Augustine as Critic of Liberal Society

In Book 2 of the City of God appears a truly remarkable passage, in which Augustine criticizes Roman society and law in terms that seem as if they were aimed directly at our own modern liberal society.  It is worth quoting in full:

"'So long as it [the republic] survives,' they say, 'so long as it prospers, rich in resources, self-confident in victory, or, better still, secure in peace, what difference does it make to us?  What matters is that there is money to be made to support our lavish style of life, and to give the stronger their hold over the weaker; that the poor treat the wealthy with compliance, to ensure their daily bread--the poor depending on the patronage of the wealthy for a quiet life, the wealthy calling on the poor for support to boost their public standing.  Popularity should accrue not to those whose policies promote public welfare, but to the big providers of public entertainment.  
Law should not be rigorous; low indulgences should not be proscribed.  Rulers should not bother themselves with getting virtuous subjects, simply quiescent ones.  Territories should view their rulers not in the light of moral educators, merely as economic managers and purveyors of satisfactions.  It does not matter if they do not seriously respect them, so long as they treat them with a calculating and subservient fear.  No one should be liable to court proceedings if he has not infringed or done harm to the property, real estate, or physical safety of another person without consent;* but everyone should be free to do with himself, his dependents, and consenting associates exactly what he likes.  Sexual satisfactions should be freely available on the open market for those who want them, especially those who cannot afford to maintain facilities privately.  Domestic architecture should be expensive and ornate, to accomodate large and lavish parties where anyone may game and drink all day and night, if he pleases, till he brings it up or sweats it out.  The sound of dancing should be heard in every neighborhood, and theaters should be humming with excitement at their coarse amusements and their various brash entertainments.  Should someone disapprove of this perfect contentment, he must expect to meet public hostility; and should someone attempt to reform or abolish it, the spirit of popular freedom must know what to do with him: shut him up, pack him up, beat him up!  Religion ought to make a case for itself by guaranteeing and perpetuating these conditions of life for the greatest number of people.  Let the gods have all the worship they want, and all the games that they ant, to enjoy them with (and at the expense of) their worshipers, just so long as they ensure this satisfactory state of affairs against threat from enemy, plague, or disaster.'"

*Joan O'Donovan states that this statement is virtually a textbook definition of the modern theory of law.

Avatar's Gross

On Tuesday of this week, Avatar completed its Triple Crown of all-time box office records, all of which it captured from James Cameron’s previous hit, Titanic--first it took the record for foreign gross (previously $1.2 billion; Avatar is now at $1.5 billion), then the record for worldwide gross (previously $1.8 billion; Avatar is now at $2.1 billion), and now finally the $600 million record for domestic gross. 

There are many things one can say about all this success, such as wondering why a movie should be so successful which, despite its breathtaking visual beauty, offers a completely vapid and cliched story.  But then one remembers that other mega-blockbusters of recent decades have scarcely had more to offer--Titanic, E.T., Jaws, and Star Wars, for example. 

I mean, really, Star Wars is fun and all, and has a pretty good story, but when you go back and watch it, you can’t help but be dazzled by how bad the script is at times, and wonder how it captured the imagination of a generation.  Indeed, there seems to be little logic to why certain movies become super-blockbusters, so it is hardly worth singling out one and protesting that it’s undeserving.

The same could be said about Avatar’s remarkable success with the critics--how a movie like Avatar could win the Golden Globe’s Best Picture award and be a serious contender for the Oscar defies the powers of reason.  And yet, one remembers Titanic’s astounding Oscar success, and then remembers that the Academy, when the tsunami of popular frenzy grows large enough, knows how to abandon their snobbish ways and go with the flow.

One could also point out that, in inflation-adjusted terms, Avatar’s box-office run, while remarkable, is hardly historic.  Of course, it may still be very high on the inflation-adjusted worldwide list, but that’s simply because the ex-U.S. movie-watching market has grown so vastly in recent years (for example, 60% of Star Wars’s gross was domestic, 33% of Titanic’s, and only 29% of Avatar’s).  On the domestic inflation-adjusted list, it’s currently only 21st, or to be fair, 14th if you’re counting initial releases (since many of the films ahead of it got a substantial portion of their grosses in re-releases).  

