1996, the best year in movie history, pt. 60: Un héros très discret (A self-made hero)

Albert grows up thinking his father died fighting for France in World War I. Probably not; probably, his mother lied to him. During the next war, the Nazis capture their village. The village officials welcome the Nazis. Albert’s mother discreetly collaborates with the Nazis so that she can receive the pension for war widows. Then the Nazis are driven out and the village officials welcome the liberators. The Nazis’ French collaborators are rounded up and dealt with. Albert’s mother is spared the worst treatment, however: Albert’s father-in-law has been sheltering Allied parachutists in his barn, and the whole family is protected by, indeed profits from, this clandestine heroism. Albert is humiliated that neither his father-in-law nor his wife saw fit to inform him that good deeds were being done. He hops on a train to Paris. There he falls in with a con artist and an unscrupulous businessman. He learns to inflate his credentials, rehearse catchphrases, and recall names. By dropping the right words into conversation, he insinuates himself into the postwar in-crowd. Its celebrities are the former Resistance fighters. Albert attends their gatherings and pretends to have been a Resistance fighter. He fits right in. The Resistance fighters also name-drop, and he can do it better than they can. He studies English phrases and street names and pretends to have been exiled in London. When he pretends to have been sired by a Polish Jew, his star rises especially high. Eventually, he impresses the right people and is given a prestigious army job.

He works hard at being an impostor. All the while, he is racked with guilt.

The story is sordid and tragic and brightly and cheerfully told.

This impostor’s tale is designed to make every honest viewer worry whether, or to what degree, he or she also is an impostor. It also develops a subtler theme. Is society responsible for incentivizing the deception that Albert practices? Yes, and for turning a blind eye to it. Consider Albert’s wife, and his mistress. Both suspect that something about him is screwy. Neither is especially bothered. They see potential in his talent for self-presentation. Consider the virtuous father-in-law, the one who heroically hides the parachutists in his barn. Deep down, he must not trust Albert; but he trains him in his salesman’s craft. By turning Albert into a disciplined performer, he helps him down the road to impostorship. Consider the soldiers and Resistance fighters. Some are clearly fooled by Albert. Others clearly are not. Most leave it ambiguous whether or not they are fooled. The prevailing attitude seems to be: Let’s see how far this guy will travel; let’s see how useful he can be to us. Hardly surprising, in a society that exalts Nazis or Resistance fighters according to who it is who happens to have the upper hand.

Throughout the movie, various men engage in homosexual flirtations toward Albert. I don’t believe that Albert is a closeted or latent homosexual. The sexual flirtation is a metaphor for a different kind of flirtation: I know what you’re really up to, but I’m going to let you get away with it because I can capitalize on it. The dance of sex is a dance of social advancement, or, in some cases, of social rebellion. Put your wedding dress back on, Albert tells his bride after they have consummated their marriage. Albert, the fraud, wants to recover the idea of purity, of transparency. His bride, who really is pure, is attracted to his deceptiveness. She won’t be the last to regard him in this way. Albert is a self-made “hero,” and a discreet one; and it is a discreet society that quietly calculates whether such a fraud as Albert can be allowed to pass for a hero.

A wedding

Our big event this weekend was the wedding of our friend, Eman. She was Karin’s colleague and mine in different jobs before Karin & I were married.

I’d never attended any sort of Islamic service, so I was keen to view the proceedings. The Imam gave a short discourse on marriage. The observant men retired to pray in a far corner of the hall. The Best Man gave a wise and humane speech on how a relationship changes when the children arrive. I also was interested to see Muslims of a variety of origins make each other’s acquaintance and place each other on different spots of the map (Chechnya, Turkey, etc.). In this way the service wasn’t so unlike a gathering of expatriates at Quito’s English Fellowship Church.

Eman and Ahmed sat on a high-backed white couch; guests took turns approaching them to offer congratulations. For dinner, we had such Islamic delicacies as mashed potatoes, roast beef, and Chicken Kiev. The venue was attached to a golf course. Deer roamed the links. Karin’s dad and Carol, his girlfriend, watched over Samuel and Daniel for us at their house.

Happy birthday to Daniel

He turned one today, the livelier of my two lively sons.

He and Samuel usually leave me plumb tuckered out. But today it rained and Daniel considerately did a very long birthday nap.

This morning, Karin took him to the WIC doctor’s where he enjoyed looking at himself in a funhouse mirror; alas, there are no photos of the occasion. This photo, from a few days ago, shows him looking in an ordinary mirror.

Here he eats his birthday cupcake.

