America?... Fuck Yeah!

Team America: World Police is a Bush Era satire discussing a great many issues that have been posed in the post-9/11 world. The guys who made South Park use (cheap) marionettes to lampoon U.S. foreign policy and the war on terror, the action films of Michael Bay, liberal Hollywood actors, and everyone else for that matter. Gary Johnston is a skilled actor who joins Team America, a group of five counterterrorists whose preferred method involves lots of explosions. The leader, Spottswoode, wants him to go undercover to discover the next terrorist plot, dubbed "9/11 times a thousand" (911,000). Unbeknownst to our heroes, North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Il is secretly funding and arming the terrorists. He is also encouraging the Film Actors Guild (FAG) to shut down Team America and its ultra violent antics.

What's interesting about this movie is that it presents an actual, functioning moral system to why horrible things happen on such a large scale, and the checks and balances that a culture provides, and needs to deal with such atrocities. 

In the movie, and more specifically the theme song (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhnUgAaea4M) there are a lot of buzz words that are parts and pieces of essentially what is thought to make up the idea of what America is, (Liberty, Walmart, Porno, Apple Pie, etc.), satirizing the concepts that are being protected by going to war. As Kant insists, this is a necessary part of war, to understand the opponent as other. To conceptualize your opponent as evil, you must conceptualize yourself as good. So when fighting for America, you have to break down everything America is supposed to stand for, while having a blind fervent patriotism and allegiance to these vague, and ultimately empty concepts.

But, it is exactly these concepts, and the abstraction of these concepts that make war so complicated in this day and age. If you were to read Xenophon's March of 10,000 (or just watch The Warriors) he'll exactly dehumanize both parties in the same way that they are today. Break down both the Greeks and their honor and reason from the Persians and their cruelty and savagery. But there is no suggestion of seeing the other as complex human beings, because they were at war. There was a distinct place for war, separate and sacred from peacetime, and therefore a different way of thinking of others. But today, war and peace exist at the same time. Where in the world isn't some sort of armed conflict happening? And we're made aware of it on such a high level through the media that we can't separate it mentally. Thus, our civilian morality mixes with our war morality. And Team America: World Police explains this interesting system of checks and balances.

In the famous "dicks, pussies and assholes" speech. Team America, the "dicks" fight for good causes, protecting the innocents and serving justice to the evil, but can go too far. The "pussies", F.A.G. and the rest of the world, can tell when the "dicks" are out of line, but can become evil if they are too self-righteous. The "assholes"- Kim Jong Il and terrorists, are "pussies" that went too far at some point. So the real problem with war is getting too carried away during, and loosing your base, or focus. 

V

In V for Vendetta, V murders select individuals for ' the greater good' as well as blows up a few buildings (that I'm sure were full of people), to bring about his revolution.  He makes it clear that killing is not a moral problem for him, as  he slashes most men who get in his way.  Evey asks him at one point if he will kill again,  to which he tells her yes without question. The only time he shows a little sympathy  is with the coroner, whom he lethaly injects  as she sleeps and once she wakes he listens to her story.

"Is it meaningless to apologize?"
"Never."

Kagan's essay compares harm for harm's  sake and harm for a greater end result. If you look at V as a character,  he demonstrates both.  Evey discovers that he is killing the doctors from Larkhill for what they did to the women who was in the cell next to him.  Here he is killing to kill, to get back at the doctors and scientists. This motive, however  is not as clear as his want to cleanse the corrupt government of London.  This can  be viewed as  harm for the greater good,  with the hopes that taking down the government who tortures and rules with fear might in the end save more lives.  It may seem that killing so many innocent people is not necessary  yet if you look at any revolution in the past, to make gigantic changes, unfortunately  lots of people end  up dead.

V for Vendetta & Metaphysics of Morals

V for Vendetta is a film by James McTeigue. The film is set in a near-futuristic London, at a time where a totalitarian government has formed and Britain seems to have emerged as the leading world power at the cost of the freedom of it's citizens. The film attempts to call attention to the possibilities of a government gaining too much power through fear. While heavy-handed political symbology is used throughout, (see the Catholic symbols used to resemble the Nazi Swastika) the film uses a more interpersonal dramatic story line to gain it’s largest effect. After a run in with a zealot in a Guy Fawkes mask(V), the character Evey finds herself in the middle of his revolutionary plot.

Throughout the film, V is the primary force upon the plot. There’s a shot of him pushing a large group of dominos down that is very much representative of how the plot works. This also creates one of the films largest yet soft-spoken dilemmas. The question must arise; who gives V the right to be the decider of the fate of several individuals and a nation? This is even the question on which V laments as he dies before his plan is finally carried out by his protege of sorts, Evey.