But what doesn’t make sense is to insist, as a number of pundits have lately, that its gross should be adjusted for the fact that its ticket prices have generally been higher, since most have been for 3-D or Imax.  This would be like saying that Apple’s sales figures ought to be adjusted downward to compensate for the fact that its laptops are more expensive than their PC equivalents.  The higher price discourages people from buying it, duh!  Otherwise, why wouldn’t every movie just ratchet up its ticket prices accordingly?  It’s simple laws of supply and demand, people!  If Avatar can succeed in selling so many tickets when it’s charging more than all the other movies currently out, then it should get credited with every dollar it earns. 

I’m sure I’m the only person who has been annoyed by this, or at least, sufficiently annoyed to think about it and write something about it, but I’m something of a statistics nerd, and the manifest lack of common sense being exhibited was really vexing.  So, now I’ve got that off my chest, and you (if you’ve read this far) have lots of useless facts to stow in your head.

Top Ten Conservative Heresies of the Past Generation, Pt. 5

So, we come to Gardiner's last four films. As I said, I haven't seen any of these myself, though I know a bit about two of them. So I will primarily confine myself to remarking on Gardiner's descriptions and the shallowness and appalling priorities they display.

#7, The Hurt Locker. This, I understand, is a recent portrayal of the Iraq War, and one which, by all counts, is a very well-done film. Also, by many counts, it is by no means as pro-war and pro-America as Gardiner seems to think (he seems to think here along similar lines as he did for Black Hawk Down), but in any case, the most troubling thing here is Gardiner's rationale for his endorsement:

"What is refreshing about the film is its willingness to portray the US military presence in Iraq in an overwhelmingly sympathetic light, and the al-Qaeda-backed enemy as barbaric and fundamentally evil. There are no shades of gray in The Hurt Locker, and this is a strikingly patriotic motion picture that has been embraced by an American public weary of the anti-Americanism churned out by Hollywood in its portrayal of the War on Terror."

Aside from the fact that his last statement is simply false--the film was a total failure at the box-office, ranking 128th among 2009 releases--this is one of the most ridiculous sentiments I have ever read in a movie review. So we're supposed to think of our enemies as "barbaric and fundamentally evil" and to place ourselves in an "overwhelmingly sympathetic light" without any "shades of gray"? Not only is this blatantly un-Christian, it is also irrational and unrealistic--the world doesn't work that way. There are shades of gray...the good guys are usually riddled with bad motives and bad decisions; the bad guys are often motivated by laudable and sympathetic goals. To call them "barbaric" is to dehumanize them in a way that can be used to legitimate any kind of behaviour against them, Nazi-style. To think so uncritically of one's own forces is naive and unwise, certain to lead to an embrace of any number of atrocities. This kind of talk is just foolishness.

#8, Hotel Rwanda. This too, from what I understand, was an exceptionally fine film, but its conservative credentials are dubious. According to Gardiner, we are to embrace this film because "it demonstrated the impotence and moral bankruptcy of the UN’s leadership in the face of genocide as well as the limits of multilateralism, and ultimately made a compelling case for the use of force by the free world to act against evil."

Wow, is that all that conservatism has left to stand for? Opposition to the United Nations and multilateralism? I've got my share of criticisms for the United Nations as well, but that hardly makes me a model conservative. And while multilateralism certainly has its limits, any sensible person should agree that it has less than unilateralism, and is certainly a more Christian course of action.

#9, The Lives of Others. This East German film won the Best Foreign Film Oscar in 2007, but, like Hotel Rwanda, its claim to fame as a "conservative" film seems to depend on an isolated and arbitrary criterion--namely, its opposition to Soviet-style communism. This is just silly; almost anyone on the political spectrum is quite aware of the evils of the totalitarian East German regime, and a film that exposes them does not thereby plant itself firmly on the right. Humorously, from Gardiner's description, the bad guys in this movie sound more like the Bush-Cheney government than any leftists I know: it "is a damning indictment of the totalitarian surveillance society run by the Secret Police in East Germany. Set in East Berlin in 1984, the film tells the ultimately redemptive tale of a conflicted Stasi officer tasked with spying on a dissident playwright." The most totalitarian surveillance regime in US history was inaugurated by the Patriot Act, and the dissident playwrights of American culture have generally been hard leftists.

