Oscars, Identity, Crisis.

First Published: 7 March 2006

There is a striking commonality in the subject matter of the films that were nominated for best picture at Sunday night's Oscars. All the films tackle issues of tangible contemporary relevance, and are designed to inspire thought and insight, not to escape from it. These films eschew placidity and instead challenge society. Many have said that Hollywood seems now to be 'out of touch' with the normative audience, the common man and his emotions. Indeed, that is a tradition from which these films seem to stray. Instead of pandering to the whims and gusts of an indifferent audience, these films aim to inspire debate and change, which recalls Schiller's directive that the artist's duty is to guide the moral intentions of the people.

Perhaps, this is reflective of a general mood in the current consciousness, one that questions accepted value structures as well as the nature and validity of authority. This is expressed poignantly in Good Night, and Good Luck, which highlights the repression of civic freedoms during the McCarthy 'witch-hunts'. The film showcases the responsibility of the press to report on the liberties taken by an intrusive government, which has implications for contemporary political issues, such as the cooperative role played by the media and the government in manufacturing public consent for the Iraq war.

That consent was found and manipulated easily in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of 9/11, which inspired a palpable atmosphere of public fear. Munich draws on this vivid experience of terrorism and its continuing prominence in the public consciousness. It is a psychological examination of murder and vengeance, the humans that undertake such actions, and the politics that underpin it all. As well, it discusses the contemporary issue of Israeli-Palestinian relations from a stirringly human angle.

It is, again, the human condition that is examined in Crash, which brings to the fore the very modern problem of civic alienation and its impact on human psyche and behaviour. It questions the effectiveness of public policies that seek to integrate diversity as well as gestures to their inability to inspire an ethic of tolerance in individuals. It draws attention to the civic problem of exclusion and questions definitions of identity.

Identity is an issue that is central in Brokeback Mountain. Of course, same-sex issues have received increasing attention in recent years due to the legalisation of same-sex marriage in a number of Western countries. The film examines the nature of love as well as its accepted notions. It questions traditional beliefs in love as universally accepting and tests society's willingness to attend to those convictions.

The final nominee, Capote, is a film that also investigates individual identity. The film explores the psyche of one of the most influential writers of the modern age and, in an interesting interpretation, suggests that his last and final novel is a reflection of his own self-image.

This quest for identity speaks of a movement towards the renegotiation of society's values and ethics, as well as the political, ethnic, religious, and social affiliations that continue to obtain. That this year's Oscar nominees are all films that deal with relevant, critical, and contemporary issues is indicative of a widening desire to consider alternative viewpoints in the search for a deeper understanding of our selves and our beliefs. This trend cannot be brushed aside as mere liberal elitism. Rather, it represents a desire to see art influence life, and not the passive opposite. The intellectual courage of these films gestures to the desire to stifle the loud cries of argument in favour of the spirited din of debate, in the hope that concerted reform will triumph over reactive chauvinism.

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Lexical Lament

First Published: 2 February 2006

One of the most horrifying aspects of modern life, some people agree, is the egregious and oftentimes macabre misuse of language. The commonness of lexical slips in popular parlance is indicative of a subversive, general perversion of the language. This is exemplified by the pervasiveness of sub par sub-species like Ebonics and Albertan. Too many conversationalists, with their lazy, wide-eyed tongues, get entangled in webs of dangling modifiers and split infinitives, leading them down a dangerous slippy-slope to certain embarrassment, if not suicide (social, not actual). Beyond these considerations, however, is the hard reality that speaking well isn’t really considered well in our times. Plebian parlance has infected the popular consciousness.

How baneful are the trills of Valleyspeakers, verbifying nouns and ‘like, omigod’-ing willy-nilly! All too frequently can we recount screechy, elongated monologues by speakers chronicling how they ‘were like totally making out on every lamppost on St Cat’s!’ With much shock and awe do we witness dialogue that substitutes pronouns for verbs, ignores standard conjugations, and eliminates subject-verb agreement: ‘My mother she bigger than you. She always do crazy things. She going to knock you out.’ It’s not only English that suffers this proverbial deflowering, though. Every vernacular perpetrates on its mother tongue such oedipal crimes.

