Tynan's Anger

Dear Mr. Rosenbaum,

I wanted to respond to your arguments about Inglourious Basterds, especially your call for "enthusiasts for Inglourious Basterds to come up with some guidance about what grown-up things this movie has to say to us about World War 2 or the Holocaust—or maybe just what it has to say about other movies with the same subject matter."

First off, I wanted to say that I am glad that you were able to argue this case. It was a point of view that needed to be heard on the discussion of the film, and few critics are now able to argue that case, even within the highest ivory towers of academia.

The movie certainly did cross a line for me; it is difficult for it not to cross a line for any Jew with an active concern for the larger scope. The bigger problem for me is that the line that Tarantino crosses was one that already was crossed years ago by Spielberg in Schindler's List—a movie that came out when I was in the first grade. If we are going to take a Sontag-esque evaluation of camp culture, I would argue that there is more value in a movie Inglourious Basterds than in a movie like Defiance, which takes the same revenge fantasy into supposedly morally astute territory. By the same logic, I would argue that there is more value in Dr. Strangelove than in a movie like On the Beach, a position few would question today, even if few would argue that case in 1963, most likely due to the same forces that have given Tarantino a pass but were infuriated by Sophie's Choice.

For me, at least, Tarantino is falling into the same trap that Spielberg has fallen into, which is to shamelessly treat the political subjects in the same stylistic manner as his earlier, more apolitical films. I would argue that it is the best movie Tarantino has made since Pulp Fiction, but compared to the Kill Bill movies and Grindhouse, that's not saying anything drastic.

The difference between Tarantino and Spielberg is that Tarantino is more open about his shamelessness, a rhetorical tactic that is too often misperceived in postmodern discussions as a form of honesty rather than a way to gloss over ethically dubious motivations. Nonetheless, I would prefer apathy and blindness towards the larger perspective than Spielberg's approach, which is to make deeply flawed and over simplistic ethical justifications backed by an overwhelming marketing campaign. I'd venture to say that most film enthusiasts of my age are much more willing to overlook the overwhelming power of a marketing campaign than I am, to the point where otherwise indefensible films that were marketed well in the '90s become difficult to defend against increasingly weaponized ironic defenses.

For instance, no matter how much I try to argue that The Counterfeiters is a fairer and ultimately better assessment of the Holocaust and World War II than Schindler's List or Inglourious Basterds, few are willing to hear me. With enough attention to all three films, it becomes increasingly difficult to argue to the contrary without complete ignorance of the ethics of the Holocaust. What worries me more is that I, like most members of a generation, have less of a vehicle to provoke such a discussion while still making a living outside of academia. I suppose that being able to talk about film in such a manner is a luxury I am lucky to have anyway, but it allows the ever-pernicious forces of marketing to dominate most discussions of film.

I would like to say that while I was happy to see your contribution to the discussion on Inglourious Basterds, my major qualms were the following:

First off, your argument assumes Barthes' view of the Holocaust as a spectacular moment in history, a position I do not agree with, mainly because it comes from a predominately Eurocentric historical narrative. While the systematic qualities of the Holocaust are still the most resonant legacy of that genocide, is it worse, for instance, to have a movie that treats a historical atrocity like the Holocaust immaturely, or to have no American film even begin to address a tragedy like the Nanking Massacre? Furthermore, is the cheaply bilateral Jews vs. Nazis trope that Tarantino has more or less newly minted with Inglourious Basterds any more horrific than the inescapable and no less "unreal" tradition in Western movies of Cowboys vs. Indians? As much as I struggle to defend Inglorious Basterds against the complaints you propose, I would not be able to defend Stagecoach against the same complaints.

Secondly, I would be against calling any film a product of Holocaust denial in most cases, but especially in the wake of The Passion of The Christ, a clearly vile work produced by a man who is most likely a bona-fide Holocaust denier. That movie resonated a lot more with the Palin-esque kind of reasoning that you associated with Inglorious Basterds. Very rarely do movies have the same kind of overwhelming cultural effect as The Passion of the Christ, Birth of a Nation, or Triumph of The Will, and that phenomenon is even rarer today, with a more fractured international film culture overloaded with cinematic information. Inglourious Basterds provoked little controversy, enthusiasm, or enragement beyond the first two weeks of its release, a fate that I do not think would have happened with this film in any other decade but the present one. I have hestitated to publish this letter until the film's Blu Ray/DVD release because it has taken awhile for me to fully come to terms with my feelings on the subject. But the fact that I see that date as a crucual demarcation is also an enormous generational difference.