#10, 300. You have got to be kidding me. You mean the comic-book style violent action extravaganza that came out a couple years ago, based on the Battle of Thermopylae? Wow. This really proves that all a movie needs to do to be a "conservative" masterpiece is to be bloody and militaristic. Gardiner's first line here is particularly fatuous: "Any film that prompts howls of indignation from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his brutal acolytes in Tehran deserves recognition." I'm sure that American Pie and its sequels would prompt howls of indignation from Tehran, too, but that is hardly a reason to recognize them as great films. The conservative lesson to take from this film is this: "As he contemplates how to deal with the Iranian nuclear threat, Barack Obama should ditch his failed appeasement strategy and take some tips from the Spartans about standing your ground in the face of an evil tyrant." Never mind that, in terms of relative power and the history of the conflict, Iran is much more analogous to Sparta and the US to Persia than the other way around. It's rather juvenile for us to pretend like we, the United States of America, most powerful empire that the world has ever seen, are the hopelessly outnumbered, overmatched heroes standing our ground and facing certain death in the face of an enormous enemy force that wants to conquer and colonize our homeland. But, the Iranians might reasonably enough identify with the Spartans in their long struggle against the U.S.'s military ambitions.

Gardiner lists for "Honorable Mention" the following 10 films: The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe (Andrew Adamson, 2005); Cinderella Man (Ron Howard, 2005); Gran Torino (Clint Eastwood, 2008); Juno (Jason Reitman, 2007); The Passion of the Christ (Mel Gibson, 2004); Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone, 2006); Tears of the Sun (Antoine Fuqua, 2003); United 93 (Paul Greengrass, 2006); We Were Soldiers (Randall Wallace, 2002).

Although this list is slightly better, now I, as a Christian, am insulted. In the previous movies, Gardiner made no pretense of identifying conservatism with Christianity, even if many Christians have themselves foolishly done so. But by throwing in Narnia and The Passion, and the pro-life Juno, Gardiner lumps Christian values (which were admittedly completely stripped from the film version of Narnia) together with his bloodthirsty pagan militarism. In any case, this listing, aside from Juno and The Passion, shows the same idiosyncratic selection of values--a vague but uncompromising conflict of good-vs.-evil, a pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps individualism, and a gory appreciation of martial bravery.

Wow, that was all rather too easy. But people actually believe this kind of thing, so presumably someone has to take the time to tear it to pieces. One hopes that we are finally reaching the point where conservatism has become so shallow, self-refuting, violent, and pagan that Christians will stop hitching themselves to its wagon and stand up for the Gospel.

Top Ten Conservative Heresies of the Past Decade, Pt. 4

By the way, in case you were wondering why this is chopped up into little segments, it's because my brother-in-law advised me that more people would read my posts if they were broken up into shorter installments, and I grudgingly agreed that he was probably right.

So, Gladiator. Of course, this is a fantastic movie in many ways, one which I've enjoyed many times, but I can hardly see how it's a showcase of conservative political thought. Gardiner clearly disagrees, however, and his reasons are rather chilling:

"In essence this is a movie about confronting evil and destroying it. There is not an ounce of appeasement or the whiff of “engagement” in Maximus’s blood, only the desire to avenge the murder of his family and see justice carried out. It is the sort of uncompromising movie experience guaranteed to send pacifists and lily-livered liberals running for the exits."

Holy hexameter! That sentence ought to send Christians running for the exits. So uncompromising, bloodthirsty vengeance, rather than any more peaceful form of engagement, is to be the the order of the day? Well count me out. This is about as un-Christian an ethic as one could present, at least when put in those terms (though there are certainly more sympathetic angles to Gladiator). One desperately hopes that this is not indeed the essence of conservatism--an unswerving commitment to violence and revenge. Of course, this is also an absurdly simplistic distillation of the film, of which I hope we could say more than that it is about "good vs. evil"--as trite a summary as can be imagined. It is also about subversive opposition to the nation's rulers when they become too violent and oppressive, something which conservatives loudly condemned as "unpatriotic" during the Bush years, but which they now happily engage in now that Obama's in charge.

