Tag Archives: Arts

Realistic War Films?

By Robin Hanson · March 6, 2010 7:40 am · Comments (21)

A few months ago I had a nice long talk with a smart high-ranking, well-published (ex-) military officer who focuses on soldier psychological issues.  He said most war movies aren’t at all realistic.  When I pressed him for a realistic film, he offered Catch-22, at least for emotional realism.  This doesn’t appear on any of the four lists of most realistic war films I found in a quick search (here, here, here, here), which agree only modestly with each other.

The supposedly realistic Hurt Locker is favored to win Best Picture tomorrow, but some complain about its realism:

Many in the military say “Hurt Locker” is plagued by unforgivable inaccuracies that make the most critically acclaimed Iraq war film to date more a Hollywood fantasy than the searingly realistic rendition that civilians take it for. … To those who were there, Iraq is real life. And they’re very sensitive — some would say overly so — when their war is portrayed via a central character who is a reckless rogue. … “When he puts a hood on like Eminem and starts roving outside the wire, it’s ridiculous.”

Is it even possible to make and sell a realistic war movie?  The experience of war varies enormously across wars, battles, roles, moments, etc., and most of that is insufferably slow and boring.  Since war is so powerfully symbolic, and so many care about those symbols, it seems many would complain about most any emotionally compelling war film, even if exactly accurate on a particular event.

What exactly could it mean for a film to be “realistic”?  Since few are entertained by watching random samples of real life, entertaining films must select strongly from the space of actual and possible events.  One might allow a movie any initial setting, no matter how strange, and call it realistic if events depicted that were typical conditional on that setting.  But then how long does the movie get to “set the scene,” after which we start to evaluate its realism?  And for how many settings could realistic behavior given that setting be entertaining?

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The Biggest Lie?

By Robin Hanson · March 2, 2010 10:45 pm · Comments (19)

The message of the movie The Invention of Lying, according to the NYT:

A world without lying is also one without art. … Lying becomes a means to transcendence, an escape from the quotidian, from our oppressive literal-mindedness, from our brute selves. … The truth doesn’t just hurt — sometimes it’s also degrading, and not just for the characters. The movie encourages our inner bully, coaxing it out for giggles.

Notice: a movie dedicated to the idea that lies are better than truth induced little outrage or opposition!  Reviewers’ main complaint was just that it didn’t stay funny long enough.  Can anyone make a similarly compelling movie dedicated to the opposite claim, that truth is better than lies?  If not, doesn’t that count as evidence that most people do in fact accept that lies are better?

The movie is set in an alternate Earth where people not only never lie, they go out of their way to tell truths others want to know, even when that makes the speaker look bad.  This is far from a stable social equilibrium – most any weak tendency to more often repeat successful behavior would quickly lead away from this.  But let’s set that issue aside to consider the movie’s message.

In this world people are selfish, shallow, cynical, base, and rude. They explicitly think in terms of evolutionary motives; men want sex with pretty women, while women want money and hansome good-gene sex partners, etc.  People act on these beliefs, which makes them dull, unhappy, and emotionally flat:

The undressed, undeceptive, utterly honest world is no Eden: flat lighting, earth tones, beige bachelor flops, blank-walled offices, bland daytime barrooms.

A man notices that he can gain by lying, first to avoid being evicted.  Then he tries to lie to bed a pretty woman, but finds he just doesn’t want this.  Apparently lying induces altruism, as he spends his time telling lies to make various random strangers like themselves better and be more entertained.  He also lies to get cash and fame, but that is apparently all right in pursuit of a woman – the main thing he likes about her is that she is “out of his league” pretty.  But he refuses to lie to her about why she should like him.

He invents God and heaven, lies big and bright enough to make the whole world honestly happy.  A headline reads: “Finally a reason to be good.”  The man finally convinces the woman to focus less on his looks; “he’s smart funny kind loving, makes me feel special, makes me happy.”  She learns to lie to please, and see the best in people.

So the movie’s thesis is that to be happy, we must self-deceive and embrace incorrect but inspiring far-view ideals, such love, friendship, altruism, laughter, art, and fiction.  This thesis affirms a core ideal we seem desperate to believe: that common far ideals have little practical function.  For example, we want to think that our loves of fiction or laughter are “true” loves, and do little to achieve base and personal purposes.

In fact of course our far ideals evolved to serve concrete, practical, and largely personal functions.  A world without lies would still contain art, laughter, fiction, etc. – we’d just be more honest about the functions they serve.  But that is a truth we dare not tell; we’d actually rather believe that most of our other cherished ideals are lies.

