How 90 Minutes Can Change A Woman

Title: Cleo from 5 to 7

Rating: 4 Stars

This is another high ranking film from the Sight and Sound recent film survey that I’d never heard of. Released in 1962, it’s an early example from the French New Wave movement.

This is the story of Cleo, a young singer. She is nervously awaiting the results of a medical test for cancer. Taking place in basically real time (from 5:00 to 6:30), we see her as she meets with friends, lovers, and strangers.

That is really the plot. Although quite simple, we see Cleo undergo significant changes in that 90 minute period.

The film starts with her going to a tarot card reader to learn her fortune. Unfortunately, it does not bode well for her. Her final card is the death card. Although the fortune teller tries to reassure Cleo that this does not always mean death, Cleo is quite upset. After she leaves, she looks in a mirror, reassuring herself that even if she’s dying, that she’s still a beautiful woman.

She next meets her lover. He is in such a rush that he barely has time to kiss her. He says that he’s so busy that he can’t even spare time to go on vacation with her. She seems to be a pretty insignificant part of his very full life.

Songwriters come to visit her to pitch their next songs. It’s significant that she doesn’t even have control over her songs. She is just another product of the music business. Her career is just one more area in which she seems to have little control. Later she enters a café. She plays one of her songs on the jukebox and no one in the café recognizes her or even has a response to the song. It reinforces the shallowness of her career.

At some point, she removes her wig and changes clothes. Symbolically, it’s as if she abandons Cleo the singer and becomes Florence (her real name). In so doing, she begins to take control over her life. Towards the end of the film she meets a soldier that is at the end of his leave. They walk around slowly and have a meaningful conversation. They talk and listen to each other. They establish an emotional connection. Together they go to the hospital to get her test results. They meet the doctor. He tells her that she does have cancer but that she will be fine after a couple of months of chemotherapy. The film ends with Cleo and the soldier staring and smiling into each other’s eyes.

Several themes occur in this film. One is destiny and the fatalism that comes with feeling that destiny is unchangeable. Cleo believes in the truth of the cards. Witnessing another person dying actually is a bit of a relief because she can tell herself that the tarot card reader was referring to this accident.

Just like Jeanne Dielman, this is another example of a feminist film. At the beginning of the film she is the tool of men. Her lover barely has time for her. Her songwriters tell her what to sing. It’s only at the end of the film, after she has discarded the wig (symbolizing the artificial nature of her singing career), that she begins to fully realize herself as a woman and have a fully realized relationship with a man. It’s interesting that two of top fifteen films in the Sights and Sound film list have such an obvious feminist influence. Contrast that with the AFI top 100 films, which didn’t feature so much as even one female director.

The French New Wave had a huge impact on cinema in the late 1960s and the 1970s. I’ve written about this before, but the old studio system was in trouble during the 1960s. With the rise of television, there was much discussion regarding the future of cinema. The Hays Code was still in effect, severely limiting the subject matter of American films.

The thinking was that films needed to be epic and showy. Musicals and three hour films (or, best of all, three hour musicals), complete with an intermission, was seen as the solution. This was the era of The West Side Story, The Sound of Music, and Lawrence of Arabia. This era ended with a thud with the release of Dr Doolittle. Knowing that Cleo came out during the same time as these studio films show how innovative it was.

While the studios were flailing, there was a rise of rebel, fledgling filmmakers like Martin Scorsese and Peter Bogdanovich. They were watching the French New Wave films and learning that there was a different approach to film.

I have no idea if Scorsese was inspired by Cleo or not, but crowded, raw, unfiltered Paris is central to this film much like 1970s New York City was vital to Scorsese’s films.

Watching this film was like seeing an early prototype of the 1970s films that would later dominate many best film lists.

The Family That Serial Kills Together Stays Together

Title: Hell’s Half-Acre

Rating: 3 Stars

Not often, but I do occasionally venture into the true crime genre. I can’t remember now how I heard about this one.

The story is set in the 1870s in very rural Kansas. The Bender family set up a sparse, crude grocery store and basic lodgings near one of the few roads in the area. The mother and father are quiet and barely speak English. Their son John Jr spoke English well but had a regular nervous laugh. Their neighbors considered him simple. Their daughter Kate was considered to be somewhat of a local beauty with a personality that seemed to veer from pleasant to menacing.

Shortly after they moved to the area and built their house, people started disappearing. Because this was generally a lawless area, cattle rustlers were the suspected culprits. Pressure increased when the physician William York disappeared. He was the brother of Alexander York, a vigorous and politically connected man.

York set up an extensive search party. As various locals began to be questioned, the Benders were mentioned. The Benders were generally unsociable. John Jr’s odd behavior and the disquieting presence of Kate was enough to justify York’s visit to their homestead. Although the interview was unsettling (Kate suspiciously asked York to come back later without his men), York left. Later that night, the Bender family abandoned their homestead and fled to Texas.

When it was discovered that the Benders had left, the searchers came back to their homestead. After noticing fresh mounds of dirt in the orchard, they dug and began finding bodies. The Benders apparent method was to have a victim sit at their table in their cabin. Someone would then beat the victim over the head with a hammer. Ultimately, the victim’s throat would be slashed and the body dropped down through a trap door to a cellar, later to be buried. Although the number will never be known, the Benders were estimated to have killed at least a dozen people.

The discovery of the bodies launched a manhunt. Given the limited financial resources of Kansas and the general lawlessness of the Texas area that the Benders fled to, the search did not go well. In fact, it later turned out that, at one point, one of the searchers was in the same room as John Jr, but never having seen him, was not able to make the connection.

Over the years, there were various rumors about the Benders. Nearly twenty years after the crimes, two women were suspected of being the Bender women and were brought back to Kansas for trial. During the trial, affidavits were produced that proved that they were nowhere near Kansas when the crimes were committed. To this day, no one knows what happened to the Bender family.

The book can be thought of as comprising two parts. The first part covers a quick history of Kansas, the arrival of the Benders, a quick portrait of the murder victims, and the discovery of the bodies. The second half is the pursuit of the Benders.

Because there is so much more documentation, the first half of the book is much richer than the second. The second half, except for the trial of the two women, seems to be conjecture. This is often the problem when trying to write a narrative history around a remote historical event. The author reaches a point where there is simply not enough historical documentation to produce the level of detail required to produce a rich narrative history.

