The New Republic

One of the better interviews of Mr. Loury I have seen. When will you be interviewed on Bloggingshead about your new book?

- rayward

April 30, 2012 at 5:24pm

I don't follow you.

- Timothy Noah

April 30, 2012 at 5:56pm

I was just going to write that I don't get who Mr. Loury is either, in the context of this thread. Glenn Loury?

- liberalref

April 30, 2012 at 6:09pm

I disagree. 1) Criticizing a dystopian fiction for imagining a regime that by your historical standards is implausibly brutal is just silly. Within its genre HG works just fine. Dystopian fantasies are almost always highly schematic and highly implausible. They operate by making implicit power relationships explicit and then amping them up to their logical extension. The point is not to mimic any kind of reality, but to create situations where the moral choices facing the characters are starkly binary. 2) I haven't read the books, (My son has) but I thought the movie did a good job of not encouraging us to root for Katniss killing other children. I felt that I was being asked to feel sympathy for all of the contestants, even the mean-girl, popular kid professional killers. The blond guy at the end gives his go-ahead-and-kill-me-because-we're-all-fucked-anyway speech, and I felt entirely sympathetic to him and felt that Katniss did too. Yes, we're asked to root for Katniss, but we're rooting for her to negotiate dire circumstance when all available choices are bad.

- AaronW

April 30, 2012 at 7:03pm

"Because The Hunger Games lacks the courage of its dark conceit, the story line must be contrived in such a way as to minimize any moral objection we might raise against the bow-wielding heroine’s kills. The nice (usually younger) kids, whom she tries to save, all get killed by others. " I made exactly this objection myself and others--who have read the books--inform me that the heroine is morally compromised later in the series, as she isn't here, and that as she does, she begins to experience ptsd and is forced to confront the consequences of killing other innocent children. I remain hopeful that this tale for young people grows more queasily complex at it continues. This is 'long form' story-telling I do think distopian fictions have their place. We frequently need significant aesthetic distance from the horrors of real life in order to cognitively digest those horrors (but, of course, a steady diet of distopian fantasies can wind up being an unhealthy and permanent escape from the horrors of real life, as well.)

- dimbulb

April 30, 2012 at 8:44pm

Another thing, you ask why young people have a need to read about made up horrors when the world has plenty of real horrors for them to read about/learn about. The answer is that the value in this kind of story isn't to teach kids about the world's awfulness, it's to allow kids to ask and answer the question, "What would I do in that situation? How would I hold up?" For this to be effective, there has to be a possibility for identification and for whatever reason, people find it easier to identify in this way with characters in an imagined future than in an actual present or past. This isn't necessarily so, I'll admit. My son, the same one who read HG, got as much or more out of a young adult novel called "Once" by Morris Gleitzman, set during the Holocaust. But Isaac's capacity for identification with this story might have been enhanced by his knowledge that his own great grandparents were survivors and his familiarity with another living relative who was in Auschwitz at thirteen.

- AaronW

April 30, 2012 at 8:45pm

Isn't it possible to view The Hunger Games merely as a plot device to explore how characters react when "the system" itself requires that someone must die. Whether "the system" is an artificial game or a natural system in which there are insufficient resources to sustain life for all, doesn't it come to the same thing in terms of the plot? That is, we tend to root for some characters over others to survive, knowing that as a result of the *the system*, whether artificial or natural, the ones who don't win will die. Indeed, contra your point about the lack of historical parallels to The Hunger Games, I would argue that history is rife with examples of the type of competitive situation embodied by The Hunger Games. Take as one example besieged cities in history in which people ate, knowing as they did that someone else didn't, and died. Indeed, there's ample precedent in current TV fare for this basic plot line. Isn't this basically what Survivor reality TV is about (sans actual physical death, of course)? In short, this story really seems to be about the Darwinian ethos writ large. And I would argue from history that it's far more common for people to kill and eat each other in situations like this than it is for them to help each other at the cost of their own lives. Humanity is not basically good and altruistic.

- tngraham

April 30, 2012 at 9:10pm

I actually strongly agree with you, Aaron, and your posts are well-thought out and are very articulate on this thread. I have long been against overmoralizing literature and films. Your interrogative, "what would I do in that situation" is excellent.

- liberalref

April 30, 2012 at 9:16pm

Some appellate judges prefer not to read the briefs before oral argument.

- rayward

April 30, 2012 at 9:43pm

It's important to remember that HG is novel for young adults, and it's conceit has much more to do with teenager cliques and adolescent obsessions with reality TV than it does with larger social and political issues. I think the books and the movie are enjoyable enough, but I abandoned any expectations of statements about politics or sociology early on in the books. Dimbulb is correct that Katniss evolves through the books, but I found that much more time was spent on how she deals with celebrity and assuming the responsibilities of being an adult than it does with any political theories or beliefs. All in all it's an enjoyable movie, but it isn't covering the same territory as dystopian classics like Logan's Run or Zardoz. It's more like Rollerball, but for teenagers instead of sports fans.

- Attrill

April 30, 2012 at 9:54pm

Okay, but you're missing the point. As with "1984", or "Brave New World", or even "Fahrenheit 451", the point of the story is how the oppressed (or "our hero's") deal with the situation. Sure, the situation is inhuman. Susan Collins based the entire exercise off the story of Theseus and the Minotaur, where tribute nations had to send a sacrifical tribute to be killed in the maze by the Minotaur. And sure, Susan Collins is no Orwell, no Aldous Huxley. The situation is more than a little contrived. Yet our heroine manages to survive without losing her sense of humanity. I agree, that's true mostly because the other 'tributes' kill each other off (conveniently). Yet even so, "not becoming the monster they want me to be" is the key idea of the book, and the movie pulls that off as well.

