Anatomy of Criticism

Anatomy of Criticism

northropfrye

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Albums of the Decade	[Dec. 8th, 2009\|06:10 pm]
My favourite albums from 2000-2009 1. Yankee Hotel Foxtrot - Wilco 2. Van Lear Rose - Loretta Lynn 3. Illinoise - Sufjan Stevens 4. In Rainbows - Radiohead 5. I am a Bird Now - Antony and the Johnsons 6. Lay it Down - Al Green 7. Achilles Heel - Pedro the Lion 8. Medulla - Bjork 9. Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots - The Flaming Lips 10. Everything that Happens Will Happen Today - David Byrne and Brian Eno 11. Theology -Sinead O'Connor 12. Exit - Shugo Tokumaru 13. Album - Girls 14. Wolfgang Amadeus - Phoenix 15. Offend Maggie - Deerhoof 16. This is It - The Strokes 17. Show Your Bones - The Yeah Yeah Yeahs 18. Sensuous - Cornelius 19. Kid A - Radiohead 20. Dear Catastrophe Waitress - Belle and Sebastian I haven't thought about this too long, so I reserve the right to change this :)
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Films of the Decade	[Dec. 8th, 2009\|05:01 pm]
I didn't have this blog, or any blog for that matter, at the turn of the last decade, so now's my first chance to do decade lists. I'll create a music one, and possibly a book one, eventually, but for now, here are my favourite films of the decade 2000-2009. 1. Werckmeister Harmonies - Bela Tarr 2. In the Mood for Love - Wong Kar-Wai 3. Antichrist - Lars von Trier 4. My Winnipeg - Guy Maddin 5. Silent Light - Carlos Reygadas 6. Talk to Her - Pedro Almodovar 7. The Lives of Others - Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck 8. Sideways - Alexander Payne 9. No Country for Old Men - Joel and Ethan Coen 10. The Man Without a Past - Aki Kaurismaki Honourable mention to: Amelie, There Will be Blood, Dogville, City of God, Into the Wild, Match Point, No Man's Land, Persepolis, Paris Je T'aime, Saraband, Volver, The Wrestler, YiYi, Notre Musique....
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Poem	[Nov. 29th, 2009\|03:59 pm]
Check out my poem published on everydaypoets.com http://www.everydaypoets.com/words-by-andrew-unger/ It's not the typical poem I usually write - this one is much "nicer." My style and content is usually much harsher, more negative - Ginsberg or Bukowski-esque. But here I tried to write something well...nice. Hope you enjoy it.
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2012	[Nov. 22nd, 2009\|03:13 pm]
Lesson learnt - you can blow up the Vatican, but you can't touch Mecca.
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Group Psychology and Anarchism	[Nov. 19th, 2009\|08:42 pm]
Wow, there's a subject line that'll really get people reading. Well, whatever, who cares. Anyway, I've been reading Denial of Death by Ernest Becker. I'm about halfway finished and it's a fascinating read. Becker's thesis is that humanity's primary motivation is not, as Freud suggested, purely sexual, but rather a denial of our own mortality. This denial of death manifests itself in many ways, from heroism, to religion and patriotism. Anyway, what I'd like to discuss is actually kind of a secondary focus in his book, but it fits well with other thoughts I've been having. My current political persuasion could be described as Anarcho-pacifist. I'm not going to elaborate too much on that, because there's a lot I could say, but I think it's pretty obvious what the basic essence of anarcho-pacifism is, by it’s very name - that is, a rejection of all forms of violence, both economic and political (which means there can be no top-down government.) I'd also like to stress that I only believe in this on a philosophical or ideal level – At least I'm not under any illusions that an anarcho-pacifist world can or will exist. But I feel an ideal is necessary, so that other systems and beliefs can be compared to it. Anyway, it surprised me when reading Becker that he had some things to say on group psychology, which very much fit in with my beliefs on anarcho-pacifism. There's a misconception about anarchism that it equals chaos. There's an idea by statists (which is most everyone, because most people believe in the usefulness of government) that without government people would be more violent - that government keeps people from resorting to violence. In other words, government threatens violence (arrest) in order to stop people from committing violent acts. First of all, I reject the notion that anyone can be deterred from violence in this way. The threat of violence (arrest and punishment) does not seem to deter people from committing crimes. I believe that the crime rate would be more or less the same regardless of whether there was any legal punishment for these crimes or not. Regions with the death penalty, for example, do not seem to have lower rates of crime. Violence is not deterred by violence. My second point is that I believe that governments, in fact, create violence in their people. Yes, in an anarchist world there would be violence - of course. But government takes these violent tendencies in people and then puts nuclear weapons