1996, the best year in movie history, pt. 52: Rats in the ranks

A warm welcome to George, my nephew, born yesterday to Ana & David. My mom is in Texas with them. She looks after little Ada and the dog, Russell, while Ana, David, and George are in the hospital.

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A synopsis (not by me) of Rats in the Ranks.

Each year, as part of the democratic process all over Australia, local councillors meet to elect a mayor to lead their council for the next year. Rats in the Ranks tells the story of this process in the Leichhardt council area of Sydney in 1994. Every September, the Leichhardt council meets to elect one of their twelve members as the Mayor and another for Deputy Mayor for the following year. The election is rarely a straightforward affair.

In 1994, the current mayor, Larry Hand, was popular with the local citizens, but they don’t vote for the mayor, the councillors do – and after three years of Larry, some of them were after his job.

In Rats in the Ranks, filmmakers Bob Connolly and Robin Anderson trace the story of the struggle for the mayoralty. They had extraordinary access to the councillors who were willing for the story to be filmed in the lead up to the election.

Arms are twisted, favours are called in, people are double-crossed, damaging stories are leaked to the media and deals are done. But right up to the vote, no one knows how the numbers will stick and who will walk away from the election as mayor.

I copied this from OZmovies, a lovely website.

Another tidbit is that Rats in the Ranks

missed out on a nomination in the “best documentary” category and most other categories at the 1996 [Australian Film Institute] Awards. …

The film’s failure to make it past a pre-selection jury into general membership voting became part of a larger ongoing controversy about the AFI Awards, and eventually led to a change to the AFI’s voting system. This was the year that the AFI Awards reached the level of contempt usually reserved for the Academy Awards.

(The last sentence is a bonus, I guess.)

The documentary is basically C.P. Snow’s The Masters, with this difference: the scheming Cambridge dons of that novel are conscientious and gentle souls next to the professional politicians of Rats in the Ranks. In what follows, I’ll not reveal the outcome of the election, but I shall describe some of its participants. My opinions of these people changed as I viewed the movie. Here I’ll present my final character assessments. I thought hard about whether I could cheer for anyone to win the election, and, in the end, I decided I could; but you might reach a different verdict. I recommend you watch the movie and then read this review.

The accents and slang aren’t always easy to follow. I watched with the captions turned on. Here is a YouTube upload; the movie also can be streamed through Kanopy.

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There is a councilor in Rats in the Ranks who may as well be Satan. (In some scenes, he even wears a cape.)

There is another councilor who is “Satan’s” dupe – in effect, his lackey – even though she belongs to the opposing party. She spends more time with the Satan figure than with her fellow party members. After her meetings with them, she runs over to tell “Satan” everything.

In good bureaucratic fashion, this lackey has a lackey.

Meanwhile, other members of her party conspire to defeat the Satan figure by means fair or foul. (Mostly fair means, but the foul cannot be overlooked.) So, there is a potentially fatal division within that party. This makes for some outrageous caucus meetings. These scenes would be ghastly if they weren’t so entertaining.

It’s fascinating to hear such good talkers make tactical blunders, lose all sight of values, etc.

What’s most disturbing is how little the populace matters in all of this. The residents vote for their councilors, but not for their mayor; which might not matter so much, except for two things.

First, the mayor has considerably more formal and effective power than the other councilors have. (Not even the deputy mayor comes close.)

And second, the councilors choose the mayor on the basis of their personal ambitions and resentments. They give lip-service to their parties’ and constituents’ interests; but, at the end of the day, those interests don’t determine their choices.

How can these people live with themselves? How can they sleep at night?, the Satan figure asks about his fellow councilors – though he himself would betray any of them, should the winds change.

Interestingly, the Satan figure is a very good public official. (At least, he convinces me that he is a good public official.) He gets things done. He listens to the citizens. When they disagree with him, he patiently and candidly explains to them why his way is better. Were I to live in Leichhardt, and were it in my power to vote in this election, I’d be tempted to vote for this candidate.

I also was favorably impressed by his main challenger. He, too, has the makings of a good public official. He is the schlubbiest of all these schlubs (or the second-schlubbiest, after the lackey’s lackey); but he has moments of reasonableness and forthrightness.

Indeed, he may be too forthright to be a very successful politician. The Satan figure runs rings around him, gamesmanship-wise.

The two men can’t stand one another. Perhaps this is because of a class difference. Or perhaps they recognize each other as genuine threats. Or perhaps they sincerely disagree about how to govern.