One of the more significant writers of this genre is David Grann. I think that I once remember him talking about his writing process. Imagine there is a sentence in his work that says something like, “On August 25th, 1889, there was a scent of orange and coffee in the air on the warm summer day”. For that one sentence, he consulted a weather history to get the temperature of the day, he consulted a fireman’s map to determine that a coffee roaster was nearby, and he found a daily newspaper that reported that an orange cart had been knocked over on that day. For that one seemingly innocuous sentence, he consulted three distinct sources to validate each fact implicit in that sentence.

Now imagine that he has to do that for all 300 or so pages of his work. The scale of this effort is impossible to imagine. The skill and craft to form a cohesive narrative out of all of these disparate sources is monumental.

Knowing that, I have to cast some suspicion on the veracity of this book. This book contains direct quotes, narrative flourishes, and behavioral quirks (eg Pa Bender regularly spitting off the back of wagon as they’re fleeing) that I can’t imagine has the documentation backing that a writer like Grann would require. Given that, this makes me wonder exactly how much of this is narrative history and how much is just plain old fashioned fiction. Since this is advertised as a narrative history, this confusion leads me to give this a lower rating.

I have to admit that, unknowing at the time that I chose to read this book, I actually do have a personal connection to this history. Independence Kansas (not to be confused with the birthplace of Harry Truman, Independence Missouri) is mentioned several times. In fact, this seems to cover the time when Independence was at its peak. Identified as the place to register land claims, it was apparently one of the more significant towns in the area. Independence was the birth place of my mother. Having visited it a couple of times, I can attest that it is now a sleepy little town that, for the last eighty years or so, is slowly losing population. It’s interesting to read about it during a time in which it was thriving.

I do find nineteenth century true crime history to be interesting. We’re always so wrapped up in our current time. When we read today’s bloody headlines we seem to yearn for those seemingly innocent days of yesteryear. Well, guess what? Those days weren’t so innocent. Independence Kansas in the 1870s is about as far as you can get from the streets of current big cities, but violence seemingly lurks everywhere.

The Mass Of Women Also Live Lives Of Quiet Desperation

Title: Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles

Rating: 5 Stars

On the recently released Sight and Sound film survey, this was voted the number one film. Yes, this awkwardly titled film beat out the likes of Vertigo and Citizen Kane.

If I was to give you the film’s elevator speech, it would be something along the lines of a widowed woman raising her son takes up prostitution to make ends meet. All is well until one day, immediately after having sex, she murders her client by stabbing him in the neck with a pair of scissors (spoiler alert for a nearly 50 year old film).

If I were to tell you this summary, what would you think? Would you think that it must be some kind of action hero film where her client was abusing her and she bravely defended herself to keep her child safe? Or are you thinking that it must be a sensitive, psychological, sociological study of the choices that a woman must make when confronted with the very few choices that society has to offer a woman in distress?

Well, it’s none of those. What if I were to tell you that it’s a near three and a half hour film? That the entire film consists of long takes from a single shot camera? That the film only has five named characters (and I’m being generous when I say named, because three of the characters are named first client, second client, and third client and we only know Jeanne’s name because we hear her read a letter out loud to her son (the fifth character) from her sister)? That the film is nearly silent (the three clients might say twenty words collectively and with two exceptions that I can recall, Jeanne and her son Sylvain barely talk at all?

Does that sound like a nightmare cinematic experience? Well, I have to be honest, I was there for it.

The film takes place over three days. We pick up Jeanne in the afternoon on the first day, we spend the entire second day with her, and then we stay with her on the third day until the late afternoon when she murders her client.

When I say that there are long takes, I mean some seriously long takes. For example, when Jeanne and Sylvain eat the dinner that Jeanne has prepared, we see them eat the entire meal. There are no cutaways. We see them take every sip of their soup. We see them take every bite of their meat and potatoes. We see them clear away the table and put away their napkins. Nothing is left out.

The second day, after Jeanne burns the potatoes, we see her go out and get a second bag of potatoes. We see her peel the potatoes. We see her place the potatoes in the pot to cook. Again, no cutaways. One camera, fixed in place, witnesses every step.

It doesn’t stop there. When she does her dishes, we see her wash and dry every dish. In this case, her back is to the fixed single shot camera. Therefore, we don’t actually see her wash dishes. We watch her back as she does the dishes and then places each dish in the rack.

This is the film. Let me remind you. It runs for nearly three and a half hours. Are you thinking that someone would have to strap you down and pry your eyes open, ala Alex in Clockwork Orange style, to get you to watch the film?

Here’s the thing, if you go in understanding what’s about to happen, it actually works.

First of all, the fixed single camera watching a woman doing absolutely mundane tasks makes you feel voyeuristic. Honestly, there were times that I almost felt that I was a peeping tom. You are watching an actor do things that you never see on screen. The intimacy of watching this minutiae left me, at times, feeling uncomfortable.

You also begin to feel invested in these absolutely trivial actions. Since the actions on the screen are so minimally interesting, you find yourself becoming invested in them. On the third day, when I’m watching Jeanne wash dishes again, I notice that she places one dish on the cleaning tray that still has suds on them. I immediately started thinking, WTF? Is she going to let that stand? As odd as it sounds, I was actually relieved when, a minute or so later, she reached back, retrieved the plate, and rinsed it off.

I was relieved, because, as the film develops, it’s clear that all is not right with Jeanne Dielman. Her life is soul crushingly monotonous, repetitive, and isolated. She does the same things at the same place at the same time. Her three clients apparently show up at the same day and time every week. Her son, Sylvain, appears to be at least late teenage in years. He’s still in school but its not clear if it’s high school or university. Regardless, Sylvain is apparently helpless. Jeanne makes all of his meals, puts out his clothes for the next day, and even shines his shoes.

In the course of her day, Jeanne barely talks to anyone. She spends the bulk of her day alone in her apartment. Her only interactions are with the tradespeople that she shops with, a woman who drops her infant off for Jeanne to babysit while she runs some errands, and a couple of muttered comments to her clients. She makes a daily stop at a coffee shop, but sits alone. Sylvain and Jeanne barely speak. At the dinner table, Jeanne asks Sylvain to put down his book, but even after doing so, they barely speak.