in their hands, something that is impossible in an anarchist world. The very existence of government only exacerbates the problem of violent human nature by giving us unnatural powers (weaponry) and coercing people into violence. Instead of neighbour killing neighbour (which exists in non-anarchist states, anyway), we have state against state and the total number of deaths is likely higher than in an anarchist world. These are all things I've thought about for a while, but Ernest Becker's ideas fit in here very well. Drawing upon the psychological theories of people like Freud, Fromm, and Redl, Becker has some fascinating insights into group psychology. He describes the hypnotic power of the leader, and how it fulfills a human need to follow. Becker says, “by explaining the precise power that held groups together, Freud could also show why groups did not fear danger. The members do not feel that they are alone in their smallness and helplessness…*Natural narcissism – the feeling that the person next* to you will die, but not you – is reinforced by trusting dependence on the leader’s power. No wonder the hundreds of thousands of men marched up from the trenches in the face of blistering gunfire in World War I**….And so we understand the terrible sadism of group activity.” Becker, referring to Fromm, explains that “…the fear of emerging out of one’s family and into the world and one’s own responsibility and powers; the desire to keep oneself tucked into a larger source of power…It is these things that make for the mystique of “group”, “nation”, “blood”, “mother-or fatherland” and the like….As Fromm put it, they keep one “in the prison of the motherly racial-national-religious fixation.” More from Freud, via Becker: “...acts that are illegal for the individual can be justified if the whole group shares responsibility for them.” Human beings are naturally social animals, and quite sophisticated ones at that, so I don’t want to oversimplify here. But the idea that somehow anarchism would be more violent and more dangerous than government states, I think should, at the very least, be placed under great scrutiny. But don’t get me wrong, I certainly don’t believe in individualism. I believe people share a social responsibility. I am certainly not defending capitalism, because I believe it fits under the category of a collective violence. The horrors of capitalism are justified because “everyone is doing it” or “it’s inevitable.” So, I’m not calling for individualism. What I would like to see is voluntary participatory anarchism. A full rejection of political, social and economic violence and a truly participatory, rather than authoritarian system. We absolutely have social needs, but I don’t see the essential need to be governed. After all, as pointed out here, I believe it may cause more harm than good.
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Country Music	[Nov. 17th, 2009\|07:52 pm]
I don't dislike country music - I actually like it. It's "country" music I despise. But there's plenty of good real country, which is now called "alt-country", whereas pop-country is simply called "country." Pretty absurd. This is my little disclaimer. I don't hate all country music, I just hate this type of country music: "I thank God for my life And for the stars and stripes May freedom forever fly, let it ring. Salute the ones who died The ones that give their lives so we don`t have to sacrifice All the things we love Like our chicken fried" "Chicken Fried" by the Zac Brown Band The jingoistic nonsense is bad enough....then it goes on to say that the reason these "heroes" died is so that we can eat fried fucking chicken!?!! Wow.....I've come across some pretty horrible country lyrics over the years - songs about sexy tractors and checking people for ticks, but this one is the worst I've seen.
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Khalid Sheikh Mohammed	[Nov. 14th, 2009\|11:55 am]
There's been some question as to whether New York is the right place to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. While I see the potential problems, I do think this is the right place for the trial. I think the potential issues of bias would exist anywhere in the United States, so I don't buy the argument that he'd have a worse time in New York than in any other American city. However, what this does do is domesticate the crime of 9/11, which is something that should have happened to begin with. Ideally the trial of this man would be no different than any other mass murder in the NYC area. Ideally, the American government should have pursued these men as criminals rather than pursuing the entire nation of Afghanistan as an enemy. Mass murders, normally, do not start wars, they start criminal investigations. By having this trial in New York city, the site of the crime, it takes at least one significant step in normalizing this process. This was a criminal act that occurred in this particular city, and nothing more (or less). Can he get a fair trial there? As fair as the American government would offer him, sure.
