On Religious Tolerance in Rhode Island

Posted on February 14, 2012 by admin

The question of whether religion has a place in civic life has been a constant source of controversy since the emergence of modern liberal-democratic societies—since it was within them that this very notion of civic or public life first came to exist.  For instance, in 1784, Immanuel Kant wrote a well-known essay in which he tried to answer this same question but from the perspective of what—as Michel Foucault would later call it (see below)—the Enlightenment attitude toward truth and liberty.

According to historian James Schmidt, at the center of Kant’s discussion was a similar matter, that of whether clergymen (or the church) should have a place on what started to be seen—then as much as now—as a purely civic matter—that is, the signing of a marriage contract. Should a Clergyman preside at wedding ceremonies? That was the question that incited Kant’s response. As one of his contemporary laid it out, the problem of clergymen presiding at wedding was due to the fact that “unenlightened citizens” usually felt compelled to give a greater weight to marriage contracts—since they were “made with God himself”—than to other types of contracts—merely “made by men.” For Kant and many of his fellow thinkers, it was assumed that “enlightened citizens” shouldn’t behave that way; that they should do without all kinds of ceremonies and prejudices, and therefore that they should judge the quality of contracts not based on “dogmas and formulas”—like that of religiously presided matrimonies—but on reason. For them, civil life was synonymous of one’s public life and, in that realm, one should be entitled to freely “make public use of one’s reason in all matters,” including marriage and religious cult. So, having a clergymen presiding what should be a civic act—the signing of a contract—was problematic in two counts. First, it promoted an unhealthy reliance of civic acts on “dogmas and formulas” that prevented people from using their own understanding and natural endowments. Second, such a reliance kept people away from freedom—that is, from the free exercise of their public reason [1].

Recently, I was reminded of this old controversy as I read the case of Jessica Ahlquist, a Rhode Island teenager who has been battling some of her town’s authorities on the issue of a religious banner that has been on display in her school’s gymnasium for almost half a century. Jessica, a self-proclaimed atheist, believes that such types of religious displays shouldn’t be allowed in public schools. Basically, she considered the banner offensive since it is an intromission on her own civic or public life. And I guess that Kant—as many other “enlightened men”—would have agreed with her.

The separation between religion and the state is not—as many modern-day American conservatives seem to believe—a matter of opinions. In fact, it is one of the fundamental premises on which the project of Enlightenment was founded—the same project that inspired American republicanism two centuries ago. And it is something that Roger Williams, the liberal theologian who founded the state of Rhode Island—Jessica’s  own home state—understood very well (as writer John M. Barry reminded us on a recent op-ed on Jessica’s case).

In 1636, Williams left the intolerant Massachusetts—whose Puritans were particularly bigoted, as the Salem’s witch trials would later demonstrate—to establish the Providence Plantation, what later would become modern-day Rhode Island. There, he established a settlement in which a “wall of separation” was setup between religion dogma and the business of the state. As Barry explains, Williams understood early on that “any government-sponsored prayer required a public official to pass judgment on something to do with God,” something he considered “a sacrilegious presumption.” In his little essay, Kant argues similarly:

“It indeed detracts from [a ruler’s majesty] if he interferes in [his subjects’ religious affairs] by subjecting the writings in which his subjects attempt to clarify their religious ideas to governmental supervision. This holds whether he acts from his own highest insight—whereby he calls upon himself the reproach, Caesar non eat supra grammaticos [Caesar is not above the grammarians] —as  well as, indeed even more, when he demeans his highest authority by supporting the spiritual despotism of some tyrants in his state over his other subjects.”

I guess that Kant would have agreed with Williams’ assertion that “when one mixes religion and politics, one gets politics.” In other words, religion always looses. That is why whenever the state gets involved in religion, the latter ended up serving to the interests of the “tyrants” who use it to their own political (and economic) profit. At the end, it is always a zero-sum game for religious integrity and freedom—politicians win and religion loses.

By the way, in 1984, Michel Foucault published a comment on Kant’s essay, returning to the original question addressed by Kant’s essay: What is enlightenment? There, he argues that what the Enlightenment really means is certain ethos or philosophical attitude “in which the critique of what we are is at one and the same time the historical analysis of the limits that are imposed on us and an experiment with the possibility of going beyond them.” I suspect that Jessica may agree with him, since she—despite her age—embodies such an enlightened attitude very well.