By the third day, clearly things are going wrong with Jeanne. It’s more than just the burnt potatoes. At times, she sits in a chair in the apartment, clearly at a loss for what to do. She stands up momentarily to do some dusting but then sits back down again. She drinks coffee at home, but throws it out after a sip. She remakes the coffee (which we watch in full), takes another sip, and then throws it out. At her coffee shop, she doesn’t even take a sip. She just gets up and walks out.

Something is going on. With her third client, for the first time we watch Jeanne have sex. As it proceeds, she’s clearly experiencing something. Is it her first orgasm? Is it painful? The previous night, in one of their rare conversations, Sylvain frankly discusses sex with Jeanne. Sylvain’s friend compares the penis to the sword which makes Sylvain think that sex must be painful for the woman? In response, Jeanne just tells him not to worry about it. Did that conversation repeat in her head as she was having sex?

It’s not at all clear but almost immediately after the act is completed, as Jeanne is redressing, she grabs the scissors, walks over to the relaxing man and plunges the scissors into his throat. After she murders him, she moves to the dining table and sits there. For five minutes the film unblinkingly stares at her in that pose. This marks the end of the film.

As I was watching it, I kept thinking about the painter Edward Hopper. In paintings like Nighthawks, he painted the utter isolation of twentieth century existence. In many of his paintings, the figure is alone. In those which do have multiple figures, the figures do not look at each other and usually are at radically different angles to each other to highlight their relative isolation. To my eye, Jeanne Dielman even resembled a typical Hopper model.

I found myself amazed at Delphine Seyrig’s acting. She is essentially in every frame of the film. Not only that, but we see her acting in the most prosaic of settings. With such minimal action, every little choice that she makes has to be conscious. I learned something about Jeanne just by watching her eat. I learned more when I watch her do the dishes or even just sitting quietly in a chair. Any false move on her part would have destroyed the illusion. Seyrig completely inhabited the role of Jeanne.

This film is considered a feminist example of cinema. As I watching this, I thought of Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique. Written in the early 1960s, it was a reaction to the then current thinking that a woman should be fulfilled by housework and children and not be bothered by concerns of the larger world. Here we see Jeanne slowly becoming suffocated by the tedium of her daily existence.

In many ways, this film is almost an anti-movie. Classified as Slow Cinema, the film dares you to be bored. The audacity of including a several minute scene of a woman washing dishes with her back turned to you (not just once but twice!) is breathtaking. Considering that film is popularly considered to be an escapist medium, to include such scenes is an act of rebellion.

Is it the greatest film ever made? To even pose the question shows its absurdity. After all, the number nine film on the list is the Man with a Movie Camera (I wrote about it here), a frenetic Russian silent film with no characters. How can you compare them? How do you compare Jeanne Dielman with Star Wars or the Marx Brother’s Duck Soup?

What’s important isn’t that it was ranked number one but that, by appearing on the list, I was inspired to watch it. Otherwise, I would never have stumbled on it. If nothing else, the Sight and Sound list has introduced to me a whole new set of films that might be of interest to me.

The Monster’s Lament

Title: Frankenstein

Rating: 5 Stars

Why am I bothering with writing about a 200 year old novel? Good question. Let’s see where this goes.

I’ve read Frankenstein before. I’m sure that it’s been at least twenty years, if not much longer than that. I last rewatched the classic 1930s film sometime during the pandemic.

For those whose view of Frankenstein comes from either the 1930s film, or even better, Young Frankenstein, you might be surprised by the novel.

Victor Frankenstein is a young man that has been sent off to study. At university, he becomes enthralled with natural sciences. In particular, he develops an interest in how life forms. It’s more than an interest; it’s an obsession. For two years, he reads all available books on the subject. He masters the subject so much that he eventually moves beyond the books and makes new discoveries. In his zeal, he neglects his friends, family, and health.

He creates a human body. Because of the difficulty of working in the small detail of a normal human body, the body that he creates is eight feet tall. One night, he imbues it with life. When Frankenstein sees the dull eyes of his hideous monster gaze upon him, he collapses.

It takes many months for Frankenstein to regain his health. After he does, a great tragedy befalls his family. His younger brother is found strangled and a woman that was almost a sister to him is arrested, convicted, and executed for the crime.

In his grief, Frankenstein seeks solace on a remote hike. There, his monster accosts him. The monster, now with the power of speech and reasoning, only wants the same love and companionship that all human desires. He curses Frankenstein for making him such a hideous creation, doomed to be forever alone and scorned by humanity. He confesses that he killed Frankenstein’s brother and implicated the woman. He claims that if Frankenstein creates a mate for him, that he will abandon all violence and will live in peace and solitude with his mate.

Frankenstein agrees but as he progresses along with the development of the female form, he gets second thoughts. What if the two mate and create children? Their superior strength will ultimately doom humanity. Knowing that he couldn’t live with himself, he destroys the woman that he was creating.

The monster, enraged, swears vengeance. He first strangles Frankenstein’s best friend. Even in his grief, Frankenstein plans to wed his childhood love, Elizabeth. On their wedding night, the monster creeps in and strangles Elizabeth.

Now Frankenstein vows vengeance. Frankenstein, abandoning all else, pursues the creature all over the planet. The creature, always just a step ahead, leaves Frankenstein chiding notes to further enrage him. The chase takes them all of the way to the Arctic region. There, Frankenstein, who has destroyed his health in his zeal to track down the monster, dies. The monster, seeing Frankenstein’s corpse, both feels avenged but also mourns the death of his creator. The monster plans to go to the North Pole, set his sled ablaze, and to perish in the flames.

If you’ve seen the film, then you know that the novel and the film diverge widely. The film is much more of a conventional horror story. The monster terrifies the villagers and they, in a mob with literal flames and pitchforks, ultimately chase down and burn the monster trapped in a windmill.

In the novel, it’s a much more personal horror. The monster, with his own moral code, only wants vengeance upon his creator. Except for a few rare sightings, no one other than Frankenstein even knows that the monster exists. The final third of the book is a long running duel between Frankenstein and his creation.