Next, Gardiner lists The Pursuit of Happyness, calling it "one of the most powerful tributes to the free market and the value of individual responsibility ever made." He goes on to gush,

"Smith’s character embodies the can-do spirit of Reagan’s America, and rejects the welfare state in favour of the capitalist ideal, while bringing up a young son on his own. The Pursuit of Happyness is an inspiring and often deeply moving tribute to the American dream, and one of the great conservative movies of this generation."

Once again there are two problems with this picture: 1) is it accurate? and 2) if it is, Christians should hold it at arm's length. Now, I've only seen the movie once, but it seems more reasonable to read it as the story of one man's determination winning out against the greedy capitalism that's repeatedly screwed him as it is to read it as a ringing endorsement of free-market capitalism. If Smith's final achievement of some measure of happiness in spite of all that has gone wrong is the American dream, then I'd wish for a better dream, one that didn't force one good man to fight the whole world to achieve success.

Which brings me to my second concern--a can-do individualism is light-years away from the Christian ethic of cooperation, interdependence, and care for one's neighbor. If this is conservatism, let us have nothing to do with it.

The sixth movie on Gardiner's list is The Dark Knight, which is, like Gladiator, an indisputably great film, but hardly seems to fit Gardiner's mold of conservatism. Unsurprisingly, Gardiner identifies its conservatism, similarly to Gladiator's, with the hero's unswerving opposition to the villain.

It is its depiction of Batman’s relentless war against the Joker’s campaign of terror, which marks The Dark Knight as a standout conservative film. The Dark Knight himself, played to perfection by Christian Bale, is unwavering in his determination to defeat his adversary, whatever the cost.

Now, The Dark Knight is a rich, subtle, and sophisticated film, and one can identify many themes in it, but when I see it, I find in general, a deep critique of Bush-era conservatism. In this film, as in Lord of the Rings (contra Gardiner), good and evil are not straightforward, and the war of the good guys against the bad is deeply ambiguous and morally perilous. We find that the "good guys" are deeply corrupt, and even the one shining white knight in the government determined to stamp out evil--Harvey Dent--himself becomes a villain through the relentlessness and remorselessness of his fight against the bad guys. The movie depicts the fact that the fight against terror creates as many villains as it destroys, both because it provokes new opposition like the Joker, which embraces violence in response to the violence of the law, and because it creates villains out of would-be heroes ("You either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become a villain"). Batman himself remains uncorrupt, yet this is a critique, not an endorsement, of forces like the US government, since Batman remains resolutely outside of the untrustworthy institutions of government, and refuses to fight terror with terror, to use deadly force against even enemies like the Joker. To be sure, the film does appear to in the end endorse victory through deception, rather than through the truth, and possibly of appalling surveillance methods (though these are portrayed as highly ambiguous in the film), endorsements which could certainly come across as endorsement of Bush-Cheney methods, though hardly of traditional conservatism or Christianity.

The last post shall address Gardiner's final four films: The Hurt Locker, Hotel Rwanda, The Lives of Others, and 300. (I have seen none of these, and shall merely cross-examine, and laugh at, Gardiner's rationales.)

Top Ten Conservative Heresies of the Past Decade, Pt. 3

So, Master and Commander is the top "conservative" movie of the past decade. Why's that, Nile?
"Peter Weir’s unashamedly old-fashioned and visually stunning adaptation of Patrick O’Brian’s novel is one of the greatest odes to leadership ever committed to celluloid....Set in 1805, it is an epic tale of heroism and love for country in the face of incredible odds, and a glowing tribute to the grit and determination that forged the British Empire."

Ok, that may be, but it's still puzzling how this manages to rank as the top conservative film for the decade. The only reason I can imagine is that the opponent is the French, whom conservatives have decided to rank just above Al-Qaeda on their hate list. Aside from my concerns that military leadership seems to be the paradigmatic for our understanding of the virtue of leadership (whereas, for Christians, it is the leadership of the saint or martyr, usually the opposite of a military leadership, that embodies the virtue of leadership), it is hard to see how this is a distinctively conservative virtue. Surely liberals believe in leadership too? We may not like their leaders, but they have leaders. The latter sentence is equally troubling, on three grounds already expressed--love of country is not obviously a virtue, nonmilitary heroism ought to be our highest ideal of heroism, and liberals, so far as I know, are fans of grit and determination as well; conservatives have no monopoly on these ideals. Of course, perhaps what Gardiner means (this becomes clear with later movies) is that it endorses a kind of individualist grit and determination, which is perhaps a modern conservative value, but which should make alarm bells go off for Christians. Also, needless to say, imperialism is scarcely a Christian or a traditionally conservative ideal.

