Culture – Page 11 – God of the Machine

Culture Clash

 Culture, Politics  8 Responses »
Mar 242003
 

You really want a culture clash, attend the next time some TV reporter interviews a soldier. Chances are you’ll hear an exchange like the following:

TV Head: So, you’re flying out again tonight?
Pilot: Yes.
TV Head: How do you feel? Are you apprehensive at all?
Pilot: No. I’m ready to go out there and do my job.
TV Head: Are you ever worried that you’ll, uh, drop a bomb on the wrong target?
Pilot: No.
TV Head: No?
Pilot: We’ve got a job to do and we’re well-trained to do it. We don’t release until we have 100% target acquisition. And when I aim at something, I’m gonna hit it.

Now I’m speaking here as a member of the culture consumed by fear and doubt. You want 100% target acquisition, don’t send me. And there are martial vices as well as martial virtues. But when I watch an interview like this, I can’t help feeling that these soldiers are, in important ways, my moral superiors, and I hope the TV journalists feel the same way. Somehow I doubt it.

(Update: Jim Ryan comments. Marc Miyake comments. Floyd McWilliams comments.)

Operation Second Wind

 Culture, Politics  2 Responses »
Mar 222003
 

Yes, Peter Arnett, last seen in 1998 disseminating a virtually unsourced and utterly false tale about the U.S. Army using sarin against Vietnam War defectors in 1970, is back, armed with a National Geographic press credential and reporting on the war for NBC. You can say what you like about lawyers, but if they get caught embezzling the escrow funds, it’s disbarment and that’s all she wrote. Arnett gets caught effectively making up a sensational story and publishing it under his own byline in Time. He pleads in his own defense that the copy was handed to him, classily passing the buck to his colleagues. And not only does he not get fired — his producer, whom he hung out to dry, was canned, while his own contract was allowed to quietly expire — but he resurfaces a few years later on another major network! I wonder what Scott Fitzgerald was smoking when he said there are no second acts in American lives. Sometimes I think American lives consist of nothing but second acts. (Link from Colby Cosh.)

(Update: Hey, great! Now he’s criticizing American military strategy for Iraqi TV. Imagine that. Thanks to Susanna for the link.)

(Further: Canned. Stay tuned for the third act.)

What Made Sammy Run?

 Literature, Movies  8 Responses »
Mar 212003
 

To my surprise and delight, Michael Blowhard exhumes one of my favorite novels, Budd Schulberg’s What Makes Sammy Run?, describing its protagonist, one Samuel Glick, née Shmelka Glickstein, as an “unprincipled, asslicking, domineering, will-do-anything-to-succeed Hollywood hustler.” All that and more: Sammy is a force of nature. The book opens with seventeen-year-old Sammy at the newspaper office running copy, and when Sammy runs copy, he runs copy:

The boss told me Sammy was getting a three-week tryout. But Sammy did more running around that office in those three weeks than Paavo Nurmi did in his whole career. Every time I handed him a page of copy, he ran off with it as if his life depended on it. I can still see Sammy racing between the desks, his tie flying, wild-eyed, desperate…

“Hey, kid, take it easy.”

This was like cautioning Niagara to fall more slowly.

“You said rush, Mr. Manheim.”

“I didn’t ask you to drop dead on us.”

“I don’t drop dead very easy, Mr. Manheim.”

“Like your job, Sammy?”

“It’s a damn good job — this year.”

“What do you mean — this year?”

“If I still have it next year, it’ll stink.”

He looked so tense and serious I almost laughed in his face. I liked him. Maybe he was a little too fresh, but he was quite a boy.

“I’ll keep my ear to the ground for you, kid. Maybe in a couple of years I’ll have a chance to slip you in as a cub reporter.”

That was the first time he ever scared me. Here I was going out of my way to be nice to him and he answered me with a look that was almost contemptuous.

“Thanks, Mr. Manheim,” he said, “but don’t do me any favors. I know this newspaper racket. Couple of years as a cub reporter? Twenty bucks. Then another stretch as district man. Thirty-five. And finally you’re a great big reporter and get forty-five for the rest of your life. No, thanks.”

Football scouts have a term, “high motor,” for people like Sammy. (Other characters compare him to an engine, a motor, and a dynamo.) He runs from first page to last. And with every despicable act, as Sammy bullies, plagiarizes, lies, and cheats his way to Hollywood success, you watch, like the narrator, Al Manheim, with horror and fascination, and finally a sneaking admiration, the way you might admire a tornado, provided you’re not caught in it. First shock, then awe.