This brings about the very question of morality. (ethics, rather) There’s a pervasive question that is; what is the definition of good and bad, right and wrong? Immanuel Kent writes upon the ideas of morality in Groundwork for the Metaphysical. As we question right and wrong we have to consider the empirical attitude it would take to make such decision, though we must; “a good will seems to constitute the indispensable condition even of our worthiness to be happy” (Kant, 258). This idea contradicts another idea of what morality is and what it’s value is based on what it can achieve. While V is working to free the people of Britain, he’s still somewhat unsure of whether or not he is doing the right thing, or rather if he is someone who even deserves to do so.  This is quite a contrast with what one must suppose this character does intend. This can be more accurately captured with another quote from Kent, “That judgement rather is based on the idea that our existence has another and much worthier purpose, for which, and not for happiness, our reason is properly intended, an end which, therefore, is the supreme condition to which our private ends must for the most part be subordinated” (Kant, 259). 

I think there’s no way to be certain of any true moral reason to be sure or unsure of whether or not larger ideological concepts are good or bad. It’s very difficult to weigh the true value of good and bad based solely on information one could not possibly attain regarding self and community. The attempt can only be made to do best and to hand that power to the majority.

Appy-polly-loggies: A Clockwork Orange and the Songs of Revolution

    The behavior of the government, and it’s lack of involvement in bettering it’s country and judicial system, led misfits and groups to define their own laws in Clockwork Orange. The book became a film that led society into a guiding of “ultra-violence”. The film, becomes a revolution itself via cinema and societal influence. There was something sinister but interesting about the way the story played cinematically. Stanley Kubrick, and Malcolm McDowell as Alex, engaging the viewers into a world of “droogs” and milk and Slavic styled cockney.  I mean, he himself, had Alex as a "strapping young lad with good looks", he almost seemed to romanticize violence and charm the viewers with glares and smirks and Alex's enjoyment of it all.

    After the film’s release in the 70’s, a rise of imitation had occurred, and we all have heard that “imitation being the highest form of flattery”. The film changed the idea of cinematic violence and our current governments and political persons not taking a liking to it. I suppose because of the idea that it could almost lead to an uprising of a sorts, possibly adding to anarchism against the governments of today. I say this because the film was widely known for being eccentric in negative ways: The issues of young adults causing havoc and rape, the fact that neither the police nor the government tried to help stop, but only to their own selfish benefit such as the Ludovico treatment. This treatment, forcing the prisoners to be “reconstructed” through medically induced sickness anytime there was the thought of “ultra-violence”. This was selfish in the sense that the government just wanted to come off as good and beneficial to the citizens, showing that they can cure the wrong-doers.

   Shelly Kagan speaks about intending harm and foreseeing harm. This can be correlated quite well with the film’s portrayal of a government that uses harmful techniques to stop future violence. But it doesn’t actually stop Alex’s violent ways, but merely forces him to submit to his karmic past. In doing so, he’s not really able to defend himself physically, his old droog gang having their way with torturing and deserting him, after a band of old homeless men react negatively towards Alex.  This led him back to the Home of the writer and his wife, which seemed positive at first. The old writer didn’t recognize him, until the moment Alex started singing in the bath a song not meant to be traumatizing. 

   There are so many symbols and meanings within this film: Beethoven and classical music, milk, Slavic influence, and even graphic images of violence and Nazis/World War II snippets. So during the era following the film’s release, it’s understandable that people would want to imitate the look and style of what the film was showing. A revolution within itself, and the real world, changing the viewer’s questions of government, and the ideas of violence.

(Star)War as a Means for Peace

*Note: I admittedly am referencing from all of the Star Wars movies to make this point.

In 2005's Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith we see the evil Chancellor Palpatine-turned-Darth Sidious declare in his grimy voice.

"Once more the Sith shall rule the galaxy... and we shall have peace."

This quote comes as a shock initially because the Sith are the archetypal "bad guys". They are regularly told to "use [their] anger, aggression, and hate" for their power and focus. It is presumed that their entire motivation is destruction and evil, with no other surrounding motives other than that now the Sith can be unchallenged by Jedi.

However, nowhere in the series do any of the Sith lords ever proclaim to be evil or desire chaos or rebellion. In fact, Anakin-turned-Darth Vader infamously says to his previous master, Obi-Wan,"...From my point of view the Jedi are evil." Given that Anakin is not completely delusional and that Darth Sidious isn't just lying about peace, we can delineate a philosophy of war for the Sith.

