Whose Reality Are We In Anyway?

June 7, 2012 in Culture | Tags: , , | Leave a comment

From CNN: When your office is like a reality TV show

Why is rudeness so much more prevalent than it used to be? Cohen believes that your comparison of your office to a reality show is not far off the mark. “A lot of the decline in civility in the culture as a whole has to do with who our role models are, particularly who gets the most media attention,” he observes. “The Kardashians, Charlie Sheen, the people on hit shows like ‘Dance Moms’ and ‘Bridezilla’ — the more mean-spirited they are, the more attention they get. So being mean has become much more socially acceptable. Kindness and courtesy are no longer the expected norm.”

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Cannes 2012 Recap

June 3, 2012 in Culture | Tags: , , | Leave a comment

Karina Longworth of LA Weekly provides a good overview:

The Cannes Film Festival (which ended its two-week run on Saturday) is nothing if not a study in contradictions. Studio product and tabloid fixtures — RPatz! KStew! “Le gentleman Brad,” as one daily rag heralded the arrival of annual attendee Pitt — butt up on the red carpet against international unknowns, some representing the national cinemas of impoverished and/or war-torn nations. Future Oscar winners are unveiled on the ground floor of the Palais du Cinema, as schlocky genre fare attracts buyers in the massive marketplace a floor below.

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Black and White Movies

June 1, 2012 in Culture | Tags: , , | Leave a comment

I have trouble with the idea of life being a black and white movie. Good and Evil. Us vs. Them. Heroes and villains.

In nature, a jaguar attacks a gazelle. While not so good from the point of view of the gazelle, the jaguar thinks it’s OK.

From the point of view the British Government, the Syrian massacre is a litmus test of evil. Thus they summoned the top Syrian diplomat in London to tell him so. But is it?

No matter what we think, from the point of view of the terrorist, such actions are justified. Does that make it justified? No. Does it make it right? No. Does it make the Syrian government absolute evil? No.

How can I say this?

It seems to me that American, NATO and coalition forces have killed many, many children and women over the past few years during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and also using killer drones in Pakistan and Yemen. Is the British or U.S. government weeping over these deaths? Are they justified? Depends on who you ask. Are they right? Depends on who you talk to.

Who is the role model for the Syrian forces that kill women and children? Is it Al Qaeda? Is it Americans? Is it both?

You might say, ‘they struck first.’ But did they? To the Palestinian, the root cause for much of the Middle East’s woes is the insistence on a Jewish State, and that was the ‘first blow.’ Prior to the Jewish State, Palestinians and Jews had no problem co-existing for hundreds of years. The point is not to bash Israel. The point is that the question ‘who struck first’ is ultimately futile.

At Hiroshima and Nagasaki, two nuclear devices killed tens of thousands, among of which were women and children. Do we weep for those women and children? Were the acts justified? It seems some very well-respected Presidents ordered those killings.

My point is this. Evil is more often than not a point of view, as is good. My experience tells me that huffing and puffing about good and evil gets people ready for war. It is generally, usually, a manipulation. It is a manipulation to get people emotionally wound up so that we can go to battle convinced of our righteousness.

That’s what is happening now.

Let’s get this straight. To a large extent the greatest butchers of all time have been the ‘civilized’ west. We don’t blink an eye when decimating the American Indians, Iraqi civilians, Pakistanis, Vietnamese and others.

We will probably not blink an eye in killing a few thousand Syrians, should it come to that.

Does it need to come to that?

Isn’t there a better way? I for one believe there is. We must envision a new world where killing of innocent women and children no longer occurs, so that we no longer feel the need to retaliate. We must create a better world where dialog, mutual respect and collaboration are embedded into international dealings and institutionalized as the only and best approach.

If we do not do this, war will always be the destiny of humankind.

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D.R. Thompson’s is a producer, playwright and essayist. His latest book of essays is A World Without War.

The Hunger Games

March 25, 2012 in Reviews | Tags: , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

I haven’t waited in line for a movie for quite some time, little less one playing at your local cineplex. The Hunger Games changed all that this weekend. I found myself standing in line with packs of teenage girls (each five or six strong), along with a healthy smattering of adults and young boys — in short, a mélange of humanity that was interested in what will likely become the phenomena of The Hunger Games. The film just filed an opening weekend of $150 million plus – the largest film opening of all time for a non-sequel – 3rd largest for all films in all history – a ‘shocker’ according to imdb. And it has just got started.

Well, you ask, was it a good film?  Let me say this. As a cultural artifact it was one of the most powerful works I’ve seen since the post-Vietnam era, where the likes of Francis Coppola and Apocalypse Now were also lining them up outside the theater. In those days, a serious, topical drama could actually get a place at the mainstream distribution table in the United States and not be crowded out by numerous Vampire knock-offs, low-brow comedies, and ads for the Marine Corps. My favorite one of late is the upcoming  Abe Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. I can imagine studio heads laughing themselves into hysterics how their foisting that one on their teenage audience. And we thought Soviet Russia was creative at re-inventing history.

But back to Hunger Games. Well, you might ask, was the film as artistically satisfying as Apocalypse Now or other ‘important’ films? Not exactly. As a sci-fi film, I would rank Hunger Games on the artistic level of Star Wars and any good James Cameron movie. Some might even question whether Gary Ross was the best choice to direct; after some reflection, my take is that Ross may have indeed been a very good choice, for reasons I’ll get into later. That said, the execution of the film was at times lackluster, particularly in the Wizard of Oz-like scenes at ‘The Capitol,’ where protagonist Katniss Everdeen (played brilliantly by Jennifer Lawrence) and Peeta (competently portrayed by Josh Hutcherson ) get their training and makeovers in prep for the Games.

Thematically, there’s a lot going on in The Hunger Games, and this is its real strength. The ideas of the film are powerful, multi-tiered and on the level of great satire. Not the funny kind of satire that we think of when we hear the term today, but the satire of Jonathan Swift and Gulliver’s Travels, which during its time was a great social commentary on human nature and the mechanics and folly of Empire. So much of the strength of Hunger Games must go back to the source material, and the author Suzanne Collins, who stated that she got the idea for the books after channel surfing and finding an eerie similarity between the Iraq War coverage and reality TV shows.