Also, in the film, while the monster is not without intelligence, it’s clear that he’s somewhat simple. After all, he throws the little girl into the pond when they run out of petals to throw in. In the novel, the monster is not only verbal but is also intellectual, persuasive, and well read.

Here’s my hot take. In the novel, it’s Frankenstein that’s the real monster.

In Frankenstein, you see the arrogance of science. Frankenstein is a man that becomes possessed and driven to accomplish something without once questioning whether or not he should. He created a powerful, intelligent eight foot man without once considering how dangerous he might be. He never once gave a thought to how lonely and miserable the life would be for such a wretch. Even God gave Adam an Eve.

This arrogance of science lives on today. My career was spent in software. In my own experiences as well as stories told to me, there’s many examples of engineers in a room, caught up in the thrill of creation, coming up with simply amazing ideas and barely giving a thought to the moral / ethical concerns that might arise. It’s in rooms like these that our right to privacy is being slowly eroded away as well as unexpected consequences such as Russia’s impact upon our 2016 election via Facebook.

Shelley’s subtitle for the novel is The Modern Prometheus. Prometheus gave man fire and was eternally punished for doing so. Frankenstein was no Prometheus. At best he is a lesser, shortsighted, incompetent god. He created something without understanding or even caring of how ensuing events might unfold.

The monster did not ask to be created. He certainly did not asked to be made in a form that would be universally despised by all humanity. The second volume of the novel is given over to the monster. Here you can see his despair and anguish. The monster, who simply has a thirst for learning, love, and kindness, is repulsed by everyone, even by his creator. Is there any wonder that he felt the need to lash out?

Although known as a great gothic novel, it’s also considered to be the first science fiction novel. I can see that. If so, then it sets the pattern for a lot of science fiction by being pretty implausible. There are gaping holes in the narrative. Seriously, how does an eight foot tall monster that not only can’t talk to people but has to actively hide from them, track Frankenstein from Switzerland to Scotland (where Frankenstein started building his mate)? Not only Scotland but a tiny Scottish island with something like five inhabitants. Which brings me to my second question. How does Frankenstein find the body parts to create the monster’s mate on a remote, desolate, Scottish island that has five inhabitants on it? Sure, this was written in 1818 when Shelley was 19, so I should give her a break, but still.

Frankenstein is the blind hubris of unbridled science and the unintended consequences of its fruit. In the ever increasingly complex technical world in which we live, this makes Frankenstein a novel for our time.

Will Zeihanism Be The New Malthusian?

Title: The End of the World is Just the Beginning

Rating: 4 Stars

Those of us who survived the 1970s remember those grim times. The population explosion led to horrific misery. The growth in population could not be matched by the growth in food supplies. There was simply no longer enough food for everyone. The global death rate immediately started soaring. Hundreds of millions of people starved to death. We had to do brutal food triage. For example, India was such a hopeless case that all food aid to it was stopped and the Indians were left to starve. The crisis was finally solved when we started injecting birth control in nations’ water, initiated a luxury tax on newborn children, and provided incentives to men to voluntarily sterilize themselves.

No? You don’t remember reading about this horrible tragedy in your history books? The reason why you didn’t is because it didn’t happen. Instead, what happened was the Green Revolution. There were tremendous advances in crop yields and crop hardiness. There were dramatic advances in fertilizers, pesticides, hybrid seeds, and farm management practices. Scientists disseminated this knowledge to developing nations. Nations that were perennially in food crisis were able to grow their own crops. India is now a major rice exporter. Hundreds of millions were spared hunger, poverty decreased, and infant mortality decreased even as farm land use declined.

The first paragraph was a set of predictions taken from The Population Bomb, by Paul and Anna Ehrlich. Written in 1968 and predicting catastrophes in the 1970s, it was a classic Malthusian work. Thomas Malthus, an 18th century English economist, wrote a book in which he explained that human population grows geometrically while food can only increase arithmetically. This inevitably will lead to tragic famines.

Well, Malthus wasn’t right then, and the Ehrlichs weren’t right in 1968. The Green Revolution dramatically raised food production. Also, it turns out that, as humans leave poverty, specially as more opportunities become available to women, that the population growth rate inevitably slows. Hilariously, even though his predictions have proven to be laughably wrong, Paul Ehrlich even now still claims that his conclusions and predictions have actually come to pass.

So, in the year 2023, what are all of the doomsayers of the world thinking? This brings me to The End of the World is Just the Beginning, by Peter Zeihan. The subtitle of his book is “Mapping the Collapse of Globalization”.

He sees two major events that will trigger this collapse, both of which are underway. The first event is essentially reverse Malthusian. He sees the problem as being not overpopulation but underpopulation. In many nations, most notably China, Japan, South Korea, Russia, and Italy, population growth is nowhere near population replacement levels. Some of this is due to women having the freedom to choose to have fewer children. Some of this is due to the increased urbanization of populations leaving couples without the living space or time for more children. In the most trouble is China, with its notorious one child policy (initiated precisely due to Malthusian predictions) that had been in place in decades. Now that the disaster of this policy is obvious, there are no easily remedied solutions. In fact, with proportionately few twenty somethings in the population pipeline, it’s impossible. China, along with at least Japan and Russia, are now seeing population declines. This decline will increase dramatically .

So what’s the big deal with population declines? After all, won’t this help solve other problems like climate change? Well, it turns out that a country essentially exists on the back of its young. It requires the labor of its younger population as well as the capital investments of its middle aged population to prosper. As these younger generations age with much smaller generations replacing them, a nation’s economic power diminishes accordingly.

The other major event that Zeihan sees is the end of what he calls The Order. At the conclusion of World War II, the US ruled supreme in the West. The US could have, as previous conquering powers were wont to do, claimed massive amounts of territory as the price for emerging as the clear winner of the war. Cognizant of the rising threat of the USSR, the US took a different tack.

Instead, the US exerted its will by mandating that the seas be available to all. It enforced this mandate with the world’s largest blue water navy. It instigated international agreements like the UN and Bretton Woods that essentially created a level playing field for all countries. Serving as kind of a paternal referee, it enabled an environment that created the potential for all countries to move up the economic development ladder.