- AllanL5

April 30, 2012 at 10:39pm

I have not read or seen HG. A basic question of civilization is: "Do the good guys win because they are good guys?" The biggest tests in my life time has been WWII and the Cold War. Was it inevitable that we defeated Hitler & Co because we were good? Or did we just get lucky? Then did we defeat Stalin & Mao's heirs because we were good? The case here is perhaps a little stronger, in that Communism in spite of some noble (and at times persuasive) ideals, so blatantly and disgustingly violated both practical good sense and decency that apparently they rotted from within. Though as North Korea (and perhaps Cuba and Venezuela) demonstrate, whatever virus spreads this evil at times has amazing persistence and perniciousness. Generally good wins, but why is it so f*cking hard?

- skahn

May 1, 2012 at 12:38am

It seems that young people could be thrust into moral dilemmas and be forced to make decisions critical to their lives in other than fantasy arenas. That's the easy way out. Stories like these are based on ancient myths that were engendered when survival was much simpler than it is today. Ancient myths bore me blind, as do violent video games and cartoons. Maybe it's because I've consumed so many books and documentaries about Nazi Germany, Bolshevik Russia, and Red China. I've encountered countless stories about real individuals and groups of people who've had to make life-and-death, and sometimes moral decisions amidst a maelstrom of violence and depravity. If I want humanity at its worst, I don't need no stinking dystopian fantasies. And I don't think young people do either. I agree with Timothy. Why can't youth be encouraged to escape into dystopian reality? It's often fascinating, and it really happened. "1984" and "Fahrenheit 451" are much more developed as dystopian fantasies than "The Hunger Games," but even they are not based on reality. They are overheated projections from the minds of writers who exaggerated to make political points. The people in real totalitarian states are much more complicated than they are portrayed in dystopian works. For example, the assembly-line executioners in the basement of Lubyanka under Stalin often went mad or committed slow suicide with vodka. Even young people can be engaged with and learn from reality. They don't need pablum like "The Hunger Games" that cynical authors and screen writers pump out. Right on, Timothy. Give them history, not fantasy.

- magboy47.

May 1, 2012 at 1:33am

"Why can't youth be encouraged to escape into dystopian reality? It's often fascinating, and it really happened." Would an adventure story set in Pol Pot's Cambodia be a big seller? Would it be trashed by critics for making a hash of history and making a bankable entertainment out of real people's real suffering? I suspect that the answers are "No" and "Yes" respectively. To my mind asking kids (and adults) to satisfy their apetite for escapist adventure stories through reading history or at least historically accurate fiction makes about as much sense as asking teenage boys to satisfy their appetite for Internet porn by reading Tropic of Cancer. There may still be valid arguments to make against porn and dystopian fantasy, but wringing your hands saying, "Why can't people like something different from what they like?!?" is pointless.

- AaronW

May 1, 2012 at 2:01am

>Why do adolescents who resist reading.. about the sickening things people have actually done to one another... flock to novels and films that inform them of sickening things that have not been done? Errr, if you don't accept the legitimacy of fiction, you shouldn't expect yourself to like any particular instance of it. And, you shouldn't inflict your self-fulfilling prophecies on the rest of us as if they were intelligent, discerning commentary.

- floydsm8

May 1, 2012 at 3:39am

"Nowhere in the film is it suggested that if 12 moral individuals were told to kill one another for no reason other than to amuse the masses, then the only choice consistent with any notion of ethics that I’m familiar with would be to refuse and be executed. " I missed this bit, the first time through. I'm sure you're familiar with the tragedy of the commons, Tim, which doesn't precisely fit the scenario under discussion but will suffice. For your proposed act of collective civil disobedience to work, each of the twelve (24, actually in the movie) would have to know and trust that every single one of their fellow Hunger Games gladiators were going to behave similarly. But how could any of them have such assurances? If Katniss or any of the others put down her weapons and said, "I refuse to kill, do with me what you will", the most likely result by a long shot would that she would be killed on the spot by another contestant, and her protest would go completely unnoticed.

- AaronW

May 1, 2012 at 7:36am

Rayward says it best - I get the strong impression that reading the book (it's pretty short and simple; most people I know read it in an evening of or two) would help Tim out here a little. The reason we root for Katniss when reading the book is because it's written in the first person! Katniss, like any other person wants to live, does what she has to. The movie didn't present her as enjoying it any more than the book did. Also note that she is prepared to commit suicide at the end to stick it to the machine. I'm also not sure that I'm onboard with Tim's complaint that no regime has done anything quite like this. The use of children is likely a YA device; otherwise the Romans obviously had a famous appetite for seeing people slaughtered live, and they are hardly unique. From say our various religious interactions through the ages, through Columbus chopping off the hands of anyone who didn't bring their month's worth of gold (presumably making it even harder to do so next month) to Lynchings (the definition of which is that it's done in public and everyone knows about it), the level of nastiness we can impose on "others" (in the HG, those not of the Capitol) seems pretty high, in the real world. And honestly, while I found the entire concept a bit strong (it is YA after all), I really read it as a general commentary on what people are prepared (and enjoy) watching on TV today, rather than a dysoptian manifesto. It's certainly no 1984, another thing that is clear when reading the books, the second and third of which went downhill IMHO.

