Left or Right: the Case of Sonia Sotomayor

Please note that I am simply a layman Supreme Court enthusiast, trying to dissect these issues using the Internet and the books at my disposal. I am not an expert. Read everything with a grain of salt.

Today President Obama announced his nomination of Sonia Sotomayor, and already both sides have begun taking potshots at each other. The Democrats and liberal special interest groups are hailing her as a progressive wonder, sensitive to a woman's right to choose and the rights of homosexuals; the Republicans are claiming (in oddly identical phrasing) that she is guided by her "personal politics, feelings, and preferences," which means that, since she is the daughter of (legal) immigrants, a member of a minority, and a woman, she'll be too empathetic and therefore have bad judgment. (The sexism, racism, and hypocrisy on display here is pretty disgusting, but I'll have to leave that for another day.)

We'll leave sexism and racism for another day. Both sides are guilty of making this up as they go along, retreating to "Left v. Right" dogmas which feed the undying (but perhaps not undue) characterization of the Supreme Court as a political, and therefore either conservative or liberal, institution. In order to be analyzed by the press and Congress, Sotomayor must fit into the box created for her, despite any nuances that may exist in her career. And yet, despite 400 opinions on the Court of Appeals, Sotomayor's judicial philosophy is not completely formed in the minds of the public or the press, and if history has told us anything, it's possible that her philosophy isn't entirely formed in her own mind. Furthermore, Supreme Court appointments rarely behave exactly as expected, as is demonstrated by James F. Simon in his book, The Antagonists.


Unexpected Justice

The subtitle of Simon's book is Hugo Black, Felix Frankfurter, and Civil Liberties in America. The book is billed as a tale of a historical feud between two powerful men, in this case Supreme Court Justices, and how their feud determined the course of American life. It doesn't really succeed on that point, but it is nonetheless a fine book for those looking for biographical information on either of the two Justices in the title, both pre- and post-appointment to the court. ^[1] It is in this area, biography, where we find some revealing details about the judicial system in America, and perhaps can apply some of this to Sonia Sotomayor.

Simon's best explicated thesis is the aforementioned truth, that judicial appointments rarely perform as expected: Hugo Black beat the more qualified Frankfurter to the bench, and though both were appointed by FDR, neither lived up to their pedigree. Frankfurter helped found the ACLU and stood publicly in support of Sacco and Vanzetti when doing so was very unpopular. (It is especially moving when Simon describes Frankfurter's emotional reaction upon hearing that the two immigrants were executed.) ^[2] Lawyer Frankfurter's liberal pedigree seemed to some impeccable, but Justice Frankfurter went on to promote "judicial restraint" on the bench, which put him in league with the conservative and moderate voices on the court who did not want the Judicial branch of the government to be in charge of regulating the relationship between civil rights, states rights, and federal law.

Hugo Black, on the other hand, was a member of the Ku Klux Klan. Though it is documented that his membership was a political expedient and shrewd business decision, everyone thought it was a political problem for FDR, who just shrugged it off and told Black to go get 'em. (Simon points out as an interesting side note that the Klan, while advocating prohibition and racial purity, also "exalted the role of the common laborer too often victimized by manipulative corporate powers." Black's single speech to the KKK was forthrightly populist, interspersed with subtle racist messages). Despite or maybe because of this taint, Black went on to be one of the most ferocious liberal voices on the bench, advocating for the incorporation of the Bill of Rights, and for the rights of American Communists in the midst of the Red Scare. ^[3]

This apparent flip-flopping has become a sort of joke for the Court: Earl Warren as Republican Governor of California allowed the internment of thousands of Japanese-Americans, but as Chief Justice during the 50s and 60s led the liberal wing to decisive victories in school desegregation (Brown v. Board of Education), the rights of prisoners (Miranda v. Arizona), and the right to receive counsel (Gideon v. Wainwright). The effect of each of these decisions was felt immediately in the nation, and Richard Nixon implicitly and explicitly ran against each one in 1968. He then appointed Warren Burger as Chief Justice in an attempt to reverse the court's direction, and though Burger had some success in stemming the tide, he also oversaw and concurred with the result in many liberal landmarks, with Roe v. Wade being just one.

Other examples include Sandra Day O'Connor, a Goldwater Republican who says she saw her party "move to the right" without her and became the court's key swing-vote; Anthony Kennedy, currently a swing-vote who often sides with the conservative bloc on issues like gun control, but has also been the important fifth vote on issues like the death penalty for minors, gay rights, abortion rights, and the trio of habeus corpus/Gitmo cases during the Bush years; Nixon appointees Lewis Powell, a moderate for his tenure, and Harry Blackmun, the author of Roe but also a moderate; and John Paul Stevens, appointed by Gerald Ford, an idiosyncratic judge whose opinions always defy categorization but have caused him to be classified a liberal. ^[4]


STOP SOUTER

Most significant to the Sotomayer nomination is the case of David Souter. With only five months experience on the Federal bench, Souter was a Washington outsider. President George H. W. Bush considered this fact to be a positive attribute in his favor, as he had few written opinions that could be held against him (Sotomayor in contrast has many). Souter had been recommended to the position by some prominent Republicans that had the President's ear; he was involved in conservative politics in New Hampshire, registered as a Republican, and was subsequently demonized by a reactionary left-wing of the country. Jeffrey Toobin reports in his book The Nine that the National Organization for Women created a pamphlet titled STOP SOUTER OR WOMEN WILL DIE. Senators Ted Kennedy, John Kerry, and seven others voted against his appointment.