Notes

[1] Kant introduces here a distinction between what he calls the public and private uses of reason:

The public use of one’s reason must always be free, and it alone can bring about enlightenment among mankind; the private use of reason may, however, often be very narrowly restricted, without otherwise hindering the progress of enlightenment. By the public use of one’s own reason I understand the use that anyone as a scholar makes of reason before the entire literate world. I call the private use of reason that which a person may make in a civic post or office that has been entrusted to him. Now in many affairs conducted in the interests of a community, a certain mechanism is required by means of which some of its members must conduct themselves in an entirely passive manner so that through an artificial unanimity the government may guide them toward public ends, or at least prevent them from destroying such ends. Here one certainly must not argue, instead one must obey. However, insofar as this part of the machine also regards himself as a member of the community as a whole, or even of the world community, and as a consequence addresses the public in the role of a scholar, in the proper sense of that term, he can most certainly argue, without thereby harming the affairs for which as a passive member he is partly responsible. Thus it would be disastrous if an officer on duty who was given a command by his superior were to question the appropriateness or utility of the order. He must obey.

What Jessica is asking for is nothing but her right to exercise her public reason on a matter that—although belongs to a different realm (be it a particular church or a household)—has been imposed on her publicly. Within the Enlightened liberal-democratic tradition, the reason why church and state should be kept apart has to do precisely with that—with protecting one’s right to dissent on things that are addressed to the public, while, at the time same time, protecting the rights of religious organizations (or private institutions or communities, etc.) to privately impose obedience on their members.

What is going on here is just a symptom—one among many others—of a deeper problem and maybe America’s democracy’s biggest challenge ever. It uncovers a profound gap between formal democracy and actual democracy—though Tocqueville may have foreseen it. As Žižek explains in his book Violence, American democratic habits are becoming less and less democratic, and they constitute an undercurrent, a dark unconscious that threatens the whole system. And, since the gap between formal democracy—which is what many interest groups, both conservative and liberal, pretend to defend—and actual democracy—the totally fragmented and dysfunctional hotchpotch of contradictory interests involved in actual politics and social life—is becoming abysmal, closing such a gap may end up being almost an impossible task. As Žižek rightly argues,”These obscene underground, the unconscious terrain of habits, is what is really difficult to change.” And that is why I claim that this may constitute America’s biggest challenge.

Posted in Ethics, Philosophy, Politics, Public Opinion, Religion, Slavoj Žižek | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Dickens and Happiness

Posted on February 8, 2012 by admin

About Charles Dickens fellow-writer George Orwell said once that the former probably was the only “among modern writers” who ever gave “a convincing picture of happiness.” Orwell was referring to Dickens’ most famous story—A Christmas Carol—in which the Cratchits, the family of Mr. Scrooge’s nephew Bob, prepares to enjoy Christmas “in high spirits,” simply because—at least for the night—they will have enough food on their table. As Orwell explains, “The Cratchits are able to enjoy Christmas precisely because it only comes once a year.” Since happiness, insists Orwell, “is convincing” only whenever “it is described as incomplete.”

Today, we celebrate Dickens’ Bicentenary. A good time to remember the man who, as Orwell understood well, was smart enough to comprehend that happiness can never be convincingly portrayed as permanent.

 

Posted in Literatura | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Margin Call (2011), or a Report on the Banality of Greed

Posted on December 29, 2011 by admin

So far, few movies have been as successful as J. C. Chandor’s Margin Call (2011) in portraying the events of the 2008 economic crisis. In fact, the movie achieves something only a few among the best films in history have ever been able to achieve, say, catching the Zeitgeist — the spirit of the time.

The film is about the events leading to the demise of an American investment bank during the financial crisis of 2007-2008. It’s modeled on the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the investment bank that filed for bankruptcy in late 2008 after big losses due to the subprime mortgage crisis. In summary, it tells the story of a group of executives who discover, with the help of junior analyst Peter Sullivan (Zachary Quinto), a flaw in the software the company uses to calculate risk. Due to this flaw, the company is now exposed to monumental losses should the value of its mortgage-based securities decreases, as it is believed most likely to happen. The discovery initiates a chain of events that mobilizes the upper echelon of the company, including its CEO John Tuld (Jeremy Irons). In order to save their own financial interests, Tuld and his head of security Jared Cohen (Simon Baker) made the decision of selling off all the company’s toxic assets before the market realizes the truth about those same assets’ real value. A decision that is opposed by Sam Rogers (Kevin Spacey), the company’s head of sales, who understands that in doing so Tuld is threatening the future of the company — no one will ever trust the company once they have realized what is about to heppen — as well as spreading the risk throughout the whole financial system. At the end, Rogers agrees to help Tuld, after the latter offers him a substantial compensation.

Despite the apparent simplicity of its plot, Margin Call is a brilliant exploration of the ethos of modern day capitalist society. The word ethos refers to the set of beliefs and values that guide the behavior of the different members of a community. This ethos configures our particular Zeitgeist — say, our particular cultural and moral climate. Two words summarize this ethos: money and, ultimately, greed.

It’s all about money… isn’t it?