More? OK, one more. We took him to the food court a while ago:

“Sons who are born to a young middle-aged man / are like arrows in the hand of a warrior.” (Psalm 127:4, International Children’s Bible)

Duolingo; a party game; a legend dies

Karin’s Duolingo streak has surpassed 1300 days. That’s longer than 3½ years. It antedates our second-to-last address change. It antedates Samuel.

I am impressed.

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A party game. Guess which dour philosopher wrote the following.

Ten years ago I was awarded a year-long fellowship at the Humanities Institute of the University of Michigan to pursue research into narrative and its relevance to the value of a good life. I began reading the vast literature on narrative, and by the end of the first semester I was utterly lost. I decided to work on a different project, so as to have something to show for the year. This paper is an effort to make good on the project that the Institute funded; I have no illusions of its having been worth the wait.

And yet the paper (“Narrative Explanation”) was published in The Philosophical Review.

It is fitting that the philosopher should have provided a “narrative explanation” of how the paper came to be written, and of its likely deficiencies.

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R.I.P. Richard Belzer, best known as Detective John Munch of Homicide: Life on the Street, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, and other shows, e.g. Sesame Street and The X-Files. According to ranker.com, Munch is the second-best detective in the Law & Order “universe”:

Your classic … paranoid, misanthropic detective. He thrives off conspiracy theories, and a new ex-wife of his seems to pop up every other season. Munch is a huge advocate for the mentally ill, as several of his ex-wives and family members have suffered from mental disorders.

He (Munch, anyway) was a sweetheart.

Some old, old, old favorites

For the boys, we put on Chitty Chitty Bang Bang – overlong but not devoid of charm. I wouldn’t be surprised if it were responsible for twenty-five to fifty percent of my anglophilia. Daniel is transfixed, and Samuel jumps up and down: he loves the old automobiles. One of the best gifts I ever bought him was a huge volume called The Complete Encyclopedia of Motorcars ($1 at a library sale). It is too heavy for him to gently carry around, and so, over the years, he has wrecked its spine. (Lately, Daniel has been tearing out its pages; he also ripped the front cover off a paperback that I received in the mail today.)

I once read Ian Fleming’s Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang during a long car ride. The novel was disappointing. At least it is slim. The movie is 2½ hours long. Some of its musical numbers seem that long, all by themselves.

Tonight we don’t watch the whole movie. Instead, I put on Bugs Bunny: Superstar and we watch the first two cartoons. Samuel doesn’t know what to make of it. He’s a shrewder child than I was. Bugs Bunny may have unduly influenced my personality.

Edoarda & Stephen have acquired a puppy: Rembrandt (Remi). Last night we all went over to Mishawaka to meet him. He is still an excitable young beast.

February’s poem

William McGonagall, “The Demon Drink”:

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

Oh, thou demon Drink, thou fell destroyer;

Thou curse of society, and its greatest annoyer.

What hast thou done to society, let me think?

I answer thou hast caused the most of ills, thou demon Drink.

Thou causeth the mother to neglect her child,

Also the father to act as he were wild,

So that he neglects his loving wife and family dear,

By spending his earnings foolishly on whisky, rum and beer.

And after spending his earnings foolishly he beats his wife –

The man that promised to protect her during life –

And so the man would if there was no drink in society,

For seldom a man beats his wife in a state of sobriety.

And if he does, perhaps he finds his wife fou’,

Then that causes, no doubt, a great hullaballo;

When he finds his wife drunk he begins to frown,

And in a fury of passion he knocks her down.

And in that knock down she fractures her head,

And perhaps the poor wife she is killed dead,

Whereas, if there was no strong drink to be got,

To be killed wouldn’t have been the poor wife’s lot.

Then the unfortunate husband is arrested and cast into jail,

And sadly his fate he does bewail;

And he curses the hour that ever was born,

And paces his cell up and down very forlorn.

And when the day of his trial draws near,

No doubt for the murdering of his wife he drops a tear,

And he exclaims, “Oh, thou demon Drink, through thee I must die,”

And on the scaffold he warns the people from drink to fly,

Because whenever a father or a mother takes to drink,

Step by step on in crime they do sink,

Until their children loses all affection for them,

And in justice we cannot their children condemn.

The man that gets drunk is little else than a fool,

And is in the habit, no doubt, of advocating for Home Rule;

But the best Home Rule for him, as far as I can understand,

Is the abolition of strong drink from the land.

And the men that get drunk in general wants Home Rule;

But such men, I rather think, should keep their heads cool,

And try and learn more sense, I most earnestly do pray,

And help to get strong drink abolished without delay.

If drink was abolished how many peaceful homes would there be,

Just, for instance in the beautiful town of Dundee;

then this world would be heaven, whereas it’s a hell,

An the people would have more peace in it to dwell.