In Shelley Kagan's Intending Harm (written after Doing Harm) she extrapolates on the difference between coldly desiring harm for someone versus harm being done to someone for the greater good.
So when this concept is initially applied to the Sith, we see that they view war, hate, and aggression as totally justifiable means in order to achieve galactic peace. The power and focus that comes from anger establishes their security, or peace. It seems that maybe in fact the Sith aren't actually evil, they just have a different avenue for achieving the same goal, right? However at the end of her paper, Kagan concludes that means-to-an-end harm is not worth separating from intentional harm. If someone goes into a situation foreseeing and being fully aware that harm will be done to people though it isn't the goal entirely, this person is still inciting harm intentionally. The Sith may want to justify war as the means to peace, but to say that harm inflicted on others is the only way to peace is just creating the conflict they wished to destroy.

Starwars: dirty fighting and moral duty

   In Starwars (1977), the Empire goes after the rebels by attacking them through bureaucratic operation, rather than attacking the source of the hostility itself. This Idea is outlined in Nagel's War and Massacre. According to Nagel attacking a more vulnerable and harmless peripheral of a target, in order to weaken the target itself is unacceptable. He demonstrates this quite clearly, giving examples of everything from boxing matches to political campaigns. In a campaign, a politician might go after an opponents family troubles, which bear no threat, in order to blackmail the opponent himself, all the keeping in mind the old idea of the "ends justifying the means."
  In Starwars, this idea is taken to insidious degrees, whenever the empire decides to destroy Princess Lea's home planet, in order to first divulge information from her, and then in order to simply test the weapon. In no philosophy is this action justified. Even with defenders of utilitarianism, the ends must be justified, however, in this scenario, the ends were essentially evil in all facets.
  Just as the pure evil was demonstrated in the film, the even more rare instance of pure good was demonstrated in the film as well. In The Metaphysics of Morals Immanual Kant explains that in order for an action to be purely good, it must:

1. Be without ulterior Motives
2. Have a thoroughly moral quality, even if the ends have a negative impact
3. If they are done only out of respect for Moral Law.

Whenever Han Solo decided to join the fight against the deathstar, not only did he not have ulterior motives, but he was acting in direct conflict with his own self interest (surviving and clearing his debts). This was the only act of pure good that I noticed in the film, just as the destruction of  Lea's home planet was the only act of pure evil. This is due to the fact that both of these acts were thoroughly pure with no regard to the consequences.
 

Dr Strangelove: Utilitarianism gone hilariously haywire

     Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb beautifully represents the dangers of Utilitarianism as outlined by Thomas Nagel in his work War and Massacre. In the movie, a psychotic and extremely paranoid airforce general exceeds his authority by taking it upon himself to nuke Russia during the cold war. According to Nagel, nuclear warfare completely defies absolutist restrictions that any decent human ought to have. The restrictions being that it should be considered dirty to attack your opponent's human faculties (ie. through starvation, or chemcal warfare) rather than attacking their faculties as soldiers in which the source of their hostilities lie. This kind of absolutist restriction can keep us from falling into "the abyss of utilitarian apologetics for large-scale murder." This idea is plainly and hilariously through the president explaining to the Russian premier what the situation is. In this scene they are continuously apologizing to one another, the president goes so far as to say "You're sorry?! Well, how do you think I feel!"
  It is incredibly ironic that throughout the movie, the military seems to be oblivious to their utilitarian self-justification. This is demonstrated by the General whenever he explains his self-justification for fighting dirty, is the fact that the "Commies" are the dirtiest fighters, going so far as to manipulate American bodily fluids through fluoridation. The cowboy-hatted pilot of one of the planes even makes a statement about going "toe-to-toe in nuclear warfare with the Ruskis." This is a completely non-coherent idea, since nuclear warfare (a utilitarian idea) is about the farthest you can possibly be from going toe-to-toe (a absolutist idea)." At the same time, however he does briefly mention the internal conflict of the two ideas in each person, saying to his crew: "you wouldn't be human beings if you didn't have strong feelings about nuclear warfare." These intuitive "human" feelings are the essence of Absolutism.

Detached Desire for a Greater Calling

In the 1998 film Saving Private Ryan, we are told the war story of a group of men that fought their way through Europe in World War Two to find a paratrooper named Private Ryan. They are sent on the mission because all of Private Ryan’s brothers have been killed in battle and the U.S. Army has decided to send him home so his mother doesn’t have all of her sons killed in the world war. Of course there are men lost on this journey of finding a needle in a haystack and when they finally do find him, the rest of the men die in action, but Private Ryan lives on and tries to live his life to the fullest in honor of all the men that died for his safe return home.

The interesting thing about this is the cost of this objective that is paid to save the one life of a man with many. In the movie, one gets the sense that these men are doing it for the greater good, for Mrs. Ryan to have one son at least, that she shouldn’t have to pay such a price for the country. These men have the duty to follow orders and give a life of happiness and stability in America after the war for Private Ryan, they wanted it but they could do what they need to, to at least give a young soldier the chance to do that when, such as Captain Miller (Tom Hanks), has already lived that life before the war. Yes, he wants to return to that life, but it is duty that compels him and good will for Ryan to give everything in his power to completing the objective.

