The American Culture

This is the last day in which I can decently mark the centennial of the birth of the truly great detection fiction writer John Dickson Carr. Carr flourished as a writer during the 1930s and '40s and wrote numerous classic detective novels and short stories, continuing to write until the 1970s. With Doyle, Chesterton, Christie, Queen, and Sayers, Carr is one of the greatest of all mystery writers.

Carr was the master of the "impossible crime" story and its best-known subset, the locked-room mystery. Carr's narratives are fiendishly deceptive and puzzling, yet he leaves the crucial clues right out there for the reader to see. Yet we never do, and the detective's revelation of the killer nearly always comes as a big surprise.

Carr's stories tend to include a bit of overly cute romance between some young couple unique to each book or story, and he has a habit of piling on melodramatic language at times (primarily in the dialogue) and setting obviously artificial rhetorical cliffhangers at the end of some chapters, but these are minor inconveniences that detract only a little from the overall excellence of most of his books and stories.

His achievement rests mainly on two series. One, written under his own name, featured Dr. Gideon Fell, a delightfully larger than life English detective modeled on G. K. Chesterton and Dr. Samuel Johnson. Fell's exploits began with the splendid 1933 novel Hag's Nook, and extended through 23 novels and several short stories, most of which are of very high quality indeed. Highlights are The Mad Hatter Mystery, The Blind Barber, and The Hollow Man (aka The Three Coffins).

The Hollow Man is truly one of the great classics of the genre, and includes Dr. Fell's famous "locked room lecture," in which he tells the reader how to solve locked-room puzzles, in a novel in which the central issue is a murder in a locked room. Of course, even after reading the lecture, no sane reader can actually solve the puzzle anyway.

Although Carr was an American, born in western Pennsylvania, his detectives were predominantly English, and his second great series, written under the pen name Carter Dickson, features Sir Henry Merrivale as detective. These are rather more humorous on the whole than the Fell mysteries, and are indeed often farcical, usually in a highly entertaining and likeable way. (Thanks are due to the late Wyatt James, an enthusiastic and astute reader of Carr, for my capsule description of Merrivale.)

Merrivale, a bald, stout, Churchillian English baronet descended from Cavaliers, is one of the great characters of mystery fiction. Smoking vile cigars and dressed like a villain in a cheap melodrama, Merrivale sweeps grandly through each story, arguing forcefully with his friends and staying about fifty-five steps ahead of both narrator and reader. And the mysteries are often as brain-roastingly puzzling as those in the Fell stories.

Among my favorite Merrivales are The Plague Court Murders, The White Priory Murders, and the delightfully zany The Curse of the Bronze Lamp. One of Carr's very best novels and one of my personal favorites is a Merrivale: The Judas Key. It is one of the most Carrian of all of Carr's novels, and it is one of the greatest mystery novels of all time, in my view.

Carr's first detective character was Dr. Henri Benconlin of the Paris police. The Bencolin novels are highly atmospheric, often almost gothic in tone, and very tense and spooky at their best. The Corpse in the Waxworks is quite impressive. Another Carr detective who was featured in a series of short stories was Colonel March; his exploits are collected in the book The Department of Queer Complaints and in the excellent 1991 collection Merrivale, March, and Murder, edited by Carr biographer Douglas Greene.

Greene's biography of Carr, The Man Who Explained Miracles, is one of the greatest biographies of a mystery fiction writer ever produced. Perhaps the best, in fact.

Carr also wrote several excellent mysteries set in historical times; most of these appeared during the 1950s and '60. Among my favorites in this group are The Bride of Newgate, The Devil in Velvet, Fire, Burn!, Most Secret, and The Demoniacs. These are all great fun, often with a good deal of swashbuckling action not found in Carr's other writings.

In addition to all this, Carr wrote several novels and a like number of short stories featuring non-series detectives. Among these are a couple of my favorite Carr novels: The Nine Wrong Answers and Patrick Butler for the Defense. Also among these is my favorite of all of Carr's novels: The Burning Court. The latter is one of the top five mystery novels of all time, in my opinion.

Carr also wrote numerous scripts for radio, and the excellent mystery publisher Crippen and Landru has published a volume of these, Speak of the Devil. 

It's a real pity that Carr's writings have fallen into relatively obscurity in the three decades since his death. He is truly one of the very greatest mystery writers, and his writings still give great pleasure to those blessed enough to know about them.

One thing that may have contributed to this undeserved obscurity is the unfortunate fact that few of Carr's writings have been translated to television or film. In the 1960s the BBC produced a fondly remembered series starring Boris Karloff as Col. March, which alas I haven't seen and would dearly like to get a hold of. Other than that, there haven't been many adaptations of Carr for the visual media. Some enterprising British or American producer would do well to mine Carr's rich vein of great mysteries and bring these tales to a new audience while taking advantage of some really superb, atmospheric story material. Carr's narratives are ripe for the picking, and it's about time someone who appreciates great mystery fiction brought him to a new generation of readers.

You could certainly do much worse than to make a resolution to read some Carr this year. Start here and here.

Strongly recommended

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Your correspondent has been very busy with other work during the past week and has neglected his work here, for which he apologizes profusely. During this hectic time, however, we did manage to take a couple of hours to see Rocky Balboa, the sixth and supposedly last of actor/writer/director Sylvester Stallone's Rocky films.

Stallone has promoted the film aggressively to Christian audiences, pointing out that he has become much more greatly committed to Christianity (and jolly good for him!), specifically the Catholicism in which he was brought up. 

Stallone says that the character of Rocky Balboa always had a strong element of Stallone's Christian thought behind him:

It's like he was being chosen, Jesus was over him, and he was going to be the fella that would live through the example of Christ," Stallone said. "He's very, very forgiving. There's no bitterness in him. He always turns the other cheek. And it's like his whole life was about service.

Those are reasonable claims about Rocky, and of course his Christian name is a clear and rather charming reference to the disciple Peter (whose name, Petra, means "rock" and whose clear statement of Jesus's divinity was the "rock" on which Jesus based the Christian church). 

Stewart Shepherd of Focus on the Family's Citizen magazine, who attended a conference call in which Stallone talked about the film, notes that the very first image in the Rocky series sets a Christian tone:

Stallone reminded those of us on the call that the opening shot of the original film is of a painting of Jesus looking down on Rocky in the boxing ring in a rundown gym.

Stallone says that his recommitment to Christianity made it important for him to make the Christian subtext clearer in Rocky Balboa. I wouldn't say that he overdoes it at all. In fact, it's rather subtle, as Stallone puts it mostly by implication in the story rather than foregrounding Christian imagery and having the characters talk about religion.

That is a very good artistic choice, as the narrative itself makes Stallone's points in a much more intelligent and subtle manner than an explicit presentation of such issues in a boxing film would have done. Only one character talks about Christianity, a washed-up boxer Rocky beat in an early film in the series and whom Rocky now allows to eat for free in his restaurant. Interestingly, the recipient of this charity insists on working in the kitchen for his keep, washing dishes rather ineptly.

All of this makes the film palatable for audiences regardless of their religious beliefs, which makes it an even more effective means of bring Stallone's message out to the public. 

Rocky Balboa is indeed one of the best entries in the series and an excellent film.

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Tomorrow night Texas Tech basketball coach Bobby Knight goes out to break Dean Smith's record for lifetime victories by an NCAA men's basketball coach. Knight has been vilified for years by the press, and of course some of his behavior has certainly earned rebuke. However, as Michael Ledeen points out in National Review Online, the press tends to hold Knight to a higher standard than it sets for most coaches. For example, Ledeen notes,

Yes, he’s got a temper. I have never known a winning coach in any spot who did not have a terrible temper. A few years ago I went to the Final Four in Indianapolis and watched Wisconsin lose to Florida. The Wisconsin coach was named Bennett, and everybody loved him. At a certain point one of his players committed a stupid foul and he called timeout, walked onto the court, and let fly at this poor kid with a torrent of abuse that would have made Knight blush (which is saying something). We were sitting two rows down from the Arctic Circle, and we heard every epithet. But there was no mention of it in the press coverage, because the hunting pack had decided the guy was lovable.

That is a thoroughly correct observation, and I'll add the "why" to it. The real reason the press go after Knight so aggressively is not his infamous actions such as chucking a player under the chin during a game or throwing a chair, unpleasant as those incidents may look on television.

The press will forgive even things such as that—consider the kind of rancid behavior we've seen on football and baseball fields that has been entirely forgotten by the press.

But what the media won't forgive or forget is being exposed as ignorant. And that that is what Knight consistently does in his postgame press conferences and other public forums. Knight treats the press just as he does his players: when they do something stupid, he tells them so, in no uncertain terms.

His press conferences are often hilarious, as he takes ignorant writers to task for asking absurdly stupid questions. 

Knight is the one sports figure who does this consistently, and he has paid the price in public scorn. Yet he doesn't appear to mind at all. Here is a man who does what he thinks is right and doesn't give a crud who thinks otherwise. That's a very masculine way to act, and Knight makes no apologies for it. That's another reason many in the press fear and dislike him: he's not the type to worry about other people's opinions and back down under fire. Instead, he fights back.