As for the books, I have to admit I have not read them, so cannot make a comparison to the film or comment on their literary merit. But again, as for the ideas of the film, and the way the themes were carefully and skillfully weaved together, this in itself is quite an accomplishment. On one level Hunger Games is certainly an anti-war film, and gets into the mechanics of how wars are bought, sold and packaged to a manipulated populace. But because there is no real ‘enemy’ to fight in Hunger Games, but rather the Game is depicted as a ‘punishment’ for ‘past sins’ of the rebellion, we venture into some pretty interesting thematic territory over and above your standard anti-war message. In this sense the film transcends themes of war and dissects how elites control their subjects in modern societies.  As such, Panem’s ‘Capitol’ (the Capital city of the futuristic dystopia of Panem) serves as a proxy for the Pentagon, the Vatican, the US Capitol, Las Vegas, New York, London and Shanghai all rolled into one.

The idea of the war ‘game’ (which the film is modeled after – i.e., a military war game or a reality game show) serves a multi-leveled social device, some stated but most of it unstated and hidden. The stated part is that wars bring unity; the unstated part is that older generations manipulate, coerce and/or draft the young into an effort that they may or may not want to play a part in and certainly have no responsibility in creating. The social drama is played out and serves as a mechanisms for social cohesion for the top 1%, who view war as a spectacle or method of ‘penance’ (debt with interest?) of the ‘bad’ or ‘flawed’ or ‘weak’ people who must depend on them (when in reality the reverse is the case), and coercion to the 99%, who see war as a way to ‘serve with pride’ and/or ‘win the prize’ in the case of economic warfare, gambling and/or winning the lotto. The 99% are also, importantly, motivated by fear and under the boot of an oppressive police state who fascinates them with their power and prestige: hence the word fascism as it arises from fascination with power.

To go a little further with ‘one percent’ theme, in the case of the neo-feudal Panem,  the ‘Capitol’ could just as aptly be named the ‘Capital’ in that it is the requirements of Capitalism that keep it humming and give it purpose. It is a city of aristocrats, costumed appropriately, and all under the gilded elegance of a techno-fascistic state. The dangers of technology and the media manipulation to fuel a story is not new (you can think of The Truman Show) but the way The Hunger Games fits so well into the current social moment, with Occupy Wall Street (and others) again about to hit the streets in protest, makes the film’s context as powerful as its storytelling.

That  repeated motto of the Games ‘may the odds be in your favor’ is of course a pun on ‘may the Gods be in your favor,’ and alludes to a Las Vegas motif, but also to that of the casino capitalism that we’ve all bought into hook line and sinker. Now this is where I’ll veer from the normal purview of the film critic, most of whom will not venture into this thematic territory, or have not pondered it very deeply. For outside of the anti-war and social control elements also mentioned, the film is also a critique on how economics plays so neatly into our media and war spectacles, much the same way they did during the Coliseum of the Roman Empire (with characters aptly named Caeser Flickerman and Seneca Crane).

The casino mentality showcased in The Hunger Games contrasts itself to other means of social organization that are effectively labeled as ‘socialistic’ by many in this country. I often find it amazing how we accept the organization of mega-corporations, give them personhood status, allow them to donate millions to political campaigns, and yet in general call any attempt of working people to unite (or gain common benefit) ‘socialistic.’ I’m sure there will be a commentator or two that will say that Hunger Games has a socialist tinge to it (although others will argue just as strongly the film promotes an Ayn Rand type of rugged individualism).

Regardless, the film’s power is that it displays the potential for a neo-feudal corporate world where the corporate interests of the top 1% are so intertwined with the political elites that they become indistinguishable. Many would argue in fact that we are already there, and Hunger Games is really not just about where we are headed, but rather a first class satire on our current situation, which in many ways is just as de-humanizing as what is depicted in The Hunger Games.

Another important theme in the film is that of ‘wounds.’ For while the film is fairly bloodless and restrained in its depiction of violence, it is quite visual in depicting its results. This may be why Gary Ross was selected as the film’s director, for he is much more of a ‘soft’ portrayer of human realities and emotions than an action film director (Ross’ past credits include Big, Lassie and Seabiscuit). While I personally ponder how Hunger Games might have been a masterpiece with a John Boorman (Deliverance) at the helm, nonetheless the harder edge that Boorman would have given it might have detracted from a certain audience.

This emphasis on wounds and the healing of wounds is both a very feminine and human perspective that shows the consequences of violence in counter-balance to any glorification. I find it ironic that a film such as The Passion of the Christ was much more bloody than Hunger Games, and yet I’m sure that some ‘family friendly’ reviewers of Hunger Games might whole-heartedly endorse their children see The Passion with its much higher level of blood-letting. Not to berate religious reviewers or The Passion (which I believe had a lot of merit) but when you hear criticisms of how Hunger Games is too ‘humanistic’ and that this is a negative connotation, a reviewer such as myself takes note.

I would only ask that the broad range of viewers reflect on what the term humanism actually means.  For I believe that the concept of humanism must evolve to be much more inclusive than we’ve seen in the past; for example, I would call Ben Hur a humanistic film even though it explores many Christian themes, while at the same time labeling more ‘secular’ films such Norma Rae and Thelma and Louise as equally humanistic. (A much-needed re-definition of media humanism can be found here).

As for Hunger Games, have other films treaded similar territory before? Certainly. In the realm of science fiction we’ve seen The Running Man, Roller Ball, Death Race 2000, and (as mentioned) The Truman Show, to name a few. But because our current social reality is mapping ever closer to what is depicted in The Hunger Games, and the efforts of  mainstream media are generally focused on keeping people in a cynical and profitable place, that this film (coming notably from a Canadian company, Lionsgate), compounded with the context of the times, becomes ever more powerful because of these elements outside the screen.

And it is those elements outside the theater where the real Hunger Games are being played out. The question is will we do something about inequality? Will social media serve as our own kind of ‘mocking jay’ (Katniss’ emblem and practical means of communicating in the forest) where we use organic forms of communication to outwit the 1% and convince them that we can forge something better? Do films matter enough, or really, do we matter enough, to want to change the fabric of the system to something more equitable? The Powers That Be hope that Hunger Games can serve as a release valve for festering social anger and that people really do feel ultimately powerless to change the system. Others, such as myself, believe that films like Hunger Games, and perhaps others to come (Ron Howard will apparently produce a new version of 1984) can serve to inspire our young people — indeed all of us — to shape a better world.

