Shock! Horror! Single random person calls for boycott of Mad Max: Fury Road

I see that this Aaron Clarey person, apparently a men's rights advocate, has called for a boycott of Mad Max: Fury Road on the basis of its supposed feminist message or some such thing.

First, let me say that I would never call for a boycott of a film, song, book, etc., on the basis of what I take to be its message. At most, I might write about it in a way meant to make the message clear and to criticise it. There might be some circumstances in which I'd not see the film, listen to the song, read the book, etc., myself, if, for example, I had some serious objection to the director/singer/author/etc., but I would certainly not try to organise a boycott of some cultural product for its message. That is, in effect, trying to punish and deter speech that I disagree with - it shows an authoritarian, anti-liberal impulse. (Much better, I think, to be positive about good art than get into the game of punishment and deterrence.)

Second, Clarey would probably hate my own fiction - including the novels I wrote for the Terminator franchise some years ago now. Those novels and my other work are notable for their highly capable, kickass female characters, and that was a conscious strategy on my part. I enjoyed creating characters such as Jade Tagatoshi in the Terminator books, Idol Le Saint in "Lucent Carbon" and "Idol", my version of Queen Zenobia in "The Sword of God", and so on. If the powers that be ever made a movie based on my Terminator books (which they are legally entitled to do), Clarey would want to boycott that as well, I suppose.

But third, I hesitate to write this post because so many other people are blowing this incident out of all proportion, as if the silly - and yes, rather authoritarian - proposal of one stray MRA with a platform amounts to some sort of crisis. I'm sure that far more people have read denunciations of Clarey - together with suggestions that his piece represents a cultural crisis - than would ever had read his article in the normal course of events. Furthermore, this publicity is probably helping the box office of Mad Max: Fury Road. Let's keep a sense of proportion.

Edit: Someone on Twitter informed me that "Return of Kings" claims not to be an MRA site. Well, I don't know all the technical terminology of the (Zeus help us!) "manosphere" - however, you don't have to look very far to see that it is, at least, an explicitly anti-feminist site. Whether the site and the author are, speaking strictly, putting an "MRA" position, as opposed to some other bloody sort of (perhaps more extreme) anti-feminist position, was not my point or something I would want to insist on.

Noises off

A month back, I wrote a post in which I said that I'd be taking this blog back to basics - to something more like what it was when it began back in 2006. I noted, though, that I'd be disabling comments, and that I'd have more to say about this.

So far, I'm pleased with the experiment. I'm feeling free to write posts that might have appeal only to a niche audience - without worrying about popularity - and, to be honest, I find it liberating not to have comments. Anyone who reads what I have to say is free to respond on their own blog or elsewhere, but meanwhile I'm finding it much easier to express myself freely and quickly if I don't have to worry about providing yet another online forum.

In the past, my regular commenters were usually thoughtful and civil, but engaging and moderating was nonetheless time-consuming and a distraction from whatever else I was doing. And even then, there were some people who wore me down with negativity, attempted to hijack the blog to promulgate their own lengthy rants, or even (in one case in particular) posted threatening messages aimed at me and my family.

The bottom line is that - at least for the foreseeable future - I plan to avoid all that by using this blog as simply a place to express some views on issues that I happen to find interesting, develop (or merely play with) some thoughts, and record some events in my own life. Hopefully, there are people who will find the mix interesting enough to want to read, but if my approach diminishes the blog's popularity - and if it never regains the audience it had at its peak a few years ago - I'm not going to worry about that.

My attitude is bolstered by my general observation of the current state of debate and discussion within the blogosphere, on Twitter, and more generally in the social media. A great deal of it seems to consist of tribalism, dogma, mutual abuse, and rival attempts at "calling out" and shaming real or perceived enemies, rather than any rational attempt to identify what might be the strong points on various sides of current controversies, what room for common ground or compromise might be available, and what issues are left underdetermined by the available evidence (so that it is most reasonable to suspend judgment, or at least to hold opinions in a tentative and not-very-insistent way).

