grylliade.org Free minds. Free markets. Free beer.

According to Wikipedia:

"Brazil evokes the melancholy, dreamlike quality of its theme song, an English translation of a 1939 Brazilian song, "Aquarela do Brasil," featured in Disney's Saludos Amigos (1942). In that escapist film, Brazil is represented as a romantic, fantasy location that is the opposite of gloomy, northern countries. Gilliam was inspired by this song to create the fictional totalitarian government and the overall dystopian mood of the film."

Well, I dislike Rand's work because I always found Roark (and all the Rand heroes) to be exceptionally childish. Someone wanted to change his designs, so be blows the building up. Well, he didn't pay for that building to be made, and he didn't have ultimate creative control as a result of any sort of contract, so what exactly gave him the right to do that? Property is supposed to be inviolable, isn't it? Roark gave up his plans, and he rather stupidly did it in exchange for an agreement from a man who couldn't possibly have upheld his promise in the face of challenge, a fact that Roark should have known. He was exceptionally childish in all the worst possible ways.

Rand's work is also childish in that her heroes constantly ignore the fact that they aren't really creating their own success out of ether. Roark would never have been able to even be an architect without the architects who he dismisses as being hopelessly pedestrian. Galt wouldn't have been able to create what he did without the business that wanted to use his invention in a way that he didn't approve of. Rand herself wouldn't have been able to even stay in this country if it hadn't been for the husband who married her out of pity for the fact that she was going to be deported back to the 1930s USSR, 9the husband who she cuckolded to his face once she achieved the success that she portrayed herself as being solely responsible for, no less). The world is full of people who give to you without getting anything back in return; they generally do it because someone did it for them in the past, so they're repaying the old debt. If they stop because they aren't getting anything for their troubles, it's great for them, because they've gotten something for free, but not so great for the people who came before who have their attempts to help someone as they've been helped foiled, and catastrophic for the people coming after, who live in a system that depends on some people helping those who came after where the people above them have raised the ladder behind them.

Plus, the whole "letting 4/5ths of the world's population die off so that the remaining people will appreciate my brilliance?" That's not heroic; that's cartoonish supervillainy.

In terms of your problems, (and I really feel for you; it's never easy to realize you hate the place you've spend your life getting to) well, Rand wasn't completely wrong. People do owe others for their success, but nobody owes their entire life to anyone for it. Looking at your publishing record, it seems like you've repaid whatever debts you had to those people who helped you along years ago. Why *don't* you start doing things your own way? It's never too late.

...just, don't forget that, for all the ways that those people held you back, they also helped to shape you into a person with the skills and abilities to follow your dreams. You don't have to like them, just don't let yourself fall into the trap of thinking that they only ever held you back.

I should have made it clearer; I was talking about Galt here. Galt set about to bring the end of society so that the survivors would be properly cowed and would accept his ideals. Roark is rather immature, but not really evil, at least not cartoonishly so. I'd have a lot fewer problems with The Fountainhead if it weren't the starting point for all the crazyness that came later. Roark's ideals are fairly benign if they stay where they are, but they tend to lead people into Atlas Shrugged territory, which is significantly less benign, both in its implications and in the effects that it can often have on people who take it too seriously.

OK, so this week I watched two movies suggested at either the other thread or elsewhere on H&R or at mises.org.

1. Amazing Grace:

I really enjoyed that movie, especially because of the history as I knew very little about how the slave trade ended in Great Britain. It was a very good story. And for the first time, and though I have listened to the song so many times in the past, I have come to appreciate and actually like Amazing Grace. More because of its history and the story behind it, rather than the religious message. Coincidentally, I listened to a talk on NPR given at Boston University on the American foreign slave trade and how it had ended in 1808. The speaker was also complaining about the fact that the 200 anniversary was not remembered as it should be.

2. There Will Be Blood:

The film is obviously about a rugged (and very stubborn, in a Howard Roark kind of way, except more emotionally violent, I guess) individualist. Well, I am a bit confused because a lot of libertarians were so excited about the movie. To me it seemed more like an attack on individualism. I mean, wasn't Upton Sinclair some sort of a socialist and There Will Be Blood is based on Sinclair's Oil!? Well, of course the individualist is going to be made to look like a loner, sociopathic, and someone who has no interest in emotionally connecting with others. Regardless of all this, I really really like this movie. Daniel Day-Lewis was superb.