- Nari224

May 1, 2012 at 7:39am

Tim, On the other hand, read Joe Nocera's many incisive commentaries on the NCAA, which has been running real-life, real-time hunger games for decades. Dan

- dbuck1

May 1, 2012 at 8:27am

Not having seen Hunger Games, nor, doubtless, will I, I have nothing to say about it. So I may as well go ahead and say it. When I was more callow and in my literary criticism police phase, I took the view, as Henry James said, I paraphrase, "Grant the artist his idea." The test was the whether the artist pulled it off (for James by his canons of judgment.) For me that meant as some have noted here excluding moral concern in criticism. In my callowness, I couldn't "get" critics like Irving Howe or Lionel Trilling or Edmund Wislon and I preferred academic literary critics like Cleanth Brooks and the other New Critics.  Somewhere along the line, something changed. I can't know for sure when, but I think the change was signaled by my rethinking, at the same time, of both Pauline Kael and Quentin Tarantino. As I looked back over the body of work of the latter--except for Jackie Brown, which got a lot of help of course from Elmore Leonard--I was chagrined at my own emptiness in vaunting him and failing to see the moral idiocy in his films couched in a vacuous aesthetic, which got me to thinking that that same emptiness pervades the work of Pauline Kael, her failure to see the moral vacuity in so many of the films she celebrated with her so-hip-it hurts prose.  Which all got me back to the thinness and ultimate limitation of mere explication de texte and to the corresponding richness of the critics I previously had not gotten. And in that, for myself, I resolved a false opposition between the aesthetic and the moral and saw that even for Henry James, who I also came to understand better, the highest form of art criticism fuses the aesthetic and the moral. So if the criticism of David Thomson's review--which I have not read and doubt that I will--is that it focuses on the aesthetic and not the immoral dimensions of Hunger Games, in the terms that I'm mentioning that criticism may be misplaced. But in those same terms I read Noah to be engaged in exactly that form of high criticism, embedding a moral critique in an aesthetic one, in his piece's ending criticism of the movie. (I can't assess the aptness of that criticism for not having read or seen the work.) And so ends the nothing I have to say and will ever to have to say about Hunger Games.

- basman

May 1, 2012 at 9:17am

Good timing. I haven't seen the movie, but at the sirport yesterday with nothing to read I bought The HUnger Games and tore through the first half of it on the plane. A future contributor to Classic American Literature it is not, but I have to say its pretty entertaining. But as a case study in what could happen in future dystopian yadda yadda yadda, I would read to much into it. This is not much different than the short stories "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas" and Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery". I don't think it's meant to be an actual critical study of what could conceivably happen if all of society went goofy. The themes are meant to parallel certain dark elements of our own society and human history, sure, but as in many works of this genre are magnified to the point of absurdity. But that's the point. In many ways it reminds me of the movie "Starship Troopers", which while on the surface seems like another dumb futeristic war movie, has a multitude of recurring elements that magnify many of the narrow-thinking, xenophobic, flag-waving-ignorance and ability to succumb to patriotic news spinning that were the hallmarks of the pre-Iraqi invasion and the following decade. Brilliant, really. Also, Katniss is a badass.

- Tristan

May 1, 2012 at 9:23am

yeah that should read "airport", "I WOULDN'T read too much into it", etc. Ok, going to get coffee.

- Tristan

May 1, 2012 at 9:26am

P.S. It's me not it, but I can't stand science fiction. If I want dystopia I guess I'll read Thomas More and guys like that.

- basman

May 1, 2012 at 9:58am

I think most of Tim's reaction might be moderated by reading the book. It is, after all, Young Adult fiction, so a certain number of moral punches are indeed pulled -- the extent to which Collins manipulates events to keep our heroine's hands clean does ring false -- but the arguments he makes against it are not ignored in the text. It's just very difficult to strongly feature/depict introspection and moral crisis in the context of what Hollywood intends to be its next Twilight-caliber windfall. The book reminded me quite a bit of early Orson Scott Card, but with more thinking about boys. (If you've read "Ender's Game" I think you'll note the similarities.) Also, there are two sequels, which I have yet to read but rumor has it concern the heroine leading a revolt against the dystopian society -- a difficult story to tell if the only moral choice Tim will allow her is to refuse to participate and be executed (or murdered).

- austinexpat

May 1, 2012 at 10:08am

Magboy47, me n' Morgantown got on so well, there's talk I'm gonna' be made an honorary citizen. Great town, great people, great scenic setting, great campus. Dinner twice at Oliveri's overlooking the mighty but tamed Monongahela River. I bought and never took off a bright gold WVU Moutaineers football sweatshirt with hood and my life was even easier in the consequence, both in Mtown and at Merlefest, itself almost beyond words. Sweatshirt got me a cut in, don't tell anyone, in the portable outhouse line, and that was even after I explained I wasn't a West Virginian. I got props and favors just from wearing the sweatshirt with hood-- hood because it be cold in the mountains at night.

- basman

May 1, 2012 at 10:10am

basman, I'm very glad you liked Morgantown and environs. Try going back in the summer sometime. That's when Morgantown and WV really live up to the nickname Almost Heaven. BTW, the mighty Monongalia River wasn't always tamed. I think it was 1980 when I saw Walter Cronkite on the news showing videos of water up to the second story of buildings at the bottom of downtown Morgantown. And old timers there told me of a flood that washed away a good part of downtown, due to the sudden spring melt of heavy winter snow. Speaking of WVU football, I still follow it somewhat. It sure will be weird to see the Mountaineers in the Big 12 this year. The Sooners are playing in Morgantown in 2012! That town will be hoppin'. I bet you enjoyed the pickin' and clickin' at Merlefest, too.

