ponderings of the pococurante

I suppose that BIll Maher’s ego has gotten the best of him and he decided, that he just HAD to make a movie and somehow contribute to the demise of organized religion, which he believes is one of the greatest obstacles to human progress. So he goes around, skewering religious types, ranging from the truck stop evangelicals to your hapless, un-media savvy imam.

Part of the film is autobiographical, in that Maher talks about his own upbringing: his mother is Jewish and his father Catholic, and he was raised a catholic.

Maher’s real beef is with literalists, those whose insistence on various dogma handed down to us from our ancient forebears in the Promised Land impedes the adoption of more liberal and, Maher would say, modern, normal, outlooks and values. Maher knows the Bible fairly well, and of course, he’s a “skilled debater” of sorts, that is, he knows, from being both a standup and TV personality, the art of rhetoric. However, Maher ends up being something less than the Socratic gadfly: He is interested in the truth, yes, but there are greater truths that he is missing out on.

What I mean is this: Nietzsche, for example, was well aware that while organized religion, and in particular the Lutheranism of his father and compatriots, was perhaps a crock of shit, opiates for the many mediocre people of which society is formed, but he knew that humanity’s *religiosity*–was not something that could be so easily jettisoned, replaced by a smirky, Maher-esque Enlightenment reason. How does Maher, for example, think about death: he believes that there is nothing after life, and that at best we ought to remain skeptical about the grand questions. And that attitude is fine, but that begs the question, I think–the religiosity is always going to rear its ugly head, and you can’t expect everyone to just take Maher’s attitude. Not many people, in the history of humanity, have been satisfied with his answers.

Organized religion versus mysticism: this is a theme that i’ve run into a lot recently. I saw a documentary about sufism in Pakistan–a country more known as being, in certain areas at least, a hotbed of militant, retrogressive Islam. And then there was a quote from the French philosopher Henri Bergson, where he said that organized religion was (and here I paraphrase) that which cools what was poured, white-hot, into the soul of man. That is to say, that mysticism is not just a “non-mainstream” type of religion, a la sufism, but is, in fact, the very core of humanity’s religious instinct.

People need to know how to deal with death, and with the issues of meaning.

I don’t mean to entirely negate Maher’s movie just because I think books do a better job of navigating these issues, but hell, they do. And here are the books that I would recommend, having just read or re-read them:

Andre Comte-Sponville: The Little Book of Atheist Spirituality
Henry David Thoreau: Walden
Ernest Becker: The Denial of Death
Christopher Hitchens: God is not Great.

These books run the gamut but, I think, give a good basis for why we ought to be skeptical of organized religions (especially when it becomes the last refuge of charlatans and scoundrels) while remaining, at our core, profoundly religious, mystical, etc.

I suppose that BIll Maher’s ego has gotten the best of him and he decided, that he just HAD to make a movie and somehow contribute to the demise of organized religion, which he believes is one of the greatest obstacles to human progress. So he goes around, skewering religious types, ranging from the truck stop evangelicals to your hapless, un-media savvy imam.

Part of the film is autobiographical, in that Maher talks about his own upbringing: his mother is Jewish and his father Catholic, and he was raised a catholic.

Maher’s real beef is with literalists, those whose insistence on various dogma handed down to us from our ancient forebears in the Promised Land impedes the adoption of more liberal and, Maher would say, modern, normal, outlooks and values. Maher knows the Bible fairly well, and of course, he’s a “skilled debater” of sorts, that is, he knows, from being both a standup and TV personality, the art of rhetoric. However, Maher ends up being something less than the Socratic gadfly: He is interested in the truth, yes, but there are greater truths that he is missing out on.

What I mean is this: Nietzsche, for example, was well aware that while organized religion, and in particular the Lutheranism of his father and compatriots, was perhaps a crock of shit, opiates for the many mediocre people of which society is formed, but he knew that humanity’s *religiosity*–was not something that could be so easily jettisoned, replaced by a smirky, Maher-esque Enlightenment reason. How does Maher, for example, think about death: he believes that there is nothing after life, and that at best we ought to remain skeptical about the grand questions. And that attitude is fine, but that begs the question, I think–the religiosity is always going to rear its ugly head, and you can’t expect everyone to just take Maher’s attitude. Not many people, in the history of humanity, have been satisfied with his answers.

