Real Life: Strangers in Fiction

There are some things in life so unlikely that one is apt not to believe them even when they turn out to be true. An example? I got a television. Actually, I got another one. The super at my place gave me one a few years ago. Or maybe it only feels like it's been in the doorway for years. I wanted to throw it out, but I didn't want the guy seeing it in the dumpster and thinking I'm ungrateful. Then I got a dvd player from a friend. My floor is sagging already with all the books in my place. What I need is more stuff? So, there I am complaining about more stuff and a friend drops in with a monster tv, saying he knew I had a new dvd player and he just happened to have bought a new tv that's even bigger than this sucker he's dropped off. Today a friend asked me if my new tv works. He asked how many channels I get. I told him I don't know, I've never tried it. Why would I watch tv? It never occurred to me to turn it on. Instead, I watched a Clint Eastwood movie on dvd. My neighbors all think I'm a psycho. Alright, they're certain now. Last evening I had earplugs in the tv sound slot so I wouldn't piss off everyone in the neighborhood. The neighbours heard me laughing in the dark for hours all by myself. You just can't win.

I watched The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. I think it's based on the Prisoners' Dilemma. I didn't think that the first time I saw it, when I was eight or ten-- or something. Back then I think I liked it because it's funny, same as I still think it's funny. I haven't seen a movie in 20 years. Maybe they're all funny. I think The Dirty Dozen is hilarious.

I read somewhere that humor is the plausible but unexpected. I've been around long enough now to know that much is plausible, and most of it is unexpected. Usually I laugh. The philosopher Rene Girard makes me laugh. So do jihadis, often.

I laugh while watching The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly because it's plausible, though things that happen are unlikely and yet happen anyway.

And then there's the wacky world of television, where plausible thing happen that are unexpected, and I don't find them funny at all. I read this on the Internet and now I know why I don't watch tv.

Andrew Klavan, "Shocked … Shocked!", Klavan on the Culture. June 9th, 2009

Boy oh boy, these last few days have been full of surprises, haven’t they? One shocking revelation tumbles out after another. Here’re just a few blind-siders coming in from way out of left field:

Adam Lambert is gay. I mean, hold the phone, Mabel, I never saw that coming! You’re telling me the guy who would surely have won American Idol this year if it were, in fact, a singing contest instead of an informal poll of which guy 13-year-old girls find cute but unthreatening is batting for the other team??? You know, now that I think about it, when we saw pictures of him wearing eyeliner, dressing in drag and kissing another guy, I sort of thought something might be going on. But not that! Never that!

http://pajamasmedia.com/andrewklavan/2009/06/09/shocked-shocked/

I had no idea of what I'm missing. I spend my free time reading. I never tire of it.

I never tire of the Prisoners' Dilemma. In the case of the movie The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, it's a Mexican Standoff. By the strangest of coincidences, as I type this, sure enough, on the radio is now playing Stealer's Wheel, "Stuck in the Middle with You." I saw the movie, Reservoir Dogs, years ago on television. It has a scene in which this tune plays. It ends with a Mexican Standoff. I laugh.

How do we make honest decisions and act in good faith? I accept that I will probably regret some actions later; but I know that if I don't act because I'm waiting for perfection, then all will be lost. That's not a bad thing, I guess, if I were watching television. But life is funny. There's watchers and then there's actors. Conservatives are watchers. Leftards, often, are actors. We know the result.

Watchers can only stop actors by acting. I think it's very funny. If I'd known when I was a kid how funny it would be, I would have pleaded sickness and never have gotten out of bed at all. It's good, it's bad, and it's ugly. Much of the time the dilemma's funny. You just can't win.

"The Story of a Soldier"
from the film The Good, The Bad and the Ugly
music by Ennio Morricone
lyrics by Tommy Connor

Bugles are calling
from prairie to shore,
"Sign up" and "Fall in"
and march off to war.
Drums beating loudly,
Hearts beating proudly
Match Blue and Grey
And smile as you say Goodbye.
Smoke hides the valleys
And fire paints the plains.
Loud roar the cannons
'Til ruin remains:
Blue grass and cotton
Burnt and forgotten
All hope seems gone
So soldier march on to die.
There in the distance
A flag I can see,
Scorched and in ribbons
But whose can it be;
How ends the story,
Whose is the glory,
Ask if we dare
Our comrades out there who sleep.

Lyrics to "The Story of A Soldier" as sung in the film

Bugles are calling from prairie to shore,
"Sign up" and "Fall In" and march off to war.
Blue grass and cotton, burnt and forgotten
All hope seems gone so soldier march on to die.
Bugles are calling from prairie to shore,
"Sign up" and "Fall In" and march off to war.
There in the distance a flag I can see,
Scorched and in ribbons but whose can it be,
How ends the story, whose is the glory
Ask if we dare, our comrades out there who sleep

(Thanks to Michael Caletka and Addie Smith)

http://sartana.homestead.com/story.html

The Psychopath and the Gun Slinger

Clint Eastwood plays this character who sits in the barber's chair, the barber's hand is shaking so badly he gets lather all over Clint's face, Clint "looking" at him, the barber going even shakier, and then trying to hold the straight-razor steady as he attempts to shave Clint's throat of a week's beard. A third character stands by the door. He says to Clint: "The Rojas brothers wanted to meet you." Clint says: "I don't know those men." The guy in the doorway says: "Now you never will. You just killed them." As I recall, Clint looks mildly amused. Or is it just me? It's been 40 years since I saw the movie so the details are as fuzzy Clint's beard. What is clear is that Clint's character encountered three men on a dusty frontier street, that they drew their guns on him, and he shot them all down before going off for his shave and a haircut, which he didn't actually get, perhaps his only real regret of the day. He killed three strangers and didn't bother to know more about them than that. What do you think? Would it wash today among the EU/UN crowd? I don't think so. But look at this instead and think how well the character would be received by the same lot as above:

