The Antisocial Socialist

Yo remember how I watched all of the Atlas Shrugged movies that one time so you don't have to? And I was probably one of like, five people who saw them?

WELL GOOD NEWS EVERYONE now there's six.



YouTuber Orowen takes one for the team and watched the whole thing and it's glorious. Spoiler: His reaction is like mine except it's on video and he has a British accent so it's funnier. I honestly just really needed some shitting on bad movies and bad politics and I promise you that this is worth your time to see. I feel this guy's pain and relate on a deep emotional level. Been there, buddy.

Anyway, I enjoyed it a lot and you might too.

“It was like a sex scene in an Ayn Rand novel, huh?” — Angels in America, Tony Kushner


Erstwhile on Atlas Shrugged III: Who Is John Galt?, society fell apart because of a lack of Minnesota wheat and an excess of socialism, and Dagny returned from the Crunchy Conservative Compound to save her railroad company.

( Speeches, shagging, and apocalypse )

That’s it folks! I’m gonna go drink myself to death.

I fucking did it. I watched the fucking movie. For science, and for you. Because unlike the characters in Atlas Shrugged Part 3: Who Is John Galt?, I believe that sacrifice and altruism are among the highest of virtues.



Actual picture of me.

Background
Are you just tuning in or forgot what happened during the first two parts of the trilogy? That’s understandable; they’re totally forgettable and I wouldn’t blame your brain for blocking out that experience. Part I begins here and Part II begins here.

If the Atlas Shrugged movies were some kind of communistic indie art film, it might be justifiable for a producer to say of them, “fuck what the market demands or desires! I want to express myself and dance naked beneath the full moon painted with my own menstrual blood, capturing the entire experience on degraded Super8 film. Art!”

But these movies are all about how awesome capitalism is, and how there needs to be more capitalism because the present level of capitalism is insufficiently capitalistic and CEOs are just too goshdarned nice. And also about how you shouldn’t beg money from anyone, not even Kickstarter. As you’ll see, our fictional heroes in this film believe that no one has an intrinsic right to exist unless they are capable of generating shitloads of money independently. In the Randroid imagination then, is a movie that no one wants to see and that will make negative amounts of money still worth creating? With everything I know about libertarianism, I would suspect the answer is no.

Naturally, they made it anyway.

The filmmakers had a particularly interesting challenge here, which was whether they could make a movie even worse than the previous two. I am pleased to report that they were successful in this. It was absolutely the only success they had. I can safely say that Atlas Shrugged 3: Who Is John Galt is the worst of three incredibly terrible movies, and that is a significant accomplishment.



The Problem of Genre
I certainly have my biases when it comes to film, but I do try to review—and appreciate—films in the context of genre. I can still get into a movie that’s not my cup of tea if it’s a well-made example of its genre and those involved seem to be into the thing they’re doing. And I can appreciate competence in filmmaking, even when I disagree with the fundamental ideology or narrative.

So what kind of a film is Atlas Shrugged? The first problem with it is that it does not actually know what kind of film it is. It wants to be a political thriller, but it also kind of wants to be a science fiction movie, but by the third movie, it’s become actual fantasy. I’m going to be overly generous and classify it broadly as a work of political/philosophical fiction. I say “generous” because a) the politics in it are heavily reliant upon literal magic in order for them to make sense, which may be an interesting narrative twist, but not exactly useful prescriptively when it comes to running an IRL country, and b) Objectivism is less of a political philosophy and more:



Film and Ideology
There are few things that nearly all political, theological, and philosophical schools agree upon, but most would accept some concept of society and interdependence—not because of some mystical concept of “human nature,” but because we have evolved as social animals, and part of the process of civilization involves teaching cranky toddlers to share their toys. Objectivism is developmentally stuck in the toy-hoarding stage, and as we can see by flicking on the news for 30 seconds, toy-hoarding is fundamentally unsustainable.

But Atlas is hardly the first example of someone taking poorly thought out and/or evil philosophy and using the medium of film to promote it. Some of the most heavily influential works of cinema were created to spread horrible ideas. But the more horrible the idea, I think, the better the film needs to be in order to convince an audience that the ideas behind it are worth listening to.

Let’s say I had an awful political philosophy. Something along the lines of “my ethnic or national group is fundamentally superior, but for some reason threatened, by an oppressed ethnic group that is darker in complexion, and that latter group should be murdered en masse as a result.” If I phrase it like that, it’s going to sound really bad, right? So in order to get people to follow my shitty idea, I would need to get a filmmaker like D.W. Griffiths to glorify the Klan with Birth of a Nation, or Leni Riefenstahl to make the Nazis look awesome with Triumph of the Will, or Zack Snyder to drum up support for bombing the Middle East with The 300.