During Souter's first year as a justice, he behaved about as everyone expected, siding with Scalia and Rhenquist on most cases. However, during his first Summer off (the Supreme Court takes a yearly Summer break), Souter devoted himself to study, trying to join his judicial philosophy with the realities of the heightened Supreme Court atmosphere. By the next year, the court was faced with re-affirming or completely rejecting Roe v. Wade, and it was Souter who spearheaded the secret insurgency that retained the essence of Roe while drastically redefining it. Souter, according to Toobin, "was appointed to overturn Roe v. Wade." Instead, he ended up saving it. Many women's groups contend that the opinion that resulted, Casey v. Planned Parenthood, greatly neutered women's rights, even if it was nonetheless a preferable outcome to the total abolition of abortion. In just one year, Souter became a villain to the right-wing, while suddenly becoming a feeble, unexpected, imperfect hero to a wary left-wing.


Left or Right

I'm not saying that liberals have to worry about Sotomayor, but rather that there's a serious problem with characterizing a justice as either liberal or conservative, especially during the nomination process. First and foremost, the words don't mean quite what we think when applied to the realm of law. People still use these words partly because many of the court's decisions can be immediately interpreted as favoring one side of the political divide or the other; further, these decisions cannot be reversed by elections, as judges have lifetime appointment and "precedent" is a guiding principle of common-law interpretation. As such, those in power whose political beliefs are contradicted by the court often attack the court as "activist" or "politically motivated," and far be it from me to deny that this has been true in the past. What is important, however, is not to judge the court's decisions as "conservative" or "liberal" but instead to judge the principles on which the court is making those decisions.

The two sides mainly disagree as to whether the Constitution is a vehicle for expanding civil rights; in fact, that was the very argument justices Frankfurter and Black had for several decades in the past. For instance, the conservative Federalist Society contends that the original meaning of the Constitution is the only way to interpret it (I give a quick overview of this view here). This view has been used to justify judicious capital punishment, legislation of sex acts, expanded Executive power in wartime, diminished Federal power over domestic issues (aka States Rights), second amendment rights, etc., all considered conservative issues. The opposing view seeks to apply the Constitution's principles to our time, in ways the framers could not have envisioned but would likely approve of, for instance gay rights (equal protection under laws) or the abolition of the death penalty (cruel and unusual punishment).

The New York Times has supplied us with an overview of many of Sotomayer's mountain of opinions for the Court of Appeals, and it is possible that some or many of her judicial philosophies could be discovered within that pile. Yet she has never had to contend with the issue of gay marriage or gay rights, nor has she dealt in depth with the issue of abortion (her one opinion on that topic sided with the anti-abortion side; see the New York Times link for details). Based on my limited exploration, she doesn't seem like the radical the right is painting her as, or the progressive the left contends she is. The White House is maintaining that she's a moderate (I expect her to vote with the court's liberal bloc). Their talking points say this: "In cases where Sotomayor and at least one judge appointed by a Republican president were on the three-judge panel, Sotomayor and the Republican appointee(s) agreed on the outcome 95% of the time." But I don't think anyone is listening.

Sean Hannity and Barack Obama may agree on one thing: they both probably believe that Sonia Sotomayor has been made in Obama's image. However, as evidenced by history, that may not mean much, especially to her. She, and she alone, is the person who will shape her judicial future, and she doesn't have to start thinking like a Supreme Court Justice until she puts on the robe.



Notes

^[1] I say the book is not about the supposed feud between Frankfurter and Black because Simon doesn't convince me that there ever was one: Frankfurter had a negative opinion of Black, William O. Douglas, and anyone else that sided with their powerful coalition of liberal thought, but it seems like Douglas (among others) was the one who actually hated Frankfurter back. Based on Simon's well-researched but anecdotal evidence, Black never really returned Frankfurter's ire, and instead was happy to win the battles he won (and very angrily lose those he lost).

^[2] Lest I mischaracterize Felix Frankfurter's reputation, here's one example of his liberal gusto while on the bench. He was trying to compel his brethren to hear argument on the case of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, saying: "I am...concerned about men and women as high-minded as any of us, though with less understanding of law and its workings, who feel as I do that it is a concession to Communism, not a safeguard against it, to retreat from reason and to compromise those cherished traditions which one likes to think of as the peculiar characteristics of an Anglo-American justice."

^[3] One major example was when Hugo Black dissented the ruling in Dennis v. U.S. "Public opinion being what it is now, few will protest the conviction of these Communist petitioners. There is hope, however, that in calmer times, when present pressures, passions and fears subside, this or some later Court will restore the First Amendment liberties to the high preferred place where they belong in a free society."

^[4] It gets even thicker when the President himself is involved in the case before the court. The Nixon appointees all voted against his Presidential claim to Executive Privilege in United States v. Nixon (though the path that opinion took was a winding road; see Bob Woodward's The Brethren); both Clinton nominees voted against him when he claimed the President could not be sued in a civil court while holding office (Clinton v. Jones); and President Obama's waffling on Abu Ghraib photos could wind its way up to the Supreme Court where some expect that his decision to keep the photos classified will be overturned.

On the other hand, both George W. Bush nominees sided with his justice department's claims in two key Gitmo cases. This is likely the result of the Bush White House's paranoia about flip-flopping justices: O'Connor was a closet-liberal, Kennedy was too moderate, and Souter was practically a socialist. The level of suspicion White House aides showed to Roberts, Harriet Miers, and Alito is amusingly documented in Jeffrey Toobin's The Nine. So far, their suspicions seem unwarranted.

Things I Read Today: Pro-America, Anti-Government

Today, listening to Rush Limbaugh while packaging cookies into small cardboard boxes, I was struck by the fact that I was listening to Rush Limbaugh and not getting angry. I disagreed with everything he said, certainly, and sometimes I laughed out loud at his vagueness, his detail-lacking reports of President Obama's "thuggery" (he actually used that word). His powers of misdirection are great; sometimes it feels like he's about to criticize someone with a "hard R" behind their name, but it's always "the libs," "the left" who are at fault (and if not them, the moderates). It kinda feels nice to belong to a group that is so comprehensively and systematically disenfranchising America.