Sincerely,
Ethan Stanislawski

Labels: ethics, holocaust, inglourious basterds, jews, jonathan rosenbaum, movies, post-modernism, quentin tarantino, steven spielberg, tynan's letters

Dear Mr. Hitchens,

I was very pleased to have encountered your book Letters to a Young Contrarian. I was especially greatful to have encountered it this year, when I am 23, as opposed to 18, when it probably would have been the kind of book to change my life. No doubt, Mr. Hitchens, your views on being a contrarian are well formed by years of experience, dealing with both the social, political, and psychological pressures of being a contrarian. My question to you, Mr. Hitchens, is the following: why?

No doubt, there is significant value to being contrarian in many instances. If Mother Theresa has had some questionable, perhaps horrific political views or effects, it should be pointed out. Considering the social and political assumptions about Mother Theresa's immaculate reputation, it would probably be a full-time, all-consuming task for an individual. My question is this: do you think anyone would naturally want to be the guy who rails against Mother Theresa for a living? And would you want to be in the social company of the guy who rails against Mother Theresa for a living.

Nonetheless, I understand your motivation for doing so. The unspoken, but often forced silence against Mother Theresa's hardline views represents something of an injustice. In an ideal world, those actually effected by Mother Theresa's views, should be able to voice their concerns. While they mat lack the proper voice and advocacy to do so, is it really your job to speak for an entire people you otherwise have no connection to? In that case, doesn't it become less about social injustice and more about your professional reputation?

Nonetheless, your letters to a young contrarian provide an invaluable resource to understanding how contrarianism works when necessary. In particular, I appreciated your juxtaposition of Vaclav Havel's "as if" policy in an oppressive society with E.P. Thompson's "as if" principle in a free one. The fact that your letters were written and published right around 9/11 have only made the comparison more appropriate, and with less restraint than both you and Thompson displayed.

Nonetheless, Mr. Hitchens, not everyone has the luxury you do of being a professional contrarian. In most cases, people stand up for certain principles that they feel they need to be contrarian about. Being a contrarian for the sake of being contrarian is less of a social justice and more of a method of drawing personal attention (which you have accomplished with remarkable success this decade). Nonetheless, the fundamental problem is this: if a mistake is made in the perpetual search for contrarianism—as in, you take a contrarian view to a just policy-it can damage both the personal clout the contrarian has built. Most dangerously, it can lead to the replacement of a just policy with an oppressive-even if, as a proper contrarian, one looks for an unquestioned injustice.

The ultimate problem is this, Mr. Hitchens; not everyone can be a professional contrarian such as yourself. The reason may be less one of means (journalism, political freedoms, economic means, etc.), and more the fact that, as a contrarian, you are forced to speak for a group of people who want nothing to do with you. The fundamental problem is that contrarianism is an emotional state, not an intellectual one. Skepticism is always to be recommended, contrarianism just leads to personal rather than intellectual ends.

Sincerely,
X

Labels: angry young man, christopher hitchens, ep thompson, letters to a young contrarian, mother theresa, politics, radicals, Social justice, tynan's letters, vaclav havel

Dear Maureen Dowd,


Allow me, on my humble little handmade soapbox here at Tynan's Anger, to explain to you why your paper has lost the audience of anyone except white people over the age of 45, and what your recent "opinion piece" about William Safire may or may not have had to do with it. There are a few facts about the dearly departed Mr. Safire that can be found on any quick check of Google or Wikipedia. One, he was a Nixon flack, the man who invented the modern flackery that you derided oh so brilliantly when Clinton and Bush were in the White House. His contemporaries on the Nixon flack brigade included Ben Stein, who has recently exited sanity stage left, and Peggy Noonan, the only other female op-ed columnist who rivals your status, and whose penchant for insincerity is already legendary in online media coverage.

It doesn't take a brilliant journalistic exposé to realize that you are operating in a small circle, one that blurs the lines of hackery and flackery, depending on who you and your circle are writing about, what personal or political behavior annoys you at this particular moment, and what gives you whatever appearance of authority you like to have. In fact, if I decided not to click on the nytimes.com link but the slate.com link in my search for William Safire remembrances, I would find a spellbinding list of egregious behaviors and lies Safire engaged in over his lifetime. The biggest of all were the flimsy ground on which Safire held his skills as a wordsmith—the skills you and just about every other hack have vaunted in your various memoria. It may be easy to hide to older readers that you have gone from hack to flack for a man who went from flack to hack; those who know what words to type into a search bar are less easy to fool.