At first sight, money seems to be at the chore of all Margin Call‘s characters. For them, money seems to be everything. It is the fundamental unit they use to measure up every aspect of their lives — from success, to happiness, loyalty, and so on. For instance, when Sam learned that his dog has cancer and is going to die, he complains about the thousand dollars a week he is spending to keep his pet alive. It is as if this amount truly represents the sincerity of his feelings towards his dog.

A similar thing happens with Tuld. He knows he cannot demand loyalty from his subalterns. I suspect he wouldn’t accept it anyway — at least not for free. Loyalty for him should be translated into money. So, he buys it. He pays Eric Dale (just a few hours after he’s been laid off from the same firm) to come back to the company and sit there for a few hours doing nothing, so to prevent the former employee from leaking what is about to happen. He pays him well, since that’s the only way he can guarantee Dale’s faithfulness. The same happens with head of risk Sarah Robertson (Demi Moore). Tuld decides that she is the head that must roll after the storm — although she reminds him that she was the one who warned both him and his protegee (Jared Cohen) about the coming collapse. He pays her as well, to buy her silence, at least for one day. At the end, Tuld buys Sam also, despite the fact that the latter will do whatever he can to serve the firm’s best interest — and it seems likely he would do it for free. However, Tuld doesn’t understand about loyalty unless it’s expressed in terms of money. So, he gives Sam a generous check.

There is this sequence in which Will Emerson (Paul Bettany), Sam’s senior salesman, is outside watching New York city from the building’s roof. He is there along with Peter and Seth Bregman (Penn Bradgley), another junior analyst. One of the analysts asked Will about what is going on, about what he thinks will happen. He replies: “they don’t loose money, no matter if everybody else does.” With “they” he means Tuld, Cohen, and all the top executives. They never loose money, no matter if by doing so they take their own company down — as they actually ended up doing — or take the whole financial system down, as it will probably happen at the end. The survival of the fit, of the job-creators, is the only rule in place. Every one is on his/her own. No one cares about what could happen to anyone else but oneself. The job-creators must survive even if it is a the price of millions of other people’s jobs. That’s the logic of it all.

In the closing scene, Sam is on his ex-wife’s yard digging a hole to bury his dead dog. When she comes out and warns him that the police was on its way, all he can say is that he couldn’t think of any other place to bury their pet but its former home. His ex-wife sees him in all his misery and decides to go back inside, asking him to take care of himself. The movie closes with a sudden black screen. However, although we can’t see anything, we still are able to listen to the sound of the shovel scratching against the solid ground. We can’t help to think about the metaphor of this last scene — a hidden shovel digging the hole we all will soon be buried in. We are left wondering who or what the dog itself is a metaphor of.

The banality of greed

Hannah Arendt once described Nazi criminal Adolf Eichmann — indicted and executed in Israel for crimes during the Holocaust — this way:

[He] was not Iago and not Macbeth, and nothings would have been farther from his mind than to determine with Richard III “to prove a villain.” Except for an extraordinary diligence in looking out for his own personal advancement, he had no motives at all. And this diligence in itself was in no way criminal; he certainly would never have murdered his superior in order to inherit his post. [...] He was not stupid. It was sheer thoughtlessness — something by no means identical with stupidity — that predisposed him to become one of the greatest criminal of that period. And if this is “banal” and even funny, if with the best will in the world one cannot extract any diabolical or demonic profundity from [him], that is still far from calling it commonplace. It surely cannot be so common that a man facing death, and, moreover, standing beneath the gallows, should be able to think of nothing but what he has heard at funerals all his life, and that these “lofty words” should completely becloud the reality – of his own death. That such remoteness from reality and such thoughtlessness can wreak more havoc than all the evil instincts taken together which, perhaps, are inherent in man – that was, in fact, the lesson one could learn in Jerusalem. But it was a lesson, neither an explanation of the phenomenon nor a theory about it.

According to Žižek, violence may come in many forms. There is the subjective type of violence we see in assaults, torture, war, and all other physical violent acts. It is the type of violence Eichmann was indicted for. Also, there is objective violence. This last kind of violence may come in two different forms: a symbolic form and a systemic form. Symbolic violence is the type of violence embodied in “language and its different forms” — modern-day political campaign are usually full of this kind of violence. Systemic violence is the “often catastrophic consequences of the functioning of our economic and political systems.” The Latin American Debt Crisis of the 1980s; the Great Depression; all these are examples of systemic violence. The same applies to the events depicted in Chandor’s movie.

In the latter case, there were neither concentration camps nor gas chambers. The number of corpses were not as many as in Auschwitz, although the number of virtual casualties have been almost the same… so far. A parallel argument to the one Arendt made on Eichmann could be made of the people who participated in the 2007-2008 financial crisis. A similar depiction of the Nazi criminal could be given of those involved in this systemic act of violence. It was the same “remoteness from reality,” the same “thoughtlessness” that could “wreak more havoc than all the evil instincts taken together.”