Limbaugh's art is primarily in pumping himself up, and secondarily in doing the same for his audience. Today, for a half hour, these two compulsions seemed at odds when Rush was defending his latest criticism of the GOP's (nominal) moderates: Eric Cantor, Jeb Bush, and Mitt Romney are going on a "listening tour" of the country, and the CNN report that described to me their words and purpose made me, a bleeding heart lib and card-carrying member of the left, interested in their future come 2012 (prior to joining the Democratic party, I was interested in moderate Republican John McCain and his prospects for the Presidency; that obviously didn't work out, and I doubt any "compassionate conservatism" from these three is anything more than electioneering for 2012, but I'm willing to listen). Rush, like the crowd that gathered outside of the pizzeria where these three "listened" to other Republicans, finds this listening tour to be a sign of weakness amongst Conservatives who don't actually believe in their principles. Yesterday, Rush suggested that the only proper course of action for a Conservative living in Obama's America is to go on a "teaching tour." Today he played several clips of the media dismissing his anti-tour as "arrogant," and Rush then spent ten minutes explaining why it wasn't. I suppose in Rush's world, telling your call-in audience that you don't need or listen to their opinions doesn't qualify as arrogant, but in my world it does. Later he said that if he listened to his audience, he'd be in a straitjacket.

Perhaps realizing how counter-intuitive this was, Rush decided to compliment his listeners and call them smart. The proof of their smartness? Why, they listen to Rush. They understood the evils of cap-and-trade, the values of supply-side economics, the holy presidency of Ronald Reagan and the pure principles of Reaganomics. Real conservatism is hunkering down on your ideals and never letting go - the American people will one day again vote truth and honor into office, so long as true Conservatives wait it out and ignore new ideas. In all of this, Rush's overriding principles were that bigger government suppresses freedom; freedom is best expressed by lower taxes for higher-earners; Obama's principles are big-government, therefore anti-freedom and anti-American. He then called Obama an "ideological demagogue."

And why wasn't I getting angry at all of this? Beats me. For some reason, Rush is eminently listenable, and one need not agree with him to find the show, its familiar music, its surplus of commercials, the host's tics like long pauses between rants, all somewhat...comforting? I felt weird, but I couldn't change the station.

...


Rush's comments dove-tailed nicely with a book I picked up over the weekend about President Clinton. Called The Natural: The Misunderstood Presidency of Bill Clinton, it is anything but an apology for the eight-year reign of the moderate/liberal/conservative. Author Joe Klein points out a great many flaws in Clinton's leadership, organizational skills, and policy, while trying to highlight the reasons for these flaws and how he often turned lemons, like an ideologically rigid opposition Congress, into lemonade, like small-scale policy victories in healthcare, college education tax credits, etc.

Klein notes a problematic scenario that seems frighteningly familiar in our current political season: a Republican regime has racked up huge budget deficits through military buildup, and now that the Democratic leadership desires to enact the public policy they were elected for, the deficit is standing in their way.

Robert Reich, who led the economic team through the transition process...called the debilitating impact of the Republican budget deficits, first imagined by Reagan budget director David Stockman, "the law of intended consequences"—in other words, the Reagan tax cut was intended to produce budget deficits that would prevent new federal programs. - p. 50

So Bush was really following Reagan's footprint: leave any future administration's hands tied regarding federal programs by leaving them a messy deficit. Clinton's solution was to take small steps with new spending until he had balanced the budget, then enact everything he really wanted. This plan was obstructed by his second-term hiatus from governing thanks to the Lewinsky scandal. Obama's solution is a bit less "disciplined," you may say, because he has no problem increasing the size of the deficit short-term if it means stimulus long-term. I leave it to history and the economists to judge that decision, but for at least the next couple of years, the declamations of Obama's team that they "inherited this deficit" is mostly true. If President Obama does not take steps to balance the budget once the economy is on-track, then he is truly the "undisciplined liberal" that many claim; for now, he is merely following his principles (Keynesian economics) with the hand he was dealt.

Klein later showcases a speech from Clinton after the Oklahoma City bombing, which he describes as the work of "right-wing extremists, a Patriot's Day rejoinder to the lethal federal assault on the David Koresh cult in Waco, Texas, two years earlier."

I say this to the militias and all others who believe that the greatest threat to freedom comes from the government instead of from those who would take away our freedom: If you say violence is an acceptable way to make change, you are wrong. If you say government is a conspiracy to take your freedom away you are just plain wrong...

How dare you suggest that we in the freest nation on earth live in a tyranny? How dare you call yourselves patriots and heroes?

I say to you, all of you...there is nothing patriotic about hating your country, or pretending that you can love your country but despise your government.

These words ring very true post-tea parties and post-Republicanism (heh, I wish). There is a difference between those who believe government should be limited and those who denounce its every form - I believe we are seeing that transition right now, conveniently during the first months of a new Democratic President; if Bush was able to be elected for a third term, I greatly doubt the tea parties would have ever happened, for anti-government crusaders tend to forget that government is evil so long as their taxes are low. I got in trouble for publicly (via Twitter and Facebook) calling the protesters in Medford "rich"; one of my friends said he was very poor and that he was out there all day. Perhaps I'm simplistic, but I find it ironic that someone who just got a tax-cut comparable to the one Bush gave him eight years ago is protesting the President who gave it to him.