That's what men do, and it's something our modern mores find unacceptable. That's a pity. We need more examples of fortitude like Bob Knight.

Congratulations to Coach Knight on tying the record for victories. I wish him continued success.

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May you have a very Merry Christmas and a happy and prosperous New Year!

For some interesting reading, please browse our archives and enjoy our reports and analyses of a great variety of cultural events and trends.

Posted by S. T. Karnick at 11:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

As you will recall, I've been writing about the Duke false prosecution scandal since the beginning, on the Reform Club and then on this site since its inception. (See articles here and here, for example.) Over time, this writer's analysis has been confirmed repeatedly by additional revelations from North Carolina, and other writers have created a chorus of boos for NC prosecutor Thomas Nifong.

I initially called for Nifong's impeachment, the resignation of Duke president Thomas Brodhead (who jumped on the scandal as a way of showing support for the town's people over the students at his own university), and the prosecution of the unnamed accuser (who remains unnamed—her reputation, such as it may have been beforehand, continuing unscathed by this incident, unlike those of the accused Duke lacrosse players, their teammates, and especially coach Mike Pressler, who was forced to resign despite having notihing whatever to do with the incident that never actually happened)

Now the superb economist and opinion writer Thomas Sowell has called for Nifong's removal from office and disbarrment. Sowell points out that an impulse behind this matter is a desire for retribution for past injustices against blacks. But as Sowell points out, the Duke lacrosse players had nothing to do with what happened a century ago, and injustices today are wrong in themselves and won't change the past. A culture that thinks intended social consequences (such as a greater sense of pride for some particular group of people) are more important than justice is a vile thing indeed.

What was wrong then is wrong now, and any respect for justice requires that these young men be freed from the specter of prosecution and Nifong impeached, convicted, and disbarred.

In addition, I again urge that the Duke University leadership fire Brodhead for cause, and for the prosecutor who replaces Nifong to indict the Duke lacrosse accuser under the appropriate charges for her integral part in this stupendously ugly incident.

Posted by S. T. Karnick at 11:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Candace de Russy has provided a nicely informative article about the uglier side of the Omniculture, in today's edition of National Review Online. The American public square, de Russy notes,

has been blitzed with what Gawker.com, a gossip website, calls “revulse-amusement” and misused for what columnist Andrea Peyser terms a “raunch-fest” — revelry calculated, according to the New York Times, to churn up waves of “ethical nausea.”

After recounting some of the recent seamy media events, such as the O. J. Simpson book and Britney Spears' unfathomable exploits in public exhibitionism, de Russy notes that many of these occurrences are manifestations of publicity schemes pandering to the American public's "apparently boundless public appetite for debased and scabrous material." But they are also more, she observes.

De Russy aptly cites Temple University humanities professor Noel Carroll's observation of a "tolerance of boundary breaking," or as de Russy puts it, "the increasingly nonchalant acceptance of the violation of what were once accepted as the common standards of decency," which de Russy describes as ever-increasing.

Seeking the social meaning behind the trend, de Russy writes:

Janice Irvine, a sociology professor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, interprets this tolerance as a kind of perverse holier-than-thou hedonism. She maintains that the public’s reaction to “socially sensitive issues,” such as O. J. Simpson’s book, “looks like rage, but there’s a lot of pleasure bound up in it. There’s incredible excitement in being publicly outraged. It’s what makes it so powerful.”

Other critics, myself included, view the gross-out phenomenon as a particularly conspicuous sign, among other related cultural dysfunction, of serious rifts in the aesthetic and moral foundations of American civilization (“Hollywood’s Gross-Out Comedies: Cultural Crisis or Festive Freedom?,” The Chronicle of Higher Education, October 22, 1999). 

De Russy notes that fasionable leftist academics praise public assaults on refined sensibilities, calling these attacks "transgressive." (Interestingly, transgressive means not only boundary-breaking but also sinful, and the left seems not to see the irony in their use of this term.)

De Russy concludes that the trend is not just an outpouring of weirdness on the fringes of society but has at least begun to suffuse the culture and inculcate an increasing, progressive rot:

If civilization is to be salvaged, we must transcend transgression — “regress,” as it were, to an understanding of culture as famously defined by Matthew Arnold, culture as the repository of humanity’s highest spiritual, intellectual and aesthetic aspirations, or “the best that has been thought and said in the world.”

There is no denying that it will be a long climb up from the current day depredation of gross-out culture and its like. But climb we must or sink in grossness, and thus be infantilized and ultimately rendered powerless in face of barbarism.

I have argued to the contrary, that phenomena such as these are not a new rot but a public manifestation of the wide variety of human activities and interests that always exist but have not been able to reach wide audiences in the past. De Russy suggests that a powerful cultural response to counter these phenomena is in order, and I would certainly welcome that. However, I rather doubt that it will do much to suppress the impulses that bring on such behavior, and given that the technology that brings it easily to one and all onlookers is not going to go away unless the Muslims take over, this sort of open vulgarity is never going to recede in the rearview mirror.

I would suggest, as I have done in the past, that supporting what we think to be good and salutary is the best response we can make, for now at least. And I'm sure Candace de Russy would agree that it's worth a try. 

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Here's an interesting item in our ongoing series of observations that everything happens in the Omniculture. Women's Wear Daily reports that photo editors are beginning to retouch photos of seriously underweight fashion models in order to make them appear . . . healthier:

PUTTING ON THE POUNDS: As the body mass index of runway walkers continues to make headlines, skinny models just might present a whole new problem for editors. Everyone has a story of a celebrity cover slimmed by Photoshop, but several editors have been quietly ordering the retouching of gaunt model shots to make them look, well, a little fatter. "A model shows up and you realize she's too thin and has lost weight since the booking, but the show must go on," said Allure editor in chief Linda Wells. "When the film comes to me, I realize I don't want to see hip bones and ribs in the magazine."

Enter the retouching process, which helps make the haggard look healthier. "If a girl shows up at a shoot and she's too skinny, a good stylist can pose her so that the reader doesn't have as much of a sense of it," said Lucky editor in chief Kim France. But, she added, "There are angles at which a girl's arm can look haunting."

"It's never something where you made the girl look heavy," said France. "It's just a quiet, small change." . . .

"It seems like we've been doing it more lately than in years past," said Wells. "It is something we noticed at the fashion shows this year — there were some alarming moments on the runway. And that caused some chatter."

It seems unlikely that the fashion in ladies' figures will soon become Rubenesque, as in the image immediately above, but a comparison between the Rubens image and that of the fashion model shown at the top of this item suggests that it is a good thing indeed if the trend toward increasingly gaunt fashion models has run its course. The change suggests a salutary self-correcting aspect of the Omniculture. Everything happens, and often good things do occur.

Posted by S. T. Karnick at 11:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

Caitlin Moran of the Times of London asks several important questions about Christmas in the paper's December 18 issue, the most important of which is, who wrote and performed the better Christmas song, Roy Wood of Wizzard or Noddy Holder of Slade?

Slade is one of the most underrated rock bands of all time, at least in the United States. The great pub rockers brought a delightful Scottish, working-class flair to hard rock in the early to mid 1970s (and some of the worst clothing fashions of all time), and made great, fun music well into the 1980s. You've probably heard Quiet Riot's cover versions of Slade's classic songs "Cum on Feel the Noize" and "Mama Weer All Crazee Now," but Slade's originals are far superior. Slade is simply one of the fun-est rock bands ever.

And the two wrote a pair of great Christmas rock songs. Roy wrote, performed, and produced "I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day" (see video here), and Noddy and his band put out "Merry Christmas Everybody," which Ms. Moran describes as Noddy's attempt at "the great working-class Christmas song." Well, they're both perfectly delightful, but the point of Christmas arguments is that you have to decide. Here's what Moran has to say:

Slade v Wizzard: in the thrilling Merry Christmas Everybody, Noddy Holder intended to write the great working-class Christmas song. With its euphoric debauchery undercut with melancholy, and its Royle Family-like lyrics (“Does your granny always tell ya that the old songs are the best?/ Then she’s up and rock’n’rolling with the rest”), Merry Christmas Everybody does, to its endless credit, accurately simulate wandering round your home-town Woolie’s, drunk and whimsical on Christmas Eve, wondering whether to buy your mum a pink Ladyshave for £9.99. I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday, meanwhile, is so great that one simply goes along with Roy Wood’s assertion that it would be great if every day were Christmas Day. Rather than pausing for a minute and saying “Actually, Roy, if it were Christmas every day, the UK’s productivity rates would ensure that we were a Third World country by March, and we’d all have scoliosis from sleeping on an inflatable mattress in the spare room. And, indeed, would have noticed that the person most set to benefit from it being ‘Christmas every day’ would be someone famous mainly for having written a very big song about it being Christmas every day (ie, you).”

Winner: Slade. However much of a genius Wood is, there’s only one song that has Holder shouting “IT’S CHRIIIIIIISMUSSSSS!” Though honourable mention must be made of John and Yoko’s hilarious Happy Christmas (War Is Over), and the bit at the end where Lennon clearly can’t be bothered to write another verse of slightly pious yuletide doggerel, and he and Yoko go “ARGH ARGH ARGH ARGH” instead.