Are these films good? They’re toxic at the core, laughably melodramatic, and ideologically abhorrent. But they’re effective at stirring emotion, visually innovative, and engaging to watch, and they’re good at getting people to shut off their brains, which is a requirement for fascism. That’s why they’re worth studying, even if one is an anti-fascist who disagrees at every possible level with their underlying ideas. I think I would say that they might not be “good” movies, per se, but they’re successful movies.

So, okay, what if I want to promote the idea that the only thing wrong with capitalism is that if your boss goes on vacation for a month, society will fall apart? That’s obviously a stupid idea, and to get someone to buy into it, I would need to have found a brilliant director. I certainly wouldn’t choose Jim Manera. Letting this man near a camera is a worse idea than letting Roman Polanski film your pre-teen daughter’s pool party.

And don’t give me any talk about the low budget either. It had a budget of $5 million. That’s over 700 El Mariachis, and Rodriguez didn’t even have CGI to spice things up back then.

There are two good things to be said about this movie:

1) It is mercifully short. Much shorter than 50 Shades of Grey.
2) There’s very little actual movie in it. They didn’t have enough money to shoot the whole movie so they did a few scenes, slapped some voiceovers on shitty stock footage, and called it a day.

Otherwise, this is the worst atrocity in cinema history since Kazan narced to the HUAC committee, or would be if anyone actually watched this movie. But no one did. Except me. I watched it so you don’t have to.


( Here we go again! )

Stay tuned next for a detailed discussion of the failconomics of Galt's Gulch and also the sound I make when, in a fit of desperation, I chew and swallow my own tongue!

The jokes just kind of write themselves, don't they?

Have at it, folks; I'm exhausted.

Facebook political arguments are the greatest. Well, they're quite awful, really, because there is a higher percentage of stupid on FB than there was on LJ even in its heyday.

Today, I'm in an argument about—

What am I in an argument about? FB arguments are so incoherent.

A friend posted about the Québec student strike. One of his friends responded with a confused and inflammatory statement about Québec separatism. I found myself having to explain about provincial and federal tax structure, which this person still does not seem to understand, why separatism isn't actually treason or illegal regardless of whether or not one agrees with it, and how he ought not to complain about taxes since a) he is a beneficiary of tax dollars, and b) I probably pay way more in taxes than he does and you don't see me whining nearly as hard. And besides which, whether he pays taxes in Ontario has little to do with how tax dollars are spent in Québec.

Alas, on LJ you can have footnotes and link to stats and you can dogpile people. On FB, the discussion degenerates quickly and then gets forgotten. You can't thread it so that responses to a person's idiocy on taxes, Québec politics, and tuition are separated out so that each bit of stupid can be properly refuted. It leads to sloppy thinking on the part of inferior minds. At least, I can only assume this is why buddy thinks these are all the same issue.

Libertarians are the same all over, though. I truly hate listening to people whine about how they've worked so hard and don't want to pay taxes. It makes me want to let them loose in whatever wilderness remains and see how their self-sufficiency is worth as they slowly starve to death.

It's a constant irritant that I need to know anything at all about Ron Paul and that he's just not some fringe blabbermouth in a different country. Some Canadians, including a vocal minority within the Occupy movement, are really into him. Many more Americans, some of whom call themselves progressives, are really, really, into him. He seems to want to hitch himself to the Occupy bandwagon and pass himself off as some kind of populist, anti-war, pro-pot maverick.

Please note that Ron Paul is not a progressive. And for the love of women's bodies, social safety nets, and human rights, don't vote for him. Don't let your friends vote for him either. He may be touted as a fresh alternative to the two-party American establishment, but he's more of the same stale corporation-humping far-right authoritarianism, and a nutcase to boot.

jonathankorman has a fantastic round-up post of all the reasons why Ron Paul is an evil crackpot. You should read it. Then when one of your naïve hippie friends on Facebook (you know you have them too) starts in about how great Ron Paul is, just paste this link in response.

(Note: jonathankorman leaves a few major areas of Paul's wingnuttery alone, including his fascist stance on immigration. If you're curious, here it is straight from the horse's mouth. He is in favour of impoverishing, criminalizing, and murdering non-status people. If you agree with that kind of thing, I don't wanna know you.)

Here, have a bonus shape-shifting lizard alien from the Bilderburg Group:

Yesterday on Atlas Shrugged: Part I, nothing happened except for some shot-reverse-shot of people with dated hairdos hanging out in opulent offices and dining rooms. Oh, and Dagny wanted a piece of Hank Rearden’s steel.

( Trains, and yes, in a Freudian way )

I got to see the naked bike ride today! That was very—not the sort of thing that you want to see while having lunch, believe it or not. But I was done my mango mock chicken and it stayed down so that was good.

I tried to snap a picture with the Infernal Device but it didn't save properly. Consider your eyeballs spared. The Infernal Device is kinder than I would have been.