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Berlin	[Nov. 9th, 2009\|05:34 pm]
I turned 30 yesterday. Reflecting back now I have to say that it's pretty clear what the two most momentous global events of my lifetime have been. One was Sept. 11, 2001. The other was the fall of the Berlin Wall. My wife and I were in Berlin during Christmas 2007. I was also there for a couple days this past spring. I'm glad I was old enough to remember Nov. 9, 1989, and nerdy enough as a ten year old kid to be interested in that sort of thing. It actually makes me a bit emotional thinking about it. I was going to attempt to write some meaningful reflection on this...but I'm not going to....
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Greatness	[Nov. 3rd, 2009\|09:44 pm]
So I finally convinced a friend of mine (he knows who he is) to watch Citizen Kane with me. (Well, I should clarify - it was he that suggested we watch it now, after years of my annoying haranguing.) We watch a lot of movies together, and in general have similar tastes I would say. The divide in our tastes usually presents itself when it comes to art films. I like them - he doesn't...as much, or as often, perhaps. Still, I'd say we agree more than we disagree. Anyway, one of the running jokes of our film debates has been over Citizen Kane. I wouldn't call this an art film...but its appeal is certainly in its artistic merit, rather than, say, its social commentary, which is something my friend usually looks for in films. He saw Kane years ago and hated it. I've seen it many times, and though it's not near the top of my list of favourites, I do consider it a masterpiece and can understand why it's often listed at the top of Great Film lists. So, we watched the film with Roger Ebert's commentary which describes the compositions, lighting and other technical innovations that Welles used in the film. Now, technique is not the only thing to look for in a film, but I would suggest that it is something more tangible and can be more objectively judged than say the quality of a story or the message of a story, or even, acting. So, our debate over Kane often surrounded whether it deserved its place on nearly ever Greatest Film of all time list. My purpose in having us listen to the commentary was, at least partially, to illustrate that the film does, indeed, have great artistic and technical merit....even if the acting style (like all acting of this time period) seems melodramatic to modern audiences. I'm not suggesting that the Ebert commentary track was entirely convincing to my friend, but what I'd like to discuss is why this particular film is on so many of these lists. (Some might suggest it's economics or marketing that has given Kane this revered positions. Certainly, after appearing on a few lists, is does gain that inertia to the public. However, the film was more-or-less killed by Hearst upon its release and never made much money, nor can it said to be making much money today. Promoting a film like Star Wars to the top of these lists would have paid off a lot more, if all this is about money. I don't think it is.) Lists of great films are subjective and individual. True. But, I'd like to argue that the attributes that Citizen Kane has are of the less subjective variety, and that this is the reason it is so often on top of these lists. A film, say, whose merit is its profound and meaningful social commentary is never going to make the top of a list unless that list is compiled by one individual. If social commentary was the defining attribute for these lists, then what one film would thousands of voters choose as the top film? It's hard to say. There are thousands of films you could suggest, few people would agree enough to vote one to the top on a consistent basis. However, if the question is: "What film is the most influential of all time?" or "What film was the most innovative?" etc. Then there are only a handful of films that could even be discussed in this. You can't argue that Silent Light (a film I admire greatly) is one of the most influential films of all time. Nor could I argue that Stop Making Sense (also among my personal favourites) is one of the most technically innovative of all films. When answering these questions, you could make a case for The Birth of a Nation, Battleship Potemkin, perhaps Star Wars, The Godfather, and Citizen Kane. There are few films that could meet this criteria. Since lists of great films are (perhaps naively) attempting to create a "definitive" list of great films, they're going to use criteria that are as objective as possible. Yes, yes, it's never 100% objective. But by using criteria like innovation and influence, it's clear that Citizen Kane, whether a person enjoys watching the film or not, belongs among the upper echelon of films (ranked by that criteria.) Perhaps the tag "greatest" is misleading. Well, not perhaps...it IS misleading. Really these lists should read "Most Influential Films of All Time." Because greatness can be defined by other things. However, it's more fun to argue when you're talking about "greatest" and "best". You can't argue "favourite" because that's obviously individualistic. And you can't argue (as much) "influential" because that can be studied and more-or-less concluded. But you can argue "greatness." And that's what these lists are all about - stirring up arguments. That's what makes them fun.
