Reading Trumbo/Trump Through Hitler's Fascist Empire

Trumbo the man and the movie

This is a film well worth seeing. It is not great although it has great performances. It is a bio but not the typical Hollywood kind, so give it a pass on that. It is really about clarifying what happens when people get inflamed about persecuting others for not holding the same opinions and beliefs. Just a substitute for age old religious wars that nowadays are not so age old anymore.

The persecution of the Muslims - by those who know not the difference between Muslims and Islamists - is reminiscent of the early days of Hitler's storm troopers known as the Brownshirts who began by trashing the property of the Jews building up into Kristallnacht

Only it was Trumbo's swimming pool that got trashed by his next door neighbor

We have here Foucault's GRID of power/knowledge/capital/normality: how normality is enforced locally in the smallest of ways, tightening the grid, leaving less and less wiggle room every day. This is fascism at work, observing and surveilling you, making sure you conform and present the image of normality.

But it is the same mentality, the same cultural attributes of both fascist Germany and fascist US that leads to this persecution that intensifies into cold blooded killing. Trump is a "brownshirt leader" drumming up business for persecution the way Hitler did to get even more control of the government and the German people. Easy as pie. The same thing works over and over and over again because people never change within a system that promotes competition. That is, the now insidious DETERRITORIALIZED CORPORATE CAPITALISTIC SYSTEM.

Anselm Kiefer's Kristallnacht at the St.Louis Museum of Art

A truly beautiful work of art.

Today Muslim stores are having their windows smashed and their stores trashed. Are we still calling the US the land of the FREE! Nietzsche has told us to beware of whom we choose as enemies for we will become like them. We have. We are now full fledged fascists and Hitler has won his war.

This is the message of Trumbo. His treatment at the hands of the justice system was so much more benign in the 1950's than it would or is the rule today. So sad. Fascism becomes institutionalized as it becomes natural. That's the way it works. That is its danger. Our world is stolen from us in homeopathic doses. THE PERFECT CRIME. No body, no criminal, no crime scene, no justice, no punishment, nada.

Very short and readable. 

REVIEW:Dawn of the Planet of the Apes - A Reading Through ZIZEK

They are not interchangeable - The Players

Darren at them0vieblog.com in Dublin is my go to person for blockbusters.

He seems to have seen them all multiple times, loves them but critiques them wonderfully and integrates them with each other. 

He truly loves them.

But the real deep readings come from UnemployedNegativity
http://www.unemployednegativity.com/2014/07/war-has-already-begun-on-dawn-of-planet.html

I never used to watch them, I have no history with them, but I have started to go based on what Darren says. I recommend him for anyone. And do take your children.I now see why Jean Baudrillard used to go to multiplexes when in the US instead of independent art films. It is far more interesting to see what Hollywood wants the young - testosterone parade - to be injected with. We watch the Invisible Real from Hollywood's POV.

Not intending to see this film I hit it on my last night at the discount theater The Palace in Springfield MO. What a surprise for me. I loved every minute of it.

I am assuming you know the plot if you are reading this. The asshole breaks trust between Caesar and Malcolm when he pulls out a gun that was supposed to have been confiscated. On the surface this looks like what starts everything and in a way it does. But there is always someone who breaks the trust so count on it as a cliche. Reading a little deeper we are introduced to the betrayal of the Native Americans by the White Man. There always was a White Man then who had integrity, became trusted by the Native Americans, negotiated the treaty that led to the betrayal he had never intended. In other words he was the "trusty" that fronted for the duplicitous generals, leaders, et al who had other intentions. We see this in govt today. At the moment this "trusty" is Elizabeth Warren. She is being watched to see if she breaks the faith. (Clue: she already has by supporting the recent increase in war in the Middle East.Women cannot appear soft on war if they want to win elections.)

And so war begins between the apes and men, then conflict among the apes themselves and rivalry and conflict among the humans. And so it begins. 

And as this war plot unfolds we see the same-old, same-old story.

Here it is in a 2 minute video:

127,000 have watched it it's that good.