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D.R. Thompson is an award-winning filmmaker, playwright and essayist. His latest book of essays, A WORLD WITHOUT WAR, is now available from Del Sol Press. You can email Thompson at info@nextpix.com.

Become a Weapon of Mass Compassion – 2014

February 10, 2012 in Culture | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , | 1 comment

We started nextPix over 12 years ago, and have worked since then to promote and produce human-centered films and media that focus on issues that matter to a lot of people. It’s been an inspiring experiment.

Some films, like Tibet in Song, Clouds, Singing the Bones, or Bringing Tibet Home involved us as producers and/or funding sources in a significant way. Through our firstPix grant program, we’ve also supported a wide array of films that have addressed a broad range of topics, from domestic abuse (Recovering Irma) to the death penalty (Trials of Darryl Hunt) to indigenous rights (We Women Warriors) to outsourcing surrogate motherhood (Made in India) and corporate sweatshops (Sweat) – a total of over 16 feature films either produced or supported. Happily, many of the films have done well and screened at major festivals such as Sundance, Movies that Matter, Hot Docs, Chicago Documentary, New York Independent, Cinema for Peace and many others. Many have won awards; many have received national and international recognitionand distribution. But most importantly the films have all positively touched the lives of both the people who made them and saw them.

Since we have a ‘for benefit’ business model, where we devote a significant amount of effort toward producing, developing and supporting humanitarian-themed media, we’d like to sell you a good product intended to improve the world.

The product is Don Thompson’s book A WORLD WITHOUT WAR.

By supporting A WORLD WITHOUT WAR you spread a good message, help fund good projects, and become part of the effort to create peace.

Until May 1st, the publisher of A WORLD WITHOUT WAR (Del Sol Press) will generously allow for 100% of the net proceeds from the e-book version to go directly to nextPix.

You can take action NOW. What we propose is that at the grassroots level many, many people (meaning you) can buy and support A WORLD WITHOUT WAR, and that can make all the difference in the world.

We’re true believers in intention. And if we all intend A WORLD WITHOUT WAR it can happen.

We thank you in advance!

Don Thompson and Diana Takata

Click here to buy A WORLD WITHOUT WAR e-book version. Be sure to LIKE on Amazon, then positively review it and share!

If you don’t own a Kindle you can download the Kindle reader here (various platforms) for FREE.

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Please share this far and wide so you can be a WEAPON OF MASS COMPASSION and A WORLD WITHOUT WAR can become a reality.

The Descendants

December 18, 2011 in Reviews | Tags: , , , , , | 1 comment

If there’s anything true about film it’s that there really are no rules – the only rule is: does it work? This rule is on display very well in The Descendants, Alexander Payne’s adaptation of the Kaui Hart Hemming’s book of the same name. Fortunately, in the case of this film the answer is yes.

That said, a couple of ‘rules’ of scriptwriting are broken with relish. First, ‘don’t overuse narration.’ The film opens with a lengthy ‘tell don’t show’ narration by George Clooney (playing Matthew King) that outlines his current predicament: the fact that his wife is in a coma, he has more responsibility for his children than he can handle, and in tandem has to oversee the sale of his family’s land trust on Kauai to a group of investors — all with the requisite family politics.  It is within this very tragic, real, and hilariously portrayed stew that The Descendants unveils itself.

The second rule even more liberally broken is that characters should have a clear motivation, usually a single overarching motivation that drives them.  Now I’m sure I’ll get a script consultant or two who would disagree with me on this point, but the major breakthrough of this film is that the motivation of George Clooney’s character changes as often as the weather over Princeville, Kauai. He is at once angry, vindictive, forgiving, mature, selfless and victimized, often concurrently.

Interestingly, this film ends up being much better at depicting how human beings actually behave than any reality show out there. Reality shows, for the most part, are fairly well ‘scripted’ by the producers in terms of the myths that they project and the lines of behavior they coach the ‘stars’ to exhibit. The result is often a flawed mirror of behavior in that the situations that the reality stars are placed in are patently false and unrealistic.  In its own beguiling way, The Descendants shows why artists and scripted material remain relevant as they continue to be effective messengers and fulfill the important role of storytellers in society  — i.e.,  artists that communicate to the group in such a way as to maintain social cohesion and/or critique social ills. As such, a fictional reality can often be more ‘real’ than reality itself.

How so?  In but one example, the film shows how our current crop of American children seem to have very little fear of their parents and are often vocal in their opinions aimed at their parents on  subjects (such as masturbation and pornography) that would have been inappropriate twenty years or so. I know if I said such things to my father when I was a kid he would have cold-cocked me in the mouth, much like George Clooney’s wife’s father cold-cocked the insensitive Sid (hilariously played by Nick Krause) for making fun of his wife’s Alzheimer’s. These generational differences are rarely, if ever, depicted in any ‘reality’ show out there, although the Disney Channel might hint at them in an obtuse way. While TV series such as The Cosby Show used to effectively reconcile (although some might say gloss over) generational, class and racial differences, this type of programming has fallen out of vogue.

Because of these well-drawn generational schisms, The Descendants will go down as one of the few modern films in recent memory that deals effectively with these differences and outlines the issues of discipline, permissiveness, bitterness, shallowness,  and, ultimately connectedness that binds not only families, but generations of families that have specific responsibilities to leave their children in as good of shape as their parents left them.  As a kind of inverted Dallas for our modern, liberal age, The Descendants removes the guile, revenge and hatred evident in most generational melodramas and replaces it with humor, pathos and the occasional bruised ego. Finally, a message of spiritual reconciliation trumps all feelings of ill will.

Another ‘issue’ dealt with in The Descendants is one of class, although obliquely. I would draw a comparison here to Jane Austen, whose class-conscious works often were indirectly aimed at creating a feeling of reconciliation between the upper and lower classes (usually through marriage) and to as a result create the sense of a common human bonding and ‘Britishness.’ While George Clooney as Matt is distinctly a member of the 1%, he is also a human being filled with a kaleidoscope of emotions. He is pulled, as most modern Americans are, in a multitude of directions at once, and at the same time trying to live in a way that is consistent with his values.  Showing a ‘one-percenter’ in this light is interesting in this current time of rampant protests. On one hand it is completely accidental, on the other hand it is the kind of humanism that is acceptable to those with money and is (again obliquely) an attempt to create a sense of a common humanity, bound in this case to a land called America.  However, I would say it isn’t accidental in this sense: the one-percent  who own the production companies that make films like The Descendants would find the depiction of the King family very familiar in terms of the broad situation that combines privilege and pain. As such, the content of The Descendants is very much non-threatening to the powers that be, and thus acceptable to all classes.