Organized religion versus mysticism: this is a theme that i’ve run into a lot recently. I saw a documentary about sufism in Pakistan–a country more known as being, in certain areas at least, a hotbed of militant, retrogressive Islam. And then there was a quote from the French philosopher Henri Bergson, where he said that organized religion was (and here I paraphrase) that which cools what was poured, white-hot, into the soul of man. That is to say, that mysticism is not just a “non-mainstream” type of religion, a la sufism, but is, in fact, the very core of humanity’s religious instinct.

People need to know how to deal with death, and with the issues of meaning.

I don’t mean to entirely negate Maher’s movie just because I think books do a better job of navigating these issues, but hell, they do. And here are the books that I would recommend, having just read or re-read them:

Andre Comte-Sponville: The Little Book of Atheist Spirituality
Henry David Thoreau: Walden
Ernest Becker: The Denial of Death
Christopher Hitchens: God is not Great.

These books run the gamut but, I think, give a good basis for why we ought to be skeptical of organized religions (especially when it becomes the last refuge of charlatans and scoundrels) while remaining, at our core, profoundly religious, mystical, etc.

I still love this song, even after all these years. MS reminded me of it recently, she still listens to it, and so, “inspired” by that, i tried doing a cover of it just this afternoon.

Someone please tell me what the point of this movie is. If it’s meant to be satirical, which it is in spades, couldn’t it have been more LOL funny like SNL? If it’s meant to be some kind of historical political biopic, then all i can say is too soon, too soon. The gags, the famous Bushisms—they are still cringeworthy but somehow contrived to the point that they don’t make for much of a punch-line. Of course, much of this has to do with where this particular viewer is situated in time and history—no doubt that future generations won’t “get it” the same way that we do.

The placement of the famous lines are a bit awkward: consider the “rarely is the question asked: is our children learning?” Bushism–though I am not sure, it seems to have been placed at the wrong time: when Bush was running for governor, instead of president. The other one is “i read, i smoke, I admire”–which is supposedly what Laura said to her future mother in law, Barb Bush, but in the movie she says it to W. when they first meet.

I’m not a stickler for historical accuracy in these matters, but as mentioned before, it comes off, as someone who’s watched this history first-hand, as being contrived.

There were some other annoying and/or intriguing parts to this movie: Thandie Newton as Condi Rice. HEr first lines are terrible, mostly because she’s trying really hard to emulate an American accent, but her high-pitched voice just grates. And I honestly don’t know or care to remember what the real Condi sounds like, but Newton is just too affected. However, it gets better as the movie goes on. The other thing that is terrible is that they make her so homely, which is perhaps accurate, but which is painful for any devotee of Newton’s hotness to stomach. I just saw her in Rock N Rolla not too long ago, and the memories of her hotness remain fresh to this very day.

The other bit that is interesting is Jeffrey Wright as Colin Powell. I love Wright but he just completely *lacks the gravitas* to be Colin Powell. He’s of a more slight build, not quite as stout and solid seeming as the General, and simply adding some fake white hairs doesn’t improve the situation a whole lot. Furthermore, he’s always talking in some kind of low, guttural voice which sounds every bit as painful and affected as Newton’s accent.

And how about that ongoing philosophical spat between Powell, the military man who knows the realities of fighting, versus Rummy and Cheney, the hawks that have never killed anything with two legs. The ongoing debates are a bit tedious, I have to say. I have no doubt that such debates went on in real life, but in the dialogue in the script is incredibly trite, with Powell going so far as to mention Cheney’s deferments from Vietnam, and the diabolical Cheney trying to use Powell’s military experience to his rhetorical advantage. They come across as two schoolboys in debate tournament. Then there’s a bit where they have a slideshow showing a map of Iraq and Iran with American flags covering the neighboring countries–illustrating the American-friendly sphere of influence in the mideast–and again, it just comes off as being too satirical, very much Wag the Dog or War, Inc. or Starship Troopers-esque.

Another strange portrayal was that of Tony Blair, whom we see on a visit to Crawford before the start of the Iraq invasion. He looks too young and acts a bit too naive to be the real Tony Blair, and just comes across as a total boob. I never liked the man but the portrayal here is just plain weird.