Immanuel Kant writes very much about good will and means of ends in Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals. Kant writes on Dignity and Price, “Whatever is relative to universal human inclinations and needs has a market price. Whatever, even without a presupposing a need, accords with a certain taste--- that is, with satisfaction in the mere random play of our mental powers--- has an attachment price. But that which constitutes the sole condition under which anything can be an end in itself has not mere relative worth, i.e., a price, but an inner worth--- i.e., dignity”.  This kind of mission that the army gave Captain Miller has a price, but the final end is worth more than anything else because of the ethical implication they put on the families, why end a family name when it isn’t absolutely necessary even though that last brother is fighting at his own will. He has a greater attachment to country than family at first, but at the end has a great weight of responsibility to have lived up to what he was given by the men. Kant does also writes,”…The moral worth of an action done out of duty has its moral worth, not in the objective to be reached by that action, but in the maxim in accordance with which the action is decided upon; it depends, therefore, not on actualizing the object of the action, but solely on the principle of volition in accordance with which the action was done without any regard for objects of faculty of desire.” I found this interesting just in the fact that there is moral worth in just following through with an objective without desire effecting your completion of it.

This brings me to my modern day point. There are people who operate drones to eliminate targets out wherever it is needed. The soldiers are in combat, but at home, they have to follow these objectives given without question and have no idea if what they do is morally right or wrong to them. There is a sense of duty in what they do, but there is a weight of wondering guilt if they did something considered wrong or right in the grand scheme of ends. So has the military made a form of war where the soldier has no choice in the ultimate end unlike war in World War Two, sure they didn’t have a choice what they had to do, but there were instance of hand to hand combat that allowed them to keep a shred of what they were doing morally and could decide for themselves.

What "V" Kant and Can Do: Questioning Whether Justice Can Lack Morality

     According to Kant, the idea of “morality” is premised by a couple of factors. One of them being that “actions are moral if there are no ulterior motive.“ So if someone has an ulterior motive, does that make all of their actions immoral? If following this rule of morality, are their actions unjustified? The answer would be no. Justification doesn’t need to be morally promising. Justice can be sought through a form of war, but that also does not make war morally right. Take 9/11 into account, basically, the US was affected by terrorism, and sought justice by declaring war against those the United States deemed as a current enemy.  Fighting against enemies can be justified on the premise that they affected the citizens, but the war itself and the techniques used to find our enemies was immoral in so many ways. 

     In V for Vendetta, V had been seeking vengeance against Britain’s wrong-doers for administering illegal testing and “treatments” similar to that of the Nazi concentration camps in WWII. The comic and film were meant to mirror real life immorality in war, and take the possibility of revenge to justify V’s actions in a way that the audience and Evey can sympathize, or even empathize. V had obvious ulterior motives, mirroring Guy Fawkes from the 19^th century, to take down the tyrannical, futuristic government of Britain. He killed the scientists and government officials that once abused the human rights of the citizen experiments, he blew up parliament (which Guy Fawkes could not do), and practically aimed for anarchy, since he deemed the government unfit. He took power into his own hands and wasn’t very secretive about it. He helped Evey understand his means by recreating the torturous camps he once was a part of.   

    His motives make him immoral, but the question I ask is if he was justified. If these actions that he took, was a form of justice. Justice can be immoral, it can affect bad people while helping the good, and it can also be just completely wrong from a moral standpoint. Correlating that back to 9/11, the United States tortured prisoners which is immoral, as most countries have done, but they thought it justice, because it was believed it could help to “stop the bad guys”.

Life of Pi, Faith & Knowledge

In the film adaptation of Yann Martel's novel, Life of Pi, the exciting and tragic story of the main character's, Pi Patel, childhood is told through flashback scenes from the older, present-day Pi while he is being interviewed by the writer of the novel. Having grown up in India, Pi was raised Hindu but through encounters with strangers, becomes a Christian and a Muslim, while still practicing Hinduism as he sees no reason to have to give up any of each religion's beliefs. Pi is a very independent and curious young boy, and his parents have opposing opinions on his choices. His father is a realist and rationalist, and tells Pi that he must trust science and that if he believes in everything it is no different from believing in nothing. While Pi's mother encourages Pi's endeavors and claims science teaches us about the world, but religion teaches us about the heart. 