The novel dates in some ways. Its very title — “a slum childhood” turns out to be the answer to its question — smacks of a sociological determinism that was fashionable in 1941 but now just seems tired. There are plugs for the communists in the Spanish Civil War and Upton Sinclair’s campaign for Governor of California. But the Hollywood dope could have been written yesterday. Schulberg, whose father was a big-shot Hollywood producer, was 27 when Sammy was published. He was a publicist for Paramount when he was 17, a screenwriter at 19, and he knows. Here is Sammy, mid-career, making stone soup in the commissary:

Sammy would walk up to a director and say, “Spencer Tracy and Marlene Dietrich in Titanic. Do I have to say any more?”

Then he would just walk away from the guy, significantly, and leave it in his lap. The director has been desperate for a socko story all year. Tracy and Dietrich in Titanic. Jesus, it sounds like something. Natural suspense. And two great characters. Maybe Spence is a good two-fisted minister who tries to straighten Marlene out. Marlene is a tramp, of course. He’s real. She’s anything for a laugh. Then, even though the boat is going down you bring the audience up with a hell of a lift because Marlene suddenly sees the light.

Meanwhile Sammy bumps into a supervisor. “I was just telling Chick Tyler my new story,” he says. “He went off his nut about it. Spencer Tracy and Marlene Dietrich in Titanic. Do I have to say any more?”

And he drops the hot potato in the supervisor’s lap and runs again. The supervisor knows Sammy hasn’t missed yet. And he’s been trying to get a cast like that ever since he’s been made a supervisor. So he drops by Tyler’s table.

“Sammy Glick tells me you’re hot for his Titanic story,” he says.

“Yeah,” Tyler says, “I think the kid’s got something. And it’s right down my alley.”

By this time Tyler is practically thinking up the acceptance speech he’ll make on receiving the Academy Award. “I could get a great picture out of that,” he says. “Remember what I did with Strange Voyage? That’s for me!”

All this time Sammy is hopping from table to table, pollinating his story like a bumblebee, catching them as they go in and out, asking everybody who can possibly help him if he has to say anything more and running off before they can answer. Everybody is now asking everybody else if they have heard Sammy’s Titanic story. And by this time, through unconscious generosity, they have contributed to the story two characters, a beginning, middle and a climax. Now Sammy manages to cross the path of the General Manager in Charge of Production. Sammy has heard that he’s been a little burned lately because people are saying he is losing touch with studio activities.

“How do you do, sir,” Sammy says. “I suppose Tyler and Hoyt have told you my story for Dietrich and Tracy. Titanic? Everybody who’s heard it seems very excited about it.”

He has heard about Glick, of course, and he never likes to appear ignorant of anything. “Yes, I have, Glick,” he says. “Sounds very interesting. I’m going to call you all in for a conference on it some time this week.”

There is real skill in this performance. It’s no mean feat to arrange a conference, on air, with the General Manager in Charge of Production. Push, of Sammy’s superhuman caliber, is as much a talent as talent; ask any salesman. Julian Blumberg, a ghostwriter for Sammy with talent but no push — his reward is to write the nonexistent Titanic script — narrates this tale with “no bitterness or anger,” but “mild wonder and deep resignation.” Without Julian there is no Titanic, but without Sammy there is no Titanic either.

Reading Sammy reminds me that my own Glick-deficiency is a character flaw no less real than Sammy’s Glick-excess. “A little bit of Glick would help us all,” the character who understands Sammy best remarks. “A very little bit.”

The Gentle Art of Making Enemies

 Culture, Navel-Gazing  16 Responses »
Mar 172003
 

Megan McArdle discusses the necessity, if you wish to socialize in Manhattan, of avoiding political discussion, if you have politics like hers or mine. But sometimes avoiding politics just isn’t enough. I once started talking, at a dinner party at my sister’s, about Japanese painting with a guy I’d never seen before. One interesting thing about traditional Japanese art, I said, is that vanishing-point perspective does not appear. My interlocutor maintained that this was because the artists had no interest in perspective; they were trying to do something else, although he never specified quite what. I pointed out that perspective was a scientific discovery, made by the Italians in the 15th century, and that if the Japanese had known of it they certainly would have used it, at least sometimes. So how does he explain the fact that it never appears until the 19th century?

Sure, I was egging him on a little on the Western hegemony front. But only a little, and I was completely unprepared for what came next. He stood up, announced to the room that he couldn’t take any more of this, gathered up his girlfriend, and stormed out. My sister, who brooks no nonsense, banished him for life.

(Update: Stumbling Tongue says anyone who thinks Manhattan is bad ought to try Italy.)