My general impression is that anyone who attempts to look in a rational, relatively detached, way at issues of current political or cultural controversy is simply going to be attacked from more than one side. Well, I fully intend to express views on some controversial issues. Those views won't please everyone, and some won't please anyone, because I feel that both (or all) sides have at least some legitimate points, and that both (or all) sides are engaging in hyperbole, demonization, and general unfairness.

I'm not usually going to be interested in attacking individual people - when I do criticise individuals, I'll try to do so in a fair and relatively moderate manner, especially if they are not especially powerful and they are merely expressing views that I disagree with. But I'm likely to express a few views of my own that even some of my friends will dislike because (perhaps) of my lack of zeal in a mutual cause, or because of my preparedness to look for the strengths, the legitimate grievances, and so on, in what is being said by opponents. In my view, that's how you make intellectual progress, but I don't fool myself that most people agree with me.

Once again, readers can discuss anything I say in other forums - though I hope they will do so carefully and charitably. In any event, I am not proposing at this stage to provide an additional forum, with all the distraction that goes with it in the current climate. I'll rethink this policy from time to time, but any change is likely to be a long way in the future.

Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome - more a reflection than a review

I've just watched Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome - released in 1985 and the third movie in the Mad Max series. I hadn't seen it for many years, and I tend to get its events mixed up with those in Mad Max II (1981; known in the US as The Road Warrior). I have a fondness for these movies, partly because I wrote the entry on them - a decade ago now - for The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy. Indeed, the last time I watched Beyond Thunderdome was probably when I was working on that encyclopedia article.

Max is, as I point out in the article, a dangerous man whose talents are mainly for death and destruction. And yet, he always has close links with children, and in his adventures he becomes a bridge between the ruined, post-apocalypse world that is apparent in the second and third movies in particular and the new societies that emerge from the ruins. (The second and third movies are both narrated by children who have grown to adulthood and become leaders, thanks largely to Max's efforts. For them, he is a kind of culture hero.)

I was interested to watch Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome again, refresh my memory of it and see how it stands up after all this time (surprisingly well). I wanted its feel and its events at the front of my mind because I'm eager to catch the long-awaited, just-released fourth movie in the series, Mad Max: Fury Road. I'll go along and see Fury Road very soon, and I'll report back.

Introductions to philosophy - a couple of useful threads over at Leiter's place

1. A discussion of 25 must-read books before postgraduate study in philosophy. There are different opinions about the classics (Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Descartes, Hume, Kant, etc.) and about modern introductions to the field. What mix would you recommend for someone with a few months for a program of intense reading? (I make a contribution to the thread at one point.) Some of the suggestions sound interesting.

2. A good thread here on advanced (graduate level) textbooks in various areas of philosophy. I'm familiar with the books by Miller and Kymlicka that they are talking about, and these really are important books for students of metaethics and political philosophy (respectively) to come to grips with. A number of the others mentioned in the thread are not familiar to me, while looking useful. One that I clearly should familiarise myself with, but I hereby confess that I haven't read it, is the Mark Murphy book on philosophy of law, published in 2006.

I'm writing this post mainly to bookmark these threads for my own use, but it may be useful to others.

"The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag" by Robert A. Heinlein

"The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag" is a short novel that was originally published in Unknown Worlds in 1942. It is most easily accessible, as far as I know, as the title story of Heinlein's collection, The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag. This also includes such classic stories as "'- All You Zombies -'" and "'And He Built A Crooked House'" (in each of these cases, the title of the story includes inverted commas).

Although it's not of great interest to me for the purposes of my forthcoming book on science fiction and the moral imagination, "The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag" is an amusing story that ultimately takes a dark - almost horrific - turn. It follows a husband-and-wife team of private investigators hired by the amnesiac Jonathan Hoag to discover what he actually does at work during the day (each evening, he forgets the events of the day; he lives a somewhat luxurious lifestyle without knowing where his comfortable salary is coming from).

Although the final pages are frightening, the explanation of Hoag's eponymous "profession" does not seem satisfactory or entirely coherent. There's a vibe here of an author making things up as he went along, though I don't know how carefully the book was planned or revised.