I love her description of John Lennon's song as pious and the lyrics as doggerel, though I would delete the word "slightly" and substitute something like "horrendously." But we're in basic agreement on that one, I'd say.

Getting back to happier things, however, why not compare the two contenders yourself? Here's the video for Roy's and Wizzard's "I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday," and here's a nice independent video of a couple of lads and their friends and rels larking about to Noddy's and Slade's "Merry Christmas Everybody!" Enjoy.

Posted by S. T. Karnick at 10:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

The estimable Sam Smith of the Chicago Tribune quotes former NBA Utah Jazz coach Frank Layden on current Jazz coach Jerry Sloan, who just achieved his 1,000th victory as a coach in the NBA, regarding Sloan's legendary toughness:

Sloan replaced Frank Layden in 1988, and this was Layden on Sloan: "Nobody fights with Jerry because you know the price would be too high. You might come out the winner, at his age, you might even lick him, but you'd lose an eye, an arm … everything would be gone.

"I know you're going to think I'm kidding when I say this, but I saw Jerry Sloan fight at the Alamo, I saw him at Harpers Ferry, I saw him at Pearl Harbor. He's loyal. He's a hard worker. He's a man.

There aren't many men you can say that about these days.

And that is not a good thing. 

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Tonight at 8 p.m. EST, Turner Classic Movies is showing an excellent Christmas film, one which I recommend highly. Remember the Night (1940) stars Barbara Stanwyck as Lee Leander, a beautiful shoplifter in a big city (New York City, I think), whose court case is continued until after Christmas by clever assistant district attorney John Sargent (Fred MacMurray, who would costar with Stanwyck in Billy Wilder's 1944 venture into film noir, Double Indemnity), who realizes that no jury will convict her right before Christmas.

When Lee is led away to jail, however, Sargent's conscience convicts him, and he posts bail for her. Lee, however, has no money and nowhere to go, so when he discovers that she is from Indiana, where he is about to go to visit his family for Christmas, he offers to drive her to her mother's house.

Lee's mother, however, despises her because Lee never could live up to the puritanical woman's perfectionist standards of behavior, and the mother coldly turns Lee away at the door. Jack begins to understand how Lee ended up as a thief and so tough herself (to steel herself against the hurts she is sure are always on the way), and he brings her home to have Christmas with his family.

Naturally Jack and Lee fall in love with each other, and a less suitable match could hardly be imagined. Further complications ensue, of course, and a pair of difficult moral choices arise, one for each half of the couple. They both ultimately do the right thing, with Jack the prosecutor showing impressive sympathy and mercy, and Lee the thief showing powerful moral strength.

As this description should make clear, Remember the Night goes to the heart of the Christmas story: redemption. And what is most wonderful about the film, helmed by steady Paramount studios house director Mitchell Leisen from a superb screenplay by Preston Sturges, is that it doesn't limit the theme to its obvious subject, the thief Lee, but also shows it in play in Jack and all the other characters.

This is a film that not only keeps the surface aspects of Advent and Christmas in the foreground but also, and more importantly, stresses the real meaning behind it, our human condition and overwhelming need for a a Savior.

This is one you really should not miss. As far as I can determine, the film is not avaiable in any official release on DVD, but a VHS version is available.

Highly recommended.

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TV stations tend to show the great 1944 film Going My Way, directed by Leo McCarey and starring Bing Crosby and Barry Fitzgerald, more often around Christmas, even though only a couple of scenes are set during Advent.

The film, however, always repays watching. In particular, it illustrates the superiority of moral suasion over coercion in the creation of civil order -- a lesson always worth remembering. Although Going My Way won several Academy Awards, including Best Picture, the film's reputation rapidly declined beginning in the 1960s, and critical consensus has long dismissed as trite, sentimental, and unsophisticated. This is an entirely erroneous and indeed dimwitted interpretation of the film, and one that cries out for redress.

The story is familiar: easygoing, likeable Father O'Malley (Bing Crosby) is assigned by the local Catholic bishop to help bring St. Dominic's Church, a faltering urban congregation led by Father Fitzgibbon (Barry Fitzgerald), back to its feet and in particular to overcome its financial problems. Crosby's O'Malley represents the liberal side of the church -- as it was then manifested, it is important to remember -- and Fitzgibbon the conservative aspect.

The key element here is that Crosby's liberalism is entirely limited to means, not ends; he is merely trying to find ways to enable the church to treat the ills of a rapidly changing society, not to change its doctrines of belief. In the end, of course, O'Malley's approach proves surprisingly successful, and he is sent on to the next challenge. What is in the middle is a very intelligent, sophisticated, decent, and engaging film -- exactly what we should expect from McCarey, who is now greatly underrated.

The most interesting aspect of the film is the centrality of the motif of generational conflict, and specifically of reconciliation between parents and children. As such, authority is a central concern. Fathers O'Malley and Fitzgibbons initially suffer a good deal of conflict, until O'Malley is placed explicitly in a position of authority when Fitzgibbons consults the bishop and is told that O'Malley is now in fact his superior.

O'Malley had not told him this, preferring to spare him any emotional hurt, though it of course made O'Malley's work much more difficult. Their personal conflicts play out as a clear father-son type of relationship, and they end only when the father figure realizes that the time has come for him to hand over the reins of the "family" -- St. Dominic's church, of course -- to his "son". McCarey and the actors beautifully display the mixture of pride and melancholy in the handover of authority: Fitzgibbons is initially humiliated by it, but ultimately is proud of the fine man the Church has raised up to replace him.

Similarly, the local landlord, who owns a long-overdue mortgage on the church, is in conflict with his son, who values family and service to others far more highly than the obsessive accumulation of material assets which motivates his father. Eventually, the father comes to see things the son's way, realizing that, yes, love is indeed the most important and satisfying thing of all.

The young, however, are not always in the right in the film. Also central to the story is the presence of a young woman who has left her family in search of a career in music, for which she is clearly not suited. She is willing to live on the streets rather than stay at home with a family that does not show her affection and that treats her thoughts as not even worth discussing (at least, according to her statements, and we must suppose there is at least some truth to her characterization, else why would she be so desperate to leave?).

Rather than condemn her, as others in the church family are doing, O'Malley acts as a surrogate father to her and tries to guide her without her knowing it, in the same manner in which he has been dealing with his own surrogate parent, Father O'Malley. The young woman comes perilously close to disaster, but O'Malley's subtle and gentle guidance averts the impending catastrophe. The key element here is Father O'Malley's realization--never stated but implicit in his actions--that what she is really searching for is unconditional love and respect. He goes about ensuring that she finds it, and successfully puts her in the right situation.

Father O'Malley also serves as surrogate parent to a group of young neighborhood tough guys, and here again, his strategy is to understand the motives of his young charges and adapt his methods so as to speak in terms they can understand.

In addition, Father O'Malley arranges a reunion between Father Fitzgibbons and the latter's nonagenarian mother, whom Fitzgibbons has not seen since leaving Ireland many years before.

In each of these cases except the last-mentioned, O'Malley suffers much opposition and risks a good deal of personal harm in the form of loss of friends and career. Yet he is insistent on doing the right thing, despite his placid demeanor. What is politically interesting is that O'Malley's goals are quite conventional, traditional, bourgeois ones, but the means he is willing to use are all what we would characterize as liberal. They are based on an effort to understand exactly what a person is trying to accomplish, and then seeking to figure out an alternative way for them to achieve it.

Father O'Malley's efforts to get people to change always involve persuasion, not coercion. It is this that religious institutions do best, and in this respect their treatment of moral issues is far superior to the coercive methods of governments.

O'Malley's activities illustrate an important aspect of the word liberal -- a generosity of spirit that takes the form of wanting what is best for others, regardless of the consequences for oneself. They also reflect the important liberal concept that only acts done with an individual's consent can ultimately be fulfilling and to that person's credit -- O'Malley shows an intuitive and automatic dislike for coercion. His liberalism is an entirely laudable one, and he is quite an impressive and inspiring character.

There are many other interesting themes and motifs in the film, but the father-child one is what really holds it all together. This thematic unity is quite impressive, and it is directed toward entirely laudable ends. Filmmakers today could learn much about their craft by studying this remarkably intelligent, sophisticated, mature, and original film.

Going My Way is one of those rare movies that is actually more substantial than it seems.

Posted by S. T. Karnick at 11:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

If you've read my article on Christmas music below, you probably noticed that the Omniculture has made itself thoroughly manifest in that area, providing an astonishing variety of music for the season, for every taste.

And some for those with no taste at all, or at least an infinite sense of humor and boundless tolerance for chaotic assaults on the senses. Everything happens in the Omniculture, as I've noted, and the following post from CybersMusic illustrates that perfectly: it documents a death metal Christmas album.

Thanks to Mike of CybersMusic for discovering this wonder of nature and troubling to listen to it. I hope that he is out of the psych ward by now, cor bless him. Here's his review:

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Advent is my favorite time of year, for all the conventional reasons, and Christmas music is for me an essential part of it. I listen to it as much as possible throughout the season. (I have found, alas, that this music does not work for me during other times of the year.) Unfortunately, there have not been many truly great Christmas songs composed during the past couple of decades, which means that most of the really good Christmas music is highly familiar to anyone who enjoys the airs of the season.