Now, for #2, "Black Hawk Down." This seems an odd pick, in light of the first, since it seems to present a much more cynical view of the kind of overseas imperialism that Master and Commander could be interpreted as endorsing. Gardiner does have to acknowledge this--"Many critics enthusiastically dubbed Black Hawk Down an anti-war film, and it is in some respects a cautionary tale about the perils of nation-building." But then he hastily adds,

"But I regard it above all as an extraordinarily powerful and deeply patriotic tribute to the heroism and bravery of the US military, faced with overwhelming odds in a hostile city dominated by brutal Somali warlords. It is essentially a story of incredible sacrifice and camaraderie in the heat of battle, and ranks alongside Zulu, Saving Private Ryan and A Bridge Too Far as one of the greatest war films of all time."

This is just too much...so what if it's a sharp and tragic criticism of the kind of meddling in foreign affairs and militaristic nation-building that conservatives have endorsed all through the Bush years, so what if it makes the war there look foolish and pointless; it must be a "conservative" film because it pays respect to the bravery of the soldiers. Come on, give me a break! As if conservatives had a monopoly on respecting the heroism, sacrifice, and camaraderie of the soldiers! You can be against a war and still have respect for the acts of bravery by the soldiers involved. Of course, even here, Christians ought to be very restrained, given that the military arena is not, for our faith, the place where we primarily find bravery, camaraderie, and sacrifice exemplified, but even we can still appreciate these virtues when we see them in battle. Don't keep patting yourself on your conservative back as if only you have any respect for these sacrifices. And don't pretend the movie is "patriotic" just because it respects those sacrifices--it is clearly critical of the US policies involved, which is "unpatriotic" in a good sense. Plus, let's not hear anymore of this "incredible sacrifice" faced by "overwhelming odds"--forgetting that we had tanks and helicopters against handguns and grenades, and inflicted, if I remember right, 100 times as many casualties as we suffered.

Now, what about the Lord of the Rings? Now, I'm a big fan of these stories too, particularly as told in the books. But this is because they are deeply Christian, not because they are particularly "conservative" in Gardiner's sense. In fact, the books promote at least two "liberal" messages, both of which still come through in the movies, though in a somewhat attenuated way: 1. a deep concern for the environment, and a suspicion of the industrial capitalism that has exploited it in the past couple centuries; it is notable that both major "bad guys" in the story are pictured as anti-environment, and one (Saruman) is clearly a modern capitalist figure. 2. a pacificistic tendency in its awareness that war, that superior force, is not the solution. True victory comes not through force of arms, no matter how resolutely it opposes evil, but only through acts of absurd faith and self-sacrifice. I admit that the latter message is deeply compromised in the films, which have a tendency not only to depict much more violence than the books describe, but to put confidence in it, where the books always throw doubt upon its value. I should add that, according to Tolkien critic Tom Shippey, two of the main "bad guys" in the story are clearly political conservatives, one of the capitalist variety (Saruman), and one of the traditionalist variety (Denethor).

But, let's let Gardiner speak for himself. Why are these "conservative" films?

"[Tolkien's] vision of a mighty battle between good and evil in the realms of Middle Earth was brilliantly transferred to the screen by New Zealand director Peter Jackson, perfectly fitting a post 9/11 world where the forces of freedom found themselves pitted against a barbaric enemy."

There it is again! Just because there's a battle between good and evil means that this must be "conservative," since supposedly no one else believes in an opposition between good and evil. Ridiculous. No, Christians like Tolkien believe in a battle between good and evil, but it is one in which the lines are not black and white ("forces of freedom" vs. "barbaric enemy") but are grey and deceptive, often cutting right through our own midst, and it is one in which the victory is not, as I already mentioned, through force of arms, but by self-sacrifice. Another problem with drawing an analogy between the good West vs. evil East in Middle-Earth and in the "post-9/11 world" is that in the former, the West is a tiny, withered, besieged enclave; in the latter, is a mighty global power such as Sauron could only dream of.

The next post will deal with Gladiator, The Pursuit of Happyness, and The Dark Knight.