The bottom line for me is that this is a short novel that Heinlein aficianados and SF aficianados can do without. It is lighthearted, almost comic, fantasy that gradually morphs into something more like a horror story. But you can enjoy the ride. It's only a couple of hour of reading, and it rewards the effort.

Judith Shulevitz on "safe spaces" and campus self-infantilization

Here.

This is, of course, in the US context. I've not yet encountered this sort of on-campus craziness in Australia, and perhaps it seems a more prominent feature of American college life than is actually the case. I hope so. All the same, many of the crazy incidents that we hear about each week seem to be real enough. I don't entirely blame the students: somewhere along the line, older generations have conveyed to them that this kind of self-infantilization is normal, reasonable, acceptable behaviour.

I wish it went without saying that higher education institutions should provide milieux in which students expect, and receive, many challenges to their precious, deeply held beliefs - whatever those beliefs might be. Apparently that is now a controversial claim.

Miyazaki's beautiful, troubled dreams

Just quickly - here is a loving, detailed, sensitive discussion of Miyazaki's animated movies, focusing mainly on their anti-war elements, but also on their dreams of graceful flight. This can be seen as another example of the thesis (which I owe to J.P. Telotte) that science fiction narratives (as some of these Miyazaki films are) often have technophobic elements, emphasizing the power of modern technology to degrade and destroy, while simultaneously having a technophilic component. They portray, and perhaps embrace, something of technology's allure.

"Gulf" by Robert A. Heinlein

"Gulf" is a novella that was first published in Astounding Science Fiction in 1949, though it is most readily found in the collection Assignment in Eternity (available in various editions). The title refers to the yawning gulf between ordinary human beings and a new evolutionary breed of supermen.

The story is of special interest as an early attempt by one of the most prominent SF practitioners to explore the implications of people with extraordinary capacities... and how those people might relate to the rest of us. The answer, in a nutshell, is paternalistically: by standing apart from the rest of humanity, forming their own shadowy organisation, and taking decisive, competent action, as and when necessary, to save us from our follies. As acknowledged in the dialogue among its characters, there is a strong anti-democratic theme in "Gulf". It expresses distrust for democratic electorates, public officials, and the agencies of government: modern-day risks have reached a point, Heinlein seems to suggest, where we need ultra-competent people to take charge for our own good.

The novella begins convincingly with a scene where the main character - secret agent Joe Greene, although we yet don't learn this name - attempts to avoid detection by enemy agents. He is, nonetheless, followed and soon captured. Imprisoned, he meets another prisoner, "Kettle Belly" Baldwin, and they communicate by playing a coded card game. Baldwin later turns out to be one of the new breed, and he suspects (rightly) that Joe is also one; as becomes apparent, Joe merely needed recruitment, briefing, and special training.

Heinlein's depiction to this point is concise, well-paced, and fascinating. As it turns out, the new breed of supermen (and superwomen) are characterised mainly by the ability to think with extraordinary swiftness, clarity, and accuracy. Long before this ability is explicitly identified, we see Joe using it as he engages brilliantly and decisively with his enemies.

Unfortunately, the story seems to spiral increasingly out of the author's control. It might, perhaps, have worked better as a full-length novel. By the end, much is being conveyed to us through exposition, long speeches, and reports of off-stage action, all to an extent where the second half of "Gulf" seems amateurish by today's standards for genre fiction. There may be biographical reasons why Heinlein wrote in this way: perhaps he needed to cram the events into far less space than was truly required to convey them (and the weighty themes) via onstage action and dialogue, and through the thoughts and perceptions of the viewpoint character. The skill shown in the opening pages, in particular, suggests that Heinlein was equipped for the creative task, but for whatever reasons he produced a story that is far from an artistic success.

"Gulf" also dates more sadly than much of Heinlein's other fiction from this period - or at least the passage of time dates it severely for me. While I can get into the spirit of a story about Venus and Mars as habitable planets (accepting this partly as a convention, and partly as reflecting the scientific uncertainty about the surfaces of those planets in the 1940s and 1950s), I find it much more difficult to swallow the pseudoscientific gobbledegook in stories, such as "Gulf", that dabble with ideas of Korzybskian "general semantics" dialled up to eleven to suggest that study of general semantics could grant extraordinary mental powers to someone with the right potential. This plot element might have been more acceptable if simply introduced as a kind of magical technology, without ponderous explanations suggesting that we entertain it seriously.

