A couple of weeks ago I gave NPR’s 1A podcast a spin as they were discussing film and the demise of Filmstruck a specialized streaming service. One of the show’s guests, Karina Longworth, caught my attention and I followed her back to her own podcast You Must Remember This, dedicated to the hidden and/or forgotten history of Hollywood’s first century.
I adore this podcast!
Karina has been producing weekly episode for a few years producing a treasure trove for me to discover. She will often create a theme for an entire season, such as Bela and Boris following the lives and careers of the two horror icon, or Charles Manson’s Hollywood, tracing out the byzantine connections between Manson, his ‘family’, and the film and recording stars that he crossed paths with.
Each episode is thoroughly researched and presented in a clear easily followed manner. Karina’s delivery is more polished, more conversational, and more intimate than most podcaster’s creating the impression of a knowledgeable friend sharing their deep understanding of Hollywood over drinks.
There is no doubt that Karina, and I use her first name because the podcast is so well crafted at creating intimacy, approaches the subject from a feminist perspective, pulling back the curtain on Hollywood’s and by extension, society’s distorted and dismissive attitudes towards women in general and the pedestal with chains that is the ‘sex symbol.’
The most frustrating aspect to her podcast has nothing to do with Karina or her material. It is that she will often mention or discuss a film that interests me and I too quickly discover that I have no way to watch it. (I’m looking at you in-color noir Desert Fury.)
I desperately wish I could get her opinion on my film inspired SF noir novel, no doubt she’d have illuminating and a fascinating take.
If you have a love classic Hollywood and history then you should not miss the podcast. You Must Remember This is available on Stitcher, Apple Podcasts, and many other podcast venues.
Sunday my sweetie-wife and drove over to a local Art House multiplex and took in a screening of The Favorite. Set during the 17th century reign of Queen Anne (Olivia Coleman) of England and concerns the backstabbing and manipulation of two women as they scheme for the personal and romantic favors of the monarch. Sarah Chruchill (Rachel Weiss) is Anne’s lifelong confidant and partner; she often speaks for the Queen in matters of state and is pragmatic. The palace and the court are upset by the arrival Abigail Hill (Emma Stone), a woman who had been born into means but due to her father’s disastrous decisions and addiction had now fallen to the status of a commoner and servant. Abigail cunning and ruthless manipulates her way into the Queen’s favor while being manipulated herself by Sarah’s political enemy Robert Haley (Nicholas Hoult.)
The Favoriteis a dark satirical comedy of manners presenting both the elites and the downtrodden as vain, manipulative, and immoral in their pursuit of power and status. As a historical film one should always remember that narrative film is there to entertain and not education so you need to approach the larger historical issues with a great deal of skepticism. However it is also true that manner of the film more absurdist elements, palace duck racing for instance, are historically accurate.
The performances in the film are flawless. The three leads are actors of real craft and power and even as Sarah and Abigail scheme and plot they never quite lose their essential humanity and Coleman’s Queen Anne evoke real sympathy as a prisoner of position and the tragedies that stalked her life.
The film falters at the end with a resolution that doesn’t quite land or resolve. In fact when the screen faded to black I waited for several moments not quite sure if there would be another scene to follow until the appearance of the title cards definitively ended the screening. Over all I enjoyed the film, but I can’t heartily recommend it due its failure to nail the dismount, but your mileage may vary.
One of the great mistakes people make when taking advice or information is the make the assumption expertise in one field confers some sort of basic level of competence in another. Because someone is a talent astronomer does not mean that understand the dynamic of nuclear war, because someone is a gifted businessperson does not mean that understand the complexities of governance, and yet this sort of transference of expertise happens again and again.
Recently I came across a YouTube video explaining that Dr. Jordan Peterson, a Canadian Academic with advanced degrees in psychology did not understand Nazism. Watching the video, which utilized clips from Peterson 2017 lecture series Maps of Meaning, specifically, lecture 11The Flood and The Tower, I suspected that the clips had been taken out of context. The sheer level of error in the statements by Dr. Peterson seemed beyond belief for a person with a university education.