When considering this quote from Clinton, remember that this is the President that declared that the era of big government was over (he didn't know about Bush 43 yet). Klein says, "Clinton later told me that the House Republicans were as much the target of this speech as were the right-wing militias: The Gingrich movement had been built on government-bashing in the name of patriotism." - (p. 144) If this seems like political opportunism, consider Klein's analysis of Bush's vocabulary on 9/11:

...and it was no accident that on the day of the terror attacks, George W. Bush and members of his administration suddenly began referring to "your" federal government, a formulation that would have horrified many conservatives in the late twentieth century. - p. 214

When responding to terror, as Clinton was in 1995, it is understandable that we sould take ownership of "our" federal government. In fact, its what we ought to do every day. The problem with anti-government rhetoric, from the April 15th protests, from Rush's show, or from a government leader, is that it presupposes that the Government and the People are separate entities. We're not living in a perfect democratic republic, but if we wanted to live in a "more perfect union," we would involve ourselves more. In this way, a peaceful protest (of the right kind) has a function, as does petitioning our representatives, and in every way doing more than just voting. Our government, Lincoln said, is "of the people, by the people, and for the people." Once that construct becomes our enemy, then we've lost the dream of the founding fathers.

Things I Read Today: Raunch Feminism

Here's a quick blurb from the book Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture, about women who perform for Girls Gone Wild, pose nude for Playboy, or become porn stars, claiming that such activities are part of their "female liberation," that "being sexy" on their own terms is the fulfillment of radical feminism:

"That women are now doing this to ourselves isn't some kind of triumph, it's depressing. Sexuality is inherent, it is a fundamental part of being human, and it is a lot more complicated than we seem to be willing to admit. Different things are attractive to different people and sexual tastes run wide and wild. Yet somehow, we have accepted as fact the myth that sexiness needs to be something divorced from the every-day experience of being ourselves."

The book is by Ariel Levy, and she spends a lot of her time in the book going to sex parties, following Girls Gone Wild cameramen, and interviewing the (very often female) leaders of the smut empire that has, in her opinion, changed the standard of "sexy" in our culture. She interviews a participant in the first ever "bra-burning" (in fact just a trash-canning, no burning allowed), asking her what the female liberation and feminist/women's movement was all about. The answer: "Women in our society are forced daily to compete for male approval, enslaved by ludicrous beauty standards that we ourselves are conditioned to take seriously and to accept!"

The picture at the top of this post shows the Statue of Liberty with a banner advertising a mass "Women's Strike" on the 50th anniversary of suffrage in 1970. I think it's clear that a lot has changed since then.

Oregon Shakespeare Festival Adapts Kurosawa

The Oregon Shakespeare Festival announced its season lineup for 2010, and the biggest surprise is Throne of Blood, an adaptation of Akira Kurosawa's 1957 film, which is itself an adaptation of Shakespeare's Macbeth. The film is notably faithful to Shakespeare's play; the play was originally performed for Elizabethan audiences and set in Scotland, whereas Kurosawa's movie is set in Fuedal Japan and was made for a Japanese audience in the late 50s. I don't know what's going to happen when writer and director Ping Chong presumably translates Kurosawa's words back into English and delivers it to the generally affluent audiences of OSF.

Chong is a Chinese-American, but despite his adaptations of Japanese-themed literary works, there's no indication that he knows Japanese. That throws an extra kink in the machine, as there are two English subtitle translations of Throne of Blood, one by the controversial Linda Hoaglund, and the other by academic Donald Richie (both available on the Criterion DVD). Perhaps Chong will simply revert back to Shakespeare's English?

All of this is speculation, of course; I'll have to wait to see the production. The film itself has a brutally violent finale, and based on images of Chong's previous work, I expect the whole play, including the violence, to be highly stylized. My suggestions to Chong:

1) Follow Kurosawa's emphasis on weather. Rain, fog, wind, etc. are all part of Kurosawa's aesthetic, and they were always deliberately placed for dramatic effect. OSF is the most capable theatre on the West Coast for that kind of complicated theatrecraft.

2) Follow Kurosawa's contrast between spare and ornate design. The rooms and outdoor locations of Kurosawa's film are often bare and empty, but that can quickly change, as when two characters ride into a tangled forest, or during the finale when Lord Washizu ("Macbeth") is killed by an hundred archers. Things quickly become messy in this film, despite the appearance of sterility.

3) Stay true to Kurosawa's Noh theatre inspiration. This shot is an example:


Isuzu Yamada's performance as Lady Washizu is astounding; in this scene she stares in one direction while Toshiro Mifune thrashes about. The contrast between their performances is critical. Kurosawa and Yamada gave Lady Washizu an otherworldly manner, simultaneously delicate and savage, and straight out of Noh theatre.

4) Make it bloody. Just for fun.


...

On a side note, OSF is also performing the musical She Loves Me which is based on a Hungarian play (Parfumerie by Miklos Laszlo) that was adapted by Ernst Lubistch into the film The Shop Around the Corner, which was adapted into Nora Ephron's You've Got Mail. So I guess I have to see that too.

Duplicity

I really enjoyed Tony Gilroy's last film, Michael Clayton, which was also his first film as "director." He wrote all three Bourne films, plus a really weird assortment of 90s' flicks: Dolores Claiborne, The Devil's Advocate, and The Cutting Edge. Even odder, according to IMDB, he was responsible for the "adaptation" of Armageddon, which is one of Michael Bay's best and worst films. None of these flicks is as good as Michael Clayton, which is a look at scheming corporate America through the disillusioned eyes of George Clooney, corporate lawyer. Tom Wilkinson's "crazed prophet" routine is heavily inspired by Network, and the lawyerly conversations between Clooney and Sydney Pollack reminded me a lot of Changing Lanes, which featured Pollack in a nearly identical role.

Clayton's best attribute is its respect for the audience, or maybe I should say its deliberate challenging of the audience. Each moment of the film is packed with plot details, whether its about Clooney's private life or the relationship between his law firm and the chemical company they represent, but this necessary information is not given freely to the audience. The most important plot details are often thrown away or go unstated; the audience must interpret visual clues and vague dialogue. As the audience, we may feel like we're the last to know what's going on, but really we're being given a birds-eye view that doesn't really coalesce until the final scene.