This proved to be quite successful. Many countries dramatically improved their economic standing. With the freedom of open seas, highly optimized supply chains were created. Autarky (national self sufficiency) was no longer a national goal. A nation could specialize in very specific products for export, knowing that they could import the food and goods that they no needed to produce at home. As an example, this system was so successful that it is estimated that the added price of shipping a pair of shoes from China to US amounted to a whopping two cents.

In this book, Zeihan proposes that the US is effectively withdrawing from The Order. In doing so, the freedom of the open seas will come to an end. This will bring about systemic disruption. The thousand mile supply chains that we rely on for quite literally everything will come to an end. There will be a rise in both piracy and privateering. This disruption will cause worldwide shortages in everything from food to farm machinery to energy supplies like oil. Given the product specialization that many countries have moved to, they will not be able to feed, clothe, or otherwise supply their population with critical needs.

What does Zeihan predict will happen if this comes to pass? Well, he makes Paul Ehrlich look like an optimist. He believes that global consumption peaked in 2019 (before COVID). We will never achieve that level again. He predicts that one billion people will starve while an additional two billion will suffer severe food shortages. Many nations, having no more access to stable, safe, transportation routes, as well as the loss of key products like oil or farm equipment, will deindustrialize. What he means by that is that the population will move en masse out of urban cities back to rural areas and live lives little different than their preindustrial nineteenth century ancestors.

The country that will be hit hardest is predicted to be China. Already beset by a shrinking population, with its financial and export systems massively overextended, with little skill in advanced manufacturing, and needing to import many vital supplies, there is no recovery for it. Some two-thirds of its population will face starvation or severe food shortages. Zeihan believes that China will not only deindustrialize but its central government could cease to exist. Given the immense breadth of goods that China manufactures and exports, China deindustrializing will have severe global ramifications.

Autarky will once again become a national priority. Some countries can be successful by forming local empires. France, India, Turkey, the UK (in alignment with the US), and the Nordic countries can create larger blocs that could survive the shock.

The country that emerges, if not stronger, at least relatively unscathed is the US. The US has an almost unfair set of advantages in comparison to other nations. First of all, it has a thousand miles of coastline facing not just one but two oceans. I believe that it has more deep water ports than the rest of the world combined. In its interior, it has more navigable riverways than the rest of the world combined. The US population could double and it’d still have less population density than current day Germany. It has a wealth of natural materials, not least of which is huge amounts of oil via fracking. Its two neighbors are both peaceful and nonthreatening. Canada, a developed nation, along with the younger (in age) and still developing Mexico make for perfect trading partners for the US.

When will this happen? Well, buckle your seatbelts because Zeihan believes that China will collapse during this decade.

What did I think of his predictions? Well, apparently his day job is a geopolitical strategist. He seems to have a bottomless wealth of knowledge regarding a broad set of subjects spanning the entire globe. He has clearly thought about these topics in both breadth and depth. He presents a compelling, confident case.

Even though he writes with great confidence, I’m disappointed that the book does not include footnotes or even a bibliography. His charts often don’t even have a source. Those that do are something along the lines of “FDA reports, 2014”. I’m not saying that I would have checked his footnotes or his source material, but if an author includes them, you could at least have some confidence that the author is not blowing smoke up your ass. Without these references, you have to take on faith that Zeihan is speaking with the confidence that he projects.

Secondly, I think that Zeihan undervalues the inventiveness of us humans. After all, we are the most adaptable species to ever inhabit this planet. Witness the Green Revolution when it appeared that the world was on the brink of starvation. Who’s to say that the ever inventive and creative humans might come up with mitigation for some of these problems? Specifically, when it comes to the population problem, who’s to say what advances there could be in robotics, automation, AI, or even basic social structures that could address some of those concerns?

Thirdly, even if the US gives up its role as the enforcer of The Order, that is not to say that the US will completely abandon globalization. In fact, rereading Zeihan’s earlier chapters, I don’t even see why he even believes that. Assuming that the US will just wash its hands of the whole mess seems to be an unreasonable leap.

Finally, a stylist note. Zeihan really loves to…use ellipses. Seldom a page or two goes by without him doing that for effect. In a book predicting death and famine, perhaps that’s a minor critique. Having seen dozens if not over a hundred of these ellipses in the text annoyed me.

The good news is that Zeihan’s predictions are in the relative near future. Therefore, assuming that my blog is still going in the late 2020s (and considering that I’ve been doing it for nearly eight years, it’s not out of the realm of possibility), if I remember I’ll revisit this post and will either apologize to Zeihan for questioning his astute analysis or will heap scorn upon him as his  generation’s Paul Ehrlich.

Stay tuned.

A Poisonous Valentine To Hollywood

Title: Mulholland Dr

Rating: 5 Stars

Continuing upon my quest of going, ever so slowly, through the Sight and Sound top 250 films, I chose Mulholland Dr. It sits at number eight on the list. I found it interesting that Mulholland Dr does not appear anywhere on the AFI list. In fact, David Lynch has no films on the AFI. Considering how very American his films are, it seems to be an omission that such a prominent director is excluded. Well, Sight and Sound certainly does not exclude him. In fact, in the 250 film list, four of Lynch’s films appear on the list. In addition to Mulholland Dr, there is Blue Velvet (no surprise there) and weirdly, both of the Twin Peaks films.

The film starts with a woman (Laura Harring) being driven on Mulholland Dr. Her driver pulls over and it appears that she’s in danger. A car full of partying teens crashes into the pulled over car. Dazed, the woman staggers away and ends up near an apartment.

Betty (Naomi Watts), a young ingénue from Canada, lands in Los Angeles ready to embark upon an acting career. Her traveling aunt has graciously agreed to let Betty stay at her apartment. When Betty arrives, she discovers that the dazed woman has been staying there. It turns out that the woman, who now calls herself Rita after seeing a Rita Hayworth poster, has amnesia. In her purse is a key and a large sum of money.

Betty, at the same time that her acting career is flourishing as she nails her auditions and impresses casting agents, sets out to discover Rita’s identity. Rita remembers the name Diane Selwyn. When they go to investigate, they find her dead in her bed.

Betty and Rita become lovers. In the middle of the night, Rita demands that Betty go to a show. The performer collapses while singing. In the very next scene, you see Rita using her key to unlock a box. The scene then fades to black.