Given that engendering a worshipful feeling is a strong part of the appeal of Christmas music for me, the specter of boredom is of course something to be avoided at all costs. Of course, the true classics never fade. By this I refer, naturally, to the major Christmas albums of Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, and Elvis Presley. All of these are quite beautiful and moving. Their makers were incredibly skilled vocal performers, and their talents easily overcome whatever human flaws these gentlemen may have had. The spirit shines through.

Unfortunately, I have listened to these recordings so many times that they now tend to slide into the background rather than capturing my full attention. Hence, they can no longer supply a steady diet of Christmas cheer, though they remain wonderful complementary dishes.

One can, of course, cleanse the musical palate with a good many other Christmas albums of similar sorts, such as those by the Beach Boys, Nat "King" Cole, Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, Tony Bennett, the Glenn Miller Orchestra, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, Mario Lanza, Harry Connick Jr., Patti Page, Oscar Peterson, Mannheim Steamroller, Amy Grant, Dwight Yoakam, and even James Brown, Spike Jones, and Lynyrd Skynyrd. As this list suggests, there is certainly a goodly amount of Christmas music for every taste, and probably an equal quantity for those with no taste whatever. As far as I can tell, in fact, I may be the only person in the country above the age of majority who has not yet released a Christmas album. This is something I hope to rectify soon.

Also enjoyable are some of the countless multi-artist collections with titles like Motown Christmas, Ultimate Christmas, Jazz Christmas, Christmas with the Thus-and-Such Brass, Blues Christmas, Reggae Christmas, Caribbean Christmas, Hawaiian Christmas, Country Christmas, Tejano Christmas, Celtic Christmas (of which there must be several hundred thousand by now), Creole Christmas, New Age Christmas, and A Very Special Christmas. Unfortunately, as with the single-artist releases, the musical quality varies considerably. Moreover, most of the songs on all of these discs are the same ones we've already heard scores of times before, with different arrangements.

As a consequence, in recent years I have gone far afield in search of good Christmas music. I have surely listened to more Medieval Christmas music than King Henry VIII did throughout his long reign, as well as classical Christmas oratorios and concerti, Gregorian chants, and Renaissance era, Elizabethan, Victorian English, Russian choral, Bulgarian folk, and Colonial American Christmas music. There is even a Jingle Dogs Christmas album, in which the familiar tunes are "sung" by a choir of canines. I have listened to it, I confess. Once. I am still recovering.

Through this great journey of exploration, I have found that what works best for me is Christmas music that retains the old melodies but brings something truly fresh to the arrangement. The 1985 release A Christmas Tree, is one of my favorites. It consists of traditional carols and hymns played on authentic nineteenth century music boxes from the collection of Rita Ford, a woman of whom I know nothing but that she has some darn good music boxes. Played at normal volume on a decent stereo, the tunes jingle along cheerily as if they were being played on a collection of miniature bells.

Another enjoyable disc of instrumental Christmas music is A Christmas Album, by the California Guitar Trio, released this year. Most of the songs included here are old standards, but the impressive virtuosity of the three guitarists carries these traditional tunes into interesting new realms. The inclusion of "Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence," written by Ryuichi Sakamoto for the film of the same name, adds a nice bit of variety, with its elegant Asian sound.

The two albums by the Trans-Siberian Orchestra also stand out for me. In Christmas Eve and Other Stories (1996) and The Christmas Attic (1998), Paul O'Neill, producer of the heavy-metal group Savatage, tells two original Christmas stories through classic songs and new compositions, with musical performances by members of Savatage and numerous guests. Combining musical arrangements varying from solo acoustic guitar to heavy pomp rock, and dramatic vocals in a variety of styles ranging from classical to gospel to Broadway to metal, each album brings the meaning of Christmas to life in the manner of a modern musical theater piece. Some moments on these discs are really quite moving.

Sounds Like Christmas, by the December People, is a similarly eccentric idea that works equally well. Performed by guitarist/singer Robert Berry and numerous guests from classic and modern progressive rock bands, Sounds Like Christmas presents traditional Christmas songs such as "We Three Kings" and "Angels We Have Heard on High" in arrangements recreating the styles of classic prog groups such as Yes, Genesis, Pink Floyd, Kansas, King Crimson, and Emerson, Lake, and Palmer. The musical impersonations are spot-on (although most of the vocalists did not try to mimic their predecessors). Some of the musical allusions, such as the David Gilmour-style guitar line in "Silent Night" and the manic King Crimson-style instrumental break in "The First Noel," are downright comical in their accuracy. Producer Berry's successful execution of the concept makes for a good deal of musical fun while giving the listener serious songs to keep the Christmas spirit flowing.

The recently released A Christmas Heirloom, by the New Blizzard Symphony, has a similarly refreshing effect. The group, a musically eclectic band from Cleveland, performs original compositions by keyboardist Jim Bossard, which in itself solves the over-familiarity problem admirably. The songs are musically interesting, and the lyrics, though by no means poetic, evoke the season effectively. The arrangements are quite interesting, combining strong rhythmic foundations with the complexity of the progressive rock, which is the group's specialty. The vocals are quite appealing, especially guest singer Debbie West's performance on "Offerings," which has a strange, alluring melody line, and Joanne Uniatowski's sweet soprano on the sparsely arranged "Heirloom." This is a CD I will surely listen to many times. Highly recommended.

Thanks to musicians such as these, "that glorious song of old" is new again.

This article appeared on National Review Online on December 21, 2002, and is reprinted with permission.

Follow-up note:

A third Trans-Siberian Orchestra Christmas album, The Lost Christmas Eve, was released in 2004. It, too, is well worth having.

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Larry Miller is one of the funniest comedians around. Rather like a younger Bob Newhart but with a bit more of an edge, the balding, pudgy Miller has made a name for himself as a comic character actor in numerous movies and tv shows, but where he made his name was as a hilariously funny standup comedian who applied traditional morality and sound common sense to our crazy Omniculture society, a place that is simultaneously puritanical about progressive political shibboleths (such as tobacco, fatty foods, and economic freedom) and aggressively nonjudgmental about self-destructive personal behaviors such as sexual weirdness, drug abuse, willful ignorance, and atrocious manners.

Miller caught the inconsistencies and incongruities of that condition admirably, as in his memorable monologue about the five levels of alcohol drinking while on a night out, available here. 

Miller has also become an accomplished writer of comic essays, primarily for The Weekly Standard's webpage, and he has a new book out, called Spoiled Rotten America, which sounds like great fun and a nice Christmas gift for your favorite blogger.

Comedy writer Warren Bell reviews it here. Here's an excerpt from the review:

Larry Miller is profound. He possesses an ability to look deep within a thing, whether it’s the racial divide in America, or the surpassing greatness of Lou Costello, and bring forth a richness of understanding, a new way of seeing it, or maybe a surprising and funny and sweet observation. His book is packed with laugh-out-loud moments, but they surround a wonderful, refreshing take on life, a traditionalist’s view that dares to note (for instance) that men are given to wander, but shouldn’t, because if they’re married, they promised not to. In the midst of a several-chapter rumination on adultery and the male libido in general, he hits on the Unified Moral Theory: “There’s no free lunch.” 

Everything has a price, up front or later. That’s not cynical, it’s liberating, and a big step toward individual accountability, responsibility, and loyalty – which, if you think about it, is the whole point of the Ten Commandments to begin with. In fact, “There’s no free lunch” is a pretty good secular reduction of numbers 1 through 10 right there.

And here's a very brief excerpt from one of Miller's Weekly Standard Online pieces, discussing how he gives haircuts to his sons:

There was hair piled and sifted over everything in the room except for one place: the newspaper I had laid out. It was still as clean as when I slid it out of its womb that morning. It was amazing. That section couldn't have had less human hair on it if I'd left it wrapped on the driveway. The fact that it was also the section that has all the toupee and hair-restoration ads was not lost on me.

You can find Miller's Weekly Standard pieces here, and get more info on his book here.

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John J. Miller of National Review has put together a nice overview of Robert E. Howard's "Conan the Barbarian" tales, for the Wall Street Journal. Miller notes that Conan has been a highly popular character in the original pulp tales and subsequent comic books, movies, and simply as a widely known fictional character. Miller's article is well worth reading as an introduction to this important literary phenomenon.

With Conan, Howard created a protagonist whose name is almost as familiar as Tarzan's. In his influential essay on Howard, Don Herron credits the Texan with begetting the "hard-boiled" epic hero, and doing for fantasy what Dashiell Hammett did for detective fiction. Suddenly, the world--even a make-believe one such as Conan's Hyboria--was rendered seamier and more violent, and Howard described it in spare rather than lush prose.

Conan has a knack for locating damsels in distress, but he is no knight in shining armor who piously obeys a code of chivalry. Instead, he is a black-haired berserker from a wild and wintry land called Cimmeria. He has little patience for social conventions he doesn't understand. "The warm intimacies of small, kindly things, the sentiments and delicious trivialities that make up so much of civilized men's lives were meaningless to him," wrote Howard in "Beyond the Black River." Conan occasionally thinks his way out of a problem, but more often he reaches for a weapon and slashes his way out. "There's nothing in the universe cold steel won't cut," he boasts.