What comes through in this movie when watching through Zizek eyes is the Zizekian INVISIBLE REAL.

The men want power to continue the lifestyle they used to have before the viral disease decimated the population. The apes have acclimated to the world that exists now. Men want to create the same simulacrum all over again, based on capitalism.

With Keri Russell's medical knowledge and the power of anti-biotics, saving Caesar's mate, we see the marvelous benefits medical knowledge has brought. No one has nay doubt about this in the movie or now with us. Capitalism brings many benefits. 

It is the Trojan Horse.

It also brings weapons and the military and war. And never have I seen this so clearly imaged, so simple to see, in a movie before. I know it from reading Zizek of course, but to see it concretely is thrilling for me. 

Power/Knowledge is a relation

The two cannot be separated and each needs the other.Because it is a relation you cannot reify it, nounize it, give, take, trade, etc whatever. It seeps through the interstices of the Foucauldian Grid and is irreversible. It is a relation that metastasizes.

This is what makes it so difficult to challenge the ideology of capitalism.

And this is what we see happening in the movie. Caesar cannot resist. Humans have taught apes sign language - which they use with subtitles throughout the film - and words are a gift without compare for him.
Koba who has learned signing from other apes after being released from the torture of experimentation, distrusts them all.
He mistakes humans for The system of power/knowledge that has not yet intersected with capitalism in the movie.

The system will grow stronger as power/knowledge feed each other. Humans will grow stronger and then the apes will lose, -  just as the Native Americans did -  so they must war now. Humans will want more and more and more. The power/knowledge relation will be cumulative, progressive, linear, unending. And isn't this what we are living today. It cannot be fixed although most people still think it can. We can slow it, have revolutions that then incorporate the revolt making it stronger. This is the meaning of Snowpiercer.
This is what unemployednegativity describes in his review of  Bong Joon-ho's
SNOWPIERCER

What Unemployed Negativity says is that no one inside the train can imagine life outside the train in the ice-age out there. And we in our world now cannot imagine our way out of it. Only one person on the train knows about snow.

None of the humans in Dawn of the Planet of the Apes can imagine a different way of life than the one they used to know.They cannot create a different world.As one character says, "They are stronger than us because they don't need power."

So they will go to war for the ideology of the capitalism they used to know when it had intersected with power/knowledge/capital in the Foucauldian Grid.

This is the ZIZEKIAN INVISIBLE REAL, the system Koba only senses, displacing his feelings and awareness on the humans themselves. And this is what we ourselves are also doing. We cannot see the Invisible Real because it is invisible. The humans cannot see it and the apes cannot see it and this invisibility is what drives war through history. Our differences with the Middle East are the same as they were with the Native Americans. Our way of life will devour all before it including ourselves. And the toys of capitalism are so fun, we want to keep them to play with.Just as those on the train with privilege enjoy them.

It will be Caesar that understands there are differences in humans as well as apes, that neither can be stereotyped. But this reasoning will do him no good.As Simon Critchley has lectured at GCAS, in times of heightened violence, reason is useless, which he traces from classical times. An important concept to understand.

When violence is aroused, reason disappears, dissolves, gets trampled on, is of no use whatsoever. (Think going to war with Iraq over weapons of mass destruction that weren't there, if they ever were.)Malcolm and Caesar cannot influence the mobs on either side.Violence will triumph.

As long as we see our differences in terms of us and them, we will have war.This is binary thinking. We must change the way we think. Only then will we be able to see all the different kinds of snow because then we will have the language that allows us to think differently, perceive differently, and talk differently with each other.

This is what Benjamin Lee Whorf and Edward Sapir were after.

Moving to Slavoj Zizek's reading in his The Year of Living Dangerously (p.101) He refers to Jameson's  reading of The Wire:

The Wire is a whodunit in which the culprit is the social totality, the whole system, not an individual criminal (or group of criminals). But how are we to represent (or, rather, render) in art the totality of contemporary capitalism? In other words, is not totality always the ultimate culprit? What is so specific about contemporary tragedy? The point is that the Real of the capitalist system is abstract, the abstract virtual movement of Capital - here we should mobilize the Lacanian difference between reality and the Real: reality masks the Real. 