Another politician, who refuses to appear onscreen, makes a crucial intervention. He is Anthony Albanese; as of May of 2022, he has been serving as the Prime Minister of Australia.

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The other day, I said to Karin: Isn’t it funny that I, who find politics so distasteful, should have written a dissertation about political matters. But the word “political” describes two different inquiries. One inquiry is about how a polis should be run, and the other is about how the polis is run (which boils down to a lot of scheming, backstabbing, etc.). If the gulf between should and is is too great, it’s natural to be interested in one inquiry but not the other.

This movie shows a representative democracy whose representatives aren’t chosen with regard for how it’s best to run the polis. And yet the polis is run competently enough. This suggests that we may as well choose our representatives out of a hat, as some of the more trusting politicians in this movie are inclined to do; or by having each desiring person take a turn, as some of the more self-important and envious politicians insist upon.

Highs and lows

I dragged out my old whiteboard and Karin bought some dry-erase markers. Oh, how delighted Samuel was: they were like a drug for him. The first day and a half, he didn’t color or draw so much as slam the board on our laps, no matter what we were preoccupied with, and insist that we draw things. “Happy triangle,” he would plead. “Happy nonagon. Happy decagon.” (YouTube has taught him shapes and some emotions.) Then, yesterday, for a few brief hours, he drew the shapes himself.

Then, this morning, he couldn’t draw anything. “The markers have dried out,” I had to tell him. Still he pressed them to the board. So intense was his desire to draw, the concept of their drying out eluded him longer than it would have eluded someone with a cooler intellect.

Another night out

I went with Karin and her mom to St. Mary’s College and viewed a performance of Legally Blonde Jr.: The Musical. This “junior” version is Legally Blonde: The Musical with the spicy bits excised. The actors were in elementary or middle or high school. Our old pastor’s daughter had a small but crucial role. She’s been performing for some years, but this was the first time I’d gone to watch her; I thought she was remarkable. But then, I’m biased: I’ve known her since she was a blobby little infant.

(Our own infants, Samuel and Daniel, were supervised by Karin’s dad and his girlfriend, Carol.)

After the show, the director came onstage and started talking about the sponsors and the crew and the “message” of Legally Blonde (“Follow your dreams,” was her take). “Lead us out of here,” Karin’s mom said, and so I did. When we got to the parking lot, Karin’s mom thanked me for having had the courage to leave before the speeches had ended. “I wouldn’t have done it on my own,” she said.

Karin has quite the weekend lined up for herself. Tomorrow she’ll hear Billy Joel at Notre Dame Stadium, and on Sunday she’ll watch a performance of Anastasia. I’ll look after the children.

On reading scholarship

Juneteenth as a federal holiday, year two. I don’t have a job, but the holiday does bring me some respite. Karin got a day off and helped to mind the children.

Amazon delivered a package. No rest for those workers.

Our air conditioner has been repaired, and just in time: after a cool weekend, the temperature is rising again.

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After some months of staying put, philosophically speaking (Daniel’s birth threw off my routine), I am back upon that horse, reading articles and books, some of them rather old, about the ethics of nuclear warfare and deterrence; about the problem of dirty hands; about political realism, as opposed to political moralism; about the distinction between “private” and “public” morality; and about the epistemology of testimony. The topics are related, though not seamlessly. Their common elucidator is C.A.J. Coady. The longer I live, and the more I read, the more I prefer to read the same author on many topics than many authors on the same topic. Monologs rather than dialogs. Or, more precisely, I prefer dialogs to be recounted within monologs, in a clear, familiar, and singular voice. It’s one thing to give every point of view its due; it’s a different and considerably more tiresome thing to listen to every person who expresses a new point of view. It used to be, I would read topical anthologies because I thought it was good to listen to different people talking about the same topic. Now I read anthologies because, by and large, different ones feature the same authors. The better authors. I never took sociology in college, but I acquired a nice volume of first-year sociology readings. I used to think they were chosen for their topical importance. Now that I’ve read around for twenty years, and I know more names, I realize those topics were chosen because those authors had written about them. Which is well and good.

Another thing, it’s nicer to read people who don’t give a citation for every little point. Better for an author to do as Quine does and just call the other guys “McX” and “Wyman” and not refer explicitly to their writings. I realize you only can write like this once you’ve Arrived. Until then, you have to cite everybody under the sun, and you have to drone on in your acknowledgments about the many hours during your fellowship year when you were encouraged by Senior Figure So-and-So and criticized, over pints or during long walks, by Up-and-Comer Such-and-Such. Which is a bit groveling and, frankly, not much fun to read.