Duplicity shares with Michael Clayton Gilroy's taut slow-reveal storytelling method, but it uses the genre of romance-caper-comedy in the vein of Stanley Donen's Charade, and to a lesser extent Hitchcock's To Catch a Thief and both versions of Ocean's 11. (The score by James Newton Howard seems to be channeling The Third Man's zither score for foreign flavor.) Both of Gilroy's films engage corporate America with a negative eye, (in Duplicity the companies involved make soap and lotion), but Duplicity's scorn is tempered by parody and farce, mostly by way of soap CEO Paul Giamatti's big grins and bigger grimaces.


The light tone allows Gilroy to form a much heavier and much less subtle structure than the restrained plotting in Michael Clayton. He withholds reams of information, letting a half-hour tick by before the film even hints at who we ought to be rooting for (attentive and willing audience members will guess big chunks of the plot as it unfolds, which is half of the fun; I won't spoil anything important in this blog). Gilroy withholds these plot details through a progressive flashback structure that alternates the events of "now" with those of "five years ago" then "three years ago" then two, then 18 months, then one month, until we're caught up to present day.

The flashback structure gives force to the cat-and-mouse banter between Julia Roberts and Clive Owen, as we try to figure out who is gaming who and which one actually loves the other. As each character tries to stay ahead of the other, we are trying to stay ahead of them both. The conclusion of the film pulls all the pieces together and leaves us little doubt about "the truth," but some jumps in logic and an unfortunately over-explained ending mar the fun in the last ten minutes. The final scene, and the final shot, just barely redeem those mistakes.

Gilroy is already creating a bit of a pattern with his films, despite the genre-hopping; the big reckless corporations in his first two films have replaced the CIA's role in the Bourne trilogy, where his intricately layered plots had their germination as well. If he decides to keep hopping, and keep directing, I hope he doesn't lose his high level of respect for the audience. Based on Duplicity's poor box-office, Gilroy's style may not be a big money-maker, but most of his films are fun even when they're intelligent. In that sense, Gilroy represents an old-Hollywood sensibility that I'd like to keep around.

Borges and Tolkien: Fiction and Myth

"Ancient of Days (God as an Architect)" by William Blake

Jorge Luis Borges's short fiction titled Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius is a first person account of Borges stumbling upon a great conspiracy to alter the history of the world. A secret society has apparently been creating several volumes of Encyclopedias about a fake planet (Tlön) and all its countries. At first Borges reflects on how the undertaking is so vast and provocative; then it becomes apparent that the secret society (Orbis Tertius) has been planting these Encyclopedias in Libraries and introducing artifacts from this fake world into the real one. The world catches Tlön Fever, and even though it is known that Tlön is not a real place, its languages, rites, and history are endlessly studied, enter the modern lexicon, and are even taught in school. Slowly the fiction that is Tlön begins to replace the truth of the real world. Borges ends by saying that one day we won't live on Earth anymore: we'll live on Tlön.


A False Document

Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius is presented in the form of what Wikipedia (and, therefore, at least one person somewhere) calls a false document. The majority of the story is a fake magazine article written by Borges himself. Borges uses real people as characters and introduces unnecessary details to give the whole thing weight. He never breaks character, except for the three page postscript where the most absurd details come out; if not for that it all seems semi-believable.

Borges explains how the world could have fallen for this scheme:

"Ten years ago, any symmetry, any system with an appearance of order—dialectical materialism, anti-Semitism, Nazism—could spellbind and hypnotize mankind." ^[1]

Because of this reference to Nazism, some have assumed that Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius is about totalitarianism, but I think that's a bit easy. Borges doesn't care what the idea is.

"How could the world not fall under the sway of Tlön, how could it not yield to the vast and minutely detailed evidence of an ordered planet? It would be futile to reply that reality is also orderly. Perhaps it is, but orderly in accordance with divine laws (read: "inhuman laws") that we can never quite manage to penetrate. Tlön may well be a labyrinth, but it is a labyrinth forged by men, a labyrinth destined to be deciphered by men." ^[2]

In this we can see Borges summoning the realms of religion, society, fiction, politics, etc. all into one category: "manmade labyrinths." They're easier to understand than the real world, which is why it is with similar ease that we can be seduced by them. At the very end of the story, Borges expresses his dissatisfaction with the fake world that is replacing his "real" one by announcing that instead of fooling around with Tlön, he is spending his time translating a "real" text into a "real" language. Pointedly, he is translating the work Hydriotophia, Urn Burial by Sir Thomas Browne, the fifth chapter of which is a rumination on the smallness of man next to history (full text available here). Here's just one of many searing quotes from that work: "We cannot hope to live so long in our names as some have done in their persons. One face of Janus holds no proportion unto the other. 'Tis too late to be ambitious. The great mutations of the world are acted, or time may be too short for our designs." Browne wonders whether a gravestone can truly perpetuate the history of a person; can a life last beyond the monuments of one's death? Borges adds, in a merely parenthetical aside, that he never intends to publish his translation.


Mythopoeia

Yet for all his mustered lament about the death of the real Earth, Borges's story is itself guilty of creating a false history through its fake first-person perspective and its detailed accounts of untrue events. Borges creates a story that is at once a false document, and about false documents as well. This is, I think, the point.

Each man lives in fiction each day, choosing to believe what is not true for as long as the book is open, the movie is playing, or the actors are onstage. In Ingmar Bergman's highly theatrical film Fanny and Alexander, Oscar Ekdahl says that theatre is "a little world"; later his brother Gustav Adolf uses the same phrase to describe their giant family. Bergman's film, just like Borges's story, makes a connection between the two "little worlds," questioning the division between real and fake. In this sense, both works are existential and both are concerned with the idea of creation, be that of a family, a play, a translation, or a fake Encyclopedia.