I think this is at the core of the wild pouring of emotion over the dolphin slaughter at Taiji Cove in Japan. The reality of it is so excessive, so much horror for us to watch, that the Lacanian REAL is masked. The REAL is Capitalism which abstractly demands Taiji Cove exist. 

Murder of Dolphins in Taiji Cove
We cannot see the Real because we are so emotionally wrought by reality. In this way it is not addressed, nor confronted.
A
stealth poison pill

Review: Reading Divergent Through Foucault's Panopticon

Jeanine's speech to Tris

The brilliance of the faction system is its conformity to the faction that removes the threat of anyone exercising their independent will. Divergents threaten that system.

Don't get me wrong. There is a certain beauty to your resistance, its defiance of any categorization. 

It's a beauty we can't afford.

Power/Knowledge/Normality

Power and Knowledge are a relation. They form a grid that intersects with history. As capitalism grows the demand for workers/consumers grows and "normality" is demanded. The vagrants, the mad, criminals, derelicts, et al are rounded up and confined all over Europe.

Divergent's Faction System illustrates the Foucauldian Grid. Each faction demands explicit and implicit conformity. Beatrice smothers herself to display the correct behavior demanded of her in the faction of Abnegation. Caleb is able to pass by displaying all the outward behavior of Abnegation as "floating signs" masking the emptiness of his commitment. He passes.

Foucault has taught us that power does not come from above. It seeps from below, through the interstices. Caleb controls Beatrice, inhibiting any spontaneous gesture she begins to make. This is where power is. Right there with Caleb overseeing her every move when he is with her. Pecking at her like a crow, keeping her from growing as a person.

What is important is that Beatrice be obedient. That she display the "floating signs" at least of selflessness.And this is the meaning of the Grid of power/knowledge/normality.

The other aspect here is 24/7 surveillance.

This movie which has so much respect for its fan base signals surveillance without explaining it.

1. Beatrice has been told by Tori to go home, say the test made her sick so she can think over what to do without being in a room with others to distract her. Caleb asks her over dinner prep where she was and she tells him she was sick and came home. He asks her if she finished her test and she says yes. Then he asks her her result. Instead of her usual avoidance or lying, she inverts his question to address his intent by saying, "What were your results?" His questions are interrogative, for the purpose of domination and she turns the tables on him.

2. At the dinner table her father admonishes her for just coming home like that and she says, "I was sick." And still he reprimands her as they are being watched carefully, being scrutinized. 

3. When her mother appears as they are loading the truck, right after embracing her Tris says, "Mom, you can't be here." Natalie says, "I know but you're in danger."

So with these few sentences we know people are not only in factions, but they are confined as to where they can and cannot go.So, as in Hunger Games, we get confinement, although not as harsh, but still confinement it is.

Discipline and Punish

And here's Taylor Swift

But that's exactly what Foucault meant Swiftie
Smart woman

REVIEW DIVERGENT: A Leap Into the Unknown:

Beatrice and Her Family - Abnegation Dinner

This dinner scene is that of a simple, more or less religious family quietly eating their dinner. Sort of pre-bourgeois. Not unlike eating dinner with an Amish family here in the Ozarks. Conversation is limited, and the focus is on the meal and eating, then carrying the plates to be washed.There is the Foucauldian Grid in Abnegation, The Matrix, a Dominating Discourse, a standard of Normality within the Grid of Power/Knowledge.

Agnes Martin Painting

The control in Abnegation is by repression: Inscription of the Body; censoring of words and gestures, actions of selflessness, etc. It is irreversible, accumulative, metastasis 
Foucault doesn't want to talk about repression: but what else is that slow, brutal infection of the mind through sex, whose only equivalent in the past was infection through the soul (see Nietzsche - the infection through sex is nothing anyway but the historical and mental reversal of the infection through the soul under the sign of materialist parousia!) (Baudrillard - Forget Foucault p.44)

Dauntless - First Night in Cafeteria After Dinner 

Here is Tris happy at last. For the moment.