Then there was the whole thing with W. and his father, the whole you’ll never be good enough, Jeb is my favorite son dynamic which just, whatever its relation to the real life people, just comes across as a monumental cliche. James Cromwell—you can’t help but think of him in 24, so I guess he’s been type-cast as the creepy father. However, he comes across as a much more normal and smooth George Senior than the real life one, who always seemed to me, like, well, a wimp. In any case, this dynamic runs throughout the whole movie, and gets a bit tendentious after a short while. In a movie where there is little care for psychological realism, what is the point of showing this whole dynamic. Is it to offer some kind of theory for why W., the perennial underachiever, ended up as president? Is it to somehow humanize him? In any case, being a Bush-hater, i don’t think the film helped his case any, and I doubt that it was Stone’s intention to in the first place.

Mediocre.

Someone please tell me what the point of this movie is. If it’s meant to be satirical, which it is in spades, couldn’t it have been more LOL funny like SNL? If it’s meant to be some kind of historical political biopic, then all i can say is too soon, too soon. The gags, the famous Bushisms—they are still cringeworthy but somehow contrived to the point that they don’t make for much of a punch-line. Of course, much of this has to do with where this particular viewer is situated in time and history—no doubt that future generations won’t “get it” the same way that we do.

The placement of the famous lines are a bit awkward: consider the “rarely is the question asked: is our children learning?” Bushism–though I am not sure, it seems to have been placed at the wrong time: when Bush was running for governor, instead of president. The other one is “i read, i smoke, I admire”–which is supposedly what Laura said to her future mother in law, Barb Bush, but in the movie she says it to W. when they first meet.

I’m not a stickler for historical accuracy in these matters, but as mentioned before, it comes off, as someone who’s watched this history first-hand, as being contrived.

There were some other annoying and/or intriguing parts to this movie: Thandie Newton as Condi Rice. HEr first lines are terrible, mostly because she’s trying really hard to emulate an American accent, but her high-pitched voice just grates. And I honestly don’t know or care to remember what the real Condi sounds like, but Newton is just too affected. However, it gets better as the movie goes on. The other thing that is terrible is that they make her so homely, which is perhaps accurate, but which is painful for any devotee of Newton’s hotness to stomach. I just saw her in Rock N Rolla not too long ago, and the memories of her hotness remain fresh to this very day.

The other bit that is interesting is Jeffrey Wright as Colin Powell. I love Wright but he just completely *lacks the gravitas* to be Colin Powell. He’s of a more slight build, not quite as stout and solid seeming as the General, and simply adding some fake white hairs doesn’t improve the situation a whole lot. Furthermore, he’s always talking in some kind of low, guttural voice which sounds every bit as painful and affected as Newton’s accent.

And how about that ongoing philosophical spat between Powell, the military man who knows the realities of fighting, versus Rummy and Cheney, the hawks that have never killed anything with two legs. The ongoing debates are a bit tedious, I have to say. I have no doubt that such debates went on in real life, but in the dialogue in the script is incredibly trite, with Powell going so far as to mention Cheney’s deferments from Vietnam, and the diabolical Cheney trying to use Powell’s military experience to his rhetorical advantage. They come across as two schoolboys in debate tournament. Then there’s a bit where they have a slideshow showing a map of Iraq and Iran with American flags covering the neighboring countries–illustrating the American-friendly sphere of influence in the mideast–and again, it just comes off as being too satirical, very much Wag the Dog or War, Inc. or Starship Troopers-esque.

Another strange portrayal was that of Tony Blair, whom we see on a visit to Crawford before the start of the Iraq invasion. He looks too young and acts a bit too naive to be the real Tony Blair, and just comes across as a total boob. I never liked the man but the portrayal here is just plain weird.

Then there was the whole thing with W. and his father, the whole you’ll never be good enough, Jeb is my favorite son dynamic which just, whatever its relation to the real life people, just comes across as a monumental cliche. James Cromwell—you can’t help but think of him in 24, so I guess he’s been type-cast as the creepy father. However, he comes across as a much more normal and smooth George Senior than the real life one, who always seemed to me, like, well, a wimp. In any case, this dynamic runs throughout the whole movie, and gets a bit tendentious after a short while. In a movie where there is little care for psychological realism, what is the point of showing this whole dynamic. Is it to offer some kind of theory for why W., the perennial underachiever, ended up as president? Is it to somehow humanize him? In any case, being a Bush-hater, i don’t think the film helped his case any, and I doubt that it was Stone’s intention to in the first place.

Mediocre.