There are a series of stellar performances in The Descendants — including Mr. Clooney’s — that will likely land the cast several awards in the upcoming season. Along with Clooney, Shailene Woodley (Alexandra), Amara Miller (Scottie) and Nick Krause (Sid)  form a perfect ensemble.  Moreover, the film’s message of class, familial and generational unity and reconciliation will undoubtedly continue to allow it to do quite well at the box office as people cling to the film’s much needed message of forgiveness and hope for the future.  For this the filmmakers and producers deserve our congratulations and every accolade they receive.

Super 8

June 19, 2011 in Reviews | Tags: , , , , , , | 1 comment

With Super 8, director J.J. Abrams reveals himself not only as quite the commercial filmmaker, but a sociologist as well. Obviously an individual of broad interests, Abrams’ film is a textbook example of how to make a popular film that appeals to a wide constituency while maintaining a certain degree of artistic integrity.  As my former film school professor Howard Suber has long indicated, creating memorable, popular films is more akin to a political campaign than anything else. Success is measured by bringing everyone in under a large tent, with the vote being box office appeal. With Abrams, we see constituency building at its most clever, and yet without an ounce of insincerity, or at least the perception of such.  Abrams both reminds us of a past, pre-1980’s cinema that effectively built such constituencies while not insulting the intelligence of a more sophisticated audience.  As such, he can hook people like me (an adult middle-aged male), but also teenage girls — no easy feat in today’s world with its jaded studio execs whose demographers and marketers have convinced them such things are impossible. It takes someone like producer Steven Spielberg to push Super 8 through unscathed, and I’ll bet one of his main roles was to help Abrams maintain the purity of his vision.  Also, the budget on this film ($50 million) is relatively low compared to some Comic Book films that have A-listers attached. Super 8 has no stars;  the star is the story.

Some could accuse Abrams of being derivative. To be sure, there is a lot of influence going on in this film. First, and most mentioned by critics, is Steven Spielberg, whose footprint is all over the film both in terms of style and content; but most would agree the Spielberg emulated is not the Spielberg of present, but of pre-Reagan, 1970’s America, where the action of the film takes place. That Spielberg was melding the humanism of 70’s American filmmakers such  as Coppola, Scorsese, Bogdonavich and Cassavetes with the genre showmanship of the American Studio system.  As such, Super 8 reflects more the Spielberg of Close Encounters and E.T., and less the Spielberg of Duel, Jaws, or War of the Worlds.  During the early seventies, Coppola and company were very much influenced by the European art films out of the fifties and sixties, primarily from the French New Wave and Italian Neorealist masters. So from a very circuitous and long view perspective, Super 8 is all about carrying forward humanistic European sensibilities in cinema that arose post World War II, primarily from auteur filmmakers such as De Sica, Godard, Truffaut and Rossellini. Truffaut (who starred in Close Encounters) in particular had a strong impact on Spielberg.

What Spielberg has always done well is family relationships, and Abrams handling of the family is 100% Spielberg. In Super 8, familial relationships take front and center, and become the driving force behind the action.  As with Close Encounters and Jaws, the angst of the central adult male is very evident as a motivational prod that both deepens the character and the emotional payoff when the eventual familial bonding arrives. What is humanistic about this film is that themes of reconciliation rank high; that is, what brings people together rather than what separates them. Moreover, this same theme is carried into the Sci-Fi, galactic realm.  If you are a UFO and expolitical follower, this stuff is dead serious, which is why Arthur C. Clark felt that Close Encounters of the Third Kind was the most important film ever made, and would likely rank Super 8 right up there with that film in terms of its importance as a social artifact. The primary theme becomes one of compassion, not alien-squashing hatred. It is compassion, derived from the familial struggle and bonding, that reaches out to the wider world past the nuclear family and into the cosmos.

Another important reference for Abrams is Stephen King, specifically Stand By Me (based on a short story by King and directed by Rob Reiner) and IT. In IT, the group of boys whose central muse was a young girl who helped motivate them to battle the evil entity, much as Alice (beautifully played by Elle Fanning) becomes the muse to the boys in Super 8.  Alice becomes the central, feminine voice of the film, and the purpose behind the boys’ quest.  It is her innocence, beauty and sensitivity that drive them forward, not the adrenaline rush of killing an enemy, as is standard in video games and comic book movies galore. This is very much counter to a military mindset, which often tends to see everything without an American flag stitched onto it as an enemy. Thus the film fits in with a long line of anti-military films that arose out of the Vietnam era, and why its placement in a 70’s America makes so much sense. It is also why the film also makes sense in a war-weary America of today.

Soon after it was the eighties, Reagan was on the scene, Conan the Barbarian was hitting the screens, Superman II was released, and the rest is cinematic history in terms of the slow devolution of humanism in modern films. How easily we forget that E.T., Close Encounters, The Godfather, M*A*S*H, Patton, Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore,  The Last Picture Show and Apocalypse Now all packed houses in their day just a substantially as The Green Hornet and Transformers.  Have audiences changed that much, or are other exigencies and agendas also at play?

Outside of Abrams and Spielberg, who best understands all this human story  and constituency building stuff is Pixar. With J.J. Abrams and Super 8, we see the potential for these kinds of stories to make their way back into the mainstream cineplex with live human characters, not animated Avatars. Let’s  hope there’s more of the same on the way.

Digital Morality

June 12, 2011 in Culture | Tags: , , , | Leave a comment

We live in an age of technology, and everyday we interface with technology more and more. In fact, many of us interface more with technology than we do with people. We engage in online chats, comments, feedback, emails, texting, computer games, movies, cable, television – the list is endless. We live in a mediated space that is corporate owned. Ostensibly, we are wired into this digital space for our benefit, to allow us to connect with our fellow human beings more efficiently and effectively. But is something lost in the process? Are we becoming different as human beings as a result?