From the constraints of Abnegation and its confinement of body/mind she jumps into Dauntless, a facsimile of ancient Sparta, with its communal life of living at the edge. Living, not surviving as she was in Abnegation. A life of inversion.

Dauntless Manifesto:

We believe in ordinary acts of bravery, 

And in the courage that drives one person to stand up for another.

Dauntless never give up.

Only life pushed to the limit, to moments that escaped the system of equivalence, could render power powerless. 

Giving one's life away - a counter-gift - was the only present that couldn't be reciprocated.

Baudrillard in Forget Foucault p. 15

Tris will be more Dauntless than the Dauntless. 

Hyper-Dauntless; 

She gives the gift, following the ideology to its final consequences: 

Death

Dauntless can only respond with the counter-gift and if not then it must commit suicide. The Symbolic Order must be obeyed.

FOUR

Dauntless has given Four the gift of life. He now has an unpayable debt. The counter-gift must be repayed (not right away but it must be repayed) and it must be greater than the gift. Four's counter-gift is the destruction of Dauntless. The Death of Dauntless. 

Leading to the Death of the faction system.

He will lose Four, his identity as Four, his self, his everything that made him so exceptionally Four.

Ancient Chinese Wisdom: Be very careful about the life you save.

Review DIVERGENT: Deconstruction of the Script by Vanessa Taylor

Vanessa Taylor

Evan Daugherty

Disclosure: I was sent a bootlegged copy of Snow White and the Huntsman of Daugherty's sold script and it is so awful I was embarrassed for him to have written it while I was reading it. Even with Hossein Amini's doctoring of it, it was still filled with cringe worthy lines kept from the original. So I attribute the beauty of the writing in the Divergent script to Vanessa Taylor. It is intelligent, brilliantly so. 

As Foucault says, "When the writing is elegant it means that what is said is important."


Universal and Rupert fired him. (A blessing.)Five writers worked on Snow White. Rupert saved that film, made it beautiful. So much for Daugherty.

Aphoristic:Nietzsche's writing is almost completely aphoristic. It is musical and slips through your critical consciousness. The reader has no defenses. Nietzsche the great rhetorician of his time knew this full well. Ayn Rand, his disciple all her life followed his advice. Stephenie Meyer did, aware or not.

Your writing must be even more so than what you are writing about. - Nietzsche

Divergent is pared down, minimalist, no fluff. So is Dauntless.

Beatrice feels everyone is afraid to volunteer to be First Jumper. So she says, "Me."
And this is the pairing of brave/selflessness that Four will say to her later. She chooses here to be selfless which is also to be brave. And she chooses instead of holding back as she has done so far being last down the stairs, up the ladder, on the train, and jumping across the abyss. Now she will be first.

All of this is conveyed in the images and the one word "ME."

Here's Four as we first see and hear him: 

Our first look here at Four reveals his open and rather surprised face. He has witnessed a 

gift from the sky, from the Heavens miraculously appearing in the net. Like a Silkie from 

the deep. Or Dante's Beatrice: a gift from the Heavens, a Blessing.


Four: What,you were pushed?(quietly)

Beatrice: No. (all breathlessly happy)Thank 

you. (as he helps her down)

Four: What's your name?

Beatrice: B......stuttering

Four: Is it a hard one? 

Beatrice: nodding yes embarrassed

Four: You can pick a new one. But make it good. You only get to  pick once.(emphasis on 

choosing with no reversal)

Beatrice: stuttering saying Tris. My name is Tris.

Four: First jumper - Tris! Welcome to Dauntless.

So quick. The contained surprise that the first 

jumper is a girl, from Abnegation, who 

appears elated rather than frightened by her 

ordeal so far. Four is open faced, nice, 

assertive and non-threatening, non-aggressive. 

The ideal  presentation of the Butlerian 

masculine social construction of gender is performed.

Four has a beautiful face, intelligent and sensitive and sexy. But he is matter-of-fact all 

business here, gently and firmly. No provocation, just a short intimate moment.


People say that the first minutes of any encounter encompass the whole relationship in 

miniature. - ALEX by Pierre Lemaitre (p. 339)


There is quite a bit of subtext in this short and vivid scene:

1. He underestimates her sort of by alluding to the fact he thinks she was pushed.

2. He intuits her dissatisfaction with Beatrice and suggests it is possible for her to change 

her name, become a different person, become Other. He offers her a way to change her 

name with the limiting factor that it is a one shot choice with no return.

4. His welcome is warm and accepting. This is unlike Eric's immediate dislike of her (his 

frozen face) when she volunteers to be first.

5. Through Lacan, Tris rhymes with Chris, short for Christina her first friend. 


Here is Four's account of that first meeting with Beatrice/Tris in Allegiant:

When her body first hit the net, all I registered was a gray blur. I pulled her across it 

and her hand was small, but warm, and then she stood before me, short and thin and 

plain and in all ways unremarkable--except that she had jumped first. The Stiff had 

jumped first.

Even I didn't jump first.

Her eyes were so stern, so insistent.

Beautiful. (Allegiant p. 491)

_________________________________________

Here is Tris's account just before she dies.

I choke on a sob as the image of Tobias comes into my mind, of how dark and how still his eyes were, how strong and warm his hand was, when we first stood face to face. (Allegiant p. 475)

____________________________________________

Bataille in his The Eye: Her: Which part of me did you fall in love with first? Him: Your eyes of course.

All this in 9 short sentences and the images. Now that is a screenplay folks. 

Four introduces himself to the group as their instructor and says: My name is Four.

Christina: Like the number four.
Four: Exactly like the number four.
Christina: Were one, two and three taken? 
Four: What is your name?
Christina: Christina.
Four: (stepping closer to her face, half smiling)
Four: Well Christina, the first lesson you will learn from me is to keep your mouth shut,  if you want to survive here. Do you understand?
Christina: (nodding yes) 
Four: Good. (stepping back from her)

I will interject here to make a point Baudrillard makes on seduction and provocation. Christina is provocative not seductive. Tris is seductive.

All this is said firmly, assertively, non-threatening in a way that projects that he means what he says. Four's truth - not his candor - is frightening to Christina, the others and establishes Four's character.The difference between truth and candor (ventilating) is revealed for those who want to make this connection.

The Dauntless training here is immediately demonstrated as serious. We are not going to be your friends. It is not "training lite, decaffeinated training" as Zizek might say. 

Four has been written to be performed as the new masculine. He has established a distance between his students and himself. This intensifies the transference and transgression. And the sexual eroticism.

The trainers have no intention to be buddy buddy friendly with the initiates.And this is 

appropriate in a military paradigm.

In Roth's book his relationship with them is all muddied up. Vanessa Taylor has skimmed off the fluff to reveal the essence. And this is what is contributing to the Desire of the YA female/male viewers.The character Four's Excess is perceived as Desire, reading through Lacan and Zizek. The fantasy always present in Desire evaporates when listening to his interviews. Theo James is not Four. In the case of Twilight and Rob Pattinson it did not vanish but leaked across boundaries of screen and real life.


Neil Burger's direction - in screenplay? - will have Four walk into almost every scene. His is a distinct, purposive, masculine walk that is immediately sexy and seductive rather than provocative.If he is in the scene already his face responds to the context of it.His Inscription of the Body is the new masculine: fit, sexy, sensitive, intelligent, and competent in what he has chosen to do. His flipping with the knives is masculine, the way he stands in the train when he lectures them. All on purpose.

The faces: This is the influence of Passolini on Burger. The use of the face to convey emotion, thinking, hidden feelings, vulnerability, etc. Not the way Francis Lawrence used Rob Pattinson's face as porno in Water For Elephants. This is not to say Four's face is not sexy. It is, but there is more to the image than just beauty. And Burger's use of Tris's face is incredible. That young woman has so many different faces. Her face of repose in Abnegation is completely different from her face in repose in Dauntless. The close close-ups reveal her emotions when she doesn't look pretty or beautiful but very messed up. Shai performs Tris as a girl who grew up never having looked at her face in a mirror. Shai is fearless when looking in the lens of the camera.Rob Pattinson always knows how he looks when he looks in the lens as he was a model. Now he can't unknow it. And then there are those times he doesn't give a shit. 


Primitive cultures felt that mirrors were destructive. One should know their face from the way they respond to people and the way people respond to them. 


Theo James knows and early on in the film - it was shot in sequence - I felt uncomfortableness when the camera closed in on him. Especially when he runs at the head of the initiates and is called over and says, 

"What've you got?" and we are shown the Factionless. It is quick and emphasizes his expressed masculinity - the way Four runs -  as well as showing us the Factionless in a group that appears somewhat menacing. Is it because they were once initiates who were dropped into Factionless status? The question hovers silently.

I am not finished deconstructing this script but this will do for now.

DIVERGENT: Reading Tris as a Nietzschean Revolutionary Through Baudrillard's Forget Foucault

Power/Knowledge are in a Functional Relation Known as the Foucauldian Grid- The Matrix

Power does not come from the top down. It is not something you can have, take, give away, barter, lose, share or anything else of that order. Power comes from below, through the interstices of the Foucauldian Grid. It seeps from below and we see Beatrice caught in that, being denied her "will to know."

Agnes Martin Grid Painting 

Foucault advocates applying resistance pressure locally where it can be most effective. Of course, power does the same.

Jeanine is fusing the power of Dauntless with the Knowledge of Erudite
She is fusing the power/knowledge Foucauldian Grid which will keep the system static

Don't get me wrong. There is a certain beauty in your resistance. But we cannot afford that beauty. Each person in their faction must submit their independent will to their faction, for our peaceful coexistence.

And this is what constrains Beatrice. She rebels in a passive/aggressive way to the pressure of power. Her brother Caleb corrects her, restrains her, introduces her to Jeanine, tells her she is wrong about Abnegation and generally controls her. Her movements are restrained as a child when she wants to run with Dauntless. Her father warns her to be careful at the dinner table. She generally exists in a bourgeois family environment eating dinner together with restrained conversation, preparing meals, dressing so as to limit her freedom of movement. 

She has grown up and lives in the Grid of Abnegation, its Dominating Discourse of language and action.

To jump or not to jump nor reason why

Tris jumps into the abyss

Where there is power, there is resistance. - Foucault

Foucault Straddling the Chasm

Baudrillard has said Foucault does not go far enough. He straddles the abyss. He does not push to excess, extremes to collapse the system. (Following Nietzsche) He does not push to the edge of the abyss and then over.

You must be ready to burn yourself in your own flame: 

how else could you become new, if you had not first 

become ashes? - Thus Spake Zarathustra

This is what Tris does.

Tris is becoming the best Dauntless she can be. 

Tris is exemplifying Zizek's prescription for breaking the system.

 One embraces the 

idealistic pronouncements and works to make them surface, to become reality, to truly 

be what they are. 

She is excessively Dauntless in challenging each event as it escalates.

Dauntless Manifesto

• We believe in ordinary acts of bravery, 
• And in the courage that drives one person to stand up for another.
• Dauntless never give up.

Where Caleb - eating from the trashcan of ideology -  observed the everyday prescriptions of behavior for Abnegation -  which Zizek would label as Abnegation Lite -  Beatrice sullenly complied when she had to. But her will to know was stifled. She could not grow in that environment. She wanted MORE!

Tris is more Dauntless than Dauntless. Worse as Nietzsche says. And in excessively being an excessive Dauntless, Dauntless is imploded and the entire system along with it. 

This is what Edward Snowden has done with his over-identification with the ideology of the United States of America. 

A lot is imploding all around us now.

Now Cody Wilson has come along to take it to excess and implode it.

http://youtu.be/g5fhBBipU3w