Touchstone Magazine - Mere Comments

How the West was Won (Again...for Christ)

Last month Pope Benedict XVI announced the formation of a new pontifical council dedicated to the "renewed evangelization" of the West, specifically countries "in which the Gospel put down roots a long time ago, giving place to a true Christian tradition, but where in the last centuries -- with complex dynamics -- the process of secularization has produced a grave crisis of the sense of the Christian faith and of belonging to the Church." 

Understanding how the Christian West came to be is of the utmost importance for understanding how it must be evangelized again. One account of the dawn of the West is available in The Birth of Freedom, a documentary film available from Acton Media. The Birth of Freedom has been airing on PBS stations around the country, and features a host of dynamic experts, including Bill Allen, Susan Wise Bauer, Robby George, Sam Gregg, Rodney Stark, Glenn Sunshine, and George Weigel. 

State of the Groundhog

It probably won't surprise you much when I inform you that I passed up the opportunity to listen to my president's State of the Union address last night.
Instead I popped my DVD of Groundhog Day into the player, and watched it for the eleventy-second time. It was almost shorter than the president's speech, and definitely less repetitious, from what I've read.

And it's the right time of year.

I think Groundhog Day is my It's a Wonderful Life. As I've mentioned many times to friends, IaWL just depresses me. The only message I get from it is “George Bailey has a wonderful life, BUT YOU'RE NOT GEORGE BAILEY!”

Groundhog Day, on the other hand, presents a lesson I can agree with—“If I had the chance to do my life over about a million times, I might eventually figure something out.”

I understand the original script was written by a Buddhist, and that the filmmakers cut out some of the more explicitly Buddhist elements. I suppose, to be consistent with myself, I ought to reject the film for the merest taint of Buddhism.

But what kind of theology does It's a Wonderful Life present? Salvation by good works and self-esteem. “You may think you're a miserable sinner, George Bailey, but they think very highly of you in heaven!” Not exactly Christian law and gospel.

What I like about Groundhog Day is the non-theological material—the simple moral journey of a man who does actually come to realize that he's a sinner, and then works to become somebody whose life contributes. It's not a saving knowledge, but it's a good thing for the people who have to live with him.

To a large degree, it's about humility. I could name some prominent people who seem to think that humility is for their country, but not for them as individuals. Such people need to wake up and see their own shadows.

(Crossposted at Brandywine Books)

Inglourious Basterds Just Plain Inglorious

I admit that I saw the new Quentin Tarantino film Inglourious Basterds.  Now that I've seen it, you don't have to.

Inglourious Basterds is a cultural low point.  It is the revenge fantasy of a poorly educated and completely unreflective thirteen year old.  It is a jerky exercise in crudely manipulating the feelings of the audience in order to give them an excuse to hate the bad guys enough to want them brutally and cruelly dispatched.  

I did hate the bad guys.  But I hated some other things, too.

I hated the way the "good" guys acted.

I hated the way the film was put together.

I hated the extraordinarily hokey job of acting done by one Brad Pitt.

Let me dwell on that Brad Pitt issue for a second.  He spends the entire movie oddly grimacing and occasionally growling out a line. Usually a cliche'.  He is doing a bad impersonation of a cross between L'il Abner and R. Lee Ermey.

I think the theory of the film is that the Nazis are the one group of bad guys we can all agree were REALLY bad and therefore the audience will have the emotional permission needed to hate these men enough to unreservedly enjoy some completely gratuitous Hollywood graphic violence.  I was unable to reach that level.  I still had some reservations.

MINOR SPOILERS AHEAD.

The plot was a rip-off of the far superior The Dirty Dozen.  You remember.  All the big Nazis are going to be in one place.  Let's kill 'em all while we have the chance.  You've seen that movie before.  Rest content. You don't need to see it again.  

Though Inglourious Basterds opened big, I don't think it will carry over.  I can't imagine this film is going to capture many imaginations.

The innovation of this film is that you will see Nazi soldiers dispatched very cruelly and without any human feeling at all.  You will see men scalped.  You will see the survivors get swastikas carved into their foreheads.  You will see a very large man nick-named The Bear Jew beat a Nazi soldier to death berserker-style with a baseball bat because the soldier will not divulge the location of his comrades.  This is supposed to be very satisfying though the soldier passively takes the deathblows.  Some in the audience cheered.  I like seeing bad guys face terrible justice as much as the next guy.  But it shouldn't be filmed as the equivalent of a teenage wilding incident.