I will argue we are changing, and that interfacing with so many machines and computers is molding us in their image. The values of these technical devices are beginning to trump human values. We tend to value speed, efficiency, accuracy, promptness, and utility over patience, generosity, and empathy. Rather than machines serving mankind, we wind up serving the machines instead, or changing our behavior and ethics to suit their reality. As a result, we admire the latest iPad more than the greatest acts of altruism.

Our country’s recent financial struggles highlight this new digital morality. Rather than being guided by ‘the golden rule’ where we should ‘do unto others as we would have them do unto us’, many of our financial institutions and other businesses take another, more self-serving tack. The credo becomes instead ‘do whatever is legally allowed and that provides the company the greatest benefit/profit’. Computers, designed for efficiency, are implicitly guided by this same morality; the computer’s task, ‘business rules’ and workflow take precedence over a broader question of the impact of that task on the wider world. The narrow, legalistic, rule-based and specialized world of the computer becomes the moral space not only of our businesses, but our lives. Lacking a more holistic view, we are concerned for our narrow, specialized lives and their narrow, specialized concerns. Our morning routines mimic the work flows and processes we strive to perfect at work. We settle into these routines as if to protect us and shield us from something, and become as numb as the machines that do not feel or think about their particular objective. They simply perform the routine, fulfill the task, and repeat.

When we judge, we judge harshly. Software, which will ‘crash’ based on a single typo in a computer program, becomes the emblem of our judgment of others. The recent fall from grace of Representative Weiner is one example. It was a ‘typo’ in a text message that ‘caused the chain of events’ that led to his fall. As such, single failures tend to prove disastrous for otherwise good people. While Representative Weiner may deserve his fall from grace, we take this same kind of morality too far when we judge people based on a single action out of context and do not look at the wider picture. We don’t ask: ‘who is the judge’? Instead, we assume there is some pervasive, mass morality where everyone uniformly dislikes certain behavior and avoids that behavior with puritanical zeal. Is this really the case? I am doubtful. We will find instead that we are all flawed, and none can cast the first stone.

Again, we view people’s actions as software – where the single flaw causes the whole system to crash. But people are not software, and shouldn’t be judged as such. Our jails are filled with people who probably would be better off in rehabilitation, being forgiven and re-integrated into society rather than judged for ‘flaws’ that are as much the result of systemic, societal problems as their own doing.

The machine or computer task, isolated and specialized, becomes the human being, isolated and responsible for their actions, and devoid of context – all while plugged into their digital space. The infallible ‘perfect’ ones who do not fall into the trap of ‘error’ can judge those that commit crimes and are jailed when truth be told, a more humane approach would work better over the longer haul. And this attitude reaches much wider than the criminal and deep into our personal lives. Often these ‘perfect’ ones are not the most empathetic, but the ones with the best credit scores, whose efficiency at paying their bills makes them somehow ‘better’ than the ‘failures’ who have, perhaps due to illness or other misfortunes, allowed their credit ratings to lapse.

We live in rows of houses where neighbors more often than not do not communicate. The suburb becomes not so much a community as a compartmentalized, specialized human chicken coops. With many of these houses financially underwater, the people in them feel more trapped than ever. Terrified of losing their credit rating, they keep on plugging away at the routines of their lives, hoping their will be an exit and praying they don’t fall ill or lose their job.

Our children often interface more with computer games then with other children. The values of these games are of domination, control, and aggression. Cooperation, empathy, and collaboration are the furthest values in mind to the creators of video games. Our children, immersed in a ‘squash the bug’ mentality, take this morality out into the wider world. The answer to all problems is to ‘kill the enemy’ – fix the problem by eliminating the dehumanized ‘other’ who is at the heart of our unhappiness.

Am I being to harsh? I am certainly emphasizing the problems over and above the reality, which is much more diverse and balanced than what I portray here. But I do this to make a point, and I hope you see that the trends I’m pointing out are very real and very much leading us toward a society that could, within a hundred years, be completely unrecognizable as human culture.

Do we want a future of hybrid robot-humans? That is where we are heading. If we want to stop these trends, the only answer to this may not be more and more machine values with their digital morality. The answer may be to rediscover our humanity.

Deconstructing Malick’s ‘Tree Of Life’

June 1, 2011 in Reviews | Tags: , , , , | 7 comments

Seeing Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life was in a sense a return, because I had my film debut about ten years ago prior in the same lower east side New York City neighborhood where I wound up seeing Tree of Life this past week. Since both Malick and I seem to be inspired by a similar vision of film, and since both of us tol-002
(apparently) trace much of that back to Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni, it was almost as if I was watching an extension of Antonioni – as if Malick’s film was indeed another branch of an ever-growing tree.  While I’m not sure if Malick has ever seen my own Antonioni-inspired Clouds,  I found it striking that we came to similar conclusions about life and the expression of life through art, albeit via completely different paths.

As such, seeing Tree of Life was deeply personal and made me feel somewhat vindicated about the artistic choices in my own work – whether that be in film or the criticism thereof. With Tree of Life, Malick is expressing very much what I propose as an alternative direction in film style in an essay titled Peace As Style, where I discuss Antonioni as being the precursor to such a style.

In but one example, Malick effectively uses the ambiguity of sound and then later unveils the source of that sound in a kind of slow reveal that links the sound to a particular feeling or motif in such a way that he evokes mystery and awe, not the hyperventilating stimulation so often the norm today in film. Antonioni was extremely effective at the clever use of ambiguity to create a sense of mystery, and Malick, apparently inspired by Antonioni’s Zabriski Point, uses wind chimes to allude to the mystery of sex to which the young boy (played by Hunter McCracken) is slowly being revealed and later shamefully tries to rid himself by throwing the nightgown in the river. Once the source of the sound is seen (the wind chimes), and the boy steals the night-gown from his fantasy woman’s house, we don’t hear the sound again.

[As a side note, the nightgown scene has prompted more internet searches than any other I know of for this film, and apparently evokes deep, unresolved emotions. Suffice it to say many people are captured by the mystery of the scene and don’t understand the boy’s subsequent reaction. To me, he is clearly ashamed of creating a sexual fetish of the nightgown. He tries to hide the gown at first, then washes it down the river — an attempt to dissolve his guilt and shame into an overwhelming nature that washes away all sins and purifies his conscience as a result. I believe the scene essentially depicts the boy’s baptism into sexually-aware manhood.  As such, the nightgown evolves from a fetish to a sacred baptismal shroud.]