- magboy47.

May 1, 2012 at 12:33pm

AaronW, You're absolutely right. Trying to get the average teen or young adult in America to get interested in anything of substance is a waste of time and breath. But I should have answered my own "whining" question better. I blame totally cynical publishers and movie-makers for the wasteland that is youth culture. They COULD produce something more elevated, but they want to appeal to the very lowest level of young brains, so they can get the most cash. "Kill Bill", e.g., is based on comic books that Japanese kids read. Of course it's going to be a brainless bloodfest. But teens have the same number of brain cells that adults do. Only cowardly, cash-crazy capitalists are keeping more of those cells from being used.

- magboy47.

May 1, 2012 at 12:42pm

basman, I agree with you about Pauline Kael. Tons of style, ounces of substance. And she got some movies just flat-out wrong. For example, she skewered Michael Moore's "Roger and Me" without pity, when actually, it turned out to be Moore's best film, by far. She had an emotional reaction to it. If only she had had an emotional reaction to some of the dreck, that, as you say, she let slide.

- magboy47.

May 1, 2012 at 1:04pm

Tristan, I'm just saying this without checking it out after decades, but isn't Le Guin's "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" about a different problem than The Hunger Games (which I have neither read nor seen -- real expertise on show here today!). Rather than a society descending to organized death games, isn't it about a kind of anarchist paradise with equality and ecology and sexual freedom? The catch is that there is one suffering individual who has to suffer permanently in order that the happiness of the wider society continues, and the "Ones Who Walk Away" are the people who just can't or won't live with that basic trade-off. Maybe I'm mixing up two stories, however.

- ironyroad

May 1, 2012 at 1:21pm

I read Basman's, Tristan's, Ironyroad's, and others' comments with appreciation, and, if they will forgive the presumption, a sense of kinship. I read most of the literary works they cite, works that helped shape this utterly irreligious person's personality and morality. I imagine later Greeks grumbling about young people not appreciating Homer, Jews in Jesus' and Paul's time, missing the good old days of Moses' time, when the Law was the Law; late Elizabethans grumbling at Willy the Shake's plays about young people not realizing he was just ripping off Kyd and Marlowe. In more recent times, the Behomians of the 30s and 40s grumbled about Kerouac and the Beats , who grumbled about the hippies. Some older Russians (clinging to Putin) are lamenting the “stability and predictability” of Stalin's time; Chinese missing Mao's energy, creativity, and purity; as shortly will Cubans lament the loss of Castro. What Rough Beast, indeed.

- skahn

May 1, 2012 at 1:35pm

I've read the entire HG trilogy (I'm an old, not young adult, but refuse to let that affect my reading pleasure), and Noah's assertion that the moral thing for the tributes to do would be to refuse to participate and be executed ignores a couple of things that perhaps aren't made clear in the movie but are in the book. First, for Katniss to refuse to participate would have consequences beyond her own life. It is made very clear in the book that if you don't go along with the program, your family and even your community will suffer consequences up to and including execution. In fact, in the later books, District 12, Katniss' home, is firebombed into oblivion as punishment for Katniss' rebellion. And Katniss is in the HG only because she volunteered in order to protect her little sister, whose name was initially chosen. Her prime motivation not only in the first book but throughout the trilogy is not self protection (or she wouldn't have volunteered in the first place) but to protect her family and friends. Also, the book makes clear that in some of the districts, being a tribute (a player in the games) is a high honor for which children are groomed from an early age. They would never join Katniss in doing the "moral" thing; Aaron W is right about that. The trilogy as a whole exposes the young adult reader to some useful issues regarding wars, who they benefit, and what they do to people, as well as the fact that in extreme circumstances, the moral choice isn't always obvious. And it's clearly a sendup of our reality-show obsessed society. It can also be seen as a reflection of a 1% vs. 99% culture, where a select few enjoy great prosperity and luxury while countless others slave in semi-starvation to provide them with everything--and the long-term consequences of that sort of inequality.

- VAliberal

May 1, 2012 at 2:14pm

I love your Yeats reference, sk.

- liberalref

May 1, 2012 at 2:29pm

Thank you, liberalref. Though to my shame and dismay, I confess I improperly typed "Bohemians," thus czechmating myself.

- skahn

May 1, 2012 at 3:38pm

Irony - your memory is just fine, my friend. I was comparing the people of Omelas in the story to the people in Capitol City in the hunger games, and while the parallel isn't perfect, they rememble each other (at least in my mind). Each lives in what appears to us to be a world perfect in every way, save for one small detail; in Omelas, there is a young boy living a life of torture, whereas in Capitol City they enjoy the brutality of the hunger games. Both imply that human societies have a certain amount of suffering and evil, and in both the evil is entirely concentrated in one in-your-face example. And in both, this appears to be intolerable for some people... some Omelasians (?) depart, presumably for a world in which the suffering may still be there but is diffused throughout all of society. People from Capitol City... well, I haven't gotten that far yet, but it looks like there are some that have at least TRIED to leave the paradise of Capitol for the wilds of the districts. Again, not a perfect parallel. Lucky for me I'm not a literary critic. Peace. :)