When the next scene starts, we now see a living Diane Selwyn (also played by Naomi Watts). She is a struggling actor whose affair with Camilla Rhodes (also played by Laura Harring) appears to be over. Selwyn simmers with jealousy as Rhodes falls in love with her director Adam Kesher (Justin Theroux). Driven mad by the state of her life, Selwyn hires a hitman to kill Rhodes. When he reports the job as done, Selwyn becomes distraught and kills herself, ending up in the same pose that Betty and Rita found her in.

So, the usual question with David Lynch, what’s going on here?

There’s a couple of possibilities. One (and by critical consensus, the most likely) is that the first part of the film is a dream sequence. Selwyn, upset with her failed acting career and love life, dreams up an alternative perfect life. She’s bright and cheerful. She takes Hollywood by storm. Rita is madly in love with her. Even the director Kesher can’t take his eyes off of her. Not only that, but Kesher, in what must seem like sweet revenge, is hounded by the mafia, cuckolded by his wife, and his oh so hip clothes become splattered in paint. This is the life Selwyn wishes that she had.

Another possibility is that the first part of the film is Selwyn’s last thoughts as she commits suicide. Trying to find some meaning in her misery, these are the final thoughts that her mind uses to usher her to her death.

There’s a terrifying character that lives as a homeless person behind a restaurant. This character seems to have demonic characteristics. Could it be that the hitman is this man’s henchman? Perhaps Selwyn has sold her soul for the price of Rhodes death. The first part of the film is Selwyn’s last vision before she is dragged down to spend eternity in hell.

Maybe there’s a multiverse angle. Perhaps the locked box that Rita unlocks is the key to another universe. In this version, Betty is successful, happy, and in love with Rita, living in parallel to the universe of Selwyn’s madness and suicide.

As you can tell from all of these possibilities, it’s a very Lynchian film. There are other Lynchian touches beyond this ambiguity. Identity confusion, where actors play multiple characters or characters are played by multiple actors, appears often in his films. Another common theme is the gritty underbelly underlying an apparently idyllic location. Here we see Betty’s clean, sunny, shiny Los Angeles contrasted with the brutal, corrupt, mob run Los Angeles. In fact, the title of this blog isn’t my invention. A critic called the film and its contrast of dreamy Hollywood with this seediness a “a poisonous valentine to Hollywood.”

I know that David Lynch isn’t to everybody’s taste. Of the Lynch’s films that I’ve seen, this probably is the clearest and most accessible expression of what is ‘Lynchian’. As such it’s a nice addition to the Sight and Sound list.

Lonely Hearts Presidents Club

Heads up. Here’s another post from the President geek. Today I talk about the Presidents club.

What is that you ask? Well, at any point in history, it’s the list of all living ex-Presidents. Especially with the mind breaking complexity and stress of being a US President during the American Century, being the President is a lonely job. The myriad of decisions, each of which has only reached your desk because a whole bunch of smart people with great expertise could not figure it out, that you have to make on a daily basis is unimaginable. Lives are at stake for many of these decisions. No other job can compare.

If there is a solace to this lonely job, it’s that even though you are alone, you are not without precedent. There have been people before you that have had to make similar decisions of a gut wrenching nature. These are the former Presidents. Historically, current Presidents have reached out to former Presidents. This often crosses party lines. One of the more famous examples is when John Kennedy received a verbal tongue lashing from Dwight Eisenhower regarding his dealings with the Soviet Union.

This isn’t a guaranteed club. Donald Trump clearly has no interest in hanging out with the former Presidents and I pretty seriously doubt that President Biden spends much time dialing Mar-a-Lago for foreign policy advice.

Even so, current Presidents do occasionally find it useful to solicit advice from those that previously held office.

So, the question that I asked myself is, how many times has the President truly been alone? Have there been Presidents that had no living predecessors? Where there was truly no one that could truly understand what they’re going through?

The answer is, unsurprisingly, yes. Let’s take a look.

Let’s deal with the easy ones first. Clearly George Washington had no predecessors being the first, you know, President. Washington died about two years after left office, so the second President, John Adams, also had a spell with no former Presidents.

Well, this is going to be a long list, isn’t it? Well, not so much. John Adams lived for twenty-five years after he left the Presidency. He was around for a long time, available to serve as a sounding board to whomever might need one. This sets a pattern. Although there are certainly Presidents that died in office or that died shortly thereafter (I’m looking at you James Polk, who survived a scant three months as an ex-President), there are Presidents that actually did live for some time after leaving office. We’re talking everyone from John Tyler, who lived seventeen years after he left office, to Herbert Hoover, who lived for over thirty years, to Jimmy Carter, who’s at forty-two years and counting, although since he’s now in hospice (at least at this writing), it doesn’t look like he will be too much longer.

So, does that mean that Washington and Adams are the only Presidents that have been truly alone?

Nope! There are a few others. Let’s go through the list. After the second President, John Adams, we leap all of the way to the eighteenth President, US Grant. He served until 1877. Millard Fillmore died in 1874 and Andrew Johnson died in 1875. I’m guessing that Grant didn’t spent a whole lot of time consulting those two accidental Presidents. One was kind of a nonentity and the other came within a vote of getting kicked out of the Presidency.

Now we go all of the way to the thirty-first President, Herbert Hoover gets in by a whisker. Yes, the same Hoover that lived for some thirty years as a former President had, for a while, no other living former Presidents. I call that a whisker because Hoover’s term ended in March of 1933 and the last living ex-President, Calvin Coolidge, died in January of 1933. Hoover had to live in Presidential isolation for only a couple of months.

This takes us to everyone’s favorite President, the thirty-seventh, Richard Nixon. Nixon served from 1969 to 1974. Harry Truman died in December of 1972 and Lyndon Johnson died in January of 1973. Yes, they died about a month apart. That’s not quite as dramatic as Thomas Jefferson and John Adams both dying on the same Fourth of July, but still interesting. So, Nixon had about a year and a half of no former Presidents to lean on. Given the tremendous stress that he was under during this time, having someone to talk to might have been helpful.

And that’s it! George Washington, John Adams, US Grant, Herbert Hoover, and Richard Nixon are the only Presidents that served at a time when no ex-Presidents were alive. Considering that some eight Presidents have died in office and that usually Presidents aren’t all that youthful, I find that surprising.