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Soothing the Sad Savage

By Robin Hanson · February 24, 2010 11:15 pm · Comments (30)

In the latest New Yorker, Louis Menand reviews reasons to be skeptical of psychiatric drugs, including this stuff I teach in my health econ class:

Fifteen years ago, [Irving Kirsch] began conducting meta-analyses of antidepressant drug trials. … Kirsch’s conclusion is that antidepressants are just fancy placebos. … Drug trials are double-blind: neither the patients (paid volunteers) nor the doctors (also paid) are told which group is getting the drug and which is getting the placebo. But antidepressants have side effects, and sugar pills don’t. Commonly, side effects of antidepressants are tolerable things like nausea, restlessness, dry mouth, and so on. … This means that a patient who experiences minor side effects can conclude that he is taking the drug, and start to feel better.

But after 6000 words of such skepticism, Menand still concludes: take the meds.  Why?  Because impressive authors have written eloquent testimonials:

The recommendation from people who have written about their own depression is, overwhelmingly, Take the meds! It’s the position of Andrew Solomon, in “The Noonday Demon” (2001), a wise and humane book. It’s the position of many of the contributors to “Unholy Ghost” (2001) and “Poets on Prozac” (2008), anthologies of essays by writers about depression. The ones who took medication say that they write much better than they did when they were depressed. William Styron, in his widely read memoir “Darkness Visible” (1990), says that his experience in talk therapy was a damaging waste of time, and that he wishes he had gone straight to the hospital when his depression became severe.

The only reason Menand can imagine resisting such artists is a perverse religious desire to suffer:

What if there were a pill that relieved you of the physical pain of bereavement—sleeplessness, weeping, loss of appetite—without diluting your love for or memory of the dead? Assuming that bereavement “naturally” remits after six months, would you take a pill today that will allow you to feel the way you will be feeling six months from now anyway? Probably most people would say no. … Gerald Klerman once called “pharmacological Calvinism” … the view, which he thought many Americans hold, that shortcuts to happiness are sinful, that happiness is not worth anything unless you have worked for it.

Numbers schmumbers – only uncivilized animals, or religious nuts, would not let eloquent authors soothe their savage doubts, until they accept being comforted by their culture’s conventional ways to show that folks care.

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Celebrating Compromise

By Robin Hanson · January 12, 2010 4:00 pm · Comments (17)

Crapgame:  Then make a DEAL!
Big Joe:  What kind of deal?
Crapgame:  A DEAL, deal! Maybe the guy’s a Republican. “Business is business,” right?   [Famous scene from 1970 movie Kelly's Heroes]

Invictus is a decent movie – at 80 years old Clint Eastwood is still in top form.  More interesting is that Invictus, like Kelly’s Heroes, is a rare movie celebrating compromise, the key virtue of “dealism,” or economic efficiency.

The movie shows Nelson Mandela, new black leader of previously white-run South Africa, trying to unite suspicious whites with blacks eager for revenge.  Of course Mandela achieves this not by touting the advantages of peace and prosperity, but via pride in beating a common enemy: the South African rugby team wins the world cup.  The title of the movie comes from a poem that inspired Mandella in prison, a poem all about defiance, self-respect, and not a whiff of compromise.

All of which shows just how hard it is to inspire passion for compromise; sadly, no one goes to the barricades for efficiency.  The best this movie can offer is that peace and compromise can help you crush your enemies into smoldering ruins.  Whee.

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Up In The Air

By Robin Hanson · December 27, 2009 11:10 pm · Comments (15)

Up in the Air is like Doubt, both in being a well done movie and in tempting viewers to project their values onto its ambiguity.  It is about Ryan Bingham, who fires folks for a living.  At first the film seems to criticize corporations for firing folks, and to criticize Ryan for his collaboration.  But eventually the film doesn’t so much change its mind as lose interest.  The movie cares far more about what a willingness to fire people says about Ryan’s character, than it does about the people fired.  Once Ryan has an awakening to self-insight, we the audience are fine with whatever he chooses.

To the extent the movie criticizes firing folks, it mainly frowns on doing so on the cheap, via a low paid newbie following a script by phone rather than a handsome thoughtful professional in person.  Apparently we are ok with firing folks, as long as the occasion has sufficient solemnity to show respect for the departed.  It is like how we respect a hunter who pauses to say an eloquent prayer for the animal he killed, in contrast to an insensitive slaughterhouse worker just passing time till his shift ends.  As with executing humans, we don’t really mind animals dying, if we show we are good people via the process.

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Aritists Need Not Be Nice

By Robin Hanson · December 12, 2009 10:45 pm · Comments (26)

A week ago I heard Philippe Petit, featured in the respected movie Man on Wire, on a radio show and thought he sounded fun and so I ordered his movie from Netflix.  This  morning I read about Polanski in the New Yorker, this afternoon I was talking to an artist at a party about how artists are held to much lower morality standards – behavior that is shrugged off in artist biopics would be condemned for business-folk or politicians or economists.  When I got home I watched Man on Wire, and alas found that confirmed yet again.

