tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6926413038778731189.post1588604269563682757..comments2023-10-16T07:13:12.123-05:00Comments on A plain blog about politics: Monday Movies PostJonathan Bernsteinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15931039630306253241noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6926413038778731189.post-85750090853022971692013-09-03T12:07:31.835-05:002013-09-03T12:07:31.835-05:00What about "Hail the Conquering Hero?" G...What about "Hail the Conquering Hero?" Going on an about five-to-seven-year-old memory here, so not certain of details, but isn't the happy ending basically that everyone agrees to pretend he's a hero now that they've gotten to know and like him -- a chance they only gave him because they thought he was a hero? (I mean, they pretend that his admitting he lied to get where he is is equivalent to meritorious military service, yeah?) Or iow isn't the point that regardless of whether people who fit certain stereotypical criteria really make the best officials, that we can't maintain the trust necessary for a functioning democracy without the pretense that our officials meet those criteria, so we have to make him a hero even if we all know he isn't one? And more disturbingly, we even have to convince HIM he's a hero even though he plainly isn't in order to get him to properly play his role in the system?<br /><br />If so, that wouldn't suggest some kind of "good government" streak in Sturges, but it might also mean that he thinks that even if googoo is foolish in practice, the appearance of it is considerably more helpful than "honest graft." I mean, helpful to democracy. Like how in "Miracle at Morgan's Creek" everyone agrees to pretend that the young lady's licenseless, pseudonymous, champagne-splashed marriage to a soldier whose name she never knew both was definitely a real legal marriage and also was definitely really legally retroactively annulled by Governor (yup) McGinty so that her fake name-saving marriage to the protagonist was really real and legal all along. Like -- the solution isn't to honestly and openly face the situation, which would be the equivalent of openly embracing "honest graft," but to fake it more coherently. Or even in "Eve" how when he meets Jean again Hopsy says he doesn't care what's happened and the happy ending depends on his willfully ignoring that Jean is Eve? (which, btw, is why William Demarest couldn't be the moral center of that movie: his final "Positively the same dame" shows that he's missed the point; that he's too focussed on the literal truth that Eve was always Jean to understand why Hopsy needs Jean ... )<br /><br />Let me see if I can say this more clearly. You're obviously right that Sturges thinks honesty isn't always the best policy, but he seems to me to mean by that more that we need to collectively and individually embrace a lot of fictions, than that we should openly be crooked. McGinty's problem isn't his embrace of the fiction of googooism -- it's that he forgets it's a fiction.<br /><br />Also, yay Monday Movies!the classicisthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08691196845661570282noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6926413038778731189.post-56821959524600260072013-09-03T11:06:52.737-05:002013-09-03T11:06:52.737-05:00We just saw "Bad Day at Black Rock" a we...We just saw "Bad Day at Black Rock" a week ago at a local Spencer Tracy film festival and I was amazed at how relevant it was to current-day issues. Hate the Japanese in 1946, hate the Muslims now. The movie was apparently made in 1954 and released in 1955, and it must have been too soon after the war, because apparently it was not very popular.Dianehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17179716163946175084noreply@blogger.com