Given the advances in medicine with the side effect of longer life spans, is this the end of the lonely Presidents? Will there never be a time when a President does not have at least one ex-President to confide in?

Well, maybe not.

I am not a political forecaster, but currently Joe Biden and Donald Trump (gulp!) are the frontrunners for the 2024 nomination. Let’s assume that one of those two wins (double gulp!) and that they serve their full term.

That brings us to 2028. Either Biden or Trump will be term limited, assuming that one won in 2024. Let’s further assume that the other will not win in 2028. That implies that 2028 brings in a new face. Let’s further assume that this new President serves a full two terms. That means that the President will serve until January of 2037.

Let’s look at how old the current ex-Presidents will be then:

• Jimmy Carter – 112
• Joe Biden – 94
• Donald Trump – 90
• George W Bush – 90
• Bill Clinton – 90
• Barack Obama – 75

Now, I realize that we all think that Jimmy Carter is an immortal vampire, but even so 112 seems to be a stretch. Four of the Presidents will be in their nineties. The only outlier is the much younger Barack Obama. Now, different sites have different statistics, but the average life span of a black male is somewhere around seventy. Now, obviously, Obama’s wealth and prestige eliminates many of the risk factors for the more typical black male, so a 75 year old Obama is a very distinct possibility.

Whoever is President, if they want to consult with someone that truly understands the job, had better hope that Barack Obama stays in relative good health because, right now, it looks like it might come down to him,

He Writes Too Well To Be A Murderer

Title: Scoundrel

Rating: 4 Stars

What is it with elite literary authors and their fascination with murder? Back in the day it was Norman Mailer. First of all, Mailer received a Pulitzer Prize for his realistic novel The Executioner’s Song. It’s the story of Gary Gilmore. For those of you not up on your 1970s notorious criminals, Gilmore was a convicted murderer in Utah. After the Supreme Court suspended all death penalties on technical grounds, Utah passed a death penalty law that passed legal muster. Convicted under the new law, Gilmore refused to fight his death penalty conviction. Having chosen to die by firing squad, in 1977 Gilmore was the first American to be executed in ten years. The Executioner’s Song was a novelization of his life and death.

Mailer wasn’t done yet with his fixations on convicted criminals. Having read The Executioner’s Song, Jack Henry Abbott, having been incarcerated for most of his adult for multiple offences, including stabbing a fellow inmate to death, wrote to Mailer about the conditions of penal life. Believing that Gilmore’s depiction was not accurate, Abbott offered to provide Mailer a true inside look at incarceration. Mailer, intrigued, began to correspond with Abbott. These letters formed the basis of In The Belly of the Beast, a book by Abbott that Mailer helped to publish.

Apparently not content with this level of assistance, Mailer also endorsed Abbott’s efforts to obtain parole. Even though there were people that were not convinced that he’d be safe in society (in 1981, at the age of 37, he’d spent the bulk of his time in institutions and prisons since he was twelve years old), Abbott was paroled and moved to New York City, where he met with Mailer’s literary friends.

About six weeks after his release in 1981, he went out to dinner. Abbott asked to use the bathroom but the restaurant did not have one for customers. The waiter, 22 year old Richard Adan, directed him to the back door to urinate against a dumpster. When they went outside, for reasons still not clear, Abbott stabbed Adan to death. He fled, was caught, and was convicted. He ended up committing suicide in prison in 2002.

So yeah, not a great moment in Mailer’s life. It turns out that this was not an isolated case of a celebrated author taking up the cause of a violent criminal. Scoundrel tells the story of noted conservator writer, William F Buckley Jr, and a man named Edgar Smith.

Smith was a twenty-three year old man with a young wife and a child. Vicky Zielinski was a fifteen year old girl. On March 4, 1957, Vicky disappeared while walking home from a friend’s house. Her parents searched for her and found clothing that she was wearing near a sand pit. The police were called and her body was found. She was brutally beaten. Smith had borrowed a friend’s car and when he returned it, blood was found in it. When the police interviewed him, Smith admitted that he picked her up. They’d got into a fight and he punched her. He claimed to have then blacked out. Later his bloody pants, which he had discarded, were found. At his trial, Smith changed his story and attempted to implicate his friend Don Hommell. Probably not too shocking, the jury did not believe Smith. He was convicted and condemned to be executed.

This doesn’t really seem all that noteworthy, right? A young woman was tragically murdered, her murderer was caught, and now he has to suffer the consequences of his act.

It probably would have ended up that way except for one of the prison’s spiritual advisors. Among other things, this advisor had a subscription to the National Review. For those not in the know, the National Review was William F Buckley Jr’s influential magazine that was one of the progenitors for what’s considered modern conservatism (note, I’m not talking Trump conservatism but something closer to George F Will’s conservatism).

The advisor moved on. Accordingly, the prison’s subscription to the National Review was also stopped. By 1962, having spent multiple years on death row, Smith was now a pretty avid reader. Disappointed that he could no longer read the National Review, he wrote William F Buckley, Jr directly.

Perhaps Buckley was amused at the thought of having a death row inmate as a fan, but he immediately sent Smith back a magazine subscription and wrote him back. Before too long, one of history’s most unlikely set of pen pals began exchanging letters.

Death row prisoners, given the fact that they have an almost unlimited amount of time at their disposal, can be quite seductive pen pals. And so Smith was. Before long, he had Buckley convinced of his innocence. Not only that, Buckley thought that Smith showed promise as a writer. Before long, Smith was hooked up with a book editor. In 1965, Buckley wrote an article in Esquire extolling his innocence. In 1968, Smith’s book, Brief Against Death, was released to critical acclaim. With proceeds from the book, along with a defense fund that Buckley set up, lawyers were getting increasingly involved, not only to avoid his death sentence but to positively set him free.

All of this paid off. In 1971, one of Smith’s appeals (funded by Buckley) was successful. His conviction was overturned and he was ordered to be retried. The prosecution, with the passage of fourteen years, was not keen to retry him. He agreed to plead guilty to second degree murder and was sentenced to time served. He was a free man.

Shocking (at least to me), within 90 minutes of his release from prison, he was on Buckley’s television show, Firing Line. Due to the wonders of the internet, this interview is available to view on youTube.