- Tristan

May 1, 2012 at 3:49pm

I had a very similar reaction to Noah's (including my disappointment that Thomson didn't echo my moral queasiness) and posted the below under Thomson's review, comparing the depctions of violence and young people in The Hunger Games to The Kid with a Bike: I don't think the movie lacked the courage of its violent premise. I fault the movie more for the premise itself, which is highly distasteful and not adequately justified by allegorical or thematic purpose. The idea of a kiddie battle royal to the death is not only gross but unconvincing as any sort of vision of the future or commentary on the present. Its purpose as a story seems too close to its purpose *in* the story -- entertainment, thrills. Maybe the book makes a better case, but the movie, if it weren't so boring and silly, would seem exploitative and perverse. Like most Hollywood action movies, it speaks out of both sides of its mouth when it comes to violence. It's bad, sure, but it's exciting too, especially when wielded by a pretty young girl, an icky recent development in mainstream fare. I'd like to see someone call b.s. on this detente in the gender wars whereby naive, shallow feminism (Girl Power!) is aligned with the appetites of covert sickos. A mild introduction to the male gaze: for the 40 percent male audience last weekend (yes, 11-year-old boys included), Katniss's sex appeal, due in no small part to her stoic toughness and lethal competence, was far and away the main attraction. This is a Pyrrhic victory for women and girls. It reminds me of a 30 Rock I saw recently where Liz complains on feminism grounds that there aren't enough women on death row, and where are the female serial killers? Maybe, dare I suggest, sexy violence shouldn't feature prominently in children's entertainment. I saw another movie the same day about a determined youngster who gets knocked around, who commits acts of violence, who dodges death up a tree in the woods. It's a beautiful French movie called The Kid with a Bike. The kid is a real kid (not a 21-year-old playing a 16-year-old). In fact, he's 11. His mother is gone, his pathetic father wants nothing to do with him, and he lives in an orphanage. He desperately seeks his dad, and then desperately seeks a father figure in the wrong places. Meanwhile, a hairdresser played by the gorgeous Cecile de France (Hereafter) offers a more affecting picture of female toughness -- really, human toughness -- that puts the film's men to shame, one based on the draining work of caring. She takes the kid in, at first on weekends, and, without thinking, she finds herself committed to him totally as a good parent would be -- this despite the fact that the damaged kid is no angel, and she has to do battle, sometimes literally, to save him. The Hunger Games is poorly shot (with a needlessly nausea-inducing jittery camera), and is hampered by bland music and ugly fake-looking effects and design. In The Kid with a Bike, the camera moves, but it doesn't have to shake in order for the film to be convincing. When the kid does commit violence -- with a bat, with a knife -- it's awful and heart-wrenching, as it should be, as it would be in life if someone we knew were involved. No trace of titillation -- not like the violence in the video games the kid plays with a slickly charming local gang leader, or the 20-odd violent deaths of children depicted in The Hunger Games (rated PG-13). The only music, and really only obvious directorial affect, consists of the first few bars of the slow movement of Beethoven's fifth piano concerto, repeated at strategic points in order to convey the possibility of grace, before the piece is allowed to continue over the closing credits. That word -- "grace" -- describes this movie perfectly. The theater was full for The Kid with a Bike, but it was the smallest theater at the multiplex, and it was full of senior citizens. This is a movie about a kid that maybe kids should see too, one that doesn't congratulate itself on its hard-boiled view of jaded, over-sexed youth (another unpleasant recent trend), but instead, like another French film The Class, depicts kids and adults' relationship to them with compelling honesty and sensitivity. After seeing The Kid with a Bike, I was ready for some mindless entertainment with The Hunger Games, and I wanted to see what the fuss was about, but I didn't realize quite how mindless it would be. It's not really soul-deadening, but it's not encouraging either, and, when it comes to both craft and purpose, it's disheartening to see such a mediocre effort do so well.

- JakeH

May 1, 2012 at 5:54pm

Tristan, I was doing the classic lit crit thing of engaging in a comparison of two texts while being completely ignorant of one element of the pair. It's a special trick they teach in grad school :)

- ironyroad

May 1, 2012 at 6:07pm

Basman, yes, I've done a similar reevaluation of Tarantino, and I also exempt Jackie Brown, which is a sweetheart of a movie. I'm generally far less inclined than I was when I first saw Pulp Fiction to find violence funny or otherwise entertaining. I tend to think that the fiction has to earn the right to depict awful things by taking them seriously and having a point -- a test I think the Hunger Games movie (haven't read the book) fails big-time.

- JakeH

May 1, 2012 at 6:09pm

Jake, I have not seen Kid with a Bike, but I read your comment with interest, and I am adding the title to the 251 or so things I may get around to doing while still alive. Thank you. I did find a version on YouTube, but 1) I have .001% ability to understand French and 2) I don't know if the posting is legal as far as copyright goes.

- skahn

May 1, 2012 at 7:07pm

Right on Jake H.

- basman

May 1, 2012 at 7:27pm

I think that Tarentino's deal is not so much to merely make us find violence funny as to make movies without the narrative and other safetly zones that allow us to enjoy violence without thinking about it. It's discomfiting rather than purely comic to realize that violent criminals also goof around, have silly conversations, and differ on tastes in music. I woudn't say his record is seamless success, however. But Inglourious Basterds is a remarkable film and raises a whole bunch of other questions. I can't think of a director who could put a central problem of modern history front and center like he does while engaging in precisely the revenge fantasy that nobody had been able to make before that.