Pi tells a tragic and unbelievable tale of the loss of his family during a shipwreck while the family was moving overseas to Canada. Pi claims he was the only survivor and was strayed on a life boat with some of his father's zoo animals- an orangutan, a zebra with a broken leg, a hyena, and a Bengal Tiger named Richard Parker. Eventually Pi and Richard Parker are all who remain, and they develop a bond. This experience is a practice and test of Pi's survival and beliefs. When he does reach help, the investigators do not believe this story and ask Pi to tell them a more believable tale, which he does. Much darker and more gruesome, Pi says the cook, a sailor with a broken leg, Pi's mother, and himself were the survivors. The cook killed the sailor and Pi's mother to use their bodies for food and fish bait, causing Pi to kill the evil cook.  Which story is the true one is never clearly confirmed, although the first is the one most would hope to be true as it tells an elaborate story of survival and includes strong religious symbolism. In Hegel's Faith & Knowledge, he says Man is not "a spiritual focus of the universe, but an absolute sensibility. He does however, have the faculty of faith so that he can touch himself up here and there with a spot of alien supersensuousness." This relates to Pi, who filled his life with religions being extremely unsatisfied with the limitations of his reality. His first story is not sensible, but surely has alien supersensuousness and points to higher interventions. 

Dogma

This move is about two angels sent to earth for defying the will of god and the last scion who is sent on a pilgrimage to stop them. The Catholic church has a doctrine that says if you pass through the entrance of a certain church in new jersey then all sins shall immediately be for given. The angels plan to rip their wings off, become human,  pass through the archway and get forgiven their sins so that when they die they can get into heaven because of a loophole in dogma and heavenly law that says that he pope's will and law on earth will be mirrored in heaven. If the angels get forgiven and sent back to heaven it will undermine gods banishment and doctrine making it so she s no longer omnipotent. If gods isn't all powerful the universe will unravel self and life as we know it will end.

Hegel states that "The fixed standpoint which the all-powerful culture of our time has established for philosophy is that of a Reason affected by sensibility. In this situation philosophy cannot aim at the cognition of God, but only at what is called the cognition of man.", meaning that because man is flawed our reason is also flawed. If our reason is flawed the the dogma, or the incontrovertibly true principles, that we have designed in our practice of religion is also flawed. This comes up in the movie when it is revealed to the main character that there's a 13th apostle, god is a woman, and Jesus was  black. All these things aren't mentioned in dogma because of the bias of man. It's infallible proof that our dogma is flawed.

Because of his finite nature the reason of man is instead a "cruel dissection destructive of the wholeness of man, or violent abstraction that has no truth, and particularly no practical truth." we look for answers and when we find them we don't understand them and no longer want them. A truth no one is immune to in the movie. Jesus and his last ling relative both had moments where they were told a truth they didn't want to know and both had to come to terms with the new truth. As humans, prone to mistake and bias we are set with the task of creating, writing, and believing what will be remembered as truth though they are no where near infallible.

Rocky Vs. The World

Rocky is such an interesting movie franchise, all the way through. Even the bad ones have a certain dumb charm to them. Rocky is about a Philadelphia boxer who winds up by chance, getting the chance to fight the HeavyWeight champion. Up until now he had never really thought of himself as anything special, but he's suddenly able to become something. So to not waste this chance he trains hard every day and deals with the idea of maybe slipping back into nothingness, having wasted his chance and therefore his life.

One of the best things about the movie is all of the existential crises that Rocky has over the movies, they can be handled very simply and powerfully, while at the same time nuanced enough to actually have something to say. Like Class issues, living in a working class neighborhood and the problems of self-image that arrive. Or Race, which is handled very subtly, about an Italian nobody fighting a Black somebody and through sheer will and effort are they both able to take themselves out of their respective holes that life dug for them.

With all of the sports movies there's something that's very striking to me, which is they function like war movies, only they are allowed to be a little sillier. The lessons in all of the war movies are, some times people die, work hard and give your life for something bigger than you, honor, respect, the team is important, etc. Even a movie like Jarhead or Fullmetal Jacket had these as lessons, although they are a little more didactic and cynical about their lessons.

But in a sports movie you don't have to deal with all of that gravity, you don't have to push it and separate it from normal life, while still maintaining the same lessons. In a way, I think that it's silliness or as I affectionately call it, it's dumbness allows it to have the same import and weight to the lesson, without all of that being separated in your normal daily life. How to perform like a warrior, even when not training for battle.

Hoop dreams is about two boys who had dreams of becoming future NBA players. These two guys were extremely talented. They were also from two different parts of town, they ended up being recruited to the same school. So basically they ended up being each others competition because how talented they both were. One of the boys was better than the other so he got the attention of the scouts. The other one wasn't use to not being the best so he took it hard. He ended up being kicked from the team. He went to a public school. He could not keep his grades up and was doing poorly in school. They both ended up getting degrees but, neither made it to the NBA. Despite not accomplishing their dreams they are still good friends. Basketball gave these guys hope. Through out the movie these guys had faith and the movie makes you hope that they make it to the NBA.