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Religious differences	[Nov. 2nd, 2009\|08:28 pm]
Need all religions be lumped together in order to save the concept of the usefulness of religion? It seems that both the detractors of religion (Harris, Hitchens, Dawkins) and the defenders (Chris Hedges for example) seem to analyze religion as a cohesive set of ideas. We hear this all the time: "all religions are essentially the same." Either "all religions are essentially violent," or "all religions are essentially peaceful." Now, I've only read one Dawkins book and viewed plenty of youtube debates and interviews with the others, so I won't discuss the ideas of these specific theorists, but rather this idea in general. (After all, the idea is so common place in society that it need not be tied to any one, or group of, writers.) Are all religions essentially the same? Hedges, I believe, likes to distinguish fundamentalism from true religious faith, and in doing so places atheism in the category of fundamentalism, being as harmfully dogmatic as religious fundamentalism. I believe he also argues that religious extremism stems from tribalism, and that people are drawn to violence through alienation and despair, rather than religious teaching. And in arguing this, he is saying that true religious belief is essentially peaceful, whether it is Christian, Islamic, or Jewish. (From what I can recall he does make a distinction between monotheistic religion and polytheism...but I won't get into that here.) Writers like Harris, on the other hand, believe that all religions are essentially violent. And it is true, there are passages of great violence in the sacred texts of most of the world's major religions. Then, he goes on to argue (as is common in many current atheist arguments) that the violence perpetrated by Hitler, Stalin and even Kim Jung-Il, although atheist in flavour, was essentially religious. It's kind of a circular argument. It has to be religious, because it was violent, and religion is violent. (I realize I'm over-simplifying here.) And then, of course, you get the old reply: "Well, any religion can be used for good or evil." Right, good one. Very original. Of course, there is some truth in that, but I'm still tired of hearing it.... I find it a little strange to see that so much of this debate surrounds the concept of violence. Since when are so many people pacifists? I don't think they truly are. I come from a religious heritage that has taught pacifism since it's inception (Mennonite), but our pacifist beliefs have always got us in serious trouble. They were never mainstream, nor do I think they are now. So, I think it's a little insincere of people to criticize religion as being violent, when they themselves are not truly pacifists. You can have all sorts of justifications for violence, and unless you're a pacifist, I think you're not too credible when engaging in a debate that uses violence as evidence of the validity or non-validity of a religious belief. Still, the question remains: are all religions the same in some way? I've heard arguments on this topic from a variety of perspectives, and I think Hedges makes a good point about tribalism and despair being the essential motivator of violence, rather than religion. He, too, points out the violence in the sacred texts of all three of the major monotheistic religions. What no one seems to address, however, is the essential difference between Christianity and Islam - and that is found in their founders. Jesus and Muhammed. The violence in the sacred texts is more or less a saw-off. The violence in the history of these religions also cancels out. They all have violent texts and violent histories. However, texts are always interpreted in a variety of ways and historic events cannot always be said to accurately represent a particular religion, even if the acts are done specifically in the name of religion. The only thing we have left to compare is the founder of the religion. While it's true that Jesus did not intend to start a new religion, nevertheless, it would be illogical to suggest that the essential distinctive of Chrsitianity is not the person of Jesus Christ. A Christian is a follower of Jesus Christ. Just as a Muslim's creed is "There is no God but God and Muhammed is his prophet." For the purposes of this discussion, we can't compare history, and we can't compare texts, for the reason I've already stated, but you can compare these two people. Which one was violent? Which one was peaceful? I would like a defender of Islam as a peaceful religion to address this issue. So, far I haven't found a sufficient answer. Muhammed used violence, and Jesus did not. No one can really deny this. Nor, do I think, is it really possible to deny the significance of this. The role of faith in an individual's life may be essentially universal, but some religious leaders were violent and others were not. Thus the religions they found will be either violent or not. Thankfully, people transcend the negative role-models of their teachers and leaders. Thankfully we can transcend the dogmatism of Dawkins and Harris, the violence of Muhammed, the racism of Martin Luther, etc. etc. We can transcend these things and still find meaning in the aspects of these individuals that we admire. But they're not all the same.