The seminal issue here is that language is tied intimately to humanity. It is our larynxes and uvulas that make possible the transmission of ideas that distinguish human intercourse. Without proper parlance, attempts at communication would be as useful as a blind man looking out a window. Just imagine if people who spoke the same language (ostensibly) didn’t understand each other!

Consider the following actual conversation I experienced. In response to a query regarding her occupation, She says to He: ‘I just passed the bar exam.’ ‘Oh,’ replies He, ‘I didn’t realise becoming a barmaid required such rigour.’ She looks at him askance, and offers a corrective: ‘No, I just completed an actuarial-related law degree.’ He says, surprised, ‘Wow, the laws of bird-keeping. That’s really, um, interesting.’ What a nitwit, She thinks to herself! ‘No,’ She squawks, ‘my degree is in insurance and tax law!’ ‘Ah, taxonomy,’ He nods, with a wink and a smile.

How absurd. Where has gone our understanding of the language? Do we have such impoverished linguistic ability that we can no longer understand each other? Have our language skills degenerated so well that (not so) simple conversation is thrust into the realm of the imbecilic? In our quest for the bottom line and the bottom dollar, have we settled for bargain basement parlance as well? Has our standard been lowered so high that the most acceptable communications are typified by unwitting abuses at best and somewhat-syllables at worst? Has the paramountcy of the plebian become so thorough that turning a phrase is now as verboten as turning a trick (though, perhaps not in Montreal)?

What all this speaks of is our submission to an increasingly rapid pace of life, which supports a worldview that indulges, and even pampers, inability: allowing people to get away with avoidable mistakes speaks to the acceptance of improper or incomplete education. Of course, education is a scarce commodity, which is lamentable. But, when moderately educated individuals subvert the language, either through active or passive support, then we run the risk of becoming the victims of a diluted social intelligence. This, in turn, inhibits the sophisticated understanding of our lives and times that is so important in our small, small world. After all, without the use of proper subjects and predicates, attempts to come to know one another would be like a broken pencil: pointless.

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Superheroes in Action

First Published: 21 March 2006

Heroes – from Arjuna to Rustam to Gilgamesh to Dirty Harry – have always been important to human societies. In the wake of the third anniversary of the Iraq invasion, though, our society’s conception of heroism has come into question. With all our disillusionment, can we still expect our heroes to be perfect or infallible? After all, especially in regard to the Iraq situation, those whom we were meant to look up to seem to have failed us. Established authority structures, having manipulated the public trust, are no longer the heroic bastions of ethical and physical protection they once were.

Superheroes, distinguished by their immortality, represented the ideal of a messianic figure who resolved for society its problems and traumas. This was the ideal that birthed Superman in the 1930s, the era leading up to World War II, with its own, real, super-villains. However, by the 1960s, which saw the advent of Spiderman, the validity of this idea had begun to crack. The emotional and intellectual freedom of that era allowed individuals to question their established authority structures – like a government that enforced conscription – and whether they really needed someone else to solve their problems.

Contrasting the messianism of Superman, Spiderman represented the need to take responsibility for one’s own traumas and failures, which, just as Spiderman came to understand, are a result of one’s own actions. This conceptualization was and is indicative of a burgeoning, yet eternal, hope that we can overcome our own traumas, not through the intervention of a mighty and perfect Superman but rather with the inner, agonized strength of an imperfectly human Peter Parker.

Superman was a model of perfection for an unquestioning society who sought solace in the notion of a savior who would not only restore the balance of the physical world, but also the ethical balance that seemed to have tipped askew. For that generation, the Allies represented the forces of Good, who, like Superman, had to prevail against the Evil that seemed about to overrun the world.