Rudy and Religion

In the film Rudy, we see a zealous young man from the midst of poverty and bad grades rise to achieve the impossible, to play in a game of National Title football. I think the film can be stratified into two segments, the initial intentional message and the deeper level unintentional aftertaste.

By the end of the film, Rudy Reutteger has, through his goal of playing in a game of Notre-Dame football, gotten a job, friends, and an education. His external issues were resolutely solved by wanting to play football. And his "want" was harder than anyone else in his family or on his team. His sheer determination and grit to train hard, get good grades, and maintain character allow him the opportunity to rise above, pulling himself up by his bootstraps, and become the hero to his self-appointed story line. The moral of the story is that these lessons he has had to learn through football have allowed him to succeed "on and off the field." As described in Reid's "Sport, Education and the Meaning of Victory", the vicarious theatre that sports should be has proven a worthwhile endeavor.

However, I couldn't help an uneasy feeling after watching. From the time this man was a boy, he obsessed over this college team. Which is fine and all, I used to pretend I was Bear Bryant, of Crimson Tide fame, when I was a boy. But I never played football outside the backyard, like Rudy. He was, and became, not so much a specimen of football prowess as much as just a super-fan. He was entranced by the allure of running through the tunnel and slapping the signs and feeling the glory of it all, as opposed to winning a title or playing well or wanting the team to win just that game. He just up and quit when he found out he wouldn't be able to dress. His motivations were entirely for this aim. He made the aesthetic of Notre-Dame a kind of idol to which everything, his girlfriend, his family, his schoolwork, his time, and his money all came subservient to. Devotion, sacrifice, love, glory, and beauty are all religiously tinted words Rudy would have described in reference to that football program. I think the fact that he gained back some of what he sacrificed (education, job, family) is not a sufficient justification for putting all those up for grabs merely to be idolized like he did the players he worshiped in his childhood.

Roll Tide, though...

Foxcatcher - envy within sports

         Foxcatcher is a story about an olympic gold medalist wrestler named Mark Shultz who lives in Pennsylvania in a run down apartment, eats ramen everyday and practices wrestling with his older brother Dave Shultz who is also a wrestler. Until one day John DuPont with the DuPont Chemical empire gets a hold of Mark and wants him to come to Foxcatcher ranch to train while he pays him $10,000 a month. DuPont's goal is to train Mark to be the best in the world and to bring patriarchy back to America through wrestling. After a match won by Mark - DuPont mentions that he hates horses and horse trophies.. Said he always wanted to be a wrestler but his mother wouldn't let him because it was a "small sport" and that horseback riding was better for him. He wanted so badly to become a wrestler. He saw himself in Marks character. DuPont ended up bringing Marks brother Dave up to the ranch to help Mark train. This messes with Marks psyche and causes distress between the three men. DuPont praises Dave in front of Mark, side eyes are given, secret talks take place, etc. 

           That being said, this type of behavior made me think of the problems of envy/jealously in sports. To be a "good sport" means to play respectfully with a positive attitude. In all sports, whether it's a high school football team, a women's college basketball league or in this case a couple of wrestlers, there will always be some type of animosity. Between players or in an unlikely and unprofessional situation with a player and coach situation. Just like Wallace mentions in the New York Times article - the beauty of the game is in the players conscience. He mentions the amount of anxiety within the Wimbledon tournament is intense.  Competition in a sport can really get under ones skin and the toll it can have on an individual can cause depression, angst and rage. 

Sport as a Proxy for Life with Hoop Dreams

PhilFilm Hoop Dreams

Hoops Dreams is about the trials and tribulations of two top basketball recruits going through high school. They both have a lot of struggles getting through for various reasons including financial, familial, academic, and on the court.

The film begins with Arthur, one of the protagonists, admiring Isaiah Thomas. He is about to attend a basketball camp at the place where Isaiah Thomas attended high school. This relates to the Federer Moments discussed in of readings.

Throughout the film the constant theme is putting hope and belief in sports. Arthur and the other protagonist, William, refer to Basketball as their ticket out of the ghetto. Both show promise as basketball players but the film focuses on their lives as a whole. It juxtaposes the struggles of their home life and the pressure from people around them with the pressures of the sport. They put all of their hope and strength into the game. They use it as a proxy for life where if they can reach their goals in basketball then they have won.

They are slowed down at various points. Arthur can't afford to keep playing at the private school and starts going to public school. He has trouble in school. His father leaves and his mother has chronic pain so she can't work. Their family has to live off of very limited welfare between three children. All of this puts more pressure on Arthur to do well.

William gets a full ride from a sponsor to go to the private school. He injures his knee and has to get surgery. This affects his games and takes him out for most of a year. When he comes back his is off his game. He gets one more surgery. He comes back and plays well but need better grades. All of the injuries and tutoring were paid for by the school insurance or his sponsor.