The scene on the roof is a clear evidence of how Eichmannian these characters are. Will Emerson hangs on the edge of the building, risking a long fall, only for the thrill of it. There is no motives, no thoughts, no sympathy towards the others (Peter and Seth) who witness the stunt in panic… only a sense of power, the power of control, of having the last word. Tuld, at the end, admits that the whole thing is not really about money… it is power. But it isn’t power either; it is the hunger for more, the same drive towards the void that led Will on the edge of the roof. Money is just a vehicle, a fetish used to reach for what really moves them: greed.

If Eichmann was guilty of one form of banality, the banality of evil, the Tulds of the world are guilty of another, the banality of greed. The biggest achievement of Margin Call resides in having made such banality visible that it seems almost a caricature. However, fantasy here is the real thing, and the alleged real is just a fantasy.

 

Posted in Ethics, Evil, Films, Philosophy, Politics, Slavoj Žižek | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Solaris and heaven

Posted on December 20, 2011 by admin

Watching Solaris (2002), the version of Stanislaw Lem’s novel adapted and directed by Steven Soderbergh (there is a previous one by Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky), I couldn’t help thinking about Christianity’s philosophically challenging notion of heaven.

Briefly, Solaris is a story about this spaceship which is orbiting an alien planet — named Solaris — in which very strange phenomena have been happening. Unable to come up with an explanation of what’s going on, a scientist on board, Dr. Gibarian (Ulrich Tukur), who is a friend of therapist Chris Kelvin (George Clooney), asked the latter to come up to the ship and help him to figure things out. Kelvin, who is a psychologist who helps people deal with the lost of loved ones, agrees and is sent there alone. Once there, he discovers that really weird things are happening: people who doesn’t exist are appearing out of nowhere. Gibarian’s dead son, Snow’s alter ego and Kelvin’s dead wife (Rheya, played by Natascha McElhone) are among the apparent ghosts. At the end, the ghosts are actually replicas made out of the memories kept by the livings that Solaris — the planet — somehow is able to recreate anf bring back to life. One crew member — Dr. Gordon — figures it out how to permanently annihilate the replicas, including Kelvin’s wife. However, the device used to achieve that consumes a lot of the spaceship’s energy supply, making the return to earth impossible. In the last sequence, Kelvin and Dr. Gordon prepares to return home by using one of the small vessels.However, Kelvin seems to change his mind and stays… or at least it seems so.

One of the last scenes shows Kelvin back at home or what seems a replica of his house back on earth. The scene itself replicates another of the movie’s first scenes. However, this time things behave little weird. He cuts his finger — just as he did in the first scene at the beginning — but his skin regenerates the same way Kelvin’s wife face regenerates after an attempted suicide back on the ship. At that moment, Rheya reappears and tells a shocked Kelvin that all their past misgivings have been forgiven, suggesting that from now on they will have the opportunity to start over and enjoy a new and eternal life together.

In many levels, Solaris posses us a lot of interesting questions. However, it is this last scene the one that poses me the question I want to talk about in this note. Rheya’s words are an interesting key — one that suggests a possible explanation about the planet’s real meaning. If we look at what this last scene offers Kelvin — the portrait of a new life together in which he and his wife will live forever without pain and guilt — we couldn’t help thinking about why this seems to be so familiar. It is familiar because what this scene offers us is nothing else but a representation of a heavenly paradise… of heaven. (By the way, what heaven actually offers us is a life without anxiety… and we should remember that, as Freud told us, anxiety is the only real human emotion… all other human emotions are in their very essence faked.) If we look at the Judeo-Christian tradition, heaven is that metaphysical place in which life transcends itself, in which death is no more and in which there is no more suffering nor guilt (an anxiety-free zone). However, this Solarian heaven is not the regular Christian one, in which heavenly creatures are ontological independent of earthly ones. Instead, it’s closer to Swedenborg‘s, who thought of heaven as inhabited by ghostly replicas of past earthly beings.

Now, what really intrigues me about this Solarian heaven, as suggested by my reading of the movie, is the fact that this version of heaven is, essentially, an individual phenomenon. Kelvin seems to experience heaven not as a place in which he comes to be part of some sort of heavenly society or collective. Rather, his version of heaven is tailored-made to him. If we look at the whole story of his relationship with his wife, the few things we know about her — her depression and insecurities and so on and on — we may conclude that this “heaven” could never be hers. (In that case, why is she the one who must forgive and forget?) So, the movie poses me with many interesting questions about the nature of heaven itself. Of the many possible versions of a perfect world people may have about heaven, which one is the universal (collective) one? Which one is the one that satisfies everybody’s fantasies about it? Is there a heaven or a multi-verse of heavens, each one suited for every single human being who have ever existed? What’s the relationship between the notion of heaven and our fantasizing about it? Can such a place exist in which everybody’s fantasies about it can be realized? Or, is it heaven that place in which we are allowed to enter only if we agree to leave behind our very human nature — our capacity to feel (anxiety) and fantasize (desire)?