I agree. But then I have always said that Ayn Rand's best novel was We the Living. Perhaps I am wrong (plot development and character exposition have never been things I picked all that well) but for my money it's the only book where she ever really accomplished those things (ie plot development and character exposition).

Oh, and by the way, the Italian film version Noi Vivi, made with the encouragement of Mussolini because of its anticommunist theme and later suppressed because of its anti-fascism is one of the most beautiful pieces of cinematography that I've ever seen. I had never quite realized how much the cinematographer plays with light and shade in black and white until then. You wiill never hear me cry for a "colorized" version ever again (not that you ever did). See also High Noon. Coop was one of Rand's favorite actors too (see The Fountainhead). He was her first choice.

Isaac,

Thanks. Oscar Shrugged is one of the sources that I use for the movies.

Unfortunately Noi Vivi is not available on netflix.High Noon is though. Yeah, I really like Cooper's acting too.

If you haven't watched There Will Be Blood, it is really worth it.

Huh? Is that a movie?

Akira.

Not that it's overly libertarian, but I gain solace from knowing that in the dystopian future, we'll still get to ride motorcycles and beat the crap out of clowns.

It is now in my queue. Oh so many movies, so little time to watch.

I thought everyone in the world had seen Akira.

Isaac,
That's only the second time that I have failed to find something on Netflix. The other time was when I tried to get a copy of Ken Russell's The Devils.

Maybe the Criterion Collection will come to our rescue. They re-release some great stuff.

BTW, The Devils wasn't particularly libertarian, but I bet it would be a favorite of Dawkins and Hitchens.

Hm, dhex, I don't know. I am generally not judgmental, but, um, yeah.

Ali,

dhex is on, some level, pulling your leg. He had a whole thread on Tokyo Drift where he mocked the movie mercilessly and even expressed confusion at why people would see the movie other than to mock it.

Though maybe he has some subtle point about illegal street racing in Tokyo being some libertarian ideal. Who knows? :)

no i'm quite serious. i came around the bend on that one. i have realized that, like discordianism, it is a genuine spiritual yearning pretending to be a joke religion.

see, i loved watching tokyo drift. movies are generally uncomfortable affairs, with plots and feelings and CINEMATIC STRINGS and all that bullshit; tokyo drift is like "fuck you, we've got bow wow"

now what's libertarian about tokyo driftUuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu?

1) the cops are useless. people drive so fast (and furiously, even) that the cops don't even bother.
2) government? corrupt and swayed only by old lady hummers and driftuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu.
3) what is best in life, bow wow? that's right, selling ipods to japanese kids. the market is free, black (literally and figuratively) and completely unregulated.
4) indian gals with british accents prove that even the horrors of colonialism can be mitigated by the natural markets of cultural hybridity.
5) drifting is invented without any government subsidies or corporate rent-seeking.
6) likewise, subcultural creativity creates and invents new markets despite the efforts of both organized and disorganized crime units (yakuza and cops).
7) there's a really good dancehallish reggaetonesque song made by a korean crew, iirc. america by way of jamaica by way of puerto rico by way of new york city (by way of fake tokyo).

there's about three hundred other points but i cannot recommend it highly enough. no offense to our randian libertizzles out there, but it should definitely replace atlas xanax'd as the libertoid ur-text. (also there's black people in it, which might help the whole whiter than the whitest whiteness thing a bit.)

One might almost say, 2 fast? Or 2 furious?

ali, i honestly think tokyo drift teaches us more about america than any textbook could.

it may very well be perfect cinema.

demolition man is libertarian?

i am intrigued at this suggestion.

The outlaw underground gun-wielding faction lead by Dennis Leary's character are presented pretty much sympathetically. Interestingly, they have guns and occasionally resort to stealing food...but don't seem to take guns along to do so.

And as the original villain did in the movie, such a state will find the violence in an attempt to do so. :)