Anyway, I say this as someone quite supportive of Critical Mass and its variants—how does one actually ride a bike naked? It sounds like a recipe for pure pain.

In lieu of that brain-scarring image, I offer another: ( How to succeed as an Ayn Rand character )

On an unrelated note: Bear lost — and now "kidnappers" want $10,000 in cupcakes. This is one of those rare headlines where reading the whole article actually makes it funnier. Because the cupcakes have to be gluten-free.

By now, I'm sure, you have seen the amusing New York Times review of Game of Thrones. If you haven't, do go check it out. It has, I am afraid, quite confused my tiny, fragile ladybrain.

You see, Tool of the Patriarchy Ginia Bellafante makes a number of interesting claims that, while appallingly sexist, run counter to the predominant sexist narratives. Case in point:

While I do not doubt that there are women in the world who read books like Mr. Martin’s, I can honestly say that I have never met a single woman who has stood up in indignation at her book club and refused to read the latest from Lorrie Moore unless everyone agreed to “The Hobbit” first. “Game of Thrones” is boy fiction patronizingly turned out to reach the population’s other half.

Now, while I have not read A Song of Ice and Fire*, I am pretty sure that it's fantasy. Everybody knows that girls like fantasy and boys like sci-fi. Right? I suppose Bellafante is making an argument that girls do not like any sort of genre fiction at all and should perhaps stick to chick-lit with pink covers and illustrations of shoes.


This is the only genre for me!

I am also, it seems, a literary philistine, as I had never heard of Lorrie Moore and had to look her up. She's mainly a short story writer, apparently.** Do book clubs allow short stories? At any rate, it sounds like Bellafante belongs to a really dull book club. Also, didn't we all read The Hobbit in grade school, or was that just me?

This is deeply confusing to my evolutionarily stunted mind, but it's nowhere near as odd as the claim Bellafante makes right before it:

The imagined historical universe of “Game of Thrones” gives license for unhindered bed-jumping — here sibling intimacy is hardly confined to emotional exchange.

The true perversion, though, is the sense you get that all of this illicitness has been tossed in as a little something for the ladies, out of a justifiable fear, perhaps, that no woman alive would watch otherwise.

If I'm reading this correctly, she is suggesting several things. One also runs counter to the cultural narrative that men are obsessed with sex, visual creatures who must consume pornography by the bucketload, whereas women are only interested in romance novels and, perhaps, written erotica. Very tame written erotica. Well, okay. We only watch telly for the naked men, it seems. This is an odd claim to make when there are far more interesting things to watch online, if you know what I mean. But perhaps the lady is old-fashioned.

The other, even odder suggestion, is that women are really turned on by depictions of incest. I don't find that to be the case, myself, but I suppose that explains the success of Supernatural.†

I take this review as a good sign that traditional constructs of masculinity and femininity are, if not disappearing, then reversing poles. I am expected, it seems, to leave behind my traditional womanly domain of fantasy stories with magical lands and ponies in favour of whatever HBO allows in terms of hardcore porn. Neither are actually my thing, but one does inevitably get sick of existing stereotypes and it is refreshing to see a new one emerge.

While we're talking about geek things, io9.com's list of the 10 greatest libertarian sci-fi stories is also quite bollocks. William Morris: one of the great minds of socialism. Ursula K. LeGuin: anarchist all the way through. Robert Anton Wilson: also anarchist if I'm not mistaken. Did everyone just smoke a lot of crack today?

* Go ahead, geeks. Scream at me. I have this aversion to high fantasy that can be overcome only through really engrossing works. You are entirely free to argue that Martin's series is one of those works, but you must support your argument with evidence from the text.

** Members of really dull book clubs: You are entirely free to argue that Moore's books are worth reading. You must, like the geeks above, support your argument with evidence from the text.

† Go on, tell me that I should watch Supernatural. I won't listen to you, but you can certainly try.

A few pages in, I became engrossed in Romantically Apocalyptic and was nearly late for work. It's an utterly gorgeous webcomic about people amusing themselves after the apocalypse.

When I say gorgeous, I mean it looks like this:



Completely unrelated, but also very cool: There probably doesn't need to be epic take-downs of Ayn Rand anymore, but I do admire how clear and concise The World Is Socialist is. Basically, yeah, this is why I'm a socialist, and this is why Objectivism is bunk.

Here's why she doesn't have an answer -- snow storms are socialist. They hit everyone the same. We have a collective interest in getting the streets cleared asap, so we can get to work, so the ambulances can get in to take people who have strokes and heart attacks to the hospital, etc etc. We got a tiny peek, in NYC, what an Ayn Rand paradise would be like. Because we'd still be under a couple of feet of snow, a week later. Snow doesn't care how much Reardon Metal you have or if Dagny Taggart thinks you're hot. :-)