To this I would add the following brief observation:

The bleak, existential approach that Miller correctly attributes to the stories and which Herron traces to Hammett is a byproduct of the post-World War I culture in which writers looked at traditional values of honor and concluded that they were no longer viable in the cruel world that had been revealed by that horrendous war.

They were wrong, of course, in that the new world needed those values more than ever before, but that was the thinking, and the Conan tales reflected the violence of the trench wars superbly. They ironically brought the modern world to a mass audience through a series of adventures set in an ancient world. That is the kind of achievement pulp fiction can accomplish.

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Sometimes it's important to respect traditions and follow conventional morality even when it doesn't seem to make logical sense on the surface. Consider, for example, Macy's recent travails.

The retail giant bought numerous other stores in the past couple of years and decided to change all their names to Macy's, to strengthen the corporate identity. Macy's also reduced service and merchandise quality at the stores.

That's exactly the type of crude corporate behavior one sees in old movies (and many new ones as well).

The effort backfired badly.

Sales are down, and Macy's investment rating has been lowered.

As the Chicago Tribune reports,

The shock of Federated Department Stores CEO Terry Lundgren's decision to eliminate beloved names such as Marshall Field's, Kaufmann's and Famous-Barr is proving a more difficult and time-consuming fight than expected for Macy's owner, wrote analyst Dana Cohen at Banc of America Securities.

Cohen estimated that sales plunged 11 percent in November from a year earlier at Field's and the other former May department stores, all now Macy's.

Another analyst, Carol Levenson of Gimme Credit, has put the stores' sales decline at anywhere from 20 percent to more than 30 percent for the three months that ended Oct. 28. . . .

Cohen cited a "sharp reduction" in the cadence of promotions at the new Macy's stores; "dramatic" changes in merchandise assortments; a lack of compelling marketing, and "not enough change in the store environment and service levels."

"Federated tried to do too much too quickly" at Field's and the other department store chains previously owned by May Department Stores, Cohen wrote in a report to investors.

Chicagoans are increasingly bitter at what they see as lower levels of merchandise and customer service at Macy's compared with Field's.

Cohen sees no upturn in the fortunes of the newly minted Macy's stores until spring at the earliest, but she believes Federated's executives will turn things around eventually.

Doing right usually works best, in the business world as anywhere else, and adopting a servant's mentality is still the surest way to make a fortune. As George Gilder has brilliantly noted, business starts with giving, not taking. When Macy's starts giving better service and values and considering its customers' desires before its corporate strategies, things will turn around—and not until then

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The National Basketball Association has announced that the league will stop using the microfiber composite basketballs it has been employing this season, and will return to use of leather basketballs as in previous years.

Players had complained that the new basketballs became very slippery during games and the microfiber coating would cut the players' fingers after repeated use. In response to the hailstorm of complaints from players, NBA Commissioner David Stern announced that the league will go back to the old basketballs beginning January 1 of next year.

The decision is a blow to animal rights activists, who it is rumored convinced the league to use artificial basketballs instead of the traditional leather ones. As All Headline News reports:

The few positive comments about the non-leather NBA basketball have come from the animal rights group PETA.

PETA, or People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, touted the new ball as a victory for animal lovers and cows the world over.

"Although basketball may be a game to us," says PETA's website, "it's no fun for cows whose skins are used to make basketballs." The website also said, "It's easy to moo-ve away from leather."

And easy to move back., too 

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Overall box office was down 25 percent from the same weekend last year, when The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe opened.

However, the relatively strong performance of Gibson's movie, which has no big stars and is set in the past and spoken in a defunct foreign language translated in subtitles, suggests that his recent run-in with the law and controversial statements made while under the influence of alchohol did not harm the film's appeal.

In fact, the publicity surrounding the incident and Gibson's contriteness may actually have spurred some interest in the film, according to an industry analyst quoted by the Associated Press. AP notes that the film's appeal was fairly broad: "Disney reported that Gibson's 'Apocalypto' drew solid crowds across-the-board, with movie-goers equally split between men and women and the core of the audience ranging from 18 to 45."

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Cadillac has a new commercial in which a group of young men in a Caddy discuss the great progressive rock group Yes. One of the guys is playing "Wonderous Stories" in the car through his Ipod, and the others express their doubts that this is cool: "Who listens to Yes?" one asks.

The Yes fan replies, "Lots of people listen to Yes." A bearded guy wearing sunglasses in the back seat says, "Everybody listens to Yes, huh?", oozing skepticism.

They decide to ask two attractive young women whom they see near the road. The young ladies reply, "Yeah, it's classic rock," and look at the young men as if the question were entirely stupid.

So there you have it. Everybody listens to Yes.

See the commercial here.

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A Film of Second Chances

Just as crime statistics are a good measure for gauging the health of a society, crime films can reveal common attitudes toward current social conditions—and the spiritual ideas behind them. The recent release of the movie The Ice Harvest is an interesting case in point.

Although presented in advertisements as something of a zany caper film, The Ice Harvest is, in fact, a modern film noir. The action takes place mostly at night, on Christmas Eve, in snowy Wichita, Kansas, which is presented as a dreary town typical of America today.

Like many modern crime films, The Ice Harvest presents an America rife with corruption but holding great possibilities for redemption. In these films, America is the Land of Second Chances.

Hence both money and religion are central to the story. The film takes place on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, and tatty, commercialized Christmas imagery is prevalent. The film opens with shots of a nativity scene, as cold rain falls on the manger and drops of water fall on the statue of the infant Jesus as if they were tears. Images of ice and cold water recur throughout the film, and director Harold Ramis uses this to suggest the pervasiveness of corruption (it is like a natural phenomenon) and where it leads: death—literally, in the case of most of the central characters.

There ensues the typical film noir round of lies, bloodshed, and double-, triple-, and quadruple-crosses, with each of the participants puzzling over whom to trust least in any particular scene. The central characters are living thoroughly corrupt lives as they are introduced in the movie, but each retains the potential for good as well.

John Cusack plays Charlie Arglist, a mob lawyer serving an exceedingly violent smalltime hood, Bill Gerard (Randy Quaid), who runs an empire of strip clubs and other sleazy enterprises. Charlie and his partner in crime, Vic (Billy Bob Thornton) steal a couple million dollars from Gerard—a betrayal of trust that starts all the trouble.

As a result, numerous bonds of trust are broken. Charlie cannot trust Vic when the latter promises not to kill him, which leads to violence between them. Charlie’s trust of another central character leads to betrayal and murder. It is revealed that Vic had earlier broken a trust by embezzling money from Gerard. Charlie cannot even decide whether to trust Vic or a hit man whom Bill has sent out to kill them both. Gerard correctly realizes that he cannot trust his employees—but too late.

This is a common idea in films noir, and as is usual in such narratives, romantic relationships parallel the central plot in their treatment of the key theme. When we meet the first major character who is not part of Bill’s empire of crime, Charlie’s old friend Pete (Oliver Platt), the latter is roaring drunk in a bar, trying hard to find a woman with whom to cheat on his wife on Christmas Eve. Pete’s wife, we soon find out, has been cheating on him, just as she cheated on her previous husband, Charlie, throughout the last year of their marriage.

Little wonder, then, that the main characters want to escape this environment. Pete wants to leave his loveless marriage to an apparently cold, materialistic, woman. Vic’s wife is a dowdy creature whom he either kills or quite cheerfully allows to be killed. (We’re not sure which, though it is morally the same.) In the wake of his disastrous marriage, Charlie has no romantic relationship and is looking to start one with strip club manager Renata (Connie Nielsen), but he has difficulty opening up to her.

The subsidiary characters add to the depressing, corrupt nature of the social environment in the film: a bartender who brutally breaks the fingers of the boyfriend of one of the strippers (in revenge for the man having hit her); a vapid, moon-eyed young man in love with the stripper (a relationship that seems destined for disaster); Pete’s cold and materialistic in-laws; a police officer who continually truckles to Charlie in hope of getting in good with the mob; and other such human debris.

Charlie undertakes the theft because he wants to escape this world and not be a part of the corruption any more—but because the route he chooses is in itself wrong, he ends up becoming just as ruthless as those whom he originally wished to elude. The “ice harvest” of the film’s title is the wages of sin. Living under the law, Charlie slides inexorably into greater sins until he is fully confronted with their wages and realizes his need for repentance. As Paul wrote to the Galatians, “The law was put in charge to lead us to Christ, that we might be justified by faith” (Galatians 4:24).

Charlie does not state explicitly that he accepts Christ, but his repentance is definitely implicit in his actions. The film thus ends on a hopeful note, as Charlie and Pete finally do get their chance to escape, and another character embarks on the same path.

On its surface, The Ice Harvest presents a terribly bleak vision of America and an appropriately frightening view of life without God. The setting at Christmastime, however, strongly reinforces the sense that redemption is available. Everywhere the characters turn, there is sin and temptation—but there are also constant reminders of Christ.

After all, this is the land of second chances.