"Gulf" is a story of some historical importance in Heinlein's development as a writer, and in the development of the science fiction genre. It contains some fine, swift-paced superspy writing, but eventually it seems to fall apart under its own weight of themes and events. Once again, it might have worked better if the second half had been expanded to bring the total to full novel length. Alas, that didn't happen, for whatever reasons, and we're stuck with the story as is.

As is well-known to fans of Heinlein, Friday (1982) can be read as a sequel to "Gulf"; it includes Kettle Belly Baldwin among its cast of characters, and it deals, once again, with relationships between ordinary human beings and individuals with extraordinary abilities. I haven't read Friday since shortly after it was first published, over thirty years ago, so I'll be returning to it soon. At the time, I viewed it as a return to form for Heinlein after a sequence of very long and self-indulgent books (beginning in 1970 with I Will Fear No Evil). We'll see how well it has aged. But first, I plan to read (in most cases re-read, since I've read most of Heinlein's body of work), some more of the earlier novels.

Between Planets by Robert A. Heinlein - review with not many spoilers

I picked up Between Planets because it happened to be on the shelf of my university library, not because I have been reading/re-reading Heinlein's books in any systematic order (beyond concentrating, for the moment, on his work prior to the 1960s).

This is, however, a fine example of Heinlein's juveniles (today we'd use the expression "Young Adult novels") published by Scribner's in the 1940s and 1950s, and aimed largely at an audience of teenage boys. Between Planets first appeared in 1951 (initially in serial form and then in book form from Scribner's). 1951 was relatively early in the author's career when viewed from today's perspective, but it was already a few years after the end of the John W. Campbell "Golden Age" of SF. Between Planets was the fifth of the Scribner juveniles, and by 1951 Heinlein's career was well established, even if his most important books (such as Stranger in a Strange Land and The Moon is a Harsh Mistress) were yet to come.

The story is focused on the efforts of a teenager, Don Harvey, to get home to his parents on Mars. Don is attending high school on Earth when war breaks out - as settlers on Venus rebel against Earth's oppressive empire. This rebellion is compared throughout the narrative to the American War of Independence, and we are invited to take the rebels, pretty much uncritically, as the good guys. Some individuals on the rebel side do show flaws, but the rebel forces display decency and restraint throughout the conflict, while their Federation enemies are unscrupulous and even cruel (albeit sometimes cunning and charming).

Don gets caught up in complicated events that involve a long detour to Venus, and extensive efforts to make some sort of life there, while still working out how to get in contact with (and eventually return to) Mars. Not surprisingly, for this kind of story, he ends up playing a vital role in the revolution.

There's little not to love about this well-told tale, which features physically impressive (but always reasonable and kindly) "dragons" from Venus, a lost super-civilization to investigate on Mars, much discussion of revolutionary strategy, and plausible descriptions of interplanetary routes and the required futuristic infrastructure. Thematically, the novels displays Heinlein's concerns with freedom, choice, and the value of all intelligence - human or otherwise.

Between Planets has, of course, dated in many ways. Most obviously, it shows Venus as an inhabitable world, while a more modern version of the story would doubtless offer more to female readers and pay far more attention to the female characters (that said, Don's love interest, Isobel, does get some good showings during various incidents on Venus). If you cannot imaginatively place yourself in the ethos of 1950s SF, the story will not entertain and move you.

Otherwise, it's another good example of why the Heinlein juveniles are loved and revered by many older readers... and can still attract an audience. They are well-made, cleverly worked out, optimistic, and (perhaps above all) respectful to young readers. These novels were already long in print even 40-something years ago, when I was first introduced to them, but if you can get into the right frame of mind they continue to offer much enjoyment.

Leiter Reports, American Sniper, and critique

Disclaimer: I have not seen American Sniper, so I can't make an informed judgment about it. To that extent, what is said below is tentative and provisional.