The film's hook is that Brad Pitt and his Nazi hunters go about the countryside catching and killing Nazis.  However, we don't really get to know the men in the squad and most of their action is off camera or has already happened.  The film is as much or more about a Jewish woman who survived the shooting of her family to escape into the countryside as it is about the "Basterds".  One has the notion that much of the footage that would help things make sense or help us to care has ended up on the cutting room floor.  But one imagines that had to be the case because this is NOT a short film.

On the whole, I wish I'd seen G.I. Joe, instead.  You know, the REAL American hero? 

Moral Ecology and the Movies

The main theme of Robert George's book published 15 years ago, Making Men Moral, is the idea of a moral ecology. Contrary to the advocates of lifestyle liberalism and libertarianism alike, George argues that "victimless" crimes are never quite victimless. Vices, even indulged in private, can't help but have an effect on one's character. Echoing Aristotle, Lewis, and many others, what we do shapes who we are and if we learned nothing else from the presidential politics of the 1990s, the private/public divide is not as easily compartmentalized as we might want to think.

This isn't to say that any and all legal efforts to stamp out vice are warranted or desirable. Law, by itself, cannot transform the heart, and prudence has an essential role to play. At the same time, law can restrain the behavior that flows from the heart, and it does act as a teacher. Moreover,  while some vices are stubborn and will likely remain on this side of eternity, how they're considered by law and culture makes a difference. One of the best means of illustrating the extent to which a culture has changed is to see how vices are portrayed in film. And yes, this also gives one the excuse to watch (old) movies.

Consider the classic Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall film, The Big Sleep (1946), from Raymond Chander's equally classic Philip Marlowe novel of the same name (1939). My wife and I watched this film the other night on Netflix instant.

Now, I'm not as militant as some are in opposing classic movie remakes, but if there's one movie that should not be remade, it's The Big Sleep, and likely for all the aesthetic reasons that people often cite in such matters. But beyond this, it would be quite difficult to translate the movie into today's culture given how vastly different the moral ecology is now than it was then (spoilers coming!).

Consider the plot of the film and the book. A world-weary and hard-boiled detective, Philip Marlowe, is called in to assist with the blackmail of an elderly patriarch of a very wealthy family. General Sternwood has two beautiful and rather wild daughters. In his investigation Marlowe discovers that the blackmail revolves around pornographic pictures taken of the younger daughter, Carmen. The pornographer runs his business in the back of an antique bookstore and the men who purchase his wares must surreptitiously conduct their business in a password-protected backroom. A young man who has fallen in love with the Carmen confronts and kills the pornographer in an attempt to defend her honor, and the remainder of the movie depicts Marlowe pursuing the twists and turns as he and the cops attempt to figure things out while keeping the Sternwoods from experiencing the public humiliation that would ensue if the daughter's escapades came to light.

Where to start? The worries of the characters in the film seem almost quaint in today's culture. Consider first the pornography business. In the 1930s and 40s it was taken for granted that such bookstores were not only seedy, but illegal. Sure, one knew that such things went on, but you had to go behind closed doors to indulge in it. And the law helped make that happen.

And not to give any more attention to one who is overexposed in so many ways, but compare the Sternwood family to one of our famous wealthy families, the Hiltons. General Sternwood is no Puritan, and he wistfully admits to Marlowe that his own youthful peccadilloes mean he deserves whatever grief he gets from his daughters.

But the whole plot of the film turns on the attempt to shield the younger daughter from her own self-destructive behavior, and the murder of the pornographer arises from one man's unfortunate attempt to protect her honor. The Hilton daughter, in contrast, is famous only because of the broadcasting of her self-destructive behavior, and the young men in her life, rather than defend her honor by attacking her exploiters, are the exploiters in both deed and technological dissemination of the product.

In The Big Sleep, the goal is to save the daughter from the ruin of pornography. With Paris Hilton, pornography is the means by which she has achieved social noteriety and "success". The pornographer Geiger had to be sponsored by a gangster and hide his wares behind a front business; today, the porn business is broadcast online, on television, and in the Hilton Hotels. Pornographers then had to hide from law; pornographers today hire lobbyists to influence the law.

And they do so because they recognize the central theme of George's book. The law matters. It teaches. It changes the culture. Proponents of a healthy moral ecology aren't so naive as to think that vices can be rooted out entirely. The Fall is no joke. But how vices are greeted in public reveals a great deal about the nature of the culture. So check out The Big Sleep and judge for yourself. Of course, if you're awake you probably don't have to see the movie to agree the moral ecology has changed for the worse . . . but it's a really good movie.