- ironyroad

May 1, 2012 at 7:28pm

I just noticed that it is May 1. I am not sure whether I should holler "May Day! May Day," but I just recalled my pledge to let anyone try to tell me (so I will probably ignore your suggestion) whether I am too demented to continue participating and posting at TNR. When I was teaching classes in a venue whether we received evaluations after every class, a fairly good boss told me, "Discard the most favorable rating and the most negative rating, and then the others will provide a pretty good idea how you are doing." I will add to that sage advice, the thought that nobody else much cares, so I will regard no comments as "Do whatever the **** you want to." And why not?

- skahn

May 1, 2012 at 10:51pm

Time to put the chickens to bed.

- skahn

May 1, 2012 at 10:51pm

Irony, okay, maybe my problem with Tarantino has less to do with his cavalier violence than the fact that the joke is so well-worn. It's sort of like the New Yorker cartoons where dogs do human things. After the thousandth filmic depiction of bad guys bantering as though they were in an episode of Seinfeld, the more it seems like lame shtick rather than the awesomely hilarious revolutionary entertainment I took it for at the tender age of whatever I was back then. And Pulp Fiction relies a lot on that joke, more so than some of his other movies, such that when I saw it again recently, I found it thinner than I remembered. Maybe that's not a fair criticism. It's not Tarantino's fault, after all, that his breakout hit inspired countless lame imitators. And, if we recall the details, Samuel Jackson, who memorably renounces his profession of killer thug and embraces peaceful religion, lives, while Travolta, who dismisses Jackson's conversion, gets shot on the toilet. Meanwhile, Bruce Willis demonstrates adorable family values by going back for his dad's ass-watch, as well as bona fide Christian courage by going back to save his enemy, and he and his girlfriend miraculously get to ride off in the sunset on a motorcycle called "Grace." (Importantly, we don't see Willis beat his boxing opponent to death in the ring, which would make us dislike him rather than admire him for his dedication to honorable competition.) All that, though, seems like part of the joke too. It makes the movie a happy fairy tale in a lurid setting, which I guess is cute. I don't think it takes us out of any comfort zone in re violence, however. One movie that took me out of *my* comfort zone was Lars von Trier's Dogville. I totally dug the movie, from start to blood-soaked finish. Spoiler alert, Nicole Kidman, mysterious visitor, is raped, abused, tortured horribly by Our Town, and, at the end, with the help of her, surprise, gangster father, has everyone in the town, babies too, murdered. The reason why I was taken out of my comfort zone is that, while watching the movie, and for a good while after, I felt that this ending was well earned and richly satisfying. The Dogvillians were truly a bunch of assholes. No movie has made a better dramatic case for opening an Old Testament-style can of whup-ass, and yet, the collective punishment was not morally justified. Shooting the shit out of Hitler, with gleeful grins from Hell, and blowing up a theater full of self-satisfied Nazis -- Jews kicking ass against Nazis -- is more conventionally satisfying. What I didn't like, though, was that the girl gets killed. Both girls actually. Was that really necessary? I would have loved Inglourious Basterds, or however it's incorrectly spelled, if the whole movie had been a fantasy of the girl trapped under the floor (we know she has a Tarantino-esque fascination with movies, and her initial escape is unexplained) -- she's a sort of twisted Anne Frank -- that resolves when the sisters manage to get the better of the low-level Nazis outside the house, and the SS guy gets shot. If the movie's a fantasy, and it is, why be a bummer? My fantasies have things working out, except for my more demented ones that should probably be confined to the amoral imagination. Anyway, maybe I have to amend my previous comment that violence needs to be earned by taking it seriously and having a point. Sometimes violence can be harmless fun -- see Alfred Hitchcock or Brian De Palma. That's not to say that none of their films had points or took the violence seriously, but they're both proud button-pushers, Hitchcock especially, who're all about the art of the thrill, the craft of suspense. And I'm willing to admit that my aversion to gore (De Palma's films notwithstanding) is my own problem and not an ethical rule. I guess it depends on the context, the specific values of the film. I'm very sensitive to, on the one hand, sadism, and, on the other, indecently casual treatments of violent death. I recently saw again the Frankenheimer action movie Ronin, in which innocents are, to quote Roger Thornhill in North by Northwest, "slightly killed" -- some tourists in the line of fire, a beautiful figure skater -- and, even though the movie is pretty good, I found these events unpleasant, disturbing even, all the more so because it's just a dumb action flick with a happy ending. Once again, it's a fantasy. Why be a nasty fantasy? Why insist on collateral damage? Are we supposed to *enjoy* it? Last example, on the sadism point: I'm not, as may be obvious, a horror guy. But I did go see Drag Me To Hell, and enjoyed it on a button-pushing level, right up to the ending where, spoiler alert, the girl, on her way to a happy ending, is, as the title suggests, suddenly dragged to hell, screaming as her boyfriend looks on in agony. Some horror flicks offer the hope of cosmic justice, but this girl didn't do anything wrong, and certainly nothing to justify everlasting suffering! Why are we supposed to like this ending? What's the appeal of the poster art for that movie that, like so many others, depicts a pretty girl in extreme pain? Are we comfortable having the values of a snuff film insidiously claim vast swaths of cultural real estate? Or should I just chuckle merrily? If it's about Truth, then, by all means, let's have it, disturbing death and violence and all. Truth is a get out of jail free card. But if it's a game -- video game, genre game, Hunger Game -- I think it's incumbent on the game-maker to somehow or other justify the fun, or at least not fall into the traps of sadism, cruelty, or callousness.