Because of this, I do not believe that Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius is entirely a pessimistic view of mankind, or of man's desire for order. Many a modern novel seems vibrantly "real" while its plot is utterly fantastic; a future archeologist can't be blamed for reading The Lord of the Rings as ancient mythology instead of art. Tolkien's novel even uses the "false document" trick, claiming to be a translation of the Redbook of Westmarch. ^[3] This is a necessary pretense, for Tolkien's work is what he called a mythopoeia. Wikipedia defines Tolkien's term succinctly: "[Mythopoeia] is a narrative genre in modern literature and film where a fictional mythology was created by the author or screenwriter...It is invented mythology that, rather than arising out of centuries of oral tradition, are penned over a short period of time by a single author or small group of collaborators." Sound a bit like Orbis Tertius and their plans for Tlön?

"No imaginary world has been projected which is at once as multifarious and as true to its own inner laws," says C.S. Lewis on the back of my copy of The Two Towers, though the quote continues: "none so seemingly objective, so disinfected from the taint of an author's merely individual psychology..." ^[4]

Lewis lays down a miniature view of Mythopoeia in this quote. He seems to view it as the creation of a vast world consistent with itself, and therefore totally believable, but without the "taint of an author's merely individual psychology." Borges claims that any ordered system can capture our attention, but surely each of these systems has to be in some way related to an individual's psychology: the socio-political impetuses for Nazism were not its only causes, nor are socio-political issues without psychological drive. Borges allows for individuality in his concept of "ordered systems" by directly referencing George Berkeley, whose philosophical fingerprints are all over Tlön. Furthermore, if Lewis truly believes that Middle-Earth had nothing to do with Tolkien's "individual psychology" he must not have really known his friend. Tolkien's friend George Sayer said that Tolkien

"lived the book as we walked, sometimes comparing parts of the hills with, for instance, the White Mountains of Gondor. We drove to the Black Mountains on the borders of Wales, picked bilberries and climbed through the heather there. We picnicked on bread and cheese and apples, and washed them down with perry, beer or cider. When we saw signs of industrial pollution, he talked of orcs and orcery. At home he helped me to garden." ^[5]

A Single Plot

In his story, Borges takes a crack at creating his own minor mythopoeia, albeit one that was created by characters in his story. He describes Tlön as a world where individuality and objectivity don't exist. Objects may exist at any given moment, but none of those moments are considered connected, nor is any object at one moment the same when it is in a different moment. A whole section of the story is devoted to the philosophical conundrum of nine coins which are left lying in the road and whether they exist between the moment they are left on the road and the moment they are picked up – a playful inversion of George Berkeley's tree falling in the forest (in fact, Borges claims that Berkeley was the inventor of the world of Tlön and as such Borges's story is more a rumination on Berkelian philosophy than anything else).

The most interesting statement from Borges about Tlön, in my opinion, is this:

"Books are rarely signed, nor does the concept of plagiarism exist: It has been decided that all books are the work of a single author who is timeless and anonymous. Literary criticism often invents authors: It will take two dissimilar works—the Tao Te Ching and the 1001 Nights, for example—attribute them to a single author, and then in all good conscience determine the psychology of that most interesting hommes de lettres." ^[6]

How fascinating is it, then, that Tlön should have some marked similarities to Middle-Earth?

For instance, Borges describes the Southern Hemispheric language of "Ursprache" which has no nouns. "...there are impersonal verbs, modified by mono-syllabic suffixes (or prefixes) functioning as adverbs." The word for "moon" in Usprache can be translated as "to moonate" or "to enmoon." Borges translates the phrase "The moon rose above the river" into Ursprache as "hlör u fang axaxaxas mlö," which translates back into English as "Upward, behind the onstreaming it mooned." ^[7]

Now, in the Northern Hemisphere of Tlön, there is still an absence of nouns, but instead of verbs there are strings of adjectives. "One does not say 'moon'; one says 'aerial-bright above dark-round.' or 'soft-amberish-celestial' or any other string." Later Borges says that "There are famous poems composed of a single enormous word." ^[8]

How similar this is to "New" Entish in The Lord of the Rings: in that language adjectives predominate, though there are nouns which are used sparingly. Tolkien gives us the phrase "there is a black shadow in the deep dales of the forest," which becomes "Taurelilómëa-tumbalemorna Tumbaletaurëa Lómëanor" in New Entish, which translates back as "Forestmanyshadowed-deepvalleyblack Deepvalleyforested Gloomyland." ^[9] Another example is when Treebeard the Ent tries to say the word "Orc" in the Common Speech but with an Entish style: "For there was a great inrush of those burárum, those evileyed-blackhanded-bow-legged-flint-hearted-clawfingered-foulbellied-bloodthirsty, morimaite-sincahonda, hoom, well, since you are hasty folk and their full name is as long as years of torment, those vermin of orcs..." at which point he cuts himself off. ^[10]

Stretching a bit further, Borges's story connects to The Lord of the Rings by way of Sir Thomas Browne as well. In the aforementioned Hydriotophia, Urn Burial Browne says that many men live in such a way that even their gravestones are defiled by those who hate them. By contrast: "Happy are they whom privacy makes innocent, who deal so with men in this world, that they are not afraid to meet them in the next; who, when they die, make no commotion among the dead, and are not touched with that poetical taunt of Isaiah."

That poetical taunt is found in Isaiah 14. It was directed towards Babylon, and I have included an excerpt below (English Standard Version). Note that the "Day Star" refers to Venus, which is a poetical representation of Babylon in ancient times, and that "sheol" is the common grave of all people.