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Herta Muller	[Oct. 8th, 2009\|11:54 am]
Why oh why does every Nobel Prize winner have to be out-of-print in English. And I'm not upset at the committee for this - it's the ass-backwards publishing industry in North America that's the problem. I understand that authors can be more popular in one region over another, but for someone so good to be so completely ignored is ridiculous.
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Bob Dylan and the Nobel Prize	[Oct. 7th, 2009\|11:40 am]
Apparently bookies are giving Bob Dylan 25/1 odds of winning the 2009 Nobel Prize for Literature. The prize is pretty unpredictable, which is part of its appeal, in my opinion. It's also been accused of being anti-American, though plenty of Americans have won the prize. I suppose any award that isn't given to Americans the majority of the time is considered by some to be "Anti-American." Anyway, I've finally been reading Dylan's Memoirs and a lot of people have complained that he skips out the interesting parts of his life and instead spends an entire chapter (one of only five chapters total) discussing an insignificant album like Oh Mercy. It is odd, but not so odd when you consider the source. But I found page 113-125 to be absolutely riveting - it's his discussion of how he dealt with fame and being called "the voice of a generation." It's fascinating - how could a person deal with that kind of label? Anyway, I think Dylan might be taking on the Chantel Ackerman philosophy. In her film Jeanne Dielman she sets out to film "the scenes in between scenes." In other words, she's filming the scenes that are cut out of other films, giving every day tasks value. Now, Dylan certainly isn't rambling on about grocery shopping or vacuuming the floor, but he seems to be trying to give value to episodes in his life that others have ignored...Interesting. He won't win the Nobel Prize, but he's a fascinating guy and a great writer.
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Music	[Sep. 26th, 2009\|01:09 pm]
Since my hard-drive blew up and I had to re-rip all my CDs, I've gone back and discovered some music I hadn't listened to in a while - as well as some new music I've obtained. So, right now, here are my top 25 favourite albums: (maximum one album per artist, and not including jazz) - Other than the top 3, the order is kind of random. 1. Remain in Light - Talking Heads 2. Astral Weeks - Van Morrison 3. After the Gold Rush - Neil Young 4. Solid State Survivor - Yellow Magic Orchestra 5. Ok Computer - Radiohead 6. Call Me - Al Green 7. Loaded - Velvet Underground 8. The Queen is Dead - The Smiths 9. Twice Removed - Sloan 10. Raising Hell - Run DMC 11. Otis Blue - Otis Redding 12.The Modern Dance - Pere Ubu 13. Psychocandy - Jesus and Mary Chain 14.Blood on the Tracks - Bob Dylan 15. Freedom of Choice - Devo 16.The Boy With the Arab Strap - Belle and Sebastian 17.Revolver - the Beatles 18.Stand! - Sly and the Family Stone 19.D-I-V-O-R-C-E - Tammy Wynette 20.Nebraska - Bruce Springsteen 21.Billy Bragg and Wilco - Mermaid Ave. Vol. 1 22.Patti Smith - Horses 23.Kraftwerk - Man-Machine 24.Lou Reed - Transformer 25.Joni Mitchell - Blue
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Comparing genres	[Sep. 2nd, 2009\|04:14 pm]
It's surprising I don't have more pet peeves on these issues, but I've discovered my second movie criticism peeve. My first was the comparison of a book to a movie and the cliched statement: "The book was better." When people say this a lot, I usually assume they don't know much about movies..or books for that matter. But I've written about that topic before, so I will stop. My new movie criticism-related pet peeve is the idea that you can't compare films from distinct genres. I just read an article about the new Academy Awards voting procedures where the author said something like, "How can you compare two very different movies? Which is better - Slumdog Millionaire or the Dark Knight?" - and these were supposed to be rhetorical questions. It's quite common for people to throw this line out there - "you can't compare them. They're totally different movies." Usually this line is given by people to avoid thinking critically about a movie. And it's also an excuse used to defend "less serious" films and film genres like sci-fi, fantasy, romantic comedy and so on. But there are great films in all those genres, and I see no reason to say that any two films can't be compared...and it shouldn't be "impossible" to express a preference between, say, Slumdog and the Dark Knight. Of course, anyone can have difficulty choosing between two films they really like. But too often people will just say "oh you can't compare them" in order to avoid the difficult task to choosing. (Not that I'm suggesting it's always necessary to rank films, anyway). The difficulty in choosing between two favourite films is because you feel an affinity toward both of them, but it's not because it's impossible to compare them.