- JakeH

May 2, 2012 at 2:58am

Oscar Wilde quote: There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. Reading this article, I get the feeling that T. Noah would approve of Miss Prism's philosophy of what constitutes good literature: "Miss Prism. Do not speak slightingly of the three-volume novel, Cecily. I wrote one myself in earlier days. Cecily. Did you really, Miss Prism? How wonderfully clever you are! I hope it did not end happily? I don’t like novels that end happily. They depress me so much. Miss Prism. The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what Fiction means."

- noga1

May 2, 2012 at 4:46am

"Moral...immoral book" ... reminds me of an essay by Nabakov I read once (discussing Dickens, I think), in which he evaluates literature in terms of aesthetic values as opposed to moral values. I am not sure that kite flies all that well. I suspect that there is some reason few people read the Marquis de Sade (and his imitators) these days besides the lack of literary/aesthetic quality. Oh, well, I have a date with Lolita this morning, so I will have to take my leave soon. (Full disclosure -- it's actually a menage a trois with Lolita and Pollyanna.)

- skahn

May 2, 2012 at 10:08am

Jake, that's a substantial argument and I'll have to think about it before getting back (always a bit of a chore -- damn thinking!). My initial impression is that I'm broadly in agreement. Coincidentally, Noga, who posted just after you, is the person who drew my attention first to the possibility that the entire post-farmhouse narrative of Basterds is a fantasy (a kind of dying dream of Shoshana's); but it is possible, too, that Landa doesn't fire on a whim of some sort.

- ironyroad

May 2, 2012 at 11:13am

Your post is hilarious, sk. Ah yes, Vladimir Nabakov. He disliked Fyodor Dostoevsky's novels because Dostoevsky's style wasn't aesthetically pleasing to him. I have always tried to avoid the Scylla and Charybdis of the overmoralization of literature and its overaestheticizing. And also of course, the politicization of literature, which the pomos are great at.

- liberalref

May 2, 2012 at 12:16pm

I'm so glad you remembered that, ironyroad. It's a favourite theory of mine with regards to this film. I've been told by at least two persons that I tend to overthink "Basterds", but it seems to me that whatever Tarantino's intentions may have been in creating this movie, the final product is so rich with thoughtful material that it merits being treated like a novel. The fact that the movie is divided into chapters might be a clue that its creator had a similar thought. He also wanted it to premier in Israel something that again might imply he had more profound intentions than just providing entertaining violence.

- noga1

May 2, 2012 at 3:12pm

The young want it both ways, huh. The hero of an immoral enterprize, who kills only bad guys. Nothing like the Godfather.

- Vogelfam

May 2, 2012 at 3:49pm

Mslyman - it's true that the book was a bit clearer as to why the Districts acquiesed to the hunger games. However I also felt that the film didn't do a bad job of communicating why this was without bashing the audience over the head 1. Pretty clear disparity in technology. The Capitol has hovercars, bullet trains, graceful cities and can corporealise holograms. The districts have rags, wooden houses and perhaps one illicit bow. Given that, within the context of the story, the Capitol is pretty nasty, it doesnt seem a stretch that they'd enforce pretty nasty repercussions. 2. The history of the games (penalty for a previous rebellion) was described in dialogue. 3. There were some scenes of rebellion being put down in other districts.

- Nari224

May 2, 2012 at 10:39pm

Noga: "He also wanted it to premier in Israel something that again might imply he had more profound intentions than just providing entertaining violence." I didn't know that. I do know that the movie stages one of the most astonishing interplays of the English and German languages that I've ever seen. In fact I've never seen (heard?) anything like it. Maybe a few passages in le Carré novels where the characters are meant to be speaking German.

- ironyroad

May 3, 2012 at 3:33am

Tarantino pioneered in the movie the idea that in a setting where different languages are spoken, we the audience will not be lazily indulged by having the characters speak English in different accents. (By contrast, think about the recent Girl with the Dragon Tattoo where the characters are supposed to speak in a Swidish accent but some do and some do not, which if you start paying attention to it can distract you from following the film properly...) Germans speak German, Americans speak American, Brits speak English, French speak French, and only Landa can speak all these languages fluently and with hardly a trace of an accent. This is an aspect of the film whose significance I have not considered before. The Jew-hunter was a real chameleon, language-wise. And perhaps more than that: if you recall in his conversation with the French farmer he said his secret was that he could think like a Jew. He failed with Shoshana, though. He could not get into HER mind and soul (could this be another clue that the whole story following Chapter 1 is taking place in Shoshana's terrified mind seconds before she is shot?) . I can't remember if he ends up being branded. Did he?

- noga1

May 3, 2012 at 8:20am

The branding? Yes. Raines does it before he hands Landa over to the higher-ups in the U.S. command. I imagine Tarentino was thinking about Landa as one of those Germans (shown e.g. in Marcel Ophuls' documentary Hotel Terminus) who brought their skills into American intelligence agencies while their Nazi background was quietly forgotten -- except that can't happen as he'll carry the mark on his forehead.

