Month: October 2010

A Fistful of Dollars

Fistful I recently watched the Man with No Name trilogy–also known as the Dollars trilogy–starring Cling Eastwood. 

This series originally came out when I was a baby (pre- and post-born), and if my parents took me to it when it was in theaters, I have no memory of it.

What I do remember is my dad's copy of the album (remember vinyl?) and the haunting, wailing, chanting music that was used to score the films.

I never saw them growing up (this was pre-cable and pre-VCR), but I finally got around to watching them, and thought I'd review them here.

The first film–A Fistful of Dollars (2-disc edition here)–features Clint Eastwood as a wandering gunslinger with no money. Not surprising, since the film was inspired by Akira Kurosawa's film Yojimbo, which features Toshiro Mifune as a ronin, a wandering samurai who doesn't serve any master.

Clint Eastwood's character has no name. What he also doesn't have is a well defined sense of morals. Upon learning that the Mexican town in which he has arrived is dominated by two rival families–the Rojas and the Baxters–he decides to make money for himself by playing the two sides off against each other. He alternately hires himself out two both groups, sometimes at the same time.

And large numbers of people die as a result.

This was part of director Sergio Leone (operating under the absurdly Americanesque pseudonym "Bob Robertson")'s effort to reinvent the Western film genre using more morally ambiguous characters and even anti-heroes.

The film's point is somewhat blunted by the slight mistranslation of the title from Italian. In Italian the title would literally translate as "For a Fistful of Dollars"–i.e., that's why Clint Eastwood's character started the bloodbath in the first place, a grim statement about man's capacity for inhumanity.

The Man with No Name isn't completely sociopathic, however. He does do one, major, genuinely selfless thing in the movie, which is to help a captive family escape. When the mother in the family asks him why, he says that he knew someone like her once (his own mother?) but there was no one there to help.

Ironically, this proves to be his big mistake. Up to this point, the character has been a total, supercompetent, gun-slinging Mary Sue, who can not only shoot better than anyone else but who is also five steps ahead of the people on both sides.

To keep the character from being totally consumed by Mary Sueness, he needs to be taken down a peg, and when his act of kindness is discovered Eastwood is beaten to a pulp while one of the villains laughs maniacally.

Eventually one of the families massacres the other, and Eastwood–in an impressive and inventive final duel–brings a kind of belated justice to the conclusion.

At the end of the movie he rides off with his dollars (which are rather more than a fistful; he made out well from these two families) and the audience is left to contemplate the morality–or lack of it–of his actions.

This got an O (morally offensive) rating from the U.S. bishops' film review service.

Though I wonder if it would today. Back in the 1960s, when this came out, the kind of brutal violence that the film contains would have been quite a bit more shocking than today.

Actually, the violence is amazingly bloodless. It's basically "bang, you're dead." One shot per customer; no visible wounds; the victim falls over and doesn't move again. What's startling is that Eastwood will do it to three people right in a row–bang! bang! bang! And we get a hip-level camera shot, so it's rather like watching a first-person shooter game.

Also, if the title had been properly translated it would have been clearer that the filmmakers are showing what man can do for a fistful of dollars but they're not approving of it.

In other words, we've got a man's inhumanity to man story here.

I probably would have given it an L (limited adult audience) rating.

While Leone was trying to get away from some of the cliches of Westerns, he was only partially successful. The film embraces as many cliches as it eschews.

On the positive side, the film has beautiful visuals (who knew that Andalusia in Spain looks so much like the deserts of Northern Mexico and the American Southwest?), haunting music, an intricate plot with a good number of twists and surprises (which I have not spoiled), and something to think about: How justifiable–or not–are Eastwood's actions at different turns.

It's easy to see why it was popular (very popular), why it's considered an iconic film, a classic of the genre–and why it got a couple of sequels.

Prejudice in America—Part II! . . . (Moral Values)

A_million_ways_to_go_green_badge In my previous postwe talked about whether anti-Catholicism is the last socially acceptable prejudice remaining in America, as is often claimed.