In the last part of the movie, William's team can't make it to state but Arthur's team does. This highlights the sports as being a struggle to succeed. Because despite Williams having the advantage in many ways (if Arthur had been injured he probably would have had to quit) Arthur went further in high school.

At the end of the movie Arthur and William. Both go to school on full scholarships. In a way their hoop dreams came through. They both got to a much better place because of basketball. William even went to the place his older brother wanted to go to school. Both of them have aspirations besides basketball, and basketball was a conduit through which they can achieve that.

Rudy, and My Lack of Philosophical Direction with Sports

Having heard of Rudy, but never actually have watched it until this week, I was kind of shocked by the plotline. Growing up with people chanting Rudy’s name similar to the ending scene, I had presumed that it was just another “based on a true story” film that some franchise decided to decimate with heartwarming moments of victory and all that jazz about some team or person who became undefeated and won everything. In Rudy, this was not the case by a long shot. He was a mediocre player at best, short, lower middle class with no fat chance of getting to live his dream as being a football player for Notre Dame. He did actually manage to finally get in after rejection for multiple semesters, and he did actually get to be on the football team, but he was no elite player. 

What I admired most about the film, was the fact that it was about an “average” guy not giving up, managing to still in some sense live his dream. Heather Reid’s “Sport, Education, and the Meaning of Victory” deals with the modern meaning of victory, as winning  is found more important than other ideals of sports and education. I thought this was interesting because Rudy isn’t about a team winning, nor is it about Rudy winning per se. He only made it to the field in uniform because his teammates saw that Rudy had spunk and willpower. Even in the educational aspect, it took Rudy practically three years of countless rejection to finally make it into Notre Dame because according to modern meaning of victory, he was a failure.  

Notre Dame is a catholic school, and Rudy plus his entire family is Catholic, which was part of the film’s plot. Rudy spoke to a catholic priest who worked with Notre Dame, got into a catholic college near Notre Dame, and even when Rudy wanted to give up, we see him sitting in the pews of the catholic church, praying and contemplating. 

In “Federer as Religious Experience”, Wallace speaks about how serious people get with sports, and how it can be similar to one’s religion. Rudy’s father was a die-hard fan of Notre Dame, and treated football as a religious experience, especially when his son got onto the field.  So it makes sense, that the family and Notre Dame’s undertones of Catholicism was put into the film, because it does affect the emotional aspect of the film and how it affects the viewers. Affecting the viewers, in the sense that the viewers have some personal ties to religion in a positive way.

Moral responsibility on the Shoulders of Athletes

In Rudy, we are told the true story about Rudy galalalakjfkajsdf who beats the odds and works his way to playing only two plays at the end of his last game at Notre Dame. He overcomes dyslexia, financial, physical, and family problems to play football at that single game. It seems a bit over the top but somehow football is the thing that kept him in one piece and gave him that project that we need in life to make us have a purpose.

What struck me as odd was that the way the first string players were treated was the equivalent of gods. They were not to be messed with or got what they needed. It is their grace that gets Rudy the time that he does play in the end. Grant it, he proved himself to them, but again, it was by their grace that they made a statement to the coach about how Rudy deserved to be played just once in his time at Notre Dame. They had power over the coach in numbers but even he was treated with the utmost respect. They just play football. Sure they risk physical harm but they are doing it for the most part willingly. If they feel they have to do it, it is one of those “Bad Faiths” we have discussed. But they got the same attention as if going into war. And this brings me to what David Wallace wrote about in his article. He spoke of Roger Federer with a degree of detail that is scary to me; being able to analyze video so closely that a fan can know his personal habits and not know each other. But this kind of attention and for that amount of time, it is almost like a religion to him, Federer is a god of tennis to him, seeing him come up with different angles on winning in a sport is his conviction on why this person demands the respect he has in tennis. But again, he just plays tennis. He is just a guy who is really good and devoted to tennis, and most likely does it for the love of it even though the money is a bonus. But is set on a level of observation for all that is excessive.

I know plenty of people like David Wallace, but its football that they really are into. If you really want to seem successful to the majority of people in Alabama (where I am from) you go to the University of Alabama and are on the football team but maybe about where Rudy was just as a stand-on or you join the military. Unfortunately, I learned that from people I went to High School with. The two are of the same respect to people and that is a fact from where I am from. We are in the South, so college football is king. I guess they appeal to the majority of people who are Christian and taking a sport they love for the rivalry and the physical side of these battles, they fill in the metaphors for these people. I can see the amount of drama that people can get out of the sport also. Like David Wallace wrote that we can look up just about anything on Google about a player, they are all put on a pedestal for observation and with that, they must exhibit good behavior, to get respect, but to go professional, or to receive awards. They are governed by multiple factors and must keep up the moral within the sports for their fans.  To me, it’s a bit ridiculous, but sports are that important to people where it stands in place as an activity and conveyer of morals and life lessons. 