"How you are fallen from heaven,
   O Day Star, son of Dawn!
How you are cut down to the ground,
   you who laid the nations low!
You said in your heart,
   'I will ascend to heaven;
above the stars of God
   I will set my throne on high;
I will sit on the mount of assembly
   in the far reaches of the north;
I will ascend above the heights of the clouds;
   I will make myself like the Most High.'
But you are brought down to Sheol,
   to the far reaches of the pit.
Those who see you will stare at you
   and ponder over you:
'Is this the man who made the earth tremble,
   who shook kingdoms,
who made the world like a desert
   and overthrew its cities,
   who did not let his prisoners go home?'
All the kings of the nations lie in glory,
   each in his own tomb;
but you are cast out, away from your grave,
   like a loathed branch,
clothed with the slain, those pierced by the sword,
   who go down to the stones of the pit,
   like a dead body trampled underfoot.
You will not be joined with them in burial,
   because you have destroyed your land,
   you have slain your people.
 
"May the offspring of evildoers
   nevermore be named!
Prepare slaughter for his sons
   because of the guilt of their fathers,
lest they rise and possess the earth,
   and fill the face of the world with cities."

Is it not possible to see shades of Tolkien in this Biblical poetry? Replace "Day Star" with "Sauron" and you have a lost song from the chapter "The Field of Cormallen." Not only are the lines a summary of the at-times-Biblical plot of The Lord of the Rings, but even more specifically the line "May the offspring of evildoers nevermore be named!" reminds one of both Treebeard's lament about Orcs above and the many instances where neither Mordor, Sauron, the black speech, nor any other thing relating to darkness should be spoken aloud unless necessary (a conceit used by J.K. Rowling in the Harry Potter books). Two quick examples of this can be found in The Two Towers, one when Gimli asks Gandalf "tell us how you fared with the Balrog!" to which Gandalf says "Name him not!" ^[11] and another where Faramir refers to Sauron as "He whom we do not name." ^[12]


Postscript—1947

Perhaps I have gone too far afield, focusing on minutiae instead of broad-strokes. Yet I believe that is part of our job. Finding endless connections between Tolkien, Borges, and the Bible (by way of Browne) is not just a fun mental exercise, for when Borges describes the literature of Tlön, he describes it thus:

"Their fiction has but a single plot, with every imaginable permutation."

That's an apt description of myth in particular and fiction in general.

Special thanks to Daniel Szczesniak, who is the only reason this blog is written. Daniel: read the fifth chapter of Hydriotophia, Urn Burial if you haven't already.



Notes

^[1] Borges, Jorge Luis, Collected Fictions, Trans. Andrew Hurley, (New York: Penguin, 1999) 81.
^[2] Borges 81
^[3] Tolkien, J. R. The Fellowship of the Ring, (New York: Ballantine Books Inc, 1969) 19 [Prologue]
^[4] C.S. Lewis ended his novel Out of the Silent Planet with a retroactive false document breaking the fourth wall and pleading with the reader to believe that everything in the book is true, that C.S. himself was friends with the pseudonymous hero and villains, and that they all really went to Mars. The sequel, Perelandra, is a sort of Mythopoeia about a new creation and the threat of a repeat fall from grace on Venus.
^[5] Duriez, Colin, Tolkien and C. S. Lewis: The Gift of Friendship, (New York: Paulist P, 2003) 140-141
^[6] Borges 77
^[7] Borges 73
^[8] Borges 73
^[9] Tolkien, J. R. The Return of the King, (New York: Ballantine Books Inc, 1969) 510 [Appendix F, I, "Of Other Races"]
^[10] ibid. 318, [Book Six, ch. 6]
^[11] Tolkien, J. R. The Two Towers, (New York: Ballantine Books Inc, 1969) 133 [Book Three, ch. 5]
^[12] ibid. 354 [Book Four, ch. 5]

This is As Real As it Gets: Michael Bay's War in Cinema

"Well actually this is as real as it gets." - Billy Bob Thornton in Armageddon

"This is as real as it's ever gonna get." - Jon Voight in Transfomers

"Shit just got real." - Will Smith in Bad Boys II

Why do Michael Bay's characters always feel compelled to convince us that what's happening in their world is "real?" In the first two quotes above, it's because a character essentially declares the movie's plot so ridiculous that they don't believe it's actually happening. Oddly, they're echoing the sentiments of the audience.

There's nothing real about Michael Bay's cinema. He gets the details right, from the army uniforms and the guns to the street language and crass humor, yet even when his film involves something that gets really close to being believable, like two black cops investigating an Ecstasy drug ring in Miami (Bad Boys II), he manages to make it a fantasy of explosions, breasts, car chases, slow motion, and one-liners. (That those two cops end up in Cuba of all places, only to get into another car chase, is the film's greatest accomplishment). Bay is the master of making a serious idea into something really stupid (see also: Pearl Harbor).

Bay's films are filled with flesh, sweat, and metallic edges. He finds a way to combine the fleshiness of humans with the raw crunchiness of sports cars, diesel trucks, tanks, and of course, Transformers. All of his characters can learn to be violent within a matter of minutes: training means nothing, but purpose means everything. Presented with a "common enemy," anyone can pick up a gun and start shooting. The best part of Transformers is when Jon Voight's Rumsfeldian Secretary of Defense grabs hold of a shotgun in the middle of a firefight. (I imagine a documentary about Donald Rumsfeld's reaction to mechanical terrorists wouldn't look much different than this sequence as it already exists).

On a certain level, Michael Bay seems to be making pro-America propaganda/military recruitment films (not unlike this music video that played in movie theaters in 2007), but even the audiences who get off on his specialty mix of macho heroics, crude humor, and de-contextualized violence will (I hope) laugh at his orgiastic excess. His explosions are too big, his jokes are too rude, his characters too large and caricatured. For all his military fetishism, the governmental authority figures in his films are often inept or at odds with the renegade heroes who are under-qualified for the heroic deeds they must accomplish. In Transformers Bay even has the shadowy U.S. operative, while arguing with the Secretary of Defense, reference his "ridiculous government salary." Bay is a true conservative: pro-military, anti-government. Only the individual can make a difference in Bay's America.