Though the rhetoric seems not to have changed in our times, the innocence that buttressed it has gone. Disenchanted, we shun the manteau of the distressed damsel and no longer look to Uncle Sam to save us or our ideals. Rather, we are more certain of our own power to effect change.

In a society like this, there seems little room for an omnipotent Superman who swoops down to save the day. The essential appeal of that ideal was its vicarious empowerment. The essence of our present times, on the other hand, is actual empowerment: we have it, we know it, and we don’t want others to fight our battles. This is the spirit that Spiderman embodies: recognizing his own hand in his trauma, he sets out alone to restore himself to the ethical pantheon that is the province of the innocent.

Spiderman represents, thus, our own fallibility and, more importantly, our perseverance in spite of it. We have, as a society, been through the trauma of a proverbial adolescence and no longer pine virginally for Prince Charming to rescue us, but rather accept responsibility for our actions and seek rectitude on our own merits. Like Peter Parker donning the mask of Spiderman, we transform ourselves into powerful and capable beings in charge of our own destinies. Assuming that mask, then, is not an escape into a false reality, but is rather a recognition of the true, inner nobility that inheres in us all and inspires our greatest actions.

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Luxury Jeans and Fiscal Irresponsibility

While contemporary designer denim is known for its deconstructed washes, high-quality fabrics, funky logos, and flattering cuts, it is also famously expensive, with jeans ranging from $150-$10,000. But, why are people paying so much for a fabric that used to be considered a complement to workmen’s Caterpillars and never ever as fodder for catwalks? For many, the answer is simple: they’re wicked cool, they fit oh-so-perfectly, and they’re unspeakably sexy. Indeed, didn’t Fergie warble: ‘they say they love my ass in Seven jeans, True Religion’? However, the growth of the designer denim industry gestures to a wider issue: the willingness of people to overspend on overpriced items, which one zealous observer has called an ‘epidemic of extravagance’.

Today, jeans are considered so staple that the average wardrobe has seven of them. Interestingly, the revival of fashion denim is widely considered to have begun with the founding in 2000 of the now famous California company, Seven For All Mankind. In spite of their current luxury status, jeans were designed in the 16^th-century as a specialised item for the Genoese navy, whose sailors required trousers that could be worn either wet or dry. The dye used to make the fabric came to be called ‘bleu de Gênes’, which is the etymological root for ‘jeans’. It would be over five hundred years before denim was to become ‘fashionable’, though, largely due to Jordache, founded in 1978.

Twenty years later, Gucci premiered its ‘genius jeans’, which were priced at US$3,134 each, gaining them a Guinness World Record for the world’s most expensive jeans. That was then. Today, Escada’s couture line jeans start at $8,000, but their masterpiece is a Swarovski crystal-studded $10,000 pair. The going-rate for popular designer jeans, though, such as Seven, True Religion, or Rock N’ Republic is in the $300 range.

Still, in the US, jeans that cost more than $100 make up only 1% of the $14 billion industry. Furthermore, it has become increasingly easier to find the popular brands online at much cheaper prices. It’s statistics like these at lead some analysts to conclude that the designer jeans market has peaked and is on its way down.

However, such predictions may be overlooking a central issue – people like paying a lot of money for things. People enjoy the signature label and shopping at Cours Mont-Royal or Holts. According to Robert H. Frank, author of Luxury Fever, ‘When you acquire high status [items], your serotonin level goes up. It feels good to have high status. It feels bad to have low status.’

Certainly, people have always spent outside their means to acquire high status goods, but this propensity has escalated in modern times. Whereas in the past people compared themselves with people who were close to their own financial situation, people now compare themselves with the top few percent. According to Juliet Schor, a Harvard University economist, this is because the lifestyles of the rich and famous have become so visible that they have come to be perceived as the norm. Indeed, what is believed to have jumpstarted the designer jeans ‘revolution’ of the 2000s is the product’s popularity among celebrities such as Jessica Simpson and Angelina Jolie.