F For Fake

F for Fake is the last directorial role of Orson Welles, And has a rather complicated subject. According to Welles in the Documentary, the subject is on Charlatans and Fakery. It looks at a famous biographer, who chronicles the life of a Famous art forger, Elmyr. The biographer Clifford Irving is also a man of hoaxes, who published a fake biography of Howard Hughes. They discuss both how easy it is, and how justified it is to perform fool people for profit. So to recap, Orson Welles who performed the amazing hoax of convincing half the nation we were under attack by martians, directs a documentary on a biographer who is famous for publishing a fake biography, who charts the life of an art forger who puts out fake Picassos and Modigliani, and everything is 100 percent true.

One of the most incredible points that this film makes, is that they can only perform these feats of fakery only if there are experts. If there was nobody who could say what was a true Modigliani painting, there would be nobody to fool into buying a fake one. Only when somebody positions himself into being an "expert on the subject" can they actually be convinced that they know, because a layman knows that he doesn't.

At the same time, These experts suck away the lifeblood of the creators, both the real ones and the forgers. Art critics sell art at a much higher rate than what they buy them at, making millions of dollars on works that they never created, while the creator gets very little. Their position as an expert means that they et the artificial "final say" on what is good and what is bad, even though they only know a thing superficially. They don't know an Elmyr from a Picasso, but Elmyr does. He does because he painted it. He can spot the difference between his own work and another simply because he painted it. he knows it gesturally. These people can't, they can only pretend to, and if they pretend to well enough and long enough, others start to believe them. And then he's able to make money off of what people believe. They are just as much a charlatan as an art forger. Which is the true irony explored in this movie about fakery. The fakes are just as good as the originals.

Man on a Wire

The documentary Man on a Wire, follows a French trapeze artist named Philippe Petit. Philippe begins performing in tight-ropes across famous buildings illegally, until his performance between the two towers of the World Trade Center, which is his goal from a young age. 

The film follows Philippe at mixed intervals, placing shots from different portions of time along the same timeline that is mostly based on Philippe's life. In this way, the film is able to capture the excitement of Philippe and his crew while it also is able to mimic a part of his personality that is ecstatic and unpredictable. It matches the scattered stereotype related to creative minds. With old footage and new interview footage along with photographs, the film is complete and allows the story, that one would assume must be rather short, to unfold in an interesting way.

In On the Absolute, Sublime and Ecstatic Truth, Werner Herzog writes, "But in the fine arts, in music, literature, and cinema, it is possible to reach a deeper stratum of truth—a poetic, ecstatic truth, which is mysterious and can only be grasped with effort; one attains it through vision, style, and craft." This idea is incredibly important when dealing with documentaries and especially this particular one. When an autor sets out to tell any story, even a true one, the true goal is to appeal to the human conscious. There’s no point in telling a story that no one will ever hear or want to hear. This also means there must be some bastardization of the truth. This story is unapologetically told through the romantic lens of nostalgic footage and people. Philippe and his crew are first person story tellers which makes their account both the best and worst. They tell an interesting and romantic story that may be greatly embellished, as it’s appeal certainly is through their telling and through the art of good film making. 

Capturing the friedmans and the truth

Capturing the Friedmans is a documentary about a Jewish family of teachers and entertainers that were the middle of a sexual abuse and molestation trial. They were all respected in their community but when their father and brother are suspected of molesting children in their home the family begins to break apart. The sons in the family believe the father is innocent despite all the evidence against him while viewing their mom as a harpy for not trusting or believing in their father.
Something that comes up in the movie is how the mother could be married to heir father for thirty plus years and not be suspicious of what is going on. Herzog says "This bottle filled with water was their proof for the village that there really was an ocean. I asked cautiously whether it wasn’t just a part of the truth. No, they said, if there is a bottle of seawater, then the whole ocean must be true as well.", what the wife knew as the truth is what she believed. Everyone saw what appeared to be a good man and everyone believed that image.
This movies tells two sides of a family divided both of which believe thy know the truth. This documentary acts as a catalyst to make us feel sympathetic for the family while not questioning the fathers guilt. Everyone has their own truths and clearly the sons can't see their father as guilty. as the view we pick sides based on ecstatic truth "The soul of the listener or the spectator completes this act itself; the soul actualizes truth through the experience of sublimity: that is, it completes an independent act of creation. Longinus says: For our soul is raised out of nature through the truly sublime, sways with high spirits, and is filled with proud joy, as it itself had created what it hears." and we in a since create our own truth.