We saw that, while what counts as “socially acceptable” can be debated, there are a number of easily namable prejudices that are quite acceptable in America, including prejudices against conservative Protestants (Evangelicals and Fundamentalists), against organized/western religion as a whole, and against Muslims (in the sense of actual undue hostility, not just prudent caution due to 9/11). (There is also, of course, some anti-Semitism, but it is not socially acceptable in general American culture.)

Contemporary America’s socially acceptable prejudices go way beyond religion, however. Let’s name a few non-religious ones . . .

1) Prejudice against large families: This is something that some Catholics end up experiencing. Stories about of people with large families encountering those who sneeringly ask them (even in front of the children), “Haven’t you heard of birth control?”

This form of prejudice—originally inspired by the Rev. Thomas Malthus and reinvigorated in the 1960s & 1970s—is particularly short-sighted since children are the economic future of the country. We need more children to stave off a demographic winter like the ones poised to sweep across Japan and Europe.

This leads to another prejudice . . .

2) Prejudice against non-environmentalists: Environmentalists have been so successful in worming their way into American media culture that you can’t watch TV or listen to the radio without a constant, Chinese-water-torture-like series of exhortations to “Go green,” minimize your “carbon footprint,” and promote “sustainability.”

Story after story focuses on environmental issues with either no challenge at all to the environmentalist viewpoint (it is simply assumed to be true) or with only lip service (frequently sneering lip service) given to alternative viewpoints.

3) Prejudice against traditional values concerning homosexuality:  Homosexuals have achieved great success in framing their cause in terms of the civil rights model, with the result that objectively disordered behavior is commonly treated as normal, and anyone who disagrees with this is treated as a pariah.

The way the trend is going, expect anyone with traditional sexual values to be regarded as the equivalent of a Klansman within a generation.

On the other hand, there is also:

4) Prejudice against homosexuals: While the Holy See has been quite firm that homosexual behavior is objectively disordered and not to be given societal approval, it also recognizes that there is such a thing as unjust discrimination against homosexuals (see also here, and here).

While conscientious Catholics studiously avoid such prejudice, not everybody is a conscientious Catholic, and all one has to do is look at the bullying behavior of teenage boys toward those they even suspect of homosexual tendencies to see the malice that is out there.

These prejudices go beyond religion and into the realm of moral values, but then there are prejudices that are at best only peripherally related to such values.

Those will be the subject of our next post.

What are your thoughts?

My New Book Is Out!

Disorientation No, not the one you're thinking of. A different one.

You see, recently John Zmirak, Elizabeth Scalia (the Anchoress), Eric Metaxas, Peter Kreeft, Robert Spencer, Dwight Longenecker, Eric Brende, George Rutler, Donna Steichen, John Keck, Mark Shea, Jeffrey Tucker, John Zulhsdorf, and I were sitting around the pool shooting the breeze and talking about how it would be nice to collaborate on a project with each other.

So we did.

We wrote a book together.

That afternoon.

At John Zmirak's suggestion, we took on the most common ideologies infesting college campuses today–sentimentalism, relativism, hedonism, progressivism, multiculturalism, anti-Catholicism, utilitarianism, consumerism, cynicism, feminism, Americanism, Marxism, and modernism.

And we trounced them thoroughly, with each of us contributing a chapter. (I did the one on anti-Catholicism.)

Now that book is out. It's called Disorientation: The 13 "isms" That Will Send You to Intellectual "La-La Land."

While it's pitched in a special way for those in or entering college (hint: Christmas gift idea for high-school or college-age relations!), it's also fun to read and of interest to anybody who would like short, snappy responses to the ideologies of our day.

And it comes with cartoons! Did I mention that it comes with cartoons?

While the above poolside story is entirely fictitious, the book is not, so . . . 

GET YOUR COPY!

Last Remaining Prejudice? Not Hardly!