I suspect that the real thing may actually be nightmarish. I base this suspicion on what we have learned from psychology: that fantasy realized is what we call nightmare. Maybe, as the old tragedy of Orpheus and Eurydice teaches us, heaven and hell — at the basic phenomenological level— may not be that different after all. But that’s something we might talk about another day. First I need to read the original novel and take another look at Tarkovsky’s 1972 adaptation.

By the way, here is Lem itself talking about the original.

Posted in Existentialism, Films, Philosophy | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

En busca de El pez que fuma

Posted on December 14, 2011 by admin

Conversando el otro día con un compatriota que preparaba un curso sobre cine latinoamericano en una universidad de los Estados Unidos, a la pregunta: ¿qué película venezolana incluyes?, su respuesta automática fue “ninguna”. Luego, por supuesto, siguió la sentencia de rigor: con excepción (quizá) de Araya (1959) y Oriana (1985), el resto de la cinematografía nacional es pura mierda (la hipérbole es mía).

Recordé está conversación recientemente mientras disfrutaba de El pez que fuma (1977), la inolvidable película de Román Chalbaud. Hacía muchos años que no la veía. Tenía apenas 9 años cuando se estrenó en 1977, así que estaba fuera de toda discusión que me dejaran entrar al cine a ver las tetas al natural de Haydeé Balza, o el despampanante cuerpo desnudo de la jovencísima Mimí Lazo. Sea como sea, no la pude ver sino muchos años después, en la TV, editada y super-censurada, y, ya en la universidad, en VHS, en el cineclub de la facultad de ingeniería, en todo su esplendor (el de la Balza y de la Lazo).

Está vez volví a ver la original, sin censuras, y no pude evitar sentir un orgullo profundo por nuestro cine nacional — y una lástima por los estudiantes de mi colega que no han tenido la oportunidad de disfrutar de esta joya del cine latinoamericano. Para mí, El pez sigue siendo la obra más importante de la cinematografía venezolana, muy por encima de todas las Orianas o Arayas del mundo. Y no es para negar la importancia de estas últimas, pero si hemos de hablar de un cine que represente el Weltanschauung nacional, la respuesta no está ni en el experimento postmoderno de Fina Torres ni en el formalista de Margot Benacerraf.

¿Qué mejor lugar que un prostíbulo de la Guaira para representar la cosmovisión de nuestro país? La historia no puede ser más familiar. Dos rivales que se enfrentan por el control de un territorio en disputa. El territorio es a la vez una mujer y un negocio. La mujer, la Garza (interpretado por la inolvidable Hilda Vera), es la matrona y dueña del local, fuente del poder y del orden masculino por el que se disputan el amante y su aspirante. La Garza es un motivo nacional, la devoradora de hombres que desde las páginas de Gallegos ha poblado siempre el imaginario literario venezolano. El negocio, por el otro lado, representa el orden institucional en torno al que se articula la vida del barrio, que funciona tanto como referencia normativa y moral (vemos a la Garza denunciando el abuso infantil y la maternidad irresponsable al inicio de la película) como material (es el mayor empleador y motor de la economía local). Mujer y territorio son objeto de uso y abuso, utilizables pero nunca poseídos totalmente (como la Garza insiste en recordarle al desleal Dimas).

Hay que estar ciegos para no ver la alusión obvia a la historia de un país que por centurias ha sido, como la Garza y su burdel, objeto de uso y abuso por guapetones provenientes de solares españoles o de mánores norteños. La garza es Venezuela; el burdel, la democracia… o viceversa. No extraña, pues, que Jairo (que además representa también al Otro lacaniano del imaginario venezolano, el inmigrante o hijo de inmigrantes colombianos — Jairo es un nombre muy común en la comunidad de inmigrantes de ese país hermano —, que acecha desde el subconsciente marginal) haya nacido en 1958, “con la democracia”, como dice, con cierta ironía, la Garza. El duelo de Jairo y Dimas simboliza también esa transición del caudillo eterno (i.e., Juan Vicente Gómez) al caudillo temporal, elegido con votos (o manotazos), que cada cinco años se disputaba al cuerpo de la nación, o su institucionalidad. Jairo y Dimas son arquetipos del político nacional, corrupto y corruptor, que ofrece cambios pero, como el gatopardo, sólo se asegura que todo cambie lo suficiente para que no haya cambio alguno.

Todo eso comprimido en una (tele)novela para la pantalla gigante, con elementos melodramáticos y retóricos que nos recuerdan la ópera, como ocurre con casi todo el cine de Chalbaud, o, quizá sea mejor decir: del binomio Chalbaud-Cabrujas. Por eso no tengo pena en admitirlo: El pez es el pináculo del cine venezolano. La mierda vino después.