Although he lasted longer than six weeks, it’s fair to say that post prison life did not work out well for Smith. He wrote a couple of books that were not as well received. He had financial troubles. It’s pretty clear that he should not have been out in society because, in 1976, he abducted a woman, forced her into his car, and drove off. As they were driving, the two struggled. He plunged a knife into her chest but she was still able to escape the moving car. He crashed the car but managed still managed to drive off. After a couple of weeks on the run, he reached out to Buckley. Buckley immediately contacted the FBI and Smith was apprehended. In his second trial, among other things, he admitted to killing Zielinski. This time there was no escape for him and no celebrity to vouch for him. Convicted in 1976, he died, in prison, in 2019.

Buckley’s been dead for some time now. Much like Mailer, he accepted his share of the blame for how events turned out. He didn’t seem to elaborate, but I would definitely have liked to understood more how Buckley came to be convinced of his innocence because, make no mistake, Buckley went to significant efforts to free Smith. Looking at the case now, it seems to be pretty open and shut. I mean, he basically confessed and her blood was found on his clothes. The police knew that, as a youth, Smith had sexually assaulted another young woman. This is not exactly an obvious miscarriage of justice.

Was Buckley seduced by a charismatic sociopath? Or blinded by some hubris that led him to think that a fan of the National Review was too sophisticated to be a crude murderer? Or did the tough on crime conservative leap at the chance to prove that he had an open heart for those falsely incarcerated? Or some combination of all three?

The book provides no answers. Even so, it was an interesting subject to learn about.

Tears Of A Clown

Title: Comedian

Rating: 4 Stars

This film was released over twenty years ago. I don’t think that I saw it in the theater, but it has been some twenty years since I’ve last seen it. It popped up on my radar again over the last several months for a couple of reasons, both having to do with podcasts. On the Jeselnik and Rosenthal Vanity Project (jrvp!), Anthony Jeselnik mentioned how this film was one of his inspirations to pursue comedy as a career. On Marc Maron’s WTF, he interviewed the other comedian (ie not Jerry Seinfeld), Orny Adams, that was featured in this film. Among many other things, Adams discussed how this film essentially ruined his life.

For those not familiar, the film has two arcs. One is about Jerry Seinfeld. At this point, Seinfeld is in full legend mode among comedians. His fabulously successful show is over. Once again feeling the itch to perform standup, he has decided to ditch all of his old material and come up with a whole brand new hour. The film tracks his progress as he once again goes back to the grind of being a working comedian. You see his struggles to come up with five minutes, and then ten minutes, and then twenty minutes as he slowly makes his way up to a full hour.

The second arc is about Orny Adams. Twenty-nine years old, Orny is a young, upcoming if struggling comic. He is also grinding it out. He appears to be on the verge of making it. The same agent that Seinfeld uses brings him on as a client. He’s regularly killing it with club audiences. He gets a chance to come on the Letterman show. His big break comes when he gets a significant spot at the Montreal Comedy Festival. Will this appearance launch his career like others before him?

As I’m rewatching it twenty years later, it’s interesting how the world of comedy has changed. Comedians of Seinfeld’s generation are shocked that he’s discarding all of his old jokes. It seems almost incomprehensible to them. Ray Romano seems to be aghast at Seinfeld’s audacity to give up material that he knows will still work.

In 2023, in the time of streaming, all comedians now do that. Once your hour is released on Netflix or HBO or Amazon, that hour is dead. The comedian knows that (hopefully!) millions of people have seen the hour. Once an hour is available for streaming, the comedian must come up with a new hour. Sure, before streaming, comedians released albums. Comedy album sales, with rare exceptions, were never so large that it would necessarily force a comedian to dump the work and start over.

Another interesting theme that I saw in the two arcs was, even though Seinfeld and Adams were at totally different points in their careers, in many ways they shared common behavior. They were both pretty insecure about their work and harshly self critical. You would think that somehow Seinfeld would, by this point in his career, be somehow above or beyond feeling the despair of a bad set. At times he seemed legitimately discouraged or even depressed by how his standup is progressing.

Adams, on the other hand, is almost operatic in his self loathing and self flagellation. This self loathing is often hidden behind seeming arrogance and braggadocio. He seemed supremely confident going to Montreal, but when the set does not go as well as he thinks it should, he blames everything but himself. In his interview with Maron, showing Adams flaming out at Montreal and, via selective editing, making him appear as kind of an obnoxious jerk nearly destroyed his career.

Even though the film shows the shared comedic struggles of Seinfeld and Adams, it’s pretty clear that, from a strictly survival point of view, the stakes are much higher for Adams than Seinfeld. Being successful at Montreal is literally a career defining moment for Adams.

I don’t want to say that Seinfeld is a dilettante, but the stakes are different for him. He has millions of dollars. He has a fanbase that gives him a standing ovation for just appearing on the stage. When he realizes that he needs to take his show on the road to really build his hour, he travels in a private jet, is driven everywhere in a limo, and stays in luxurious hotels. Yes, he suffers the same fears of failure that Adams does, but you can see that he’s insulated from any real, I’m speaking in the economic sense, failure.

Probably not surprising because this was a Seinfeld movie production, Seinfeld does triumph in the end. Along the way, he is cheered on by the likes of Chris Rock, Colin Quinn, Jay Leno, George Wallace, Robert Klein, and Gary Shandling. I believe that seeing comedians like these sitting in the back of the club talking about the craft of comedy was one of the things that Jeselnik felt inspired by.

As sometimes happens in a twenty year old film, events subsequently happened that have made one scene in the film particularly awkward. Chris Rock and Seinfeld were talking and Rock mentioned that he was completely blown away by a comedian that was doing two 2 1/2 hour sets a night and completely killing in both sets. The comedian in question? Bill Cosby.

It’s a bit hard to remember today, but there was a time when Bill Cosby was one of our most esteemed comedians. He was a legend and an inspiration to generations of comics. In the aforementioned awkward scene, Seinfeld meets Cosby. Cosby, from his position as some deity of comedy, bestows words of benediction upon Seinfeld that absolutely floors him. You can tell that receiving such words from Cosby was a momentous experience to Seinfeld equivalent to being awarded some high honor from an elite guild.

If you’re at all interested in the sausage making process of comedy, this is the film to check out.