Cartoon-2You sometimes hear Catholics express the opinion that anti-Catholicism is the last remaining socially acceptable prejudice in America.

For example, in a recent piece defending Archbishop Dolan, James Farrell of Irish Central writes:

Archbishop Timothy Dolan has come out swinging against The New York Times, accusing it of anti-Catholic bias in two recent articles.

He is right.

Anti-Catholicism is the last acceptable prejudice it seems to me in America. If the same comments that were made about Catholic religious figures were aimed at Rabbis, immams [sic] or Dali Lamas there would be widespread outrage.

The substance of what Farrell says is quite true, and I’m glad to see him stepping up and adding his voice to Archbishop Dolan’s. You can read Archbishop Dolan’s original piece here.

Nevertheless, the claim that anti-Catholicism is the last acceptable prejudice in America is incorrect.

It is certainly true that people publicly say things about Catholics they would never say, for example, about religious groups like Jews or Muslims—or about particular racial or ethnic groups.

It’s also understandable that many Catholics would perceive anti-Catholicism as the last remaining prejudice since it may be the only one they personally experience, the only one many of them feel.

And, indeed, anti-Catholicism does have a long history of social acceptance in the United States, as illustrated by the accompanying 19th century cartoon by Thomas Nast, which features one of his trademark ape-like Irishmen carving open the goose that laid the golden egg (the Democratic Party), to the delight of an avaricious priest.

But anti-Catholicism is far from being the last socially acceptable prejudice in America.

What are some others?

To a degree, it depends on what you mean by “socially acceptable.” What’s acceptable in one social circle is not acceptable in another, and there are degrees to the phenomenon of social acceptability. If you define your group small enough, you can find some social circle in which it is acceptable to say any arbitrary thing you want. If you define your group large enough, you’ll find someone in it who will object to the same arbitrary thing.

Nevertheless, it is possible to find prejudices that are given voice, without immediate censure, in a wide range of contexts, both private and public.

For instance, there is anti-Evangelicalism/anti-Fundamentalism. This is hostility towards conservative Protestantism. Many Catholics tend not to be aware of this prejudice because they are not the object of this kind of hostility, but those of us who are converts from conservative Protestantism have vivid memories of the way the press and other elements in modern culture would mock and look down upon our beliefs.

For us the equivalent of the priestly pedophilia scandal was the 1980s televangelism meltdown. The televangelists had always been an embarrassment to many of us, but they were the most visible faces of the movement, and when the financial and sexual scandals erupted, we were subject to the same kind of searing public criticism that the Catholic Church would be subject to a few years later.

Then there is the more general anti-organized-religion prejudice that is hostile toward anybody who takes their faith seriously, or at least anyone who takes a western religion seriously. You can find this among the people who say that they are not religious but “spiritual” and from militant atheists like Dawkins and his crowd.

And, if we want to be frank, there are some anti-Muslim sentiments that get expressed in America without being automatically censured. (I’m talking actual, undue hostility toward Muslims as a group, not prudent caution—though this is far less than the raging anti-Americanism and anti-Christianism harbored in the worldwide Islamic community.)

Prejudice in America goes beyond religion, though.

That will be the subject of our next post.

What are your thoughts?

What Is It with the Antipopes?

I have a very open friending policy over on Facebook. I accept friend requests from almost everyone. The only exceptions are those who seem to be up to no good (e.g., anti-Catholics who want to friend me so they can access my list of friends and spew anti-Catholic stuff; or that Middle Eastern guy with the suicide-bomber-looking stuff on his profile).

But some of the most unusual friend requests I've had are from antipopes. So far I've received friend requests from not one but *two* antipopes.

While I'm not opposed in principle to dialogging with antipopes, FB doesn't really strike me as the place for that, so I turned those down. It seemed like an effort to get in front of my friends to advocate their antipapacies or something.

BTW, I still have about 2800 friend slots of a maximum of 5000 available (so that's 46% of them left).