that's a tomato... no wait, that's a fetus.

[intertribal]

Title from the ever brilliant KSK.  Talk about my only light in dark times.

From the NYTimes (Oscar-Nominated Films Deliver Triumphant Tales for Dark Days): "And the best-film nominees this year — give or take “The Reader,” which has the Holocaust as a central concern — reflect an appetite on the part of the Academy, and by proxy, the public, for a nice, big chunk of uplift...  Consumers who are motivated by the laurels heaped on these films to plunk down increasingly scarce disposable income will leave the movie house with the message that circumstance is just that, and no match for the indomitability of human will. The films are built on individual successes — kids from the slums who better themselves, a television celebrity who finds his inner newsman, a newborn who overcomes old age and the midlife closeted man who steps into the light — that accrue to the greater good. That message, that darkness can be overcome by individuals working for the common good, is not so distant from the current collective impulse."

Why did How Green Is My Valley beat out the "vastly superior" Citizen Kane for Best Picture in 1941?  Why, could it be because How Green Is My Valley had a more uplifting message about family togetherness?

I assign the entire Oscar committee to watch Hot Fuzz, and meanwhile I guess I'm rooting for The Reader, even though I've never seen it.  Ha ha ha.

Comments

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

It's not that it's overtly anti-American, it's that puritanism (or maybe just puritan bigots?) inherently threatens our secular democracy or something. I think he said something more concrete about this, but I totally forgot because this class is at fucking nine in the morning, and i am generally only half-conscious.

Maybe it has something to do with "Another important distinction was the Puritan approach to church-state relations. They opposed the Anglican idea of the supremacy of the monarch in the church (Erastianism), and, following Calvin, they argued that the only head of the Church in heaven or earth is Christ (not the Pope or the monarch). However, they believed that secular governors are accountable to God (not through the church, but alongside it) to protect and reward virtue, including "true religion", and to punish wrongdoers — a policy that is best described as non-interference rather than separation of church and state," but then again, "Alexis de Tocqueville suggested in Democracy in America that the Pilgrims' Puritanism was the very thing that provided a firm foundation for American democracy, and in his view, these Puritans were hard-working, egalitarian, and studious."

*shrug*

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Hmm... I don't really think anti-puritanism is a part of American life at all, but I guess perhaps I disagree with your prof? I think Osama is a public enemy because he's Muslim, swarthy, and lives in a cave.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

But I think the Muslim part is exactly the same as the part he's calling 'puritan bigot'

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

also, i'm fairly certain he doesn't actually agree with the whole public and private enemies bit. he's just coming up with something that's american that osama threatens by being an islamic extremist.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

but it's not the tenacity of his religious belief (if that's what puritan entails here, not the actual Puritan religion) that scares us, it's ethnic.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

Maybe he likes to believe the people he knows who were scared of Osama aren't as terrified by him, seeing as he's Iranian.

I don't know.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

"Well, that was a very self-serving justification you just made, Jack, and you know it."

(not directed at you, but the professor)

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

haha. he does seem like the sort of prof who makes wild assertions to stimulate discussion, though, so i don't know how seriously to take his offhand comments.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

yeah, fair enough.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

i dunno why i feel the need to defend him, maybe he really thinks america is secular, i just don't know.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

and i mean, if you think that america is actually a Christian country, then you're disagreeing with him. but he's not saying it's an anti-puritan country, but rather a secular one.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

I definitely don't think it's secular, so I guess I am disagreeing with him. :)

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

I don't know wtf America is. I feel like we're divided precisely along those lines (secular or Christian), and those lines do have something to say about whether we were threatened by Osama or not, so he isn't really the public enemy of all Americans except insofar as they go along with the leaders of the state, or whatever.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

I guess I'm not sure the secular part is cohesive/defined enough to really count as anything. I'm not sure I would call American Christian per se, but I would definitely call it religious, maybe even "organized religious". I would call it Churchy, but maybe not Christian.

But yeah, I don't think Osama is the public enemy of every individual American. You could probably make a wider claim that he is a public enemy to everyone if you base your argument on "justice", though.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

hm...I wonder how that stands in relation to his idea of puritanical bigots. but yeah, america is a very sorta 'sunday christian' country, culturally speaking. if that makes sense.

but you can't base public enemies on justice. they don't threaten your way of life... ahaha.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

I just don't think that religious extremism is something that scares generic America. To some extent cults do, but those are associated with radical politics, weird sex, beards, suicide, Latin America, UFOs, and other things that are not in the American way of life. I don't think it's actual religious extremism that scares us at all.

ooh, but justice is part of our way of life...

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

Hmm. Mormons do, though, lol. I don't know what scares generic America.

I guess, but...yeah, that's why these distinctions don't quite make sense to me.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Ah, but Mormons have weird sex. Seriously, without that, I think they would have had a much smoother history in the U.S. And they did say some very anti-mainstream-church things... which is an affront against Christianity, not secularism.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

lol. Sexual mores determine friends and enemies!

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

They kinda do...

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

sigh. people are silly.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

but then, i didn't really read Schmitt because i was bleeding and in pain. omg this month was horrible. i had a migraine for two days...

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

for some reason we're reading schmitt in the middle of aristotle, too. it's like: aristotle, aristotle, schmitt, aristotle, aristotle, aristotle, hobbes.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

at least you're not reading Plato. But Aristotle was my third-least-favorite political theory dude, after Plato and Burke. Ha ha ha, Burke.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

I hate Plato too. I sorta like Aristotle, but I dunno about his politics...

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

All I've read by Aristotle is "Politics". It wasn't awful... but like, I don't remember any of it, at all, and that doesn't strike me as a good thing considering how much time we spent on him.

Well, I guess I'm ok with the Aristotlian tragedy, or whatever.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

i'll get back to you on "Politics" when we've finished it. I just like Aristotle 'cause he's prolific, way better than Plato, the predecessor to the scholastics and sign theory, and an empiricist.

i think we don't read Plato 'cause we're also supposed to have read The Republic in Hum 110 (even though I don't remember much of it).

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Ah, well, I wouldn't know much about that other stuff Aristotle did. I agree that he is way better than Plato, though, and that empiricism helps.

The Republic... ew. That's all I have to say. But I've had a strong dislike of Plato since AP Lang. You know who did like Plato? Anika.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

I just remember hating what I read of the Republic, and especially that even though I disagreed, I had a hard time arguing against it. We read Plato in AP Lang? Hm, I do remember the socratic dialogue bit... Haha, oh, Anika.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Yeah, Plato's tricksy that way. I'm pretty sure we first read about The Goddamned Cave in AP Lang. Anika was obsessed with the idea that this table was not the Real table, that there was a Real table somewhere... out there. With Jesus, probably.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

LOL. Ah, yeah, the Cave, I remember now.