Alas! strong drink makes men and women fanatics,

And helps to fill our prisons and lunatics;

And if there was no strong drink such cases wouldn’t be,

Which would be a very glad sight for all Christians to see.

O admit, a man may be a very good man,

But in my opinion he cannot be a true Christian

As long as he partakes of strong drink,

The more that he may differently think.

But no matter what he thinks, I say nay,

For by taking it he helps to lead his brother astray,

Whereas, if he didn’t drink, he would help to reform society,

And we would soon do away with all inebriety.

Then, for the sake of society and the Church of God,

Let each one try to abolish it at home and abroad;

Then poverty and crime would decrease and be at a stand,

And Christ’s Kingdom would soon be established throughout the land.

Therefore, brothers and sisters, pause and think,

And try to abolish the foul fiend, Drink.

Let such doctrine be taught in church and school,

That the abolition of strong drink is the only Home Rule.

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

There is a lot of truth in this poem.

Another good anti-war essay

Karin: “Did you trim your mustache today, Sweetie?”

John-Paul: “No, Sweetie.”

Karin: “I thought you might have left it long, to show your support.”

John-Paul: “You mean for Andy Reid?”

Karin: “Yes, ha, ha.”

John-Paul: “Yes, that’s right, and that’s why I got fat again, too.”

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Tonight’s essay, by Richard Norman, is “The Case for Pacifism.” It takes the “skeptical” approach: it argues, first, that in the absence of a compelling justification, large-scale killing can be presumed to be wrong; and then that the best purported justifications of large-scale killing are not compelling enough. Finally (pp. 208 and 209), it addresses the lingering conviction that there are situations in which fighting nonetheless cannot be avoided:

If we can pin down the sense of the statement “We have no choice,” we may be in a position to understand why pacifism remains difficult to accept. …

When people say that one sometimes has no choice, what they mean, I think, is that by refusing to fight, say, against aggression, or indeed against internal oppression, one is acquiescing in a very great evil, and by acquiescing in it one is tacitly endorsing it. Morally speaking, faced with that evil, we have no choice but to resist it, and if the only way to resist it is to fight, then we have no choice but to fight.

Now this reading of the situation might be challenged. … One might say: “I have not acquiesced in Nazism. I refuse to engage in military resistance to it, … but that does not mean that I accept Nazism. I reject it wholeheartedly, I will give no support to it, and if the Nazis order me to cooperate with their crimes I shall disobey even though I may be shot.” …

Nevertheless, even if many people had thought and acted thus, it could remain true that, in an important sense, Nazism had not been resisted. This is because resistance to a social phenomenon such as aggression or oppression must, if it really is to count as resistance, take a socially identifiable form. … What forms of resistance are available will therefore depend upon the institutions and traditions of the community; and if the only recognised and organisable form of resistance is military resistance, then not fighting will mean not resisting. This, I think, is the significant sense in which people could say “We have no choice but to fight.”

This is another case of a pacifist explaining more clearly than do most “bellicists” (war apologists) how warring might continue to seem good, or necessary, to do, even after the usual justifications alluding to rights and harms have run out of steam.

Norman’s reconstruction of this bellicist argument has other applications. The same pattern of reasoning helps to make sense of a popular “anti-racist” claim: that failing to actively resist racism is itself a form of racism: that a person who merely refrains from engaging in racial discrimination, disrespecting, harming (etc.) and does not actively try to prevent or counteract others’ racism is himself guilty of racism. The underlying idea, as in the case of war, is that refraining from doing an evil without trying to prevent or counteract others’ doing it is a form of acquiescence, and that acquiescence in this evil is tacit endorsement of it. Each of these steps might be contested; here I just want to point out that insofar as “anti-racism” and advocacy of war both rely on this pattern of thought, they are structurally similar, and there is a prima facie tension in endorsing “anti-racism” together with pacifism; indeed, there would seem to be a tension between accepting pacifism and insisting on the viciousness of failing to promote a number of causes. Pacifists who, by temperament or habit, are militant activists need to examine themselves closely.

I said last time that I’d discuss “the encroachment of politics upon the sporting world.” It seems to me that the best argument for stripping a locale of its opportunity to host or participate in a sporting event is the same sort of argument that Norman advances on behalf of warring, and that whether the argument succeeds in a given situation depends on whether the above-delineated sequence of steps should be accepted in that situation. If Qatar, say, commits an injustice outside of sport, does allowing it to host the World Cup amount to acquiescing in that injustice? If so, does this amount to tacitly endorsing the injustice? How does allowing Qatar to host the World Cup compare, as a matter of tacit endorsement of injustice, with traveling to Qatar, trading with Qatar, maintaining diplomatic relations with Qatar, and so on? I suggest that this is a useful framework for assessing the widespread, knee-jerk disparagement of Qatar’s World Cup (and FIFA) that has taken place during the last dozen years.