Posted in Art, Films, Politics, Public Opinion | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Deseo y cine

Posted on December 10, 2011 by admin

Žižek comienza su Guía del pervertido para el cine (2006) con una advertencia: el problema que afrontamos los humanos no es que tengamos deseos — de hecho, desear es una parte muy importante de lo que somos —; el problema real es que nuestros deseos no son algo inmanente a nosotros. En otras palabras, como dice el mismo Žižek, nosotros aprendemos a desear, de modo que nuestros deseos son algo que se nos enseña, que se nos impone desde afuera.

Ello explica porque, como nos advierte el esloveno, “el cine es el arte pervertido por antonomasia”. Lo es, no porque la pantalla nos provea directamente con aquello que debemos desear, sino porque “nos dice cómo desear“. Esto es, para él, uno de los aspectos más fundamentales del arte oculto tras la gran pantalla.

Para ilustrarlo, Žižek utiliza aquella escena de la película Poseída (1931), protagonizada por una aún desconocida Joan Crawford (quien luego protagonizaría una película con el mismo título en 1947), en donde la joven e inocente protagonista se cruza con un tren que frena lentamente ante su mirada anhelante, mostrándole a través de sus ventanas abiertas de par en par, imágenes de un mundo totalmente ajeno a su realidad inmediata. Aquí Žižek recurre a su maestro, Lacan.

Lo que le sucede a Marian (Joan Crawford) en la película, es que la presencia del tren, con sus imágenes de lujo y riqueza que pasan con incitadora y sutil cadencia, crean en ella un deseo hasta ese momento aparentemente inexistente. Ella es una joven humilde cuya vida pareciera predeterminada por las condiciones materiales en las que vive. En cierta forma, su pasado, presente y futuro ya han sido decididos para ella por la lotería de la vida. Además, aquello que constituye su alteridad — sus vecinos, compañeros, etc. — no ofrecen nada nuevo en realidad; nada que no esté a su alcance o que ella perciba como inalcanzable. En cambio, el mundo del tren es un tipo totalmente diferente de alteridad. Aquello está a mayor distancia de su inmediatez, más allá de la frontera que separa lo realizable de lo fantaseable. Por eso, lo que esas imágenes incitan en ella es envidia, en el sentido dado por Lacan al término. Las imágenes le enseñan a Marian como desear algo de manera diferente. Explico.

Lacan (ver su The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-Analysis) advierte que envidiar no es lo mismo que sentir celos. El niño de pecho que siente celos por otro niño de su edad que está degustando de la leche de su madre, siente celos por la situación del otro de ser capaz de disfrutar del objeto de su deseo en ese instante, mientras él no puede hacerlo. En cambio, el niño que ya no está en edad de chupar del pecho de su madre siente envidia de aquel que está chupando, precisamente porque el mismo acto de desear el pecho le está vedado ya. Como dice Lacan, “el objeto del deseo es el deseo del Otro” (las bastardillas son mías). La diferencia fundamental es que el objeto del deseo es todavía una posibilidad realizable para el que siente celos; es decir, el que siente celos no tiene vedado desearlo. En cambio, el que siente envidia es el que, como espectador, quisiera poder desear lo que el otro todavía puede, pero que para él está totalmente prohibido (incluso desearlo). El envidioso es, por lo tanto, el que desea no tener vedado desear. Usando otros términos, los celos ocurren dentro del universo simbólico sobre el que se construye la realidad particular del que desea; realidad que es, por lo tanto, todavía realizable. En cambio, para el envidioso, el poder desear del otro pertenece al imaginario, al mundo de fantasía que, en el caso de las película, las ventanas del tren le ofrecen a la joven heroína.

Volviendo a Poseída, lo que el evento del tren hace es mostrarle a Marian un tipo de deseo que está más allá de su universo simbólico inmediato (su realidad); uno que escapa su capacidad de realización o articulación lingüística. Las imágenes del tren, como en el caso del cine, reconfiguran su imaginario y, al hacerlo, fracturan su personalidad, imposibilitándole funcionar de la manera como solía hacerlo hasta ese momento (para saberlo hay que ver el resto de la película, donde la heroína se obsesiona con un hombre de una clase social diferente, y al que usa como un medio para consumar su deseo de acceder aquello que el tren le mostrara al inicio).

Obviamente, el cine tiene un potencial de perturbación de nuestra realidad mucho mayor que el representado por la secuencia del tren de Poseída — que funciona como una suerte de zoótropo. (Imagino que Walter Benjamin se refería a esta capacidad cuando escribiera su famoso ensayo sobre la pérdida del aura del arte en la era de la reproducción mecánica.) Con el cine, la envidia se convierte en perversión, lo que explica muy bien el título que Žižek y Fiennes le dan a su película.