I’m glad that Mickey Rourke won a Golden Globe for his performance in The Wrestler, because although the movie tends to be fairly predictable overall, this was one of the most honest performances I’ve seen in a while. Now everyone is talking about the Mickey Rourke comeback tour, which made me curious enough about the actor (I haven’t seen his other films) to get 9 1/2 weeks when i came across it at the DVD store. I don’t have anything particularly new or interesting to add to what’s been said about The Wrestler, but i think there are some interesting tidbits about how the movie has been received in other quarters: the Iranian government considers it insulting, after a fictional wrestler in the movie named The Ayatollah gets his Iranian flag smashed by Rourke’s character, while the folks at the WWE, a professional wrestling organization, aren’t too happy with what they considered the stereotyped and negative portrayals of certain wrestling circuits.

Director Aronofsky thinks that professional wrestlers do get shafted when it comes to their working conditions: he considers them actors and entertainers — and believes that they ought to be unionized and eligible for the same types of benefits that SAG members receive. Yet in reality, many wrestlers exist in some kind of legal limbo, not quite athletes, and not quite actors — and when things go awry, or when they simply exhaust their youth, bodies, and 15 minutes of fame, they are left, like Randy the Ram Robinson, out in the cold — oftentimes in desolate places, like New Jersey, the setting for this film.

Anyhow, that’s quite an interesting issue that i would not have ever been aware of otherwise. But good on Mickey Rourke – I’m glad that his career is picking up and that he is being given a second chance to share his talents with the world.

A final note: Marisa Tomei — yowzer, does that woman just get hotter with age?

I’m glad that Mickey Rourke won a Golden Globe for his performance in The Wrestler, because although the movie tends to be fairly predictable overall, this was one of the most honest performances I’ve seen in a while. Now everyone is talking about the Mickey Rourke comeback tour, which made me curious enough about the actor (I haven’t seen his other films) to get 9 1/2 weeks when i came across it at the DVD store. I don’t have anything particularly new or interesting to add to what’s been said about The Wrestler, but i think there are some interesting tidbits about how the movie has been received in other quarters: the Iranian government considers it insulting, after a fictional wrestler in the movie named The Ayatollah gets his Iranian flag smashed by Rourke’s character, while the folks at the WWE, a professional wrestling organization, aren’t too happy with what they considered the stereotyped and negative portrayals of certain wrestling circuits.

Director Aronofsky thinks that professional wrestlers do get shafted when it comes to their working conditions: he considers them actors and entertainers — and believes that they ought to be unionized and eligible for the same types of benefits that SAG members receive. Yet in reality, many wrestlers exist in some kind of legal limbo, not quite athletes, and not quite actors — and when things go awry, or when they simply exhaust their youth, bodies, and 15 minutes of fame, they are left, like Randy the Ram Robinson, out in the cold — oftentimes in desolate places, like New Jersey, the setting for this film.

Anyhow, that’s quite an interesting issue that i would not have ever been aware of otherwise. But good on Mickey Rourke – I’m glad that his career is picking up and that he is being given a second chance to share his talents with the world.

A final note: Marisa Tomei — yowzer, does that woman just get hotter with age?

I think i read the play a number of years ago … it was good but didn’t leave a huge impression on me. The movie retains that “theatrical” feeling in the way that it’s staged, in the particular rhythm of the shots and the plot as well as in the very even and articulate dialogue. I didn’t mind this too much, but it certainly was quite noticeable. The best thing about this movie were the performances by Philip Seymour Hoffman and Meryl Streep: it wasn’t the best work that either has done, but you can at least say watching said performances, that these are consummate professionals at work, and are among the best working in Hollywood today.

As for the philosophical business regarding doubt, faith, social progress, etc. Well, that was fairly boilerplate, in a way. The debate is materialized or realized in the conflict between Father Flynn and Sister Aloysius. He smokes, drinks, is socially progressive, wants to put a more human face on the church. The sister is all about discipline, authority, and puritanic rigor in thought and action–and they don’t really like each other. Of course, she wins, in a manner of speaking, because she is able to squeeze all vestiges of doubt from her when necessary. Her convictions seem unshakeable, whereas the Father, despite being a man of God, knows all too well, the wages of sin. He knows human foibles, he knows the weakness of human nature. And thus we are lead to believe that he might have, in fact, taken advantage of a young boy in that way that Catholics priests are wont to do.