S. T. Karnick is an associate fellow of the Sagamore Institute for Policy Research and editor of The Reform Club blog.

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Upon hearing that Mel Gibson was filming a story set at the end of the Mayan empire and performed in an ancient foreign tongue translated into subtitles, one might well have wondered what possessed Gibson to undertake such an odd task. Indeed, many people wondered exactly that.

Well, now we know, as Apocalypto premiered today in theaters across the United States. The film tells the story of a young father, Jaguar Paw, from a small tribe who is taken prisoner after a Mayan attack force destroys his village and takes the adult survivors back to the city to be sold into slavery or sacrificed to some alien "god." After a miraculous deliverance from the sacrificial blood altar, he escapes, pursued into the jungle by a Mayan SWAT team. At this point Gibson begins a remake of Cornel Wilde's 1966 film The Naked Prey, and the action sequences are as good as in most such films.

What is interesting about the film is how neatly it fits into Gibson's career and the themes of his previous films. At the center of Apocalypto is a man on the run trying to protect his family from an oppressive, violent, decadent regime, as is the central story of Braveheart, The Patriot, Signs, and others, or a surrogate family as in The Road Warrior, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, We Were Soldiers, etc. And of course the theme of self-sacrifice for the good of others is the central idea of The Passion of the Christ.

In the case of Apocalypto, Gibson's choice of a story set in a distant time and place and spoken in an unfamiliar language strips away contemporary concerns and points us toward the central question of what exactly it is that causes people to do such violence to one another and exploit each other so routinely.

The film positively bursts with ideas. Gibson begins the film with a quote from the philosopher Will Durant: "A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within." Gibson suggests that the Mayan civilization fell not because the Spanish we so powerful but because the civilization was itself so weak and decadent, a condition he makes clear in the scenes in the Mayan city. He also makes sure to draw out similarities between the Mayan civilization and contemporary Western society.

But he does not appear to do so simply in order to suggest that our society is decadent and that the real danger to us is not from Islam but from left-wing atheists (although he undoubtedly believes that to be true). No, the point is to bring out the universality of this human impulse to exploit and destroy. As an elder of the small tribe states in a campfire story early in the film, there is a hole in Man that causes him to take all that he can until the earth can give no more.

Gibson would call this hole Original Sin, and he clearly sees it as universal among human beings. But there is an antidote, he makes evident, and it too is universal, at least in availability. That is love. For it is Jaguar Paw's love for his wife and child that motivates him to escape and return to his village, in hope of rescuing them from a pit in which they were hiding from the invaders and are trapped.

It's impressive indeed to see what is basically a silent film present so many interesting ideas. Gibson is most certainly a hghly talented and inventive film writer and director, and Apocalypto is a stirring example of what intelligent cinema can achieve.

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The Achilles heel of most conservative cultural critics is their tendency to characterize repugnant works of pop culture as establishing that society as a whole, or some great swath of it, is irredeemably corrupt. In commenting, for example, on Carol Iannone's scathing review of the pro-homosexual and apparently exceedingly vulgar and imbecilic British film The History Boys (written by the overrated and immensely asinine author Alan Bennett), Lawrence Auster of View from the Right claims that "the British elites despise their country, their culture, their history, and secretly or openly wish to have done with it all."

Auster says that this movie shows that Britain is on a "path to national suicide."

One play, of course, does not a culture make, and Auster can undoubtedly claim his point is that The History Boys is not conclusive in itself but is revealing as part of a massive chain of evidence of corruption. Auster, however, writes, "by the time the movie ended, the realization hit me that the British elites that created a movie like this, that praised and recommended a movie like this, seek with cold and deliberate malice the destruction of their country."

Now, that is surely wrong, and it is why conservatives so seldom gain much traction in discussions of culture. The "irredeemably corrupt society/elite" argument is simply an unsophisticated, incorrect, and uninteresting critique.

There is undoubtedly a significant proportion of the British elite that is as corrupt as Alan Bennett, and there is surely a goodly portion that is sympathetic to them although they cannot bring themselves to go that far. But there are also certainly a great many who don't accept the premises of Bennett and his ilk. That's the Omniculture: Everything happens.

Look at the BBC and other British television, for example, and you'll find a good deal of material that is repugnant to the sensibilities of a reasonable, spiritually and mentally healthy person, and you'll also find much that is sensible and good. Even in openly sleazy shows such as Mile High and Footballers' Wives there are highly traditional assumptions and moral lessons to be derived. It all depends greatly on the viewer's own point of view.

Things are just a lot more complex than Auster appears to be willing to recognize. It seems clear to me that people are struggling, in England and the United States alike, to find a wordview, mentality, and culture that makes sense after the post-World War II demolition of American society's shared values. It is a process that is ongoing today, and no one can say where it will ultimately lead, whether toward destruction, regeneration, or a perpetual unhappy tension between the two. It is simply not ours to know at this point.

The fact is, anybody can cherry-pick a few especially vivid examples of popular culture on either the wilder or more traditional edges of the Omniculture and claim that things are getting worse or getting better. But the creation of simple dichotomies and the demonization of one's cultural enemies will get us nowhere. False and/or simplistic, Manichean statements simply undermine one's credibility and that of one's allies in the struggle to redeem the culture.

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Our friend and fellow classical liberal Ilana Mercer has a very interesting and well-argued article in today's American Spectator, on how a powerful and widely held cultural idea has actually changed the natural world, and for the worse. Mercer points out that the often laudable effort over the past couple of centuries to discourage mankind from harming animals has had an awful unintended consequence: many animal species are losing their fear of human beings and are increasingly attacking humans.

Mercer argues:

While Western man works to rid himself of the most basic ethical instincts, like defending his kinfolk, animals remain true to their nature. Wild beasts intuit that their teeth and talons are meant for tearing flesh -- any flesh, the easier the better. It makes perfect animal sense to attack a thing that is docile, slow, and passive, like the not-so sapient Homo sapiens.

It has been decades since animals were aggressively repelled from human habitat, and they now brazenly make themselves at home in manicured suburbs. It used to be that men killed and hunted encroaching creatures. Thanks to decades of cultural and legal emasculation, they no longer have the urge or license to protect home and hearth. Instead, they robotically intone the Sierra Club's subliminal propaganda: animals are the true homesteaders of the planet.

The handful of honest experts left admits that attacks are up because politically correct policies have bred fearless critters. The Pavlovian response to aversive treatment has been bred out of the wild animal population. Mary Zeiss Stange, author of Woman the Hunter, says that hunting ultimately has less to do with killing than with instilling fear in animals that have placed us on their menu. If animal rights activists possessed a dog's smarts, they'd understand the perils of such a program, for an unafraid animal is a dangerous animal; an unafraid human an endangered fool.

Certainly we should never be cruel to animals, Mercer agrees, but killing animals is part of our human condition, and in an attempt to become hypercivilized and suppress the parts of our nature that our intellects consider less savory, we become in fact less than fully human and upset the balance of nature:

This wildlife worship is thoroughly antediluvian, down to its human sacrifice component. Human beings should care for and be kind to animals. That's ethical (if not compulsory). But people's safety and survival must always trump that of animals. A society that reverses this ethical order is philosophically primitive, base, and ultimately immoral.

"Arm yourself with knowledge when you go out into the wilderness," advised one guru, following yet another perennial, ritual, human sacrifice to the Goddess Gaia. Wrong: apply your knowledge and arm yourself!

Good advice from a very wise woman.

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Here's a treat for you—a video featuring Roy Wood. Wood is one of the great — and most unfairly underappreciated — rock music composers of all time. He was the leader of the terrific 1960s band The Move, started the Electric Light Orchestra with Jeff Lynne and Bev Bevan, moved from there to form the rock-oriented band Wizzard, and created in his solo albums some of the best pop music albums of the past three decades. His solo albums Boulders and Mustard, in particular, are absolute classics. Roy still tours Great Britain but hasn't made an album in many years. There's always hope, however.

Boulders is not available at all on CD at this point, which is an absolute pop culture tragedy, but the rumor is that it will soon be released by a British company. The good news is that Wizzard Brew, which I consider to be the best album by Roy Wood's Wizzard, has just been remastered for CD and is now available with eight superb bonus tracks. It's a must-have, and you can have it here.

One of the bonus tracks is Roy's huge Christmas hit "I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day." To open the video, from YouTube, click here. I hope you'll enjoy it.

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To be sure, the program is pro-science, but it's not at all certain how we as a society ought to decide what is allowed and what isn't. The protatonist's investigation of "scientific disasters" suggests that there must be some limits, but what they are is not clear to him or his associates.

In the end, of course, the pilot episode seems to decide that it's up to the government to figure it out on a case by case basis, and whatever benefits the greatest number without raising too much of an Ick Factor will be allowed.

That is, it comes out in favor of a fairly straight utilitarianism.

The series stars Patrick Stewart as Prof. Ian Hood, a scientist who works for some shadowy department of the British government and investigages criminal activities in the realm of high science. The first episode, which premiered this past Monday night, dealt with the issue of human cloning, and centered on a wealthy man who is financing an effort to clone a child identical to his only son, who died in an accident.

The problem is that the effort has resulted only in the production of mutated, unviable fetuses so far, and all of them have had to be disposed of.