Pre-gaming

On Sunday I’ll root for the Chiefs, but these Eagles seem terrific, so I’ll probably be entertained no matter who wins. I love it when the Super Bowl is contested by the two one-seeds.

In the 2010s, these Super Bowls were contested by both one-seeds:

• Eagles and Patriots (good game)
• Broncos and Panthers (bad game)
• Patriots and Seahawks (awesome game)
• Broncos and Seahawks (horror show, but very interesting – the Broncos set passing records while getting blown out)

(The games are in reverse chronological order.)

My inbox has been flooded with articles and videos whose subject is the NFL. Here are some of the best things I’ve looked at.

(1) A video of bizarre uniforms. The Eagles’ throwback uniforms of 2007 – which hearken back to the 1930s – might be the craziest NFL uniforms ever.

(2) Malcolm Butler recalls his great moment in the Patriots’ and Seahawks’ Super Bowl. That game was played in Arizona, in the same venue as this year’s Super Bowl.

(3) This article is about how Arizona was supposed to have hosted the Super Bowl in 1993 but didn’t do so. After that state refused to observe a holiday for MLK Jr., the NFL moved the game to California.

I have more to say about the encroachment of politics upon the sporting world, but I’ll wait until next time.

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What with its pageantry, the Super Bowl tends to get me thinking about war – this year, especially, because of a classic but currently unfashionable essay by William James, “The Moral Equivalent of War.” A pacifist, James concedes that war meets a real need felt by its advocates – a need that pacifists have had trouble acknowledging and which they certainly haven’t addressed in a compelling fashion.

The essay predates WW1. James doesn’t foresee that the martial values that he describes so well – hardiness, communal glory, individual subordination – would decline, or at least fall into some disrepute, as a result of the carnage of the twentieth century. But I think he is right that they are permanent, that they point toward things that are of essential significance for humans.

Toward the end of the essay, James tries to redirect the enduring militaristic impulses. He wants them to be productive, not destructive. He seems to have in mind ventures like the Boy Scouts or the (still-to-come) TVA. He says that he wants people to band together to fight against nature, not each other.

Again, he hasn’t had the benefit of witnessing the destruction of the Aral Sea – or, for that matter, that of the Great Salt Lake.

Nor does he foresee that martial itches would be scratched, at personal remove but with clinical efficiency, by such entities as the modern NFL.

Still, it’s a great essay.

Training up my little “future guardians”

With Samuel I’m watching Schoolhouse Rock!, which I didn’t grow up with. He loves it. It sure is clever and catchy. Alas, the history it teaches is on a par with the myth of little George Washington and his cherry tree.

Having recently re-read those parts of the Republic that talk about primary schooling, I can’t but suspect that Socrates would have heartily approved of Schoolhouse Rock!

I do like the “I’m Just a Bill” song.

The science in the show isn’t much better than the history. Don’t burn too much fuel, or it’ll run out and we’ll all be cold, is one lesson from an episode broadcast in 1979. (Oil was expensive that year.) Samuel and I haven’t gotten to the later episodes, but I assume that the message has been quietly revised for the climate science videos of the late 2000s.

The body is a machine, says the episode about human anatomy.

A computer doesn’t have emotions or morality, a later episode says. It’s just a machine.

Combine these two lessons, and the implications are … disturbing.

Le spam; body-text fonts, pt. 12: URW Garamond

For 1½–2 years, my phone wouldn’t ring. A short time ago, however, it “fixed” itself – probably by downloading an automatic update – and the spammers began making up for lost time. A spammer roused Daniel from his nap, and, when I picked up, inquired after my “senior benefits.” Within an hour, another spammer had tried, twice, to convince me that an impostor had used my Amazon.com account to buy a MacBook Pro.

The police, paramedics, firefighters, war veterans, university chancellors, air traffic controllers, dentists, etc. resumed their panhandling-by-phone. I still am waiting to hear from the U.S. Space Force – or whichever underfunded military branch it is whose job involves shooting down Chinese weather balloons.

(I mean, either the phone repaired itself or Samuel fixed it by punching who knows what buttons. The other day, he called 911.)

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This “true crime memoir” is quite good.

The typeface is URW Garamond, the upper-case “Q” of which makes it an apt choice for setting The Fifth Queen by Ford Madox Ford.