I’ve noticed that novelists write longer and longer acknowledgments now. These are annoying because they’re like, “I want to thank my agent and my tireless editor and all my friends and my dad and my mom … and my dog, ha, ha.” As if the general reader would care about that. When even the novelists have to display all their social and professional connections, we know there isn’t likely to be a place for a loner like me in the industry of the mind.

June’s poem; body-text fonts, pt. 4: CRT Caslon and Palatino

A few nights ago, we had a good storm. It relieved us from the heat. The black sky turned mustard-yellow.

I feared for our lives, but a quick Internet search convinced me that we were in no danger.

This month’s poem, from Mark Twain’s Roughing It, is “The Aged Pilot Man.”

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

On the Erie Canal, it was,

All on a summer’s day,

I sailed forth with my parents

Far away to Albany.

From out the clouds at noon that day

There came a dreadful storm,

That piled the billows high about,

And filled us with alarm.

A man came rushing from a house,

Saying, “Snub up* your boat I pray,

Snub up your boat, snub up, alas,

Snub up while yet you may.”

Our captain cast one glance astern,

Then forward glancèd he,

And said, “My wife and little ones

I never more shall see.”

Said Dollinger the pilot man,

In noble words, but few, –

“Fear not, but lean on Dollinger,

And he will fetch you through.”

The boat drove on, the frightened mules

Tore through the rain and wind,

And bravely still, in danger’s post,

The whip-boy strode behind.

“Come ’board, come ’board,” the captain cried,

“Nor tempt so wild a storm;”

But still the raging mules advanced,

And still the boy strode on.

Then said the captain to us all,

“Alas, ’tis plain to me,

The greater danger is not there,

But here upon the sea.

“So let us strive, while life remains,

To save all souls on board,

And then if die at last we must,

Let .⁠.⁠.⁠. I cannot speak the word!”

Said Dollinger the pilot man,

Tow’ring above the crew,

“Fear not, but trust in Dollinger,

And he will fetch you through.”

“Low bridge! low bridge!” all heads went down,

The laboring bark sped on;

A mill we passed, we passed a church,

Hamlets, and fields of corn;

And all the world came out to see,

And chased along the shore

Crying, “Alas, alas, the sheeted rain,

The wind, the tempest’s roar!

Alas, the gallant ship and crew,

Can nothing help them more?”

And from our deck sad eyes looked out

Across the stormy scene:

The tossing wake of billows aft,

The bending forests green,

The chickens sheltered under carts

In lee of barn the cows,

The skurrying swine with straw in mouth,

The wild spray from our bows!

“She balances!

She wavers!

Now let her go about!

If she misses stays and broaches to,

We’re all” – (then with a shout,)

“Huray! huray!

Avast! belay!

Take in more sail!

Lord, what a gale!

Ho, boy, haul taut on the hind mule’s tail!”

“Ho! lighten ship! ho! man the pump!

Ho, hostler, heave the lead!”

“A quarter-three! – ’tis shoaling fast!

Three feet large! – t⁠-⁠h⁠-⁠r⁠-⁠e⁠-⁠e feet! –

Three feet scant!” I cried in fright

“Oh, is there no retreat?”

Said Dollinger, the pilot man,

As on the vessel flew,

“Fear not, but trust in Dollinger,

And he will fetch you through.”

A panic struck the bravest hearts,

The boldest cheek turned pale;

For plain to all, this shoaling said

A leak had burst the ditch’s bed!

And, straight as bolt from crossbow sped,

Our ship swept on, with shoaling lead,

Before the fearful gale!

“Sever the tow-line! Cripple the mules!”

Too late! There comes a shock!

∗ ∗ ∗ ∗ ∗ ∗

Another length, and the fated craft

Would have swum in the saving lock!

Then gathered together the shipwrecked crew

And took one last embrace,

While sorrowful tears from despairing eyes

Ran down each hopeless face;

And some did think of their little ones

Whom they never more might see,

And others of waiting wives at home,

And mothers that grieved would be.

But of all the children of misery there

On that poor sinking frame,

But one spake words of hope and faith,

And I worshipped as they came:

Said Dollinger the pilot man, –

(O brave heart, strong and true!) –

“Fear not, but trust in Dollinger,

For he will fetch you through.”