I, the Jury

 Movies  4 Responses »
Mar 122003
 

I shouldn’t have done it, I know, but last night I watched 12 Angry Men again on television. Its principal interest is sociological. It preserves in celluloid a representative collection of liberal stereotypes circa 1957 — bloviating bigot Ed Begley, Lonely Crowd adman Robert Webber, hypersensitive slum-dweller Jack Klugman (looking positively fawn-like, if you can believe it), neurotically precise broker E.G. Marshall, short-fused martinet Lee J. Cobb, broad-minded and tolerant architect Henry Fonda. What is it with Hollywood and architects anyway? How come they always get a free pass? Why are there doctor and lawyer jokes in store, but no architect jokes? One of the funniest running gags in Seinfeld was George, pretending not to be unemployed, continually masquerading as an architect. It’s so respectable, and you probably won’t have to answer any embarrassing technical questions. If I ever write a screeplay, I’m going to make my villain an architect, out of sheer perversity.

One thing you can’t help but notice, after you’ve seen this movie a few times, is how obviously guilty the boy is. Henry Fonda demolishes the eyewitness testimony, on which E.G. Marshall, the voice of prosecutorial reason, foolishly bases his case, but eyewitness testimony is usually unreliable anyway. Consider the murder weapon instead. The accused owned a switchblade with an elaborately carved handle, supposedly unique: the storekeeper where he bought it said he had never seen another. A switchblade of the same design was found in his father’s chest. The accused, questioned by the police about his own switchblade, maintained that he lost it through a hole in his pocket. (We’ll presume, though we’re never told, that his pocket actually did have a hole in it.) His alibi is that he went to the movies, whose titles, plots and actors he could not recall. Architect Fonda’s first gambit is to show the jury an identical switchblade that he bought in a pawnshop, reasoning thence that someone else could have done it. Maybe, but if the accused is innocent one is obliged to believe the following: first, that the real perpetrator committed the murder, coincidentally, with a knife identical to the one the suspect owned; second, that the accused lost his own knife on the very same night; and third, that he watched two movies and was unable to recall, when questioned immediately afterwards, a thing about either one. Reopen the deliberations, dammit! I want to hang that jury.

(Update: Jim Valliant, a district attorney, notes in the comments that by not turning the knife he bought over to the judge, Henry Fonda was also guilty of misconduct.)

(Another: Brian Micklethwait comments.)

Veiled Threat Department

 Business, Culture  6 Responses »
Mar 112003
 

“May your thoughts be as deep as your pockets,” a Citibank advertisement suggests. Oh yeah, that would fix me right up. Maybe my thoughts should have holes in them too, to complete the analogy. I don’t know if this is a national campaign, but Manhattan, at least, is full of Citi ads with seriously annoying fortune-cookie advice like “He who dies with the most toys is dead” and “Collecting interest does not count as a hobby” and “It’s a financial statement, not a scorecard.” The tagline is “live richly,” as if their concern was not with my finances but my well-being. I guess just asking them to collect my checking fees, keep their ATMs full, post their money market rates, and shut up would be too much.

I can barely tolerate Philip Morris commending shopkeepers for not selling cigs to minors and Anheuser-Busch moralizing against driving drunk, because I know they’ve got a gun pointed at their heads. Citibank lacks that excuse. In a world full of busybodies, do we really need a busybody multinational bank?

Why I Never Liked T.S. Eliot

 Poetry  2 Responses »
Mar 072003
 

Chard Whitlow
(Mr. Eliot’s Sunday Evening Postscript)

As we get older we do not get any younger.
Seasons return, and today I am fifty-five,
And this time last year I was fifty-four,
And this time next year I shall be sixty-two.
And I cannot say I should like (to speak for myself)
To see my time over again — if you can call it time:
Fidgeting uneasily under a draughty stair,
Or counting sleepless nights in the crowded tube.

There are certain precautions — though none of them very reliable —
Against the blast from bombs and the flying splinter,
But not against the blast from heaven, vento dei venti,
The wind within a wind unable to speak for wind;
And the frigid burnings of purgatory will not be touched
By any emollient.
I think you will find this put,
Better than I could ever hope to express it,
In the words of Kharma: “It is, we believe,
Idle to hope that the simple stirrup-pump
Will extinguish hell.”
Oh, listeners,
And you especially who have turned off the wireless,
And sit in Stoke or Basingstoke listening appreciatively to the silence,
(Which is also the silence of hell) pray, not for your skins, but your souls.

And pray for me also under the draughty stair.
As we get older we do not get any younger.

And pray for Kharma under the holy mountain.

–Henry Reed

Mitigating factor: Eliot said about this poem: “Most parodies of one’s own work strike one as very poor. In fact one is apt to think that one could parody oneself much better. (In fact some critics have said that I have done so.) But this one deserves the success it has had.”

(Update: Felicity McCarthy comments.)