Unfortunately for the rich man and cloning genius "Gepetto" and their associates, the person whom they have engaged to dispose of the bodies—at L20 per—is a Christian . Instead of incinerating them as instructed, he has buried them, including in each grave a rosary, which leads the police right to the graves by use of metal detectors.

Those damn silly Christians!

Hood makes certain to show his knowledge of the Christian's beliefs and Hood's certainty that they are in large part antiquated and asinine. And he also makes sure to tell us, very directly, that anyone who opposes the use of embryonic stem cells is a murderer.

It is important to note that this position is entirely false: adult stem cells have done great wonders over the years, whereas the use of embryonic stems cells has accomplished exactly nothing. See my article on the matter here; it is still true though two years old.

In addition, the premiere episode ultimately has to resort to a metaphysical concept in its effort to define the limits of what humans can be allowed to do to one another. Hood tells the wealthy man financing the cloning effort, "the soul is more that its constituent chemical parts."

This ultimately proves ineffectual, as the man is determined to have his way, and is thus very true to life. It also goes to show, however, that legislating morality is sometimes to only way for society to ensure that people's rights are respected by one another.

One thing is certain, as 11th Hour illustrates: there is no utilitarian argument we can make that can't be countered by an equally valid argument based on alternative assumptions. That is why there is sometimes no viable alternative to the widely derided idea of legislating morality.

Posted by S. T. Karnick at 10:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Who would have thought that the merry Dutch, world pioneers of mass-marketed pornography, would eventually tire of all the smut flowing into their neat and tidy homes? Yet it has happened, according to a Reuters/Hollywood Reporter (HR) story:

Despite a long tradition of television that pushes the boundaries of the acceptable in the Netherlands, Dutch viewers are being turned off by a wave of controversial programs.

Some weeks ago, Rotterdam-based columnist Hugo Borst was watching the daily news on family channel RTL with his 11-year-old son while having dinner. At 6:45 p.m. -- with no warning -- father and son were witness to excerpts from a home video showing the goalkeeper of a Dutch professional soccer team being introduced in embarrassingly intimate terms to a sex toy by a girlfriend.

Furious about the unexpected images, Borst called the program's editor for an explanation. The response was that the sex video was considered a news item because it was placed on the Internet that day by the goalie's vengeful ex-lover.

Borst's reaction was to write a column under the headline: "Have they lost their minds at RTL?"

Maybe they have, but until recently such programs drew big ratings. That appears to be changing, however. Citing a "less explicit—but nonetheless controversial" program called The Golden Cage, the Reuters/HR story notes, "The storm of publicity surrounding the Talpa program has not resulted in high ratings. Since its October bow, the show has lost nearly 66% of its original 1 million viewers. This may indicate that the Dutch are no longer impressed by taboo-breaking programs."

Another show raising eyebrows is "Spuiten en Slikken" (Shooting and Swallowing), on which every sexual persuasion can be found. It broadcasts on the youth-oriented public broadcaster BNN, currently the most risque station in Holland. The program, which claims to have an educational purpose, caused a scandal even before its first episode. One of the presenters experiments onscreen with all kinds of soft and hard drugs. The program also features the exploration of sexual activities, including S&M, swingers clubs, squirting female orgasms and prostate milking (shown in full detail), leading to a flurry of political disapproval.

The Dutch have had their fair share of tasteless television in recent years. Considered by some as the nadir of gutter TV, "Patty's Fort," which aired in 2004 on RTL, saw minor Dutch celebs led by former pop singer Patty Brard gather for a colonic irrigation session in a health spa, with the scatological results shown to the audience.

How such things can be considered either educational or entertaining is a true mystery to this analyst, but that the Dutch are tiring of such fare certainly is an interesting news item with real implications. Perhaps leaving a little mystery to such things really is a good idea.

Posted by S. T. Karnick at 02:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

USA Today has published today an excellent article analyzing the appeal of ultimate fighting. Here are some excerpts:

"Boxing is boring. Brawls are not," says Stephanie Cassidy, 24, a sixth-grade teacher from Fairfield whose husband got the $400-a-pop tickets for her birthday.

Which is pretty much all you need to know about how this salute to Rome's Colosseum has evolved from cultural pariah to mainstream hit. . . .

Signs of success include the fact that UFC's Spike TV reality show, The Ultimate Fighter, often outdraws NBA and baseball games among the coveted 18- to 34-year-old male demographic. Its pay-per-view bouts are estimated to pull in eight figures, and ufc.com has doubled its traffic, to 2 million unique visitors a month, in the past year. . . .

Far from being a lone oddity, UFC has spawned five other MMA leagues (mixed martial arts, which combines a variety of striking and grappling techniques), one of which, Pro Elite, just signed a deal with Showtime. . . .

To judge from all the couples in attendance, you'd think this was a concert or a movie megaplex.

Beyond the surprising abundance of women, there's also a range of races (only African-Americans seem in short supply), professions (from shelf stockers to stock brokers) and ages (from the occasional gray hair to the blond tresses of a 5-year-old). . . .

• Far from being barroom brawlers, UFC toughs often have college degrees, and some boast winning careers as boxers, jujitsu fighters, Muay Thai practitioners and collegiate wrestlers.

• Boxers have died in the ring, but so far not one UFC fighter.

• Football and baseball may be American pastimes, but for a high-tech generation weaned on immediacy, such sporadic action doesn't compare with UFC's short and definitive flurries of violence. . . .

For a populace jittery about the threat of terrorism at home and a costly war abroad, that tough-by-association cocktail can be hard to pass up. "Much of life feels out of control right now, so to see these gladiators fight your fight for you — it's somehow comforting," says Mike Voight, a lecturer on the sociology of sport at the University of Southern California. "It used to be boxing that gave us that escape." . . .

That many UFC fighters look and sound like everyday people — compared with figures like Mike Tyson and Hulk Hogan — is a powerful part of the sport's popularity.

Matt Hughes was a four-time All-American wrestler at two Midwestern colleges who likes to talk about how his bouts "are chess matches that require immense dedication and discipline." More to the point, far from being Goliath, Hughes is a compact 5-foot-9. . . .

"I love how many of these guys are my size. It makes it something I can relate to," says [actor Robert] Patrick, molten co-star of Terminator 2: Judgment Day and CBS' The Unit.

As the lights dim and the arena goes on the boil (metal music thrashing, crowds screaming, ring girls wiggling), Patrick's eyes widen. "I suppose all this is some kind of reflection on our society," he says. "But there's also just a great nobility to being a great warrior."

That's UFC as sociological mirror, a link to our roots as creatures bent on survival. But there's another UFC, the one that's just a heck of a way to rage with old friends. . . .

What UFC is can be wrestled into this: an upscale street duel elegantly marketed to the masses. And the masses are loving it.

I suspect that the morality and normality that the USA Today writer identifies at the center of ultimate fighting are probably central to its appeal and a big reason people are increasingly gravitating to it. In a time of war and fear, it's comforting for people to look to champions who are very much like them but so greatly skilled that they can defeat seemingly invincible enemies. Hence the appeal of ultimate fighting may well have a highly positive aspect.

I'll take a look at this interesting phenomenon and report on it in future.

Posted by S. T. Karnick at 12:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

I've mentioned on several occasions the turn toward "darker" programming on network TV this year, and one of the pioneers and models for that approach, the Fox series 24, will become even darker this season. An article in USA Today notes that protagonist Jack Bauer will reach a new low to begin the season:

Central character Jack Bauer isn't dead, but he's feeling that way going into Season Six (premieres Jan. 14, 8 p.m. ET/PT), said Kiefer Sutherland, who won an Emmy in August for his portrayal of the stoic counterterrorism hero. Bauer, whose kidnapping by Chinese agents closed last season, returns in the premiere, set 20 months later, as a haggard, beaten man.

"Jack's at his darkest place. He's dead inside. Even in Season Two, when he was terribly mournful at the loss of his wife, he was feeling pain but he was alive. (Now), there's an indifference which is almost primal. It's absolutely a new place to start with the character," Sutherland said on the red carpet.

As I've noted earlier on this site, "darker" new series primetime programming has had a bad run this year, as viewers have not responded favorably in general to the new shows that tried this tack.

The reason 24 has had such success is that even though the stories are full of interlocking conspiracies and betrayals, at the center of the show we have unabashedly good characters, led by Jack Bauer, a real modern-day hero. That's what makes this show so special, and as long as Jack doesn't turn "complex," meaning morally compromised (which he never has been, despite the awful things he has regularly been forced to do), the series will retain its central warmth and decency that ultimately dissipate the darkness.

TV producers and other genre writers would do very well to remember this simple fact. 

Posted by S. T. Karnick at 11:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The TV crime drama The Closer returns tonight with a two-hour movie to kick off its third season (or part two of a divided second season; I'm not sure how the producers and cable channel are categorizing it). The program stars Kyra Sedgwick as a harried, middle-aged, unmarried Southern belle who works as a deputy police chief in Los Angeles and has to adjust to professional and personal problems in the unfamiliar milieu of Lalaland.