How can we justify a filmmaker who presents America as so ridiculously militarized, so drenched in urban and government warfare, so ready to pick a fight? Or, put a different way, one could ask: "is he for real?" The lack of an answer is, I think, part of the fun.

I Didn't Win the Election

Ever since January, I've been telling my fellow Christians about Barack Obama. I thought he was new, courageous, inspiring, intelligent, and all the other accolades I can think of. His honesty, decency, presentation, and attitude towards politics not only impressed me, but changed me, forcing me to reject the typical jaded and disillusioned college student stereotype that I had so comfortably fit into. I began a crusade to get this man elected, and the first (and last) place I went was in the church.

Instantly, my father told me that I had drank the Kool-Aid; others said that I'd bought into the liberal agenda. I don't deny it: I bought it. After the historic spectacle that was tonight, I don't regret buying it at all. Whether that historic victory was worth the price that I paid, that I must wait to find out.

The past eleven months have been brutal for Christian Obama supporters. I think a lot of younger Christians have been experiencing this as well. (One friend told me that she's unwilling to bring up her politics at church; she agonized privately over the decision for several months before coming to a very strong conclusion that Obama was the best candidate, very much contrary to her congregation's general opinion.) The responses I heard from my fellow Christians were rote: "Democrats believe in abortion, or didn't you know? They also support gay marriage. Obama himself is a super-liberal, maybe even a socialist. At the very least, he's big government and anti-gun."

I think there's reasons to talk about these issues, and I don't intend to argue them now. Certainly for many Christians, some or all of these are dealbreakers. Fair enough: stick with your convictions, so long as they are well-reasoned.

The problem for people like me is that the Red v. Blue divide is not just a friendly squabble over government or taxes. It is a war of ideals and ethics, fought over the foundation of truth itself, fought against neighbors and friends, and for some of us, our families. In fighting this cultural war, both sides have claimed corners that many people found uninhabitable. In 2004, I was a proud third-party voter (though even I couldn't tell you the name of the person I voted for). The Republican corner seemed irresponsible, absolutist, religiously immature, and arrogant, while the Democratic corner seemed soft, undefinable, hostile to my religious conviction, and unwilling to take a clear stand for its beliefs. The person that I found who represented none of these traits, Barack Obama, was ironically a member of one of these parties. When he began reshaping and rebuilding his party, I very easily went along with him and the Democrats. I drank the Kool-Aid and suddenly found myself in a corner that I had previously despised.

I told everyone about my newfound candidate. It didn't take very long to realize that I was alone, and I was turning my back on that precious conservative philosophy that had reshaped America and the church over the last twenty five years. When I uttered my beliefs in my church, I was largely alone, although tolerated and encouraged to say my peace (thank you, Cornerstone). On the Internet things were less friendly, as they always are, but especially harsh were the denouncements from Reformed churches around the United States. Least surprisingly, but hardest to bear, was in my household, where my philosophy was considered stupidity, heresy, and an outright rejection of my upbringing. I shouldn't have been so surprised at this response, and I know I could've responded better to my friends and family, but my heart was set and I wasn't going to shut up. Now that my spirit has been chipped away, slowly, perhaps now I will have to shut up. The ramifications of my mistaken outspokenness will be seen soon enough.

Perhaps it's shocking to be a Christian and a Democrat. I used to think it was too, being raised by the most conservative man on the earth, but today, living the dichotomy, I believe it can be done. Religion and politics are for many of us inseparably tied, no matter how disparate our final conclusions are. I don't live two lives, one where I make political decisions with my mind and the other where I work out spiritual beliefs in my heart. I don't turn off my politics when I walk into church, nor do I become an atheist when I vote. None of us separate ourselves in this way, yet herein lies the problem: many of the church's strong spiritual leaders, holding to this singular view of the human person, see no distinction between their politics and the gospel. To believe that abortion, no matter how wrong it is, may need to stay legal for the sake of liberal democracy is considered by them to be a pragmatic acquiescence to liberal humanism. To believe that there is a valid (though not absolute) separation of church and state that protects our government, our religion, and the religion of others is to them a rejection of religious freedom. To tax the rich at a higher percentage than the poor is to them theft and socialism. To fight for gay rights is to them a systematic undermining of Biblical values. Satisfactory counter-arguments to these statements exist, and many Christians believe them. I will not provide them here, but I will say that face-value absolutisms sometimes, perhaps often, have no relation to the truth.

Feeling as strongly as I do, it is probably weird that I would wonder out loud whether my outspoken allegiance for Barack Obama was worth it. My reasons are thus: firstly, I believe that every strong opinion must be tempered by a healthy amount of self-doubt. Doubting has been a safe-haven away from the overbearing political posturing that I (and others) very easily slip into in contentious times (forgive me when I have slipped, friends); said another way, the weight of self-assuredness is heavy. Secondly, and more importantly, the Red v. Blue divide puts people at odds with those they love. Despite my convictions (which themselves are despite my doubts), I really didn't want to end this eleven month journey as alone as I started it, or lonelier. To seek peace for its own sake is stupidity when justice hangs in the balance, yet I was compelled both by other people and my own insecurity to let all this go in order to bring some much needed peace to our collective Christian life. Certainly it would have saved me some squabbles with my father, who already doesn't like our conversations; it would have saved me some tough emotions at church; and it would have kept my friendships slightly more stable. This is why I cannot answer the question, "Was it worth it?" I may have lost more than I thought.

In order to help elect a President, I had to rub sandpaper on my friends and family. The words weighing on my heart right now are Christ's:

"For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul?"

Surely government is part of the world, and I believe we have gained something great; I know that my family and friends are not my soul, but in straining our relationship I believe I have lost something of considerable greatness.

Let me put it another way: Barack Obama won. I'm confident that the American people won, too. I'm just not sure that I won anything.