What all this underscores is the fiscal irresponsibility of buyers, which really speaks of a lack of self-discipline. ‘You can’t always get what you want,’ says traditional wisdom. But, desperately seeking serotonin, we compete with those above us in an arduous race that has no end. If this is the case, then it is difficult to contend that the quest for luxury, including designer jeans, will decline any time soon: as long as we desire things, there will be things to sate those desires. Arguably, such behaviour is good for the economy: luxury fever, stoked by upwardly mobile aspirations, keeps capitalism thriving. However, indulgence in such behaviour keeps us at the margins of life, constantly scrambling for something beyond our reach and, at the same time, never satisfied with what we’ve achieved. This is, perhaps, the nature of the beast, but it’s not the nature of the intellectual being.

Love, Individually.

Doubtlessly, the advent of 14 February will find many minds turned to thoughts of romantic relationships. But, is this really a departure from the quotidian? Though V-day may see the increased propagation of chocolate delectables and horticultural offerings, romantic relationships occupy a central spot in everyday experience. That the popular consciousness is preoccupied with thoughts of relationships is evident not only from casual eavesdropping, but also from the plenitude of shows or songs that wax tirelessly about this seemingly most vital preoccupation.

Less prevalent, though, are more mystical notions of Love, with their appeals to a metaphysical union with an Ultimate Reality through which Subject is subsumed into Object – at which point there is no ‘Me’ and there is no ‘You’. Such negation of egocentricity is not a consideration for the modern mind, whose goal is the satisfaction of individual caprices. The Self is paramount, beyond it lies little.

This individualistic ethic is representative of the democratization of emotion which paralleled the rise of society’s democratization. Still, the prime place afforded to romantic relationships in today’s popular consciousness is indicative, perhaps, of a desire by individuals to ‘connect’ with something greater than their Selfs. Of course, in this post-industrialist, post-Enlightenment age, we would naturally be looking for links to ultimate principles. After all, the upshot of capitalism was individualism, while the removal of Religion from the public sphere witnessed a move away from the communitarian towards isolationism.

This is what McGill’s (not Liberia’s) Charles Taylor calls the malaise of modernity: ‘People no longer have a sense of higher purpose.… The dark side of individualism is a centring on the self, which both flattens and narrows our lives, makes them poorer in meaning, and less concerned with others or society.’ The rise of such solipsistic tendencies is attested by Robert Putnam’s seminal studies on the decline of private and public inter-human relationships in Western society.

What this sort of individualism speaks of is a society cut off from ultimate guiding principles. With Religion’s removal seemed to go its ethical upshot as well; the duties-based ethic of old is outmoded in the modern rights-based society. The very basic human sensibilities that are at the core of religious ethics seem to hold no candle to the importance of individual rights. When the touting of liberal values, such as human rights or free speech, seems to trump appeals to civic responsibility, what we have is extremist Liberalism. It was precisely to secure the public sphere from this sort of oppression from ideology that inspired Religion’s removal in the first place.

From whence, then, are we to inspire in ourselves the necessary recognition of humanity in each other in order to occasion the type of kind, just, and responsible society that was the spur of liberalism? Conceptualizations of the Other predicated on common humanity are the province of metaphysical understandings of Love, through which one comes to perceive the multiplicity of things as a reflection of the unicity of things. In perceiving the essential connectedness of things, one comes to appreciate humanity’s commonality, and thus, that to hurt one is to hurt oneself.

However, what seems to prevail in modern society is the individual’s reality and concerns. There is little space thus for the type of Love that forces one outside oneself. If, indeed, we are to create the type of society that is civil and responsible, and which safeguards sensibilities in addition to rights, then we must extend ourselves beyond ourselves and come to know one another on the basis of our common humanity, rather than what so often occurs, our common enmity.