Ambiguity, used sparingly by most filmmakers today, becomes the central stylistic choice in Malick’s Tree of Life.  While most directors and producers are so afraid to alienate or offend an audience who, according to conventional wisdom, can only take things if spelled out literally, Malick assumes his audience is intelligent, and can follow his meandering, poetic connections.

Another example of the effective use of sound is the peaceful and alluring sound the ocean, which bookends the film – beginning with the ‘spirit image’ the beach scene at the end, where the various characters meet to reconcile in a timeless, meditative state. All of this stuff is so counter to the normal fodder we are fed on television and film that it is extremely gratifying to find the critical response to Tree of Life to be so favorable, although the film apparently did receive some booing at its Cannes premiere (as did Antonioni with some of his films). The film did win the top prize at Cannes, which also helped assuage the critics. My challenge to Fox Searchlight is to go as wide as possible with this film; they might be surprised by the outcome, particularly among a Christian audience.

Tree of Life is built on the use of motifs, used brilliantly with sound and source slowly revealed, cyclic re-occurrence, the grand scale of time being interleaved with the present moment. Malick’s particular approach, at least in this film, is more akin to music than the Hollywood style that traces its roots back to D. W. Griffith, kinetic editing and The Great Train Robbery. Instead, Malick seems to draw his inspiration from the Bible, surrealists (Bunuel and Dali), Italian neo-realist filmmakers (Fellini and Antonioni), existential science fiction films (Tarkovsky and Kubrick) and the literature of William Faulkner and James Joyce. Tree of Life is a grand amalgam of sometimes contradictory influences, including an effusive orchestration from Smetana’s The Moldau, and yet reaching beyond these influences even while honoring their undeniable presence.

It is a testament to the encyclopedic scope of the film, one can find various critics not only responding in completely different ways, but referring to completely different sets of (assumed) influences that Malick brought to his film.  As such, the film is a Rorschach test of sorts, and one can take from it multiple readings, which I’m sure is Malick’s intent, and shows how powerful his multi-layered ambiguity can be as a storytelling device.

To turn to the thematic elements of Tree of Life, I have written in the SolPix webzine and blog about the need for a more ‘humanistic’ media and film and even elaborated further to use the term ‘spiritual humanism.’ Malick’s film is, I would say, a spiritually humanistic film for several reasons. First, he deals with the subject of the origins and nature of violence and compassion and their relationship to human choice. Second, he seeks a balance between nature and mankind’s desire to control nature. Third, he sees reconciliation as the answer to questions of meaning and happiness. Finally, he sees something binding all these threads, or branches, of life together (even an extra-human aspect): love. And this love compels the tree to grow ever outward from its branches. From a biblical perspective, the tree is also a source of knowledge. But the overall energy and essence that drives this movement of life is a love that Malick sees shimmering through the light of his images and characters, of nature, of far-flung galaxies, of the extra-dimensional ‘non-physical’ – in short,  the entirety of life itself.

While it is generally uncomfortable to discuss an extra-human love in a culture where our obligatory ‘love you’s’ are generally restricted to our close familial ties, if we are to believe Malick, the force of love is quite large and behind everything we see in the natural world and beyond. Call this force ‘God’ or whatever name you will, it is tangible as long as we make it so. It is this existential choice to, in essence, choose and create an alternative to a cold universe, that takes Mr. Malick beyond Antonioni, who generally only saw despair in his landscapes, and very little hope. From a philosophical perspective, this probably puts Malick closer to the Christian existentialism of Kierkegaard and further from the absurdism and alienation of Camus, who would find better company with Antonioni.

In terms of compassion, it is apparent that Malick sees compassion as one choice among many. This is why the dinosaur scene was so pivotal and important. He is showing us that there is a primal, non-rational (or proto-rational) choice involved in treating others compassionately; that this choice in a sense comes from beyond us, yet does nonetheless express itself in daily human decisions. It is the same choice Mr. Obrien’s children make when deciding not to hit their father (played in a tour de force performance by Brad Pitt), even as he chides them to do so while he teaches them to box and defend themselves.

As for nature, the imposition of the (male) architecture over the (feminine) natural world is, apparently, the wider tragedy of human existence to date, and a theme clearly traceable to Antonioni’s early works.  It is the exploration of this ‘architectural’ theme that makes Sean Penn’s scenes so important (some critics have suggested they should have been cut). It is the dwarfing of the natural landscape when compared to mankind’s architected space – seen through the modern scenes – through which something is lost. This pattern happens as one chooses the path of ‘nature’ (in the negative sense of the will to dominate) over ‘grace’, according to the preamble of the film. The grown son (moodily played by Sean Penn)  finds himself dwarfed by his own creation, but he is unhappy because there is no love in his architecture, only utility. He longs for the love of the natural world and of his mother (delicately played by Jessica Chastain) for which he has destroyed in an egoistic attempt at control as he attempts to overcome the (perceived) failings of his father.

Thus the decidedly ‘male’ perspective finds its limits; for on a grander, larger scale, it is mystery – one might say the feminine – still reigns supreme. We cannot ‘know’ reality by the rational mind, just as the natural world cannot ultimately be ‘tamed’ by architecture and science. In truth, we live by grace, or the force of will, depending on your perspective and your choice. But clearly the individual will cannot control the larger, herculean forces of nature. We could, for example, be wiped out in an instant by an errant asteroid. And even if we controlled all the asteroids, some other, larger calamity would rear its head. Thus the great winds of time and space, of galaxies and stars, which provide the context for mankind’s ‘will’ – a will that in an attempt to impose itself on nature does so only with a certain folly and arrogance, for nature is, and always has been, the wider context through which we live. Any attempt to control nature in the broadest sense is futile, and if some semblance of this does happen only occurs through the mastery achieved through the reconciling power of love — a process Malick refers to as ‘grace.’