I Know Just the Cop for Khalid Shaikh Mohammed

 Law, Movies  10 Responses »
Mar 062003
 

There has been considerable discussion of the ethics of police torture in the blogosphere without a single invocation of the seminal American text on the subject, a work with which all of these distinguished ethicists are doubtless familiar. I refer, of course, to Dirty Harry.

That famous torture scene on the football field has its troubling aspects. Callahan makes a point of ordering his partner, “Too Much Linguine” DiGiorgio, out of the stadium: “Go out and get some air, Fatso.” He knows he’s about to cross the line. He doesn’t want to make DiGiorgio complicit, but he doesn’t want witnesses either.

It’s also no certainty that the man they’re chasing is even the killer, although it’s highly probable. Nobody has had a good enough look at him to provide a physical description, and the only positive ID they have is from the ER doctor who treated his stab wound. It’s conceivable that someone else could show up at a big city hospital with the same sort of wound at the same time. But this is more than good enough for Callahan.

Callahan is also quite sure the girl, whose life he’s supposed to be interested in saving, is already dead. He tells the Mayor and the Police Chief so in an earlier scene, and Scorpio confirms his hunch by telling him in the bagman scene in the park that “I’ve changed my mind. I’m going to let her die. I just wanted you to know that.” And in fact the girl is dead. Callahan tortures Scorpio because he enjoys torturing criminals. In the famous bank robbery scene — “six shots, or only five?” — he fires the empty at the robber’s head only partly because the robber asks him to (“I gots to know”). Mostly he does it for jollies. If you doubt me take a good look at the grin on his face when the gun clicks.

Callahan does manage to discover the murder weapon (in an illegal search) and the location of the dead girl, so in a certain sense the torture is effective. In the long run, however, it proves disastrous. Callahan saunters into the District Attorney’s office the next morning expecting a hero’s welcome; instead he is informed that Scorpio isn’t going to prosecuted.

DA: You’re lucky I’m not indicting you for assault with intent to commit murder.
Callahan (doing classic Eastwood slow burn): What?!
DA: Where the hell does it say you’ve got a right to kick down doors, torture suspects, deny medical attention and legal counsel. Where have you been? Does Escobedo ring a bell? Miranda? I mean, you must have heard of the Fourth Amendment. What I’m saying is, that man had rights.
Callahan: Well, I’m all broken up about that man’s rights.
DA: You should be. I’ve got news for you, Callahan. As soon as he’s well enough to leave the hospital, he walks.
Callahan: What are you talking about?
DA: He’s free.
Callahan: You mean you’re letting him go?
DA: We have to, we can’t try him.
Callahan: And why is that?
DA: Because I’m not wasting a half a million dollars of the taxpayer’s money on a trial we can’t possibly win. The problem is, we don’t have any evidence.
Callahan: Evidence? What the hell do you call that? (He gestures toward Scorpio’s weapon on a side table.)
DA: I call it nothing, zero.
Callahan: Are you trying to tell me that Ballistics can’t match the bullet up to this rifle?
DA: It doesn’t matter what Ballistics can do. This rifle might make a nice souvenir. But it’s inadmissible as evidence.
Callahan: And who says that?
DA: It’s the law.
Callahan: Well then, the law is crazy.

Also in attendance is a Judge Bannerman, a professor of constitutional law — at Berkeley, naturally, which provokes, in me at least, some residual sympathy for Callahan. Bannerman summarizes the matter dryly:

The search of the suspect’s quarters was illegal. Evidence obtained thereby, such as that hunting rifle, for instance, is inadmissible in court. You should have gotten a search warrant. I’m sorry, but it’s that simple…The court would have to recognize the police officer’s legitimate concern for the girl’s life, but there is no way they can possibly condone police torture. All evidence concerning the girl — the suspect’s confession, all physical evidence — would have to be excluded…

Now, the suspect’s rights were violated, under the Fourth and Fifth and probably the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments. Without the evidence of the gun and the girl, I couldn’t convict him of spitting on the sidewalk.

So is Callahan justified in torturing Scorpio? Legally, no way. He scotches a case that the State had a good chance of making. Morally, unclear. Part of his motive is to try to save the girl, unlikely as that is, but part of it is sadism. The movie doesn’t approve torture by any means, despite its reputation. Eastwood himself clearly wanted a chance to clean up Callahan’s act: the first sequel, Magnum Force, casts police vigilantes as the villains, against whom Callahan stands for law, order, and proper police procedure. (It is unsatisfactory for this very reason, among others.) If arch-badass Clint Eastwood is queasy about police torture, I’m not surprised that mild-mannered law professor Eugene Volokh is too.

(Update: Arthur Silber has some well-considered thoughts — on torture, not Dirty Harry.)

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