- ironyroad

May 3, 2012 at 10:44am

Why HG is a moral movie: The only thing I find missing in this excellent thread that includes incisive comments and interesting sidebars is that HG is a subgenre of dystopian fiction, specifically young-adult dystopian fiction. Our imagined dystopias simplify and strip down moral choice, whether it is the adult choices made by the characters in McCarthy’s “The Road,” or the choices made by adolescents in HG. What differentiates this moral starkness is the characterization of what authority or circumstance has ordained this new order, and who gets to make moral choices. In the former, the post-apocalyptic landscape with its simplified morality was created by adults, and within this landscape choices are still mandated by adults, who are either the protectors or consumers of children. In HG, as in all young-adult fiction, adults tend to be oppressors, makers of the order which victimizes the children. Here, the individuating child enters that moral space on the path to finding a foundational kind of morality separate from their protectors. Who among us here who grew up as readers did not at some time entertain an adventure story that included danger, conflict, choice, bravery, or rebellion against established order, or even the possibility of violence or death? Our individuation as young adults includes facing these images of loss, abandonment, and growing empowerment. I can cite films all the way back to “Bambi.” Was it a good movie? Here I think Mr. Thomson had it right. This fiction, bubbies, and should be judged as to how well it accomplishes that goal. I have lots of problems with how this film was aggressively marketed in a six-month pre-release that included everything from social media and youtube to posters in check-out lines at supermarkets. I think its prominence is largely manufactured. I think it at best a mediocre movie. That frame is possibly a better way to consider the “immorality” of this product. But, a whole ‘nother can o’ worms, campers.

- eMish

May 3, 2012 at 6:09pm

Hey, IR. Good to read you. I'd know that voice anywhere. Here's to you.

- eMish

May 3, 2012 at 6:39pm

"Maybe a few passages in le Carré novels where the characters are meant to be speaking German." BTW, ironyroad, I recently watched the old 6 hour long BBC production of "Tinker Tailor" with Obi Wan Kenobi as Smiley. It is an extraordinarily rich and absorbing drama and I remembered none of it except the very last scene where he finally meets his wife who tells him: "Poor George, life is such a puzzle for you". Such a neat, super-intelligent, shy bureaucrat and yet capable of such deep and turbulent passion for his fickle wife. There's a puzzle for you. Having just ferreted out the dangerous mole in a brilliant series of traps, he is seen swallowing nervously and bracing himself when he asks his wife, somewhat pathetically: Were you in love with him? I think this aspect of Smiley is well captured though very briefly in the recent movie.

- noga1

May 3, 2012 at 6:46pm

Hey Ironyroad, I just heard that Tarantino has a 160+ IQ and was born in Knoxville, Tennessee. That might account for the genius of his work and his penchant for non-linear literary-narrative forms. For me the case is closed :)

- noga1

May 3, 2012 at 8:18pm

eMish, nice to hear from you. The committee feels the same, and they are looking forward to talking with you. Step this way please, door straight ahead. Er . . . sorry? Return ticket from TNR? Yeah, sure, leave it here. You can pick it up later. Totally, no problem. I promise, I'll keep an eye on it! [fake cheerfulness] Chill out, dude, it'll all be a doddle. Noga: I have some fragmentary memories of the Guiness TTSS, and I think the Ricky Tarr thread was handled more elegantly in that adaptation. The recent movie wanted to make it the central love story, and it falls into clunkiness. But the Xmas party scene in the movie was brilliant -- that's one part I admired.

- ironyroad

May 3, 2012 at 10:09pm

IR: Doddle, dawdle, and doodle, the holy trinity of online forums. World without end, and amen.

- eMish

May 4, 2012 at 5:41pm

PS: fuck committees :)

- eMish

May 4, 2012 at 5:52pm

I should quit when I am ahead, but I won't. In high school, one of the books I read was The Oxbow Incident, where a lynch mob hangs some innocent men accused of murder and cattle rustling. In college (while working on flunking out), I was on the student newspaper, and a group of us revolted against the editor, who was perfectly innocent of the accusations I no longer recall. In a hot meeting, I suddenly thought, "There's no rope here; no horses, no cattle, but we are sure acting like a lynch mob." So literature had to substitute for my moral education.

- skahn

May 4, 2012 at 11:35pm

"fuck committees :)" Yes. But.

- ironyroad

May 5, 2012 at 12:02am

Oh, I await that. Cheeky monkey.

- eMish

May 5, 2012 at 1:08am

Seriously, why bother? Maybe not the appropriate venue for that question, but hey! Anyway, good to read you, as I said. I'm not up to jumping through the hoops necessary to create a pub-at-the-end-of-the-universe here, if one would be even possible. Let me pour you a Dragon's Tooth ale, and serve you a bad cheese sandwich. Cheers!

- eMish

May 5, 2012 at 1:33am

Dangerously loud 'clink' as two glasses meet with what their owners believed to be appropriate force but was in fact a little stronger. I'm not sure I read you entirely, but basically I hope you stick around, at least for a while, or at least intermittently. At departmental end-of-spring-semester gourmet-barbecue this evening. Talking with various others and pleasant feelings afterwards. Slices of roast duck breast in refrigerator.

- ironyroad

May 5, 2012 at 2:45am

Ha! A fine description of clinking glasses and force. There is sometimes duck, which helps. There are some amenities, which also assist and have value. I do not mean in any sense to denigrate this. I will stick around at least as an observer, which I have been these some months. My observation thus far reveals nothing much of note. My participation, therefore, will be spare. Cheers to you, and to all who are awake.

- eMish

May 5, 2012 at 3:39am

Duck is greatly over rated. It's dry. It's stringy. You chew and chew and it never ends. Have you seen "Footnote", ironyroad? If not you should make haste to see it ASAP! http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1445520/ Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfsn17MqkBo

- noga1

May 5, 2012 at 12:44pm

Noga, I just checked and it's playing locally, so I'll try to see it during the week. Not this duck. Moist, tender, succulent slices. Mmmmm.

- ironyroad

May 5, 2012 at 2:08pm

Be sure to let me know how you were impressed by the movie, ironyroad.

- noga1

May 5, 2012 at 7:47pm