Tag Archives: Hollywood heroes

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How Do We Know What’s Going On?

letters in pileNovelists have the advantage of building a story around thoughts not expressed in outward behavior.

A recent novel reviewed in the New York Times portrays a 15-year-old plagued by panic attacks. Micheal Clune has certainly written a timely book. But the review made me wonder if a more direct route to the subject would be a work of non-fiction, building on a growing body of research documenting the strains of growing up in our fractured culture. The thought came up because I find ther subject interesting, even though I’m typically not a reader of fiction. I seem to find enough excitement and mayhem in descriptions of real American life.

But I have changed my mind. On second thought, the novel that I still need to read probably allows better access to the plausible intrapersonal chatter that happens within key figures. A leap into a subject’s interiority is so much easier for a storyteller. Especially in a bright but terrified teen, the clearest lens capturing their world is surely all of those unspoken but felt impressions ehat can be written into a narrative. Novelists devise all kinds of clever ways to let us eavesdrop, either through the words of a narrator, or in first-person thoughts passed only to the reader.

As a parent and a former occupant of a much younger body, it is still easy to remember how opaque we sometimes were to parents and other adults. In adolesence moody silence is almost the norm. At least it was true for my brother and me. I can remember my parents grasping for any information about whether we enjoyed a date or party. There are sometimes exceptions, as seen in Richard Linklater’s fascinating multi-year narrative, Boyhood (2014). But a nearly mute adolescent male is a familiar type.

The Brookings Institution’s Richard Reeves has coined the term “male malaise” to describe the challenging odds young men face in realizing the American Dream, with its legacy of earning a spot on the culture’s ladder of success. In addition, boys are encouraged to model heroes shown to act aggressively but explain very little. It fits that classic actors like Marlon Brando, Steve McQueen and Sylvester Stallone were known to cut lines from their scripts, flexing all of their muscles except their vocal cords. Likewise, we have never seen a “wordy” John Wayne film. To be sure, these are old examples, but Hollywood has always favored capturing the visual demeanor of characters more than their lines. It follows that the cinematic idea of getting ahead still oversells male machismo and superhuman power.

Novels exploring the psychology of their characters also have the additional advantage of escaping the dilemma of dwelling on less than flattering revelations about an actual person. Autobiographies, for example, are not known for their frank candor. We have narrative characters to fill the gap. What lurks in the darkest corner of a story can be played out without an unwanted trail of thoughts leading back to a person still with us. If, as Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures,” it is because the  tools of narrataion can make what is hidden more transparent. The old saw passed on to new writers to reveal characters through actions rather than description makes sense. But a writer can facilitate a character’s interiority in so many interesting ways. In her book for would-be authors (Bird by Bird, 1995) Anne Lamott notes that “we write to expose the unexposed.”

If there is one door in the castle you have been told not to go through, you must. Otherwise, you’ll just be rearranging furniture in rooms you’ve already been in. Most human beings are dedicated to keeping that one door shut. But the writer’s job is to see what’s behind it, to see the bleak unspeakable stuff, and to turn the unspeakable into words. . .

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The Conciliation Imperative

[Another national election is taking place. It’s a good time to remember that we will have to get beyond celebrating the unilateralism that has dominated too much American rhetoric. The challenger this time seems more open to seeking common ground with political foes. But the President still seems locked into a binary mindset dominated by the abuse of other Americans as scapegoats. He appears to not have the emotional intelligence to change. And it is our collective problem that this characteristic is one source of his popularity.]

Lawrence Wright’s book on the intense negotiations that led to the historical Camp David Accords is a good indicator of what is so frequently missing in our politics. Thirteen Days in September (2014) documents the efforts of President Jimmy Carter to find a way out of the chronic Arab/Israeli impasse, working with Israel’s Menachem Begin and Egypt’s Anwar Sadat as his partners.  Without doubt the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize had—and still has—the instincts of a peacemaker.  By contrast, prior to the negotiations in 1978, Begin and Sadat had contributed more than their share to the blood-letting that still occurs along borders that surround the Sinai Peninsula. In modern usage, they might have justifiably been labeled terrorists. And yet Carter put his already shaky presidency on the line to cloister these foes in the mountains of western Maryland on the outside chance that they could be induced to produce a lasting peace.

It was a risk and an act of political courage, even though new problems developed in the years that followed. Presidents and congressional politicians rarely put themselves on so uncertain a course unless there are guaranteed outcomes.  And that’s a problem.  A politician who won’t risk failed efforts at conciliation is little more than a poseur: a pretender to the role of a leader.

To be sure, the recent brokered deal between Israel and Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates is a welcome step. And yet the region still festers, with most of the Muslim world hostile to American leadership.  And the agreements seem more strategic than something closer to a grand gesture of conciliation that would help resolve the issue of a Palestinian homeland.

 

Somehow we are going to have to get beyond celebrating the unilateralism that is now our preferred rhetoric.

The current American challenge of negotiating differences is made worse because of an old national habit of honoring heroes who are supposedly unsullied by the impulse to compromise. We cherish the self-made person, the inner-directed leader, the lone single agent who rejects anything less than what they brought to the bargaining table.  This preference plays out in the narrative tropes that show up in our love of John Wayne’s film characters, or James Bond’s free-style execution of his own form of foreign policy.  We like our heroes to be dominant, assertive, fearless and ready to bolt at the first suggestion that they might make a concession. And so they continue to come in waves of narratives that celebrate intellectual unilateralism: everyone from cinema superheroes, to larger-than-life thinkers like Apple’s Steve Jobs.  Even the small screen occasionally cherishes the mini-rebellions of office workers stuck in the anonymity of drab cubicle farms.

Our preference for the defiant loner has grown so great that words to describe the team player now read like labels of surrender.  “Compromise,” “concession,”  “conciliation,” and “mediation” all carry the odor of appeasement.  And so our interest in performing the rhetoric of defiance is self-defining;  its a cheap way to create a persona suggesting “strong values” and ostensibly settled thinking.  Even history’s great conciliators—among them: Nelson Mandela, Henry Clay, Abraham Lincoln—seem more distant than the characters we conjure up to illustrate “decisive” and “uncompromising” leadership.  One can only guess at what former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani had in mind when he called Russia’s increasingly dictatorial Vladimir Putin a true “leader.”  The statement is a reminder that unearned certainty can be the perfect sign of a fool.

If we are wondering where to begin, I suggest that we reconsider the kinds of people we want to serve in legislative offices. Deliberative bodies require deliberators. And yet our Congress is filled with too many self-styled media stars who show little interest in finding ways to attain mutual consent. They show up for their close-ups in hearings.  But they are often absent from caucus rooms where differences must get hammered out.

Somehow we are going to have to get beyond celebrating the unilateralism that is now our preferred rhetoric. It’s a recommendation that especially holds for our chosen leaders, but also for most of us as we weigh the need for ideological purity against the more functional objective of solving problems.