Further, Malick seems to argue that love is the natural evolutionary path for humanity. Mankind, stubborn to prove otherwise, continually tries to control through his will (and the proxy servants of science and technology) what cannot ultimately be controlled, but rather must be surrendered to and accepted in order to find peace. Without this surrendering there is only conflict, only suffering. So it is the binding nature of love and reconciliation, as seen at the end of the film as the characters reconcile in timelessness on the beach, returning to the ocean from which they arose – it is here that Malick beckons us toward a path that is separate from the contentiousness of domination and control and toward a more ‘New Testament’ vision of acceptance, surrender and compassion, and it is through that path that Malick asserts we will find happiness. And again, we are compelled in this direction by the life force itself.

As a bit of personal background, Malick had just released Days of Heaven when I was in film school in the early eighties. At that time I was studying European film, with a focus on Antonioni.  Zabriski Point, Blow Up, The Passenger – all of these films by Antonioni were fresh on my mind. It was nearly twenty years later (in 1998) before Malick would return to film, and nearly twenty years later (in 2000) before I would return to film after a long stint on a different career path outside of film and the arts. Now, decades after the French and American New Wave, Malick returns to re-assert the power of those film artists who apparently impacted many of us so deeply, and pay homage to the artistic territory they staked out — to extend the branches of the tree they and his life represent. Malick, as a cinophile and philosophy teacher of a certain age, was certainly impressed in his youth by many of the same directors I was: Kubrick, Antonioni, Godard, Fellini, and so on. It was these (mostly) Europeans, who also had such an impact on the likes of Francis Coppola and Martin Scorsese, who molded my own opinions about the potential for film and film language, and, moreover, how to create a uniquely American aesthetic that nonetheless pays homage to these great European masters who offered us an alternative to the studio film and style. Malick continues that tradition with Tree of Life. It’s not that all films must conform and be like Tree of Life, but certainly our cultural palette must and should include many more films of a similar aesthetic.

Malick, who began his career in the early seventies (with Badlands) at roughly the same time as Martin Scorsese, became in a sense our lost master. Again, after Days of Heaven he wasn’t seen again for 20 years. Thankfully, he has returned to us in full glory. This is a glory that he himself would eschew; for the glory he sees is not so much in himself as an artist, but as a vessel of the beauty of life that he sees around him, and a translator and messenger to us of that beauty. While many of our most financially successful filmmakers are more architects than artists – technicians under the employ and influence of more utilitarian forces – Mr. Malick is an artist and a teacher, and, miraculously, one now allowed to express himself in a fairly unrestricted way. Malick may have given us more if he had the chance, but fortunately what we wind up with is his best, for that is what he seems to demand of himself.

We may look back on Mr. Malick’s recent work and see it as the beginning of a re-invigorated American art cinema. Suffice it to say that Mr. Malick sees the world through a different, more compassionate lens than the (currently) dominant forces in society and in film. He is leading us toward a new sensibility, and we should follow.

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Don Thompson is a producer/filmmaker and essayist. You can visit nextPix here.

Toward A Humanistic Media

December 19, 2010 in Culture | Tags: , , , , , , , | 5 comments

Note: This article was updated in November, 2016 and was originally published in 2010.

When starting nextPix in 2000 one of my personal goals was to form a company that produced and promoted ‘humanistic media.’ Exactly what that means has been a work in progress, as the term humanism itself can take on a variety of meanings depending on who is defining the term.

Humanists, in the traditional sense, are secular in their outlook. They believe that ‘people are the center of all things’ and that scientific rationality, not religion, superstition or spirituality, offer the best answers for humanity’s ills. What I have proposed as defining ‘humanistic media’ is different from the purely secular in that it can and should include what might be called a spiritual or New Humanism as laid out by the late Mario Rodriquez Cobos or the ‘common human values‘ supported by the Dalai Lama in laying the groundwork for World Peace.  Moreover, such a humanism can be different from ‘faith-based’ themes that while often inspiring have narrow definitions of what kinds of media messages can and should be purveyed, generally involving the acceptance of a Judeo-Christian god.  The tenets of such a ‘New Humanism’ include:

  • An acceptance of the intrinsic value of all human beings
  • A realization that humanity is interdependent and shares common values
  • Understanding that there should be a balance between social and individual needs
  • Accepting personal responsibility for the social and physical environment and choosing accordingly
  • Seeing non-violence and reconciliation as a world view that can lead mankind toward peace both individually and collectively.

To many secular humanists, this broader definition of humanism is an impossibility. These traditionalists believe humanists should only engage in a rational, scientific process to eliminate the darkness of superstition and religious dogma that has in so many cases burdened humankind. Ideas of spirit do not typically fit within such a framework.

The problem is this. If misinterpreted, a scientific, materialistic perspective can lead to a nihilistic view that sees human value systems as ultimately futile. For science, because people are seen through the lens of physical processes, some conclude no value system exists outside of the desire of humankind to construct it. To the nihilist, morality is not ‘natural’ but may even stand against natural law, which to the nihilist is often simply the survival of the fittest, motivated by a desire to dominate and overcome nature. To these people, power is the only defining element of life; if emotional attachments are allowed, they are generally familial and sentimental. However, the danger of nihilism is that it can and does lead us down the path, eventually, of social disintegration, as the moral dimension is eschewed for a strictly material view and social cohesion based on ethics, morality and the ‘golden rule’ dissolves. To be clear, it usually is not scientists who create these problems, but people who misinterpret science and see science and technology primarily as vehicles for gain.

In our modern era, nihilism often means that we throw the humanist baby out with the religious bath water. Close behind in the dustbin are nuance, the poetic and the beautiful. As we witness nihilism on parade within our recent economic meltdown (2008-2009), and the corruption apparently evident within the halls of finance, we see blatant examples of actions taken without a moral compass to guide them, or that moral compass is simply a legalistic frame where the individual or business man seeks only to adhere to the letter of the law (if we’re lucky), but sees no social obligation to his fellow human being outside of what he can get away with to exploit and/or manipulate people more effectively. Sometimes this exploitation and manipulation is assisted by the clever mis-use of technology. In the extreme, this literally results in an institutionalized pathology.   At best, the ‘meaningless becomes meaningful’ as so eloquently stated by one of the interviewees in the documentary film we co-produced with director Ngawang Choephel, Tibet in Song. At worst, corporate psychopaths prevail. If you think I’m making this up, feel free to read this recent article in the Journal of Business Ethics.