However, in the end, he has made his peace with doubt and sin. He knows the limits of human striving, and knows that god doesn’t expect humans to be perfect and he is dubious of the sister’s demands of her charges and peers, because he knows that to be her is to stunt something vital at the heart of oneself. And that’s not realistic for the clergy, much less for their parishioners.

In the end, Sister Aloysius admits that she suffers from doubts–such doubts. After seeing a movie where she seems utterly in control for 99% of her screen time, it’s a bit hard to believe that she would start confessing her doubts out of the blue, much less to Sister James, who she was always so supercilious and patronizing towards–but that’s what she does, and that’s the end of the movie.

Why does she doubt? Because Father Flynn “got away with it” and even ended up with a better assignment than he had with them? Or because after her husband died in the war, she repressed something vital in her, and became a dessicated version of herself–a defense against the more than fair share of sadness, grief, and darkness that she had experienced while still relatively young?

Technorati Tags: doubt, john patrick shanley, phillip seymour hoffman, meryl streep, catholic, catholicism, religion, doubt, 1960s, movies, cinema, plays, theater

I think i read the play a number of years ago … it was good but didn’t leave a huge impression on me. The movie retains that “theatrical” feeling in the way that it’s staged, in the particular rhythm of the shots and the plot as well as in the very even and articulate dialogue. I didn’t mind this too much, but it certainly was quite noticeable. The best thing about this movie were the performances by Philip Seymour Hoffman and Meryl Streep: it wasn’t the best work that either has done, but you can at least say watching said performances, that these are consummate professionals at work, and are among the best working in Hollywood today.

As for the philosophical business regarding doubt, faith, social progress, etc. Well, that was fairly boilerplate, in a way. The debate is materialized or realized in the conflict between Father Flynn and Sister Aloysius. He smokes, drinks, is socially progressive, wants to put a more human face on the church. The sister is all about discipline, authority, and puritanic rigor in thought and action–and they don’t really like each other. Of course, she wins, in a manner of speaking, because she is able to squeeze all vestiges of doubt from her when necessary. Her convictions seem unshakeable, whereas the Father, despite being a man of God, knows all too well, the wages of sin. He knows human foibles, he knows the weakness of human nature. And thus we are lead to believe that he might have, in fact, taken advantage of a young boy in that way that Catholics priests are wont to do.

However, in the end, he has made his peace with doubt and sin. He knows the limits of human striving, and knows that god doesn’t expect humans to be perfect and he is dubious of the sister’s demands of her charges and peers, because he knows that to be her is to stunt something vital at the heart of oneself. And that’s not realistic for the clergy, much less for their parishioners.

In the end, Sister Aloysius admits that she suffers from doubts–such doubts. After seeing a movie where she seems utterly in control for 99% of her screen time, it’s a bit hard to believe that she would start confessing her doubts out of the blue, much less to Sister James, who she was always so supercilious and patronizing towards–but that’s what she does, and that’s the end of the movie.

Why does she doubt? Because Father Flynn “got away with it” and even ended up with a better assignment than he had with them? Or because after her husband died in the war, she repressed something vital in her, and became a dessicated version of herself–a defense against the more than fair share of sadness, grief, and darkness that she had experienced while still relatively young?

Technorati Tags: doubt, john patrick shanley, phillip seymour hoffman, meryl streep, catholic, catholicism, religion, doubt, 1960s, movies, cinema, plays, theater

Long stretches of virgin beach ran along the cliffs, and the colors were primary and stark: green fields, high blue skies, patches of flowers, and the greenish sea. Years ago, in another world, this was the place he’d dreamed of when he thought of California:a territory still unclaimed where people lived among eternities. No history, no tradition, no society, no preordination: only whatever the rocks and the light and the changeable sky seemed to determine.

***

This passage is from Iyer’s novel Abandon which i picked up at a cafe and flipped through. I really love this description, not because it captures what is most ineffable and yet most true about california: but something even deeper, which is true of any region of that has such characteristics, ie many places in Mediterranean that share that same climate and biogeographical profile. And i think that is why this passage reminds me of something that Albert Camus would write about, when talking of the Mediterranean, though i think he is more keen on emphasizing traditions and less on the American mythology of reinventing and remaking ourselves, the endless tabula rasa of the American frontier.

Anyway, nice passage for what it’s worth.