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Bob Dylan Christmas Album!

[Aug. 26th, 2009|03:32 pm]

Wow, after years of mostly nothing but really bad Christmas albums, Bob Dylan is releasing one this year!
Sufjan Steven's Christmas music is great, but really most Christmas albums suck. I'm expecting big things from Bob Dylan...it does make me wonder why a Jew would put out a Christmas album, though. I thought everyone said he renounced that Slow-Train-Coming Christian conversion period....well, whatever...I'm looking forward to hearing this album.

EDIT: Well, it seems some people are pissed. Here, check this out: "(IsraelNN.com) Jewish-American folksinger, Bob Dylan, has upset Jewish groups in the U.S. after announcing that he will release an album of Christmas songs, including “Here Comes Santa Claus” and the carol “O Little Town of Bethlehem.”

Jewish groups in America were astonished to hear news about Dylan’s Christian album content, especially since Dylan has repeatedly stated that he has returned to his Jewish roots, Voice of Israel government radio reports. However, others say that Dylan has not done anything wrong. The Jewish folksinger has merely joined the bandwagon of other Jewish entertainers, like Barbara Streisand, Neal Diamond, Irvin Berlin, and Phil Spector, all of whom have recorded Christmas songs. """

And then there's this

:"At first glance it may sound bizarre, but I don't think Dylan cares much about what his detractors might make of it," Scott Marshall, who has written a book 'God and Bob Dylan: A Spiritual Life' told bullypulpit.com.

"He's both never renounced being Jewish or renounced his experience with Jesus some three decades ago," Marshall said.

Well, anyway, I'm looking forward to hearing a Christmas album other than Boney M this year.

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New Tea Party	[Aug. 26th, 2009\|01:11 am]
Perhaps this is old news, but I've heard about these "New Tea Parties" that have been held in cities all over the United States in order to protest against the Obama administration's stimulus package. They're complaining that he's overspending, running huge deficits and spending the money to reward people for buying houses they couldn't afford to pay for in the first place. These people claim to be staunch supporters of capitalism who are pissed off at Obama's "socialist" ways. The spending could be right, it could be wrong, I don't know. And I do realize that this is spending on a whole new level. But what I'd like to know is where were these staunch defenders of sensible government spending and balanced budgets when Bush was running record deficits in a time of economic prosperity? And for what? To pay for a war. Where were these conservative tea parties then? Widely-accepted Keynesian economic theory teaches that a government needs to run deficits in times of economic downturn - so what excuse is there in times of prosperity? So Bush runs huge deficit, mismanages the economy and leads to a economic collapse - meanwhile, people protested the war, but few people protested his rash spending. Quite frankly, they're all "socialists." Conservatives use funds on foreign issues - socialize the military, for example. Liberals use funds on domestic issues - socialized medicine, "bail-outs", etc. I don't know, it just strikes me as a bit hypocritical. Spend money to kill people and it's all good. Spend it to "bail out your lazy neighbour", well that's just horrendous. "Barack INSANE Obama." Right. Good one.
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The Flag Delusion	[Aug. 12th, 2009\|12:34 pm]
Here is an article I wrote for CBC online. http://www.cbc.ca/news/citizenbytes/2009/08/maple_leaf_on_backpack_a_canad.html
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Economics	[Aug. 2nd, 2009\|11:32 pm]
I've read Keynes and Marx and Galbraith and others, but I'm thinking about economics here, and I can't figure it out. If you look at apocalyptic films like Children of Men, it paints a gloomy economic picture for a society that is not reproducing itself. I think that makes sense - if we knew that in 50 or 100 years there would be no more humans on Earth, then the economies would completely crash. Why would you invest any money in anything? However, does a growing economy depend on a growing population? Overpopulation is having dire consequences on our planet - it is one of the root causes of environmental destruction, wars over limited resources, and so on. Yet, if economic growth is tied to global population growth, it seems as though any attempt to curb our population growth would be met with opposition by capitalists. It seems to me that the two are tied. Capitalism = over-population. We call it a "recession" whenever the economy doesn't grow. Every company in the country could still be make large profits, but unless the economy is actually growing...if it is, in fact, shrinking, even though there is still (hypothetically) profit being made, it is called a recession and eventually a depression. Growth is the essential component of our system, and this growth is both economic and biological, both of which have a series of favorable and unfavorable consequences. I wonder then whether it's even theoretically possible to increase profit without damaging the lives of another person? Some economists might suggest that the profits generated by a capitalist system are infinite...it seems to me though that profit is not taken out of this infinite pool of growth, but rather from another existing human being. For every increase in my income, another person's income is decreasing, and so on. Would it be even possible to have an entire world population that all were wealthy? Or does my wealth directly correlate to the fact that somewhere else someone is poor? Of course a "wealthy" standard of living is a relative term, and is not necessarily even desirable. Given our current global population, and a utopian Marxist system and a perfect redistribution of global wealth, what would each person's standard of living look like?