But how does this relate to Hollywood and the media? I would relate Wall Street to Hollywood in this sense. Both have constructed machines to make money that, over time, become self-fulfilling and self-generating. Just as some accuse ‘primary dealers’ on Wall Street of gaming an essentially high-tech closed system, so Hollywood Studios might be seen as gaming the system with special-effects laden blockbuster films that cater to a certain audience, trained one might say to think and feel in a certain way and respond to what is often essentially shallow sensationalism and sentimentality. Once trained, this audience returns like lemmings to the next hypnotic film in the lineup. It’s not unlike the Romans and the Coliseum. Was it always like this? No. We have devolved to the current situation over the last thirty years after making some progress in reaction to the immense destruction of World War II.

But is the current situation in media really that bad? To the crowds at the cineplex or millions of TV viewers, apparently not. And unlike the activities of some of our creative financial wizards, at least it is legal.  Who am I to spoil all the fun? However, over time, I would argue, there is a cultural corrosion that occurs. Why this occurs is that individuals are trained, from very young, to think and feel within a certain consumer framework that is shallow, selfish, lacks critical thinking, and imbues a general lack of empathy for anyone outside of one’s close ties. Moreover, media messages are generally defined within ‘heroic’ stories that are often a melodramatic mockery of the ideals of the hero as put forth in our Western tradition. Such a perversion of the notion of the hero, such a lack of empathy, such a narcissistic over-concern with the individual self and/or the myopic importance of the nuclear family over and above society as a whole, leads to a society that is unsustainable and will eventually fold in on itself in a dark spiral of self-destruction. If you doubt what I say, read the comments on many blogs. See the lack of empathy for the viewpoint(s) raised. See the anger, the hatred. Is this a society that can survive into the future?

Our young people, enveloped in video games, are urged to continue because, according to studies their skills are increased. Per a recent article on NPR’s website:

“…studies show that video gamers show improved skills in vision, attention and certain aspects of cognition. And these skills are not just gaming skills, but real-world skills. They perform better than non-gamers on certain tests of attention, speed, accuracy, vision and multitasking…”

Not a word here about being a better human being. In fact, the values described above seem more appropriate for a machine. Of course, we don’t value the inefficient and contradictory ‘human’ values; rather, it is the utilitarian ‘skills’ acquired for our businesses and military (obviously what is really important) that we value. And video games are certainly cheaper than college.

As for the movies, what may not survive our urge toward utilitarian values is the type of independent film that, as of late, generally expresses humanistic ideals. If funding becomes more difficult for independent film, humanistic voices in media will become fewer and fewer, at least in the mainstream media. And when we see humanistic messages, they are more likely to appear, ironically, in the cartoons from Pixar and Disney. All the better for Wall Street, because these images cannot be generated cheaply and must be controlled by major corporations. Human qualities are apparently expensive to create and only commercially viable when people are turned into digital avatars.

So what would be anti-humanist in its content?  In my mind, any film or story that promotes a villain or the ‘other’ as a ‘bug to be squashed’, while fun to the adolescent video gamer, may not be the best model for adult humanistic storytelling. But since our adolescent audiences are often key to modern cineplex, modern villains and the notion of a mythical evil that can be ‘terminated’ or ‘removed’ so that others can be ‘happy’ (translated to bonding sentimentally with their tribe) leaves us open, in my mind, to a fascistic mindset where we need an ‘enemy’ to unite us, be that a Jew, an Islamic terrorist, an Alien from another planet, an Orc in Middle Earth, or (for the Chinese government) a Tibetan Nun in a prison camp. In our politics, the political ‘other’, whether on the left or right, takes on the same anti-humanist attitude, with the hatred stemming from both sides reflecting no empathy whatsoever.

Perhaps this is just the nature of things. Perhaps I am too utopian and naively optimistic in the hope that people can and should live with empathy for one another, to have mutual respect for one another, and to value each human being equally. In other words, to see ourselves in the eyes of the other and to have a culture that expresses those ideals. While I might seem a little serious, these are serious times.  Perhaps even too serious for films to really matter any more – although I continue to hope that’s not the case. I’d like to think good films matter now more than ever. Our recent (2016) political turmoil tends to back this up.

I’ve attached below a link to a great blog debate by Dr. Cornel West and Dr. Robert George (both professors a Princeton) that, in my opinion, lays out the arguments for a spiritual (in this case Christian) humanism. There could also be a Buddhist Humanism and a Jewish Humanism and an Islamic Humanism. My point is not to covert, but to show the potential within human consciousness to come to a conciliatory stance that looks toward compassion, not endless conflict, as the answer to human ills.

I urge media people to consider these ideas and the give and take between the media and the mass audience. I urge media providers to have a sense of social responsibility to those that they promote their messages to. I urge us to move beyond an us/them framework and toward a ‘we’ framework that supports both justice and reconciliation – and will therefore support tolerance and forgiveness – a forgiveness that moves beyond the merely sentimental to the compassionate.

If we do not support this kind of media, be that within our news, our films, our books or our video games, we will continue to see society erode to the point where no compromise is possible, no unity is possible, and only force and fear are recognized as organizing principles of society.  Some people in our society might like it that way, but they are not wise in their conclusions.

In my estimation, we must obtain wisdom, and we as media providers can put into the mix of our media messages those that support justice with reconciliation and do not perennially polarize us into camps that cannot agree and cannot move forward into the future. While some may argue that ‘heroes and villians’ are the best framework for storytelling, there are numerous examples of humanistic film that have conflict but do not promote a simplistic us/them viewpoint of the world. Some of the films we consider humanistic can be found here.

Also, here is the link to the Cornel West/ Robert George debate. Dr. West explores some ideas and themes regarding ‘non-market values’ similar to those outlined in my play Tibet Does Not Exist as well as the nature of compassion as set forth by the Dalai Lama. You might also read the comments to the George/West debate, as they illuminate the head wind that any serious discussion of these topics can encounter. I personally would try to give the ideas a chance and listen, as academic and spiritual leaders like Cornel West and the Dalai Lama provide ideas that can offer an alternative to the endless wars, economic and social injustice, and lack of unity that we find today. Taken into media and art, they provide an alternative to nihilism, cynicism, and general lack of faith in our common future and instead give us a much-needed vision of hope.

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D.R. (Don) Thompson is a producer, playwright and essayist. This essay and others are included in his new book, A World Without War (Del Sol Press).