They were not out of context.
Here is the section of the lecture, just over five minutes, where Peterson diverts from the subject of the lecture to speak about Nazi Germany.
Here are my major objections to Peterson’s opinions.
1) ‘Hitler should have enslaved…’
The Nazis most certainly enslaved their ‘undesirable’ (Jews, Homosexuals, Roma, etc.) Even knowledge gleaned from popular culture such as Schindler’s List should be enough to make this basic knowledge. For those with just a little more understanding of history there is also the famous legend above the gate to history’s most infamous of death camps, Auschwitz, Arbeit Macht Frei, ‘Work Sets You Free.’ The Nazis worked to death the people in the camps and those that could not work they murdered. The V2 factories in addition to raining death on London and other allied cities also boasted one of the most lethal areas in the concentration camp system. It is shocking that a university professor is ignorant to all of this.
2) ‘… Win the war and then…’
Peterson’s argument that the Nazi’s should have won the war and then turn to murder ignores several critical factors. First and foremost is that the Nazi’s anti-Semitism was centered to their political and cultural worldview. The elimination of all Jewish people and influence from German culture, German Life, and German lands had been a stated goal for some time. Quite simply for the Nazis murdering of the Jewish population was a victory condition. It has also been argued and with some validity I think that the Nazi accelerated the mass murder as a way to keep the German’s population food rations higher. The lesson of the First World War where Germany was effectively starved into submission was one ruthless applied to the Second World War.
3) ‘… Significant military resources…’
The military resources diverted to the Nazis campaign of mass murder had no material effect on the war’s outcome. German intelligence seriously underestimated Soviet military strength and with the manufacturing base moved east beyond the war’s destruction, coupled with American entry into the war, doomed German to defeat.
4) ‘ … Fascistic societies are Fascistic at every level…’
Peterson referred to Daniel Goldhagen’s book Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary German and the Holocaust. I have not read this book but there are a number of good reviews and takes on this work. What is clear is that Goldhagen’s thesis is that Germany held a particularly virulent strain of anti-Semitism that primed the German population to be turned easily murderous. That’s an interesting and not undisputed hypothesis but it is not the same things as declaring a society, much less the German society, as Fascistic at every level.
As a political philosophy Fascism was founded in1915 and I am not sure how you replace an entire culture in just a dew short decades. I think it’s much more reasonable to think the Peterson is misrepresenting Godlhagen’s work. The poison of Anti-Semitism is far older than either Fascists or Nazis and it was merely a tool, a lever, by which the Nazi managed their murders and they found more than enough willing help far beyond Germany’s borders.
5) ‘ … Why do we assume that? …’
Perhaps the most stunning assertion in the entire digression is that possibility that Hitler never planned to win the war and that he actual aim, whether he was aware of it himself or not, was chaos and mass destruction. Certainly, in some case, on individual actions it may be best to determine actual motive from repeated outcomes, but applying this framework to single outcome events such as winning or losing a war strikes me as quite a stretch.
I do not think it was the Kaiser’s intent to destroy the German Empire but that was the outcome of World War I.
I do not think it was the intent of the Japanese government to subject their home islands to destruction and occupations but that was the outcome of World War II when they brought America into the conflict.
I do not think it was the intent of the rebellious Confederacy to end slavery but that was the outcome when they started the American Civil War.
I do not think it was Gorbachev’s intent to dissolve the Soviet Union but that was the outcome of his Glasnost policies.
It’s perfectly reasonable to accept that Hitler and the Nazis wanted to win the war and carry their murderous prejudices across all of Europe and beyond.
Expertise is not transferable and when someone moves beyond their field of training and specialization it is wise to subject their opinions and ‘facts’ to scrutiny.