Lo! scarce the words have passed his lips

The dauntless prophet say’th,

When every soul about him seeth

A wonder crown his faith!

“And count ye all, both great and small,

As numbered with the dead:

For mariner for forty year,

On Erie, boy and man,

I never yet saw such a storm,

Or one ’t with it began!”

So overboard a keg of nails

And anvils three we threw,

Likewise four bales of gunny-sacks,

Two hundred pounds of glue,

Two sacks of corn, four ditto wheat,

A box of books, a cow,

A violin, Lord Byron’s works,

A rip-saw and a sow.

A curve! a curve! the dangers grow!

“Labbord! – stabbord! – s⁠-⁠t⁠-⁠e⁠-⁠a⁠-⁠d⁠-⁠y! – so! –

Hard-a-port, Dol! – hellum-a-lee!

Haw the head mule! – the aft one gee!

Luff! – bring her to the wind!”

For straight a farmer brought a plank, –

(Mysteriously inspired) –

And laying it unto the ship,

In silent awe retired.

Then every sufferer stood amazed

That pilot man before;

A moment stood. Then wondering turned,

And speechless walked ashore.

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

* Snub up: “The customary canal technicality for ‘tie up’” (MT’s note).

You can see pictures here (pp. 369ff).

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And now, the typeface: CRT Caslon.

No, not CRT as in “critical race theory”; CRT as in “cathode-ray tube.”

One good place to look for CRT fonts is in books that were published c. 1982. (Chances are decent, if you own anything by Emerson, it’s this volume set in CRT Caslon.)

My favorite CRT font is this version of Hermann Zapf’s Palatino:

(From Jonathan Spence, The Gate of Heavenly Peace.)

Readings

What with heat indices of 100-plus (F) and a sputtering air conditioner, this has been a sultry week. The boys and I have spent much time in the cool basement. There is a precise boundary, on the basement staircase, between the cold and hot air masses.

More things I’ve been reading:

Joan Aiken, The Way to Write for Children. I thought this was terrific, even though I have no plans to write for children.

Ben Macintyre, The Spy and the Traitor.

Jim Thompson, The Killer Inside Me. What’s remarkable is how petty the narrator is. How twerpy. He gets as much (or more) of a thrill needling people as murdering them. I’m reminded of In Plain Sight, the TV series about the real-life Scottish serial killer Peter Manuel.

Sylvia Townsend Warner, Mr Fortune’s Maggot, about a South Seas missionary (and I just finished Lolly Willowes).

All of Montaigne. This could take a while.

We are sued, pt. 2

FIFA has judged in favor of Ecuador and Byron Castillo, and against Chile.

These are the reasons: (1) FIFA doesn’t oppose nations’ citizenship rulings, and Castillo had obtained the relevant documents from the Ecuadorian government; (2) Ecuador had previously consulted FIFA about including Castillo in its roster; and (3) Castillo had played for Ecuador’s youth teams, affiliating himself with Ecuador in FIFA tournaments.

I take it that each of these reasons establishes a strong presumption in Ecuador’s favor. (1) or (2) might even be regarded as conclusive.

Case closed.

Well, not quite. Chile could ask FIFA’s board of appeals to review the case. Or Chile could appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, more commonly known by its French initialism, TAS. It was the TAS that ruled for Chile and against Bolivia during the 2018 World Cup qualification cycle.

But it seems likely that Ecuador, not Chile, will play in this year’s World Cup.

As will Iran.

(Stephen shared most of these links and memes with me.)

Castillo intends to counter-sue the Chilean soccer federation.

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R.I.P. Vangelis (d. May 17) and Julee Cruise (d. June 9). Two musicians of whom I’m fond, not least because they’ve so often lulled my sons to sleep.

The happiness before the sadness

I’m halfway through, and keenly absorbed in, H.W. Brands’s Dreams of El Dorado: A History of the American West, a “distressed” copy of which I found at Barnes & Noble.

How does one survey such a broad topic?

The chapters are built around vignettes. In one chapter, the fur trapper Joseph Meek hides himself from a grizzly bear, under a blanket. Then he hides in the shrubbery while Crow Indians disembowel another fur trapper.

Later in the book, Meek leaves his daughter in the care of the missionaries Marcus and Narcissa Whitman. The Whitmans are killed by Cayuse. Some other youngsters, the Sagers, die with them. I remember these children from the 1974 “family Western” Seven Alone.

