .Amnesty goes through, and the Democrats have 30 million new voters. I just don't think Republicans have an obligation to forgive law-breaking just because the Democrats need another 30 million voters." And, finally, the best: “Amnesty is forever and you got to vote for the Republicans one more time and just make it clear; but if you pass amnesty, that’s it, it’s over and then we organize the death squads for the people who wrecked America.”

2.  Our next candidate, Austin Ruse, is not a celebrity, per se, but the Catholic Family and Humana Rights Institute he heads is popular among conservatives for, among other things, its rabid opposition to the U.N.  When the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities came up for ratification by the Senate, Ruse blasted out an email  claiming that the UN would use it as an excuse to take kids away from their parents.  This should tell you all you need to know about Ruse and his organization. 

Serving as a guest host on American Family Radio, Ruse went even further to the bonehead absurdity extreme.  As has been reported in the news, a freshman at Duke University recently revealed she's helping to pay her tuition by acting in porn films.  Ruse's used the woman's degrading announcement to blast liberal academics:

"That is the nonsense that they teach in women’s studies at Duke University, this is where she learned this. The toxic stew of the modern university is gender studies, it’s “Sex Week,” they all have “Sex Week” and teaching people how to be sex-positive and overcome the patriarchy. My daughters go to a little private religious school and we pay an arm and a leg for it precisely to keep them away from all of this kind of nonsense. I do hope that they go to a Christian college or university and to keep them so far away from the hard left, human-hating people that run modern universities, who should all be taken out and shot."


3.  Congressman Paul Ryan said on William Bennett's "Morning in America" talk radio show that there was a  "tailspin of culture, in our inner cities in particular, of men not working and just generations of men not even thinking about working or learning the value and the culture of work, and so there's a real culture problem here that has to be dealt with." 

And the winner is  .  .  .  .  .

THE UKRAINE CRISIS: SPECULATING ON WHAT’S AT STAKE

By Ronald Fox

New Note:  Sometimes Feedburner sends out previous posts on its own with no instruction from us.  I noticed this March 29 post was somehow re-sent last night.  I apologize for the redundancy.

 

(This post is a continuation, or Part II, if you like, of yesterday’s post, The Ukrainian Crisis and the Resurgence of the Neocons.  NOTE:  It's risky to speculate on events while they're unfolding.  I have no crystal ball.  My hope here is to stimulate an exchange of thoughts about where the Ukrainian crisis is heading and what Americans can expect.)

 

At stake in the Ukraine crisis is not only Ukrainian democracy and the territorial integrity of internationally recognized borders in the region, but the future of U.S.-Russian relations as well as the broader dynamics of international relations.  It could be we are witnessing the onset of a new Cold War, with its demonization of all things Russian and its many dysfunctions and dangers.  Worse yet, if the situation escalates into a shooting war, things could spin out of control with consequences too horrible to contemplate. Perhaps we should be grateful Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons in 1994, though now they probably wish they hadn’t.

 

Already the confrontation over Ukraine and Crimea has jeopardized, if not doomed: diplomatic efforts to resolve the conflict in Syria; achieve a satisfactory outcome to the Iran nuclear weapons issue; attain future U.S.-Soviet nuclear arms reductions (in fact, expect the events to encourage both countries to build up their nuclear arsenals, and possibly withdraw from existing arms control treaties); and, strengthen nuclear non-proliferation (who fools with a nuclear power?).  Prospects for future Washington-Moscow peace-making initiatives (which I wrote favorably about in a December 13 posting: After Iraq and Afghanistan: Will the U.S. be Less Inclined to Use Military Force Abroad?), such as in the fight against international terrorism and managing relations with North Korea, appear dead in the water.  Neocons and fellow hawks won't mind these consequences since a lack of progress in these areas will open up opportunities for the use of American force that could lead to the Pax Americana they want to establish.  For those who desire a world based on respect for human rights, the rule of law, and the peaceful settlement of disputes, however, there is good reason to dread a neocon future.     

 

SCIENCE FICTION FILMS OF THE 1950s: OR HOW I LEARNED TO START WORRYING AND HATE THE BOMB

By Ronald Fox

 

Like many youngsters in the 1950s, I watched science fiction movies. I don’t remember being very scared by the monsters and aliens, but what I do recall is that the films got me, an inquisitive kid for my age, thinking about atomic security—or more correctly, atomic insecurity. I wondered why our glorious A-bombs, which were supposed to protect us from evil, didn’t work so well against invading aliens, who always seemed smarter and more technically advanced than us. The aliens would dish out mass destruction, only to be thwarted at the last minute, not by our weapons, but by the brilliance of some scientist who figured out how to defeat them. This may have produced a happy ending, but it was little consolation for my skeptical mind. My lesson was to worry about our atomic future.

Throughout the early years of the atomic age U.S. security officials went to great lengths to convince the American public that nuclear supremacy would not only protect us from military attacks, but also enable us to control world events, large and small. We would be omnipotent. We were told that atomic weapons were a godsend, bestowed upon the United States, and not our enemies. This numinous quality would prove highly seductive, luring millions of Americans in the early post-World War II period to worship at the altar of nuclear power. In the tightly controlled and conformist Cold War atmosphere of the time, few dared to challenge the pro-bomb orthodoxy. Among the few, however, were science fiction film-makers.

DECEMBER 2013 BONEHEAD ABSURDITY OF THE MONTH

So many absurdities surround in our lives, there's a whole body of philosophical thought called "absurdism."  In this spirit, Phronesis is starting a new award series we will call “The Bonehead Absurdity of the Month.”  Each month we will select a statement by a public figure that is, according to the dictionary definition of absurd, so  "utterly or obviously senseless, illogical, or untrue; contrary to all reason or common sense; laughably foolish or false" that it warrants recognition as our bonehead Absurdity of the Month.

We didn’t post our December 2013 winner because of the holidays, so this posting will present the December recipient of this distinctive award.

The December Award goes to Congressman Duncan Hunter, Jr., R-Calif. Who said in a C-SPAN interview on December 6 regarding Iran:

"I think if you have to hit Iran, you don't put boots on the ground, you do it with tactical nuclear devices, and you set them back a decade or two or three. I think that's the way to do it — with a massive aerial bombardment campaign."

Given that bombing campaigns have never proven their worth for the U.S., it's amazing the Right remains so affixed to them.  Our bombing and deployment of military force in the Middle East is accomplishing one thing: destabilization of the entire region.

Response to Yosarian's Question about Exaggerating Enemy Fighter Airplane Capabilities

Yossarian,

Thanks for your comment.  Yes I can give you an example.  To push the F-14 and F-15 programs, the Pentagon hyped the Russian Mig-25 "Foxbat."  It was portrayed as a super plane, with superior speed, range, and capability to what we currently had; that is until a defecting Russian pilot in 1976 landed his Foxbat in Hakodate,  Japan, where upon inspection we found it to be very ordinary.  It was made of steel instead of titanium (which made it unwieldy), almost incapable of close-quarters combat, electronically far inferior to U.S. fighters, and had less top speed and range than the Pentagon had claimed. Such exaggeration was common in U.S. Cold War assessment of the Soviet threat.

Yossarian, huh?  Figures.