Anthony Hopkins is bound and masked and other ways made immobile on his way from one prison cell to another, during which time he manages to free himself of his restraints to kill a prison guard and more, I can't recall exactly, before he goes on to murder a whole whack of folks, all in the name of getting away with previous murders. I can't recall and I don't want to. The so-called liberals among us can, perhaps do, come up with all kinds of "theories" about how social conditions have created such a person, how we are all responsible for the being of such a being in our midsts, and ya ya.

I see a difference between Clint Eastwood's Man With No Name and Hopkins' Hannibal Lecter. I see the former as a man with principles, and I see the latter as a psychopath. At wikipedia we read: "Red Dragon firmly states that Lecter does not fit any known psychological profile. However, Lecter's keeper Frederick Chilton claims that Lecter is a "pure sociopath" despite characteristics in his behavior that are inconsistent with the disorder. Lecter's pathosis is explored in greater detail in Hannibal and Hannibal Rising, which explain that he is irreparably traumatized as a child when he witnesses the murder and consumption by desperate military men of his younger sister, Mischa." Spare me.

In Eastwood's character we might find moral ambiguity; in Hopkins' character it is society that is, at best, ambiguous, and more than likely outright evil in the making of an evil person. What value do we have in mind as we relate our desires and being to such characters? Given that few of us drift around the world encountering those who would kill us without a thought, and that most of us actually work day jobs and have evening and weekend families, what are we thinking when we relate to cinema idols? Most of us, I think, have a sense of fair-play and honor, seeing ourselves as competitive in business if ruthless in self-defence; but what about those of us who don't see anything beyond ourselves as victims bent on revenge for slights and woes, for outright evils visited upon us by life? What do we value anymore? We, those who might cherish the thought of adopting a Palestinian suicide bomber baby? We who might find ourselves in a flashy new and brightly lit public library coming up from the darkest depths with glibberies excusing those who kill for the sake of Islamic rectifications and yet more and more ya ya?

Kim Bolan, "Society encourages psychopaths: expert." Vancouver Sun; 2 April 2008

Today's society is a fertile breeding ground for psychopathic behaviour, says an international expert in the field.

Dr. Robert Hare, professor emeritus at the University of B.C., says that shifting ethical standards, reflected in television crime shows that glamorize the abnormal, allow psychopaths to flourish.

"What is clear is that society is making it a lot easier for psychopathy or psychopathic behaviour to flourish," Hare said.

"The moral ethical standards that we have now are shifting. What is acceptable now would not have been acceptable five or 10 or 20 years ago."

[....]

Hare, author of the best-selling Without Conscience, The Disturbing World of the Psychopaths Among Us.... Hare said research indicates that about 15 per cent of the prison population in Canada is psychopathic, compared to a guess of about one per cent of the general population.

He said it is hard to know if the numbers are increasing overall because studies are generally limited to people in jail and not society at large.

But he said changing social values -- reflected in popular TV hits like Dexter, which is about a heroic serial killer -- have made things worse.

"I won't even watch Dexter," he said. "In a sense what they are doing is glorifying, glamorizing and making normal what is really abnormal. All these programs like CSI and the hundreds of others. They are caricatures of what law enforcement does."

[....]

"My argument is that they know the difference between right and wrong. They know the rules of the game. They are perfectly aware of what society expects of them, but they have chosen for whatever reason not to follow these rules," he said of psychopaths.

"If it is to their advantage to engage in pro-social good behaviour, they are going to do so; if it is to their advantage to engage in anti-social behaviour, they are going to do so."

[....]

http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/story.html?id=a19bc454-4d01-4262-bdf8-5141618483b9&k=22431

I read Hare's book about 15 years ago, and in that time I think people haven't gotten any worse, but I do think many people are acting far worse than at any civil time in living memory. Which means?

Psychopaths flourish in wars and civil catastrophes. It is then they are unrestrained and seldom captured; that they are even lauded as the best of men in the worst of times. We seem in our day and in our neighbourhoods to like them now. Witness the hero-worship of jihadis among our intelligentsia. See our politicians go groveling before the cold-eyed killers of countless civilians; our dhimmi academics hurling stones at democrats; see our artists lying dead on the streets for challenging them.

What are you going to do when life is really boring and you can't find anything on tv worth wasting your time on? What if your life is totally boring and you have no values to keep you morally sane? Well, there's always a place to hang out and chat about the latest victims you admire who are fighting back against the system of which you are an unhappy part but wish you weren't. Definitely, if you're a psychopath with a grievance you'll find a sympathetic audience among the Middle-Class-bored and the desperate-for-meaning crowd. If you're a barbarian, they'll still love you. Maybe especially so if so.

Maybe some of us are still Clint Eastwood fans rather than cheerleaders for the lunatic fascist Grand Gesture types. Maybe some of us would happily and casually shoot down a few psychos on the street without thinking much about it if the latter pulled guns on us and meant to kill us. But we might then land ourselves, still living, in jail. Hard call, ain't it? Especially when it's not the movies but the subway or the office or the local school under attack. Yeah, London and Madrid, New York and Washington, Beslan, Bali... you pick it.