Posted in Art, Films, Philosophy, Slavoj Žižek | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

El Árbol de la vida y la cábala

Posted on November 23, 2011 by admin

Antes comentaba que, en mi opinión, la última película del director Terence Malick, El árbol de la vida, es un verdadero bodrio. Si bien el tema principal es el origen y desarrollo de la vida sobre la tierra, el mismo se yuxtapone con la historia de una familia de un suburbio estadounidense que, contada a base de fragmentos y viñetas, pareciera replicar el mismo ciclo de muerte y nacimiento que caracterizara, o asumimos caracterizó, el surgimiento de la vida sobre el planeta. El problema, sin embargo, al menos desde mi perspectiva, es que la trama de la historia se construye sobre una narrativa teleológica cuestionable. Con el uso de las voces en off y de las viñetas con imágenes que parecieran representar una divinidad o energía guiadora de algún tipo (una luz ondulante), Malick parece cuestionar la noción evolutiva de contingencia—i.e., la idea de que la historia natural no tiene un propósito o fin último—y sustituirla con la posibilidad de la existencia de un ser invisible que dirige y le da propósito a los sucesos y eventos que moldean la existencia natural y humana. Por eso mi insistencia, en mi comentario previo, de que, para esta película, Malick pareciera haberse alejado del existencialismo y asumido una postura más bien cercana a alguna modalidad de espiritualismo New Age o—dada la oposición que él hace al comienzo entre “the path of grace” (teleológico) versus “the path of nature” (contingente)—a la idea de diseño inteligente de los evangélicos tejanos.

Sin embargo, recordando la escena final en la que el personaje Jack (interpretado por el actor Sean Penn) se re-encuentra con su familia (o con sus recuerdos), esto me da la impresión de que el motivo al que alude Malick en este caso no sea otro que el sugerido literalmente por el título de la película. En otras palabras, que el árbol de la vida aludido por el título no sea otro que el ‘Etz Ḥayyim o Árbol de la vida de la tradición cabalística hebrea. Si ese es el caso, la película requiere una lectura más cuidadosa, ya no existencialista sino cabalística.

Por supuesto, mi opinión sobre la película en general, sobre su estructura y su dudosa lógica interna, sigue en pie. Lo que, quizá, requiera una lectura más detallada de mi parte, es su trasfondo ideológico. Mis impresiones iniciales (como una combinación de New Age con “intelligent design”), no aplican si vemos la película como una metáfora construida sobre la simbología del ‘Etz Hayyim. De hecho, parte de la estructura de la historia pudiera tener como inspiración las enseñanzas de este libro cabalístico.

En la tradición judía, Adán y Eva fueron expulsados del paraíso luego de comer la fruta del árbol del conocimiento del bien y el mal. Sin embargo, según el libro de Génesis, junto al árbol del conocimiento del bien y el mal había otro llamado el árbol de la vida, que podía conceder la vida eterna. Adán y su mujer fueron expulsados, precisamente, para evitar que pudieran comer de ese árbol y ganar inmortalidad. Aquí hay que recordar que ese periodo de exilio o expulsión (cósmico) sigue en pie hoy día. El pueblo hebreo sigue a la espera de su redención, que se iniciará con la llegada del mesías, tiempo en el que las letras que forman el nombre místico de dios (יהוה‎) se unirán para reunificar todos los “mundos emanados” (sefirot) del exilio (de acuerdo a la interpretación lúrica). Según la tradición cabalística, el mundo de hoy vive bajo el signo del árbol del conocimiento del bien y el mal, y no será sino hasta la llegada del mesías cuando una nueva era comience bajo el signo del árbol de la vida.

Aunque habría que desarrollar más la idea, pareciera haber una serie de motivos coincidentes en la historia de Malick y lo que recuerdo de las ideas cabalistas. Incluso, ese tema inicial sobre la senda de la gracia, podría interpretarse en términos de la senda de meditación y armonía (con su dios) del cabalista: devequt. Por ejemplo, Gerschom Scholem, quien fuera un experto de la cábala del siglo XX, explica que, para algunos, devequt se refiere a un proceso de “effacement of the human will in the divine will or of the encounter and conformity of the two wills together”. En definitiva, continua él, “un sentido de beatitud y unión íntima” con el Creador. Esta idea, me parece, coincide muy bien con esa narrativa teleológica que mencionaba al comienzo, y que trasunta de toda la película. Pero aquí voy a hacer un alto y regresar a leer mi libro sobre la cábala de Gershom Scholem. Más adelante, con tiempo, comentaré más.

Posted in Films, Public Opinion, Religion | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Tree of Boredom

Posted on November 20, 2011 by admin

Finally, I saw Terence Malick’s The Tree of Life. I must confess that I truly was looking forward to seeing this movie, as I’ve stated a few months ago. And, as it’s usually the case with Terence Malick’s movies, it took him several decades to complete… well, until last May, when, after missing its release day several times, the movie finally made it to Cannes. It went on to win the Palm D’Or there and the Grand Prix at the San Sebastian Festival. A fact that created far more expectations for sure.