But much can be said even while bracketing off any final interpretation, or judgment, of the movie itself. This discussion over at Leiter Reports a few weeks ago greatly interested me. The background was that American Sniper was originally to be shown at a University of Michigan social event. This screening was cancelled after protests, although it was apparently still intended to screen the movie separately, accompanied by a discussion of some kind. Ultimately, the initial plan was reinstated.

The University of Michigan debacle raises interesting issues, including issues about freedom of speech, including, in turn, whether the decision whether or not to cancel the screening actually did involve freedom of speech worries at all. In turn, this raises problems about how we are to conceive of "freedom of speech" or "free speech" in current social circumstances. If the course of events at the university did not raise a free speech issue, exactly, was there nonetheless a serious issue of some other kind? Perhaps even if this wasn't about free speech, in some straightforward and classical sense of that concept, there were nonetheless important values favouring going ahead and showing the movie as originally planned. But if so, might some serious countervailing values also have been at stake?

I don't intend to get too deeply into these questions, although I may return to them at some future stage, whether or not I manage to watch American Sniper in the interim.

Meanwhile, a couple of tentative points:

First, the thread on Brian Leiter's blog is actually worth reading, unlike much else in the blogosphere. In particular, a couple of the people disputing manage to reach a certain level of agreement, or at least mutual understanding, right at the end their discussion. The general quality of the interaction helped my faith in philosophers, since everyone managed to stay reasonably civil and thoughtful; and even some of the people with whom I tend (without having seen the movie) to disagree made challenging, well-formulated points.

Second, though, it's disappointing that even among philosophers - who are supposed to be trained to look at issues relatively dispassionately and objectively, to search out the strongest arguments against their own initial positions, to be open to changing their minds if confronted by strong arguments and evidence, etc - there can be a degree of political tribalism skewing debates. In this case, some contributors seem to take it as obvious that American Sniper must be some sort of crude, warmongering movie, and that its attitudes to Muslims and people from the Middle East must verge on those in works of race hate propaganda.

But why make such assumptions, given everything we know about Clint Eastwood's history and his cinematic oeuvre as a director? Why not, more plausibly, expect a movie that would take a broadly anti-war perspective (and particularly a perspective critical of far-flung US military adventures) while simultaneously displaying sympathy for the motivations and the plight of soldiers caught up in the reality of war? Why not expect a movie with impressive layers of moral, psychological, and artistic complexity? Why not expect to be confronted by considerable ambiguity, and to be sent home from the experience teased into thought?

American Sniper might, of course, be a complex cinematic masterpiece while still portraying Muslims, for example, in stereotyped and unfortunate ways. That is not a contradiction. If it's so, it could be demonstrated and explained in a reasonably charitable, critically sophisticated "reading". Although that's very possible, it can't be assumed from the start. And it certainly can't be assumed that Eastwood is a simple-minded political enemy from whom we should expect a work of outright militarist propaganda. He is an expert and brilliant director who does, in fact, have somewhat complicated political views as well as the talent to create powerful, morally ambiguous cinema.

Once again, I suppose I need to see American Sniper for myself, much as war movies are not usually my thing. Perhaps it really is as crass as its detractors claim... but everything I know about Eastwood suggests it's unlikely.

Finally, we are talking about a hugely popular mainstream feature movie: it didn't do all that well outside the United States (not as well as the big superhero movies of its year, for example), but in the US domestic market it was monstrously successful. It was the number one movie at the US box office among those released in 2014 and also among those released in the past 365 days. Perhaps it succeeded commercially on a wave of simplistic patriotism, but most likely not. In any event, American Sniper was very widely watched in the US over the last few months, and the idea that showing it on the University of Michigan campus was endangering anybody is rather absurd.

We are certainly not talking here about a Nazi propaganda film such as Triumph of the Will, and that sort of comparison, where it has been made in public debate, actually does no credit to people who make it. If it has weaknesses or points that are open to critique, it's fair to identify and discuss them, but as part of an informed and imaginatively adequate interpretation.