In 1843, the Sager family was traveling from Missouri to Oregon. Along the way, the parents died, leaving the seven children to fend for themselves in the wilderness. This movie documents the miraculous and heartwarming story of survival, which has now entered the realm of Oregon legend.

As I recall, the movie never mentions that the children were doomed to be caught up in the massacre of the Whitmans.

The Indians blame the Whitmans for spreading diseases. Other pioneers are downright murderous. Violence and greed are the two great themes of this book. I expect that, in future chapters, these themes will be pitted against, or at least invoked to darken, Frederick Jackson Turner’s Frontier Thesis, the subject of an “independent study” course I took in college. (Turner’s long book is here; some commentary on his Frontier Thesis is here.)

I am all for studying grand historical themes. I have less enthusiasm for grand historical theses. I, personally, subscribe to just one grand historical thesis, which is captured in an exchange at church between my old collegemates Andrew and Joel.

Andrew: Your child seems happy enough right now.

Joel: This is just the happiness before the sadness.

Andrew: But isn’t all happiness the happiness before the sadness.

(Case in point: the Sager children.)

Actually, because I am a Christian, I think this grand historical thesis is false; but my thesis that this thesis is false is a theological thesis, not an historical one.

Mexico 0, Ecuador 0

It was a good night in Chicago, but this morning I worry about COVID.

Martin took this photo of Stephen, my dad, and me.

You can see many more green shirts, but there were plenty of Ecuadorians: twenty or thirty percent of the crowd, I’d guess.

We took our masks into the stadium and then didn’t think to put them on. No one was near us at first. The stadium didn’t fill up until the game was well underway. (Final headcount: about 61,000.)

And I didn’t notice any mask-wearers until people began to leave. I’m not referring to the Mexicans with lucha libre masks.

My dad and I weren’t allowed to bring our drawstring bags into the stadium. “Go hide them in the trees,” advised the guard. After the game, quite a few people were creeping among the trees, in the dark, like perverts, searching for their belongings. Maybe this happens after every game at Soldier Field.

The fans behaved beautifully. No one fought, that I saw. Everyone just seemed happy to be there. We had Mexicans to our left and lively, friendly cuencanos to our right. The Mexicans sang Cielito lindo. Near the end of the game, they did their infamous taunt of Puto. Alexander Domínguez complained; the ref temporarily halted play.

This notice appeared on the scoreboard:

The Ecuadorians all laughed.

It was a good move by Domínguez, that savvy game-freezer, because the Mexicans had been been playing their best soccer; afterward, they did nothing. Ecuador was the much better team throughout the match.

Exotica

Bless Spotify, it helps me to find relics I never would have sought out on my own. It leads me from one style of old music to another style of old music.

These last weeks, I’ve been subjecting the household to heavy doses of mid-century exotica.

Yesterday’s find was Yma Sumac’s “Chuncho.” It caught my attention when I was several hours into Ritual of the Savage Album Radio.

This music is best listened to very, very late at night.

Much cover art in this genre is, shall we say, insensitive, in the manner of the Peter Pan song “What Makes the Red Man Red?”; but the music is without words. How un-PC is it to listen?

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“Where are you going for your holiday?” asked one of my grad school professors one summer.

“I’m going home, to Ecuador,” I said.

“That’s right,” she said. “I heard that you were from somewhere, er, exotic.”

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The review of this book stirs up other memories. Sixteen years ago, I took the author’s seminar on the topic (ancient epistemology). I read some of these chapters, along with related primary and secondary sources.

The sessions were grueling for this Greekless first-year student. Much time was spent staring at Greek words on the board and sometimes listening to, sometimes tuning out discussions of how to translate these words. (The classicists surely benefited more than did the philosophers who were taking the course to satisfy their distribution requirement.)

The procedure was necessary for covering the topic, and it was salutory for me to see it covered in this way. But I wish the professor had begun with a bald statement of her distinctive (“well-known”) interpretive approach and its problems, roughly what the review’s first paragraphs provide.

Graduate study is hard. There are ways to make it easier.

Or maybe the professor did give a bald statement of her approach, and I just don’t remember it or it went over my head. That’s certainly possible.

I remember our director of graduate studies – an epistemologist – telling me that the course would be easy because “it’s all just epistemology.” Yes, it’s all just epistemology, but that’s little comfort when it’s so complicated to maintain that ancient and 21st-century writers are trying to answer the same questions.