As I said before, Malick is famous for his complex and sometimes stochastic plots. His philosophical background—of an existential flavor—usually takes him to explores issues that most American filmmakers prefer to avoid. However, and for all that matters, this particular film is far from being his best. It’s nothing more than a chaotic collage of imagery and sounds that totally lacks of a coherent argument besides a very simplistic narrative that combines some New-Age motifs with a not-so-hidden evangelical twist—of a boring Texan type. Being completely unhistorical, the film becomes a postmodern pastiche with nothing more to show than beautiful imagery and a wonderful soundtrack. Besides that, it’s a complete waste.

The fact that such terrible film won two prestigious European awards amounts to nothing, of course. Well, maybe it does… it adds insult to injury. After all, it’s a well known fact that current American and European filmography lacks of any real substance… just as much as the prizes they sponsor. So I guess that any pastiche like this one should continue to make the trick.

Posted in Art, Existentialism, Films, Philosophy | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Nuevas sobre el festival

Posted on November 18, 2011 by admin

Hoy tuve la oportunidad de asistir a una presentación del joven cineasta mexicano Sebastián (Sepo) Hiriart, quien estaba en la universidad para participar en el Festival de Cine Latino Americano de Carolina del Norte. Sebastián es hijo del escritor mexicano Hugo Hiriart y de la cineasta mexicano-costarricense Guita Schyfter.

Sebastián ha trabajado como actor y como fotógrafo, pero vino al festival vistiendo la cachucha de director para mostrar su primer largometraje: A tiro de piedra. Como el mismo director mencionó en su charla, la película explora el tema de la (e)migración, del desarraigo, en un road trip lleno de contrastes y con todas las cualidades de un buen film independiente: quizá con pocos recursos pero con muchísima creatividad.

Igualmente, Sepo habló de su participación en el colectivo Emergencia MX, que es como se conoce a un grupo de jóvenes cineastas independientes (inicialmente mexicanos pero hoy día ya globalizados)  que usan los medios y las tecnologías de comunicación digitales para sensibilizar (al que quiera verlos y escucharlos) sobre los terribles problemas sociales que afectan al mundo de hoy.

Posted in Films, Public Opinion | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Eagleton on Occupy Herod’s Temple

Posted on November 4, 2011 by admin

The Guardian is carrying today a witty piece by Terry Eagleton on the Occupy London movement.  Since the London equivalent to Occupy Wall Street is “occupying” the emblematic St Paul Cathedral, one of the Church of England most iconic temples, Eagleton uses his piece to evoke one of Jesus Christ’s most symbolic acts: the running out of the money changers from the temple’s premises.

As it happen, the Irish critic, with his characteristic Irish wit, offers a quite provocative simil: Occupy St Paul protesters are much like the original Occupy Jerusalem protesters who, under the leadership of a zealot Galilean best known today as Jesus of Nazareth, demonstrated against the greedy tradesmen caste camping outside the old Herod’s temple. As Eagleton explains:

[The money changers] were there because people came to the temple to make sacrifice, and to do so they might bring a lamb or a couple of doves with them from home. This, however, could mean lugging their animals a fair distance only to find on arrival that they were rejected as acceptable offerings by the temple priests, who might discover some blemish or impurity in them. So it was a safer bet to buy an animal on the spot, and for this you might need to change your local currency into the metropolitan coinage.

Thus, the money was in the profit they got from the currency exchange.

Anyway, what Eagleton advances in his piece is the curious thesis that what the original Occupy Jerusalem protesters were protesting about was not the profit itself but the fact that such a business was actually a mockery of a sacrifice. “The gift you were offering was not really your own, or at least had only been so for a brief time,” Eagleton argues. And since “You needed to give God something that was part of your life, not something off the peg,” the whole process of offering a sacrifice was becoming fetishistic, with money becoming “a break between the product and the producer.” Which, of course, is much like that thing Marx fancied to call alienation.

Humor and irony aside, I confess that I prefer Eagleton’s original interpretation of the temple’s event as presented in his Jesus Christ The Gospels. There he says that “Running out the moneychangers was not [...] intended as an anti-capitalist gesture.” The act was purely symbolical, intended to signify the ultimate destruction of the building rather than expressing distaste for “its commercial sleaze.” Thence, the Marxist gesture is witty, clever, and keen but also unfathomable.

At the end, whether the occupiers are followers of Jesus Christ or not is open to interpretation. But taking the metaphor to its more natural extreme, it would be better to interpret this gesture as the foretelling of a fall rather than as the signifying of some way-overstretched proto-Marxist gesture.

Posted in Politics, Terry Eagleton | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment