Category Archives: Problem Practices

Communication behavior or analysis that is often counter-productive

istock man falling 1

Many of Us Do Our Own Stunts

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For an underwater sequence in the film "Mission Impossible--Rogue Nation," Tom Cruise learned how to hold his breath for six and a half minutes, according to the film's director.  
                                             -The New York Times.

Tom Cruise is surely an all-purpose actor. The press is full of stories about his prowess in doing hair-raising feats for the camera. But he doesn’t have a lock on the idea that you don’t necessarily need a double.  For years many of us have been pulling off feats others would think improbable and unlikely.

Here’s a personal shortlist:

  • I managed to have the speed-limit on the narrow one-lane road in front of my house raised after a sustained effort to have it lowered.  This provides evidence that (a) some of us are better at teaching persuasion than doing it, or (b) like its federal counterpart, local governments can be completely unresponsive.

  • After a long-running struggle with a publisher to include larger text and bold graphics in a new book, the eventual product featured print with letters the size of poppy seeds.  And there are about as many graphics as might be found in a book on contract law.  Without trying, I have apparently done my part to revive the sale of magnifying glasses.

  • Long ago during in mid-performance with specially selected high school musicians from around the state–and with no help from anyone else–I managed to stumble and pull a number of metal folding chairs off an elevated stage. This clamorous and improvised fortissimo was in addition to what had been written for those of us in the percussion section.  The guest conductor was nice enough to stop the performance and wait for me to climb back on stage, giving more meaning to the phrase, “my last shred of dignity.”

  • High school is when intent and action often diverge. As a supporting actor in the senior play I seemed to have a natural gift for “stealing scenes” from the lead actors by randomly moving around  the set while they were talking. I think I heard my drama coach comment under her breath that my performance was “never to be duplicated.”

  • In a pattern that suggests mastery of the form, a few times over my 45 years of teaching I’ve managed to show up a week early for a committee meeting.  It’s always good to check out a room before an important gathering.

  • I’m most proud of the “magic” set I had as a teenager, and the opportunity it provided to plant a tiny explosive in one of my father’s cigarettes.  As intended, it went off when he lit up.  That it exploded in the middle of a business meeting in his office was not an outcome I anticipated.  I didn’t know it at the time, but I was doing my part to combat the effects of secondhand smoke.

Who said that all stunts have to go off as planned?  I’d argue for a broader definition; a stunt is sometimes whatever happens.  Planning for specific outcomes can be overrated and–more than we might wish–beyond our grasp.  The perfect response is always a goal. But sometimes we just have to accept events, like the concert that literally brought my inflated teenage ego back to earth.

love actually

We Were Warned

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Arguably, some of the best forewarnings have come from the British, even in the film Love Actually (2003), where the PM is none too happy with the bullying of his American counterpart.

There is no question that Hollywood warrants its old label as a home of escapist entertainment.  But it is also true that there is a growing list of mainstream films offering narratives about the devolution of American political life.  Most were first presented as fiction; but hindsight makes some remarkably prescient.  These are films plotted around acts of political corruption, deception or exploitative media. Who knew that we should have paid closer attention?

Overcoming studio timidity was never been easy.  The cautionary Vietnam fable M*A*S*H (1970) was shot by director Robert Altman in a California state park, away from the prying eyes of nervous Fox executives. Even so, the studio demanded that the film must appear to be about the politically safer Korean War.

The most interesting films include plot lines that anticipate our current moment. For example, in The Manchurian Candidate (1962) propagandists from China and the Soviet Union brainwash a veteran in an effort to have him subvert the United States government.  The idea of Communist brainwashing has never been very convincing. But the fact that we have a President seemingly in the thrall of the heirs to the Soviet Union seems like a fantasy that has become uncomfortably real.

Some films are reminders that Americans are easy marks for cynical populists.

There are also a number of films that suggest how easy it can be for an empty vessel of a leader to attract the support of audiences short on reasoning but ready to accept simple-minded bromides.  Budd Schulberg’s A Face in the Crowd (1952) suggests that fame can be easily manufactured and sold to ordinary citizens. It’s emphasis on the susceptibility of media audiences is mirrored in other iconic films like writer Paddy Chayefsky’s Network (1976), or  All the King’s Men (1949), based on a Pulitzer-winning book by Robert Penn Warren.  The latter film is an extended riff on a figure like Louisiana Governor Huey P. Long, a populist demagogue we sells a stream of lies to a clueless public.  Depending on the person, films can “mean” many things.  For me,  Warren’s character of Willie Stark and Network’s Howard Beale are reminders that many of us are easy marks for cynical populists.

Of course, the corruption that may come with power was a theme familiar to Shakespeare’s audiences. It also fascinated film legend Orson Welles, who put the abuse of authority front and center in the form of corrupt police captain Hank Quinlan in A Touch of Evil (1958).  And there’s also the ruthless Hearst-like newspaper magnate in Citizen Kane (1941), who had his own seaside Mar-a-lago.

Even Charlie Chaplin gave us reasons to be wary about the abuse of power, consistently using the gentle figure of the Tramp to deflate the police and the pompous. His pattern of mocking leaders is carried on by a handful of late-night television hosts, in sharp contrast to talk radio’s continuing love of reactionary politics.

Viewers of films about the McCarthy era may also see the coming pattern of the current president to scapegoat problems to immigrants, Mexicans, China or even NFL players.  The Wisconsin senator’s bludgeon was anti-communism.  His penchant for making baseless accusations against whole categories of Americans is well-represented in Bryan Cranston’s 2015 portrayal of blacklisted writer Dalton Trumbo.  This accustory strain in American politics has its own fascinating lineage of sobering Hollywood jeremiads, ranging from a film version of Arthur’s Miller’s The Crucible (1996) to the Edward R. Murrow biopic, Good Night and Good Luck (2005).

More recently, the best forewarnings on film have come from the British. In the surprising case of the otherwise negligible Love Actually (2003), a  perfect rebuke is directed to a bullying American President. Hugh Grant is the PM, and is none too happy with the high-handedness and arrogance of his American counterpart: words that would work equally well for the embattled Theresa May.

In the recent past, BBC Films and the U.K. Film Council win the honors for confronting the problem of governments who have gone of the rails.  In the Loop (2009) is played by Tom Hollander and Peter Capaldi as farce, but seems close to the truth in displaying the twin challenges of bad foreign policy (i.e., the invasion of Iraq) pursued by inept bureaucracies.  James Gandolfini is a cautious  American General who is no match for the spin doctors in Washington and London that are planning a disastrous joint invasion.  In The Loop is a good representation of contemporary suspicions of political discourse, where the energies put into defending policies come prior to determining their basic soundness.  What was British farce in 2009 is now evident in the prevarications of official Washington.

Top Image: Universal Pictures