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Coen Brothers	[Aug. 2nd, 2009\|05:06 pm]
I saw the trailer for the new Coen Brother movie, A Serious Man, which looks quite good, if you can tell anything from a trailer.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7iggyFPls4w I like the fact that they're not using any well-known actors. I haven't liked George Clooney's presence in some of their recent films - he always strikes me as too normal and conventionally Hollywood for the types of films that they make. Anyway, I found the ending of this trailer unique because it listed off about 6 or 7 Coen Brothers films at the end. "From the creators of Raising Arizona, Fargo, The Big Lebowski, O Brother Where Art Thou, No Country for Old Men and Burn After Reading." I found that strange to list off so many films at the end, but then I realized that it probably was precisely because of the fact that there were no name actors in the film. Instead of listing all the famous actors, they listed some of the Coen Brothers more famous films. I suppose these are most popular Coen Brothers movies? I guess. I know the Big Lebowski was a flop, but has gained a large cult following and Fargo and No Country were critically acclaimed. Barton Fink won the Palme D'Or and is a great film but I guess the general public has forgotten about it...or didn't know about it to begin with. I also found it interesting that the trailer didn't play up that this was a "Coen Brothers" movie, and instead listed the films, without mentioning the Coen Brothers. I suspect that the name "Coen Brothers" might be alienating to some of the audience. This is similar, if I recall correctly, to how they marketing Woody Allen's Vicky Christina Barcelona, which really downplayed the fact that it was a Woody Allen film - too many people don't like him. Idiots these people are, sure, but.....
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Ugly Americans?	[Jul. 27th, 2009\|12:43 pm]
We were walking out of a restaurant in Helsinki last week..and who was walking in? European travel guru Rick Steves. I looked back and was convinced it was him. Then later I checked on his website, and indeed, it said that during July and August he was traveling in Sweden, Norway and Finland. Strange. (According to our Finnish friend, Viivi, only tourists go to this tacky restaurant. We went to much better restaurants after that, but apparently even Rick Steves fell for it.) Anyway, he's the host of the PBS travel show, Rick Steve's Europe, and author of countless books on European travel. I have watched his show occasionally, because its basically the only travel show I get on our poverty-satellite package - that and Amazing Race. Anyway, he's actually much more of a radical and liberal thinker than he lets across on the show. The impression you get from the show is that he's a nice, quiet guy who leads trips geared for middle-aged people. But he's actually an advocate of legalization of marijuana and has recently released a book called "Travel as a Political Act" which I actually want to read. I don't know if this quote is from that book or not, but it is interesting. "I would like travelers, especially American travelers, to travel in a way that broadens their perspective, because I think Americans tend to be some of the most ethnocentric people on the planet. It's not just Americans, it's the big countries. It's the biggest countries that tend to be ethnocentric or ugly. There are ugly Russians, ugly Germans, ugly Japanese and ugly Americans. You don't find ugly Belgians or ugly Bulgarians, they're just too small to think their world is the norm." I think it's a generalization, and thus not universally true, but it's at least partially true. I'm not sure where Canada fits into this scheme. We're small (in population) compared to the United States, but actually the 35th or so, largest country in the world, much larger than many European countries. Is Canada big, and thus Canadians are ugly? I would suggest that we don't usually fall into that category because of our close proximity to the United States. There's no way any Canadian (outside of Toronto :) ) could seriously think "their world is the norm."
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