A team of folks spent years planning and preparing for the dramatic stunt of Petit walking on a wire strung between the world trade center towers.  The movie gives lots of screen time to the rest of the team, but at the end we find that Petit abandons them all the instant he is famous.  Within hours he has dumped his loyal girlfriend for a stranger’s bedroom.  He is released without penalty and becomes the toast of the city for years; his teammates are immediately expelled from the country and into oblivion.  They are clearly hurt by this.  And we never do hear anything about whomever supported Petit and team financially for all those years.

Just as most movie reviews focus on the actors and ignore the hundreds of other folks it takes to create films, the dozen reviews of this film I read, mostly glowing (here’s Tyler), are overwhelmingly focused on the man on the wire.  They seem more impressed by his feat than by the entire team who created those buildings.  The reviews hardly mention that anyone else was even involved in the event; certainly none show interest in their ultimate treatment.  With art, all that matters is demonstration of individual artistic ability; we don’t need artists to be nice or considerate or cooperative.  (Though their vague concern for African kids may touch us deeply.)  Beware: the rest of us will be held to higher standards.

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Comedy Is Cynical

By Robin Hanson · December 4, 2009 11:05 pm · Comments (33)

Millions of consumers proceeded to their nearest commercial centers this week in hopes of acquiring the latest, and therefore most desirable, personal device. … “Its higher price indicates to me that it is superior, and that not everyone will be able to afford it, which only makes me want to possess it more,” said Tim Sturges, ….

“Not only will I be able to perform tasks faster than before, but my new device will also inform those around me that I am a successful individual who is up on the latest trends,” said Rebecca Hodge, whose executive job allowed her to line up for several hours in the middle of the day in order to obtain the previously unavailable item. “Its attractiveness and considerable value are, by extension, my attractiveness and considerable value.”

Consumer Robert Larson agreed.  “I’m going to take my new device wherever I go,” said Larson, holding the expensive item directly in the eyeline of several reporters. “That way no one on the street, inside the elevator, or at my place of business will ever mistake me for the sort of individual who does not own the new device.”

More at The Onion.  Since it is low status to be seen naked in public, we think it funny to see high status folks naked in public.  Similarly, while we humans seek status, it is low status to be too obviously trying to seek status.  So we get a special thrill out of seeing high status folks shown to be directly seeking status.

Comedy is full of such cynical observations like the above, far more than most other media.  (Why?)   Since we immediately recognize such descriptions, we must think this sort of behavior is pretty common.  But we only rarely admit that we are at the moment motivated by such concerns. So just how much of human behavior do most people think is driven by status seeking?  10%? 90%?  And just how different do we each think we are relative to the average?

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See “To Be”

By Robin Hanson · November 30, 2009 1:35 pm · Comments (43)

On who is who when people are copied, see John Weldon’s excellent short film “To Be.”  A while back I saw it on YouTube, but couldn’t find it a few months later; it had violated copyright.  So I actually bought a $15 dvd of it from the National Film Board of Canada.  But as Nathan Cook informs us, it is now on YouTube again, here.  Enjoy it while you can.

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Byron vs. Wordsworth

By Robin Hanson · November 22, 2009 6:00 am · Comments (24)

[Lord Byron] chose to be noisily “immoral” not because he was any worse (or any better) than the average aristocrat of his time but as a weapon against the moralism of Wordsworth. I don’t mean “moralism” in a normative sense – God no. I remember sifting through the elderly Wordsworth’s letters looking for any comment at all on the Great Famine which was extirpating the Irish, and finding only one remark, in which the great moralist earnestly prays that England will not weaken, ie provide any aid whatsoever.  It’s one of the curiosities of English literary history that you’ll never find the least particle of compassion for the Irish in “moral” poets like Wordsworth.

Only the “mad, bad and dangerous” Byron mentioned the slaughter of 1798, attacking the PM, Castlereagh, for “dabbling [his] sleek young hands in Erin’s gore” and, as Pope would have recommended, delivering an extra kick to his enemy’s corpse in this epitaph: “Posterity will never survey a nobler grave than this: here lie the bones of Castlereagh: stop, traveler, and piss.”

More here.  Why is it that those who seemed at the time to most emphasize morality often end up later looking the least moral?

Hat tip to Paul Gowder.

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True Violence

By Robin Hanson · October 2, 2009 12:00 am · Comments (60)

I’ll never trust movie violence again. From the first chapter of Collin’s book Violence:

One reason that real violence looks so ugly is because we have been exposed to so much mythical violence. … Contemporary film style … may give many people the sense that entertainment violence is, if anything, too realistic. Nothing could be farther from the truth. … [They] miss the most important dynamics of violence: that it starts from confrontational tension and fear, that most of the time it is bluster, and that the circumstances that allow this tension to be over­ come lead to violence that is more ugly than entertaining. …

A particularly silly myth is that fights are contagious. This is a staple of old film comedies and melodramas. One person punches another in a crowded bar … and in the next frames everyone is hitting everyone around them. This fighting of all against all, I am quite certain, has never occurred as a serious matter in real life. … Continue Reading "True Violence" »

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