As I noted earler on the Reform Club blog, The Closer is not nearly as arch as it may sound:

an unacknowledged Americanization of the long-running British police procedural TV program Prime Suspect. In The Closer, now in its second season, Kyra Sedgwick plays a police detective and homicide team supervisor who solves crimes while stumbling charmingly through a rather bumpy personal life. It's a good show, made appealing by Sedgwick's excellent performance. She's quite likeable as the protagonist, and her various problems are handled by both herself and the program's writers with a fairly light touch.

Unlike most [previous] episodes of the program, [last July's season premiere episode] had a solid puzzle with several suspects, and the viewer had enough info to solve the crime by the time Brenda was ready to reveal the killer. Most of the appeal of The Closer lies in the non-mystery elements, but having a good mystery made this episode really sing.

The rest of the season's episodes had good puzzles as well. Tonight TNT resumes the series at 8 EST with a two-hour episode. Here's TNT's description:

The two-hour Dec. 4 airing, entitled “Serving the King,” is a two-part episode with the first part directed by two-time Tony nominee Arvin Brown (The National Health, Ah Wilderness!) and the second part directed by Sedgwick’s multi-talented husband, Kevin Bacon.  In it, Deputy Chief Johnson is called upon by her old CIA mentor (two-time Emmy^® winner William Daniels) to assist in an off-the-record investigation of a would-be defector found murdered in Los Angeles.  Through a winding and complex case, Brenda must find the common thread linking a former KGB agent, the murder of several CIA agents, a young Lebanese boy thought to be a terrorist and 20 pounds of missing, weapons-grade plutonium.

Recommended. 

Posted by S. T. Karnick at 11:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Our friend Mike D'Virgilio has posted an interesting article on a cultural trend toward "cleaner" products and has kindly granted us permission to present it to you here. Mike's article notes something important about the Omniculture: everything happens, and while there is much on what traditionalists would call the extremely bad end of the spectrum, there is also much more than in recent decades on the more wholesome end of things as well. Here's Mike's article:

I guess if you live long enough you pretty much see everything, but I never thought I’d see an article I read on the front page of Friday’s Weekend Journal. (I can’t link to it, because it requires a subscription--I get the dead tree version--but I can steal a few quotes.) The article’s title drew me in: “Comedy Comes Clean: In a backlash against racy and gross-out material, some comics are turning to still-biting but less salacious jokes.”

Who would have ever imagined that post-Lenny Bruce, the cutting edge of comedy would be comics who refuse to utter vulgarities or refer to bodily functions?

Since I’m not a connoisseur of comedy I had no idea such a thing even existed. Sure I’ve heard about a few comics who refuse to throw the F-bomb to get a laugh, but I would have thought they are few and far between. One of the reasons I think that I’m not a big fan of comedy is that vulgar amorality just doesn’t appeal to me. I would be the first to agree that a good curse word at the appropriate time is not a bad thing at all, but appropriate is the key. Seeing somebody stand on a stage and have vulgarity flow like a river out of his or her mouth isn’t my idea of a good time. Sounds like there is hope for folks like me.

Jeffrey Zaslow, the author states:

It’s no joke. Those in the funny business are saying that, despite all the explicit sitcoms and mean-spirited Internet humor, there’s a quite countermovement toward clean comedy. Some comedians are deciding they’re tired of using profanity as a crutch. Others find clean comedy can be more lucrative.

It’s a backlash, 40 years in the making, in which some comics say it’s time to redraw the line between edgy and unacceptable. “Blue comedy is so commonplace, it’s no longer counterculture.” Says Brian Regan . . . .As he sees it, today’s twenty somethings grew up clicking through cable and pay-TV channels, absorbing a steady diet of nonchalantly raunchy comics and sexually explicit sitcoms. To them, inoffensive humor can seem refreshing.

Zaslow quotes an amazing poll:

According to a [Zogby] poll released yesterday, just 6% of 9,065 respondents say they want edgier, more-sexual entertainment programming; 51% said they want more shows with positive messages, and even references to God and the Bible.

Well, maybe it’s not so amazing. Americans have been exposed to an ever-increasing amount of “edgier” content in every kind of entertainment medium. It makes sense that, in the inexorable laws of economics, that the supply of something determines its cost. The ubiquitous sex, vulgarity and just plain old tastelessness has cheapened the value of such stuff so much that most people over the age of 14 simply don’t find it all that valuable any more. This bodes well for the vast majority of Americans who simply want entertainment that actually entertains.

Posted by S. T. Karnick at 10:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Confession time: I make a habit of not watching the Lifetime TV network, which appears to be aimed at left-of-center suburban soccer moms. However, the title of new Lifetime series, Inspector Mom, grabbed my attention, so I took a look at the pilot.

And what do you know? It was kind of fun.

Danica McKellar (The Wonder Years) plays Maddie Monroe, a—guess what?—soccer mom who's trying to juggle childraising and a part-time career as a newspaper columnist, known as Inspector Mom. She is in fact a former topnotch investigative journalist who quit her job and went down to part time work in order to raise her children.

And guess what? She's perfectly happy with her choice. That's definitely a point in the show's favor. Of course, she happens to be a born supersleuth who can't help getting involved in murder investigations in suburban America—such as the killing of a nasty, womanizing soccer coach (in the pilot episode), a judge in a baking competition, and a little old lady down the road. The show covers some of the same ground as the BBC TV series Murder in Suburbia, but with a good deal less archness and sense of superiority. That's to the good also.

McKellar is appealingly practical, hardnosed, curious, and cheerful in the pilot episode, and although the mystery isn't particularly challenging, the atmosphere is both interesting and realistic—parents will well recognize, for example, the politics surrounding the soccer team—and her goofy friends are highly recognizable contemporary suburban types. The pilot shows a nice, light touch and provides a diverting and sometimes quirky entertainment while giving the gray cells a little exercise. No, it's not deep or transgressive, and that actually helps make Inspector Mom a fun show to watch.

In addition, the values suggested by the program are highly salutary. Maddie's family, at the center of the narrative, is a basically healthy one with normal American problems—another real breath of fresh air on American TV. And after the mystery is solved and the family sits down together at the dining table to enjoy ice cream sundaes, they pray their thanks to God for the treat and for the good things they get to share.

It's a show that nicely combines charm, normality, and adventure. The pilot is not scheduled for any additional showings in the near future, but the series is being presented on Lifetime's website and can be watched at any time. There are eight "webisodes" available currently with a couple more to come. You can watch them here. You might well enjoy them.

Posted by S. T. Karnick at 06:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Turner Classic Movies is showing a five-movie tribute to director Frank Capra tomorrow beginning at 8 pm EST. Capra, whose career spanned the end of the silent era to the early 1960s, was one of the great American film directors. He's best known for his classic film It's a Wonderful Life, and he made numerous other fine movies such as Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (another real classic), Meet John Doe, the Oscar-winning It Happened One Night, Dirigible, Lost Horizon, the poignant Lady for a Day, and the delightfully screwy comedy Arsenic and Old Lace.

The five films to be shown tomorrow night are Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (interesting and good but not nearly as fine as Mr. Deeds), You Can't Take It with You (yuk, even though it won an Oscar—see below), American Madness (very underrated film starring Walter Huston), Lady for a Day, and Arsenic and Old Lace.

Capra was a very patriotic immigrant from Sicily who supported the Republican Party, which was just as unpopular in Hollywood then as it is now. His political and cultural instincts were a populist conservatism, and his usual cowriter was more of a leftist populist. (Capra generally did not get writing credits on his films although he oversaw every aspect of the screenplays.) As a result, the ideas evident in his films are sometimes complex and sometimes rather confused, but he always gets to the emotional heart of things, as is perfectly clear in It's a Wonderful Life.

The politics of You Can't Take It with You, based on a play cowritten by leftist Broadway satirist George S. Kaufman, by contrast, are very openly left-wing, infantile, and dislikeable, and the same sort of googoo-eyed populism crops up in Mr. Smith and Meet John Doe, though less intensely and therefore less annoyingly. The politics of Capra's films seem to resemble most closely those of Pat Buchanan and his magazine, The American Conservative, a stance with which I am not the slightest bit sympathetic. Most of Capra's films, however, are a good deal less simpleminded than You Can't Take It with You.

Even in the more overtly political films, however, Capra was trying in a rather artistic way to consider the question of how to live as a Christian in a corrupt society. Capra was at his best when the story dealt with these issues on a more personal level, as in It Happened One Night, Lady for a Day, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, American Madness, The Miracle Worker, Broadway Bill, and It's a Wonderful Life. Most of those films also explore the political implications of the characters' predicaments and choices, but without providing easy, stupid answers.

Tomorrow's tribute on TCM is well worth watching as an introduction to Capra or as an enjoyable return to a time when Hollywood films had a nice balance of ideas and entertainment.  Set your DVR pronto.

Posted by S. T. Karnick at 11:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Our Reform Club colleague Tom Van Dyke sent us this nifty quote from the late Jerry Garcia, of the rock band The Grateful Dead, in which Garcia observes that the real action in changing American society actually happened before the hippie revolution of the mid- to late 1960s, as I argued in my two-part article on the Omniculture a few years ago:

That's as good a description of the Omniculture as I've seen.

Posted by S. T. Karnick at 08:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)