Lest you think there is no escape from this endless flack-hack cycle, Maureen, I would beg to differ. To dismiss Safire's credentials as a language maven would not require a degree in linguistics, but access to a best-selling book from 1994 from a person who does have such a degree. In fact, in The Language Instinct, Steven Pinker spent a good 10 pages pointing out Mr. Safire's inherent shortcomings as a language maven, and the rest of the chapter on his lesser maven imitators. The Language Instinct is a more popular book than any book Mr. Safire ever published, whether about language, politics, or the malleable line between the two that Safire exploited throughout his life. Those with fond memories of Safire's columns must have either not read The Language Instinct, not have heard about it, or not have known that a popular book that thoroughly dismisses Safire's respectability as a wordsmith. The Language Instinct, it should be pointed out, has been in paperback since most people graduating with college degrees today were in grade school. 


If they do not know to question Safire's maven status, or even if it can be done, it is more of a fault of loyalty to your "colleague in columny," and to an entire generation of hacks that confused columny with camaraderie.

Which leads me to the actual content of your column. The details with which you embellish your "working relationship" with the dearly departed Safire would be considered "TMI" and irrelevant to the legacy of anyone actually writing a memoriam with any sense of detachment, historical perspective, or ultimately, respect for the dead. Your charming allusion to Mad Men—a classy show about flackery on what your generation until very recently dubbed the Idiot Box—cannot hide the fact that Safire's allusions to thongs, panties, and other undergarments for his female colleagues seem repulsive to anyone born after 1975. The historical context you provided with Barbara Walters' statement is true to life, but pointless. You are talking about people who are still very present in the public memory. We can't laugh off chauvinistic behavior with Safire like we can with, say, Henry VIII. There's a generational gap, but not that big of a generational gap.


Of course, even if this column were a complete lie, there would be no way for any of us to know, and why should we? You're a well-paid op-ed columnist for the New York Times; surely we can trust you to tell the truth as accurately as possible, and we can trust that if you were ever to skew the truth at all, it would be for "poetic license" of your Op-Ed that your fact-checkers have been trained to overlook. Even in an opinion column, we'd like to have a guarantee that what we are reading is based on truth, especially in a column in the Paper of Record by the person who has shaped our opinions of the Executive Branch of the United States Government for the better part of 16 years. Perhaps that's why David Brooks, lacking any reasonable evidence to support the Republican party, has to use his jogging route as evidence for the crux of a column about politics for all of America, a column that caused Charlie Pierce to comment:

Never in my long career as a professional cynic have I seen an spasm [sic] of Beltway bubblehood so far removed from the actual concerns of people's lives--so far removed that, last weekend, we had a gathering of the politically halt, lame, blind, and crippled in Washington, gathered for the sole purpose of petitioning various oligarchs to keep screwing them with their pants on.

The thing is, Maureen, you still see yourself as the public defender against the egos of the politicians and power brokers who shape this country for personal and partisan gain in equal measure. I completely understand how you still see yourself that way: if you don't do that job, who else will?

But let's take a look at the facts, Maureen. You worked with William Safire, the original flack/hack hybrid, for the better part of 20 years. You consider him your mentor. You educated him on the linguistics of lady's undergarments; he educated you on the proper use of pseudo-Yiddishisms. Well done. If not for the wonders of modern technology, it would take more than 10 seconds to discover that your mentor, for whom you have just provided a rather lavish pseudo-obituary, was instrumental in developing the brand of political flackery that you have built your reputation upon lambasting.

By just about any definition, this would count as hypocrisy, Maureen. I know you don't want to admit it, and your bevy of career experiences and accolades probably prevent you from ever fully realizing it. Considering your accolades, I'd be willing to give most columnists of your stature a pass for a cheap hypocrisy. The only problem is that it's not a cheap hypocrisy, and it cannot be easily dismissed. His Girl Friday came out in the '30s, Maureen. Things have changed since then. You have access to a job that puts you in the company of the world's movers and shakers, which has granted you access to the salary, lifestyle, and parties that would now be impossible for any aspiring Maureen Dowd to obtain. You have been a long-time critic of confusing the personal and the political, and yet you have come to prominence in an era when it is easier than ever to see through your own confusion on that front.


Maybe that's bad timing on your part, Maureen. Maybe that's just bad luck. There was no way for you to see it coming, Maureen, and I understand. Nonetheless, you've fallen victim to the same trap Safire's old boss fell into: you've willingly recorded your sins for history to judge.

Labels: flacks, hacks, maureen dowd, new york times, richard nixon, tynan's letters, william safire