As the Wing Nut Turns

I have to admit, I am fascinated intellectually by the right wing demagogues and their pied piper puppets who spin fantastical and fantasy laden conspiracy theories, amongst them anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, of hatred which hurt and demonise others. And, of course, when you return the favour, they whinge and whine and boo hoo hoo about the conspiracy theories spun against them in satirical and parodic form and how they are hurting someone they care about. There are several words that describe such people, hypocrite, in particular, comes to mind. So does wink wink nudge nudge, pot, kettle, black, goose, gander, glass houses, and self proclaimed Christian.

Hypocrisy is not the only surreal thing that is fascinating about the right. So is, in a weird sort of world turned upside down kind of way, the moronic Jack Attacks of the devotees of the Cult of the Orange One. Especially interesting is the fact that many of the devotees of the Orange One can no longer really see because their minds have been colonised by an anti-historical and anti-empirical ideology as a result of demagogic socialisation. Many of them, for instance, can no longer comprehend the historical and empirical reality of who controls the governments of the core nation world including that of the United States. To wit: the president of the US is a narcissistic and delusional failed businessman who has declared bankruptcy at least five times, while Mnuchin, one of the few adults in the Trump romper room, is a former investment banker. Those who run the government, in other words, are capitalists of the neoliberal sort until, of course, a crisis hits and they become born again Keyensians like Bush and Trump. So, the very thing the ditto heads are dittoing on about, government, is controlled by the clique and cabal they claim to adore, capitalists.

And the wing nut keeps turning...

The Books of My Life: The Cranes are Flying

As I have noted previously in these blogs, one of my hobbies and one of my scholarly interests has long involved Russia and the Soviet Union and particularly Russian and Soviet culture, literature, and film.  Given this I have, over the course of my sixty plus year life, read a lot of Russian and Soviet literature and seen a lot of Soviet films and television programmes. One of my favourite Soviet films and probably my favourite World War Two or Great Patriotic War film in general, is the award winning 1957 film The Cranes are Flying directed by Mikhail Kalatozov and filmed by Sergey Urusevsky.

The Cranes are Flying, written by Russian and Soviet film studies scholar Josephine Woll (London: Tauris, Kinofiles, 2003) argues, not surprisingly, that the broader context of The Cranes are Flying, is the Thaw, that period that began with the death of Yosef Stalin and Nikita Khrushchev's famous speech criticisng Stalin at the twentieth Congress of the Communist Party in February of 1956. As Woll notes the ebbs and flows of the Thaw allowed Soviet artists a greater degree of artistic freedom relative to the Stalin era of Soviet and Russian history and it was that greater degree of artistic freedom that allowed Kalatozov and Urusevsky the freedom to tale the tell of tale of a flawed heroine in a cinematographic language that, in part, went back to the early days of Soviet cinema and which foreshadowed some of the innovative cinematic techniques of the French nouvelle vague.

In her brief monograph Woll follows a strategy that underlies the Tauris series Kinofiles in general. Woll explores the contexts, writing, production, reception, and influence of The Cranes are Flying, a strategy that makes Woll's monograph often seem like one of those film by numbers Hollywood genre films or television programmes. That said, if you are interested in poetic cinema, Soviet film, Soviet history, and the Thaw, I recommend this monograph.

Self-Love and Death in the Kingdom of Drumpf...

"And as it was prophesied, narcissistic morons who cared more about abstract and ahistorical fantasies than their fellow man came upon the land like a plague of demonic locusts in the time of the coronavirus. Led by the Clown Prince of Narcissists they huffed and puffed and whinged and whined and rent their bright orange garments and proclaimed in one voice the ravings of their deranged messiah".
The Book of Moronic 10:32

Trump was warned about the coming coronavirus pandemic in Janaury. If he had initiated the Defense Production Act at that point, then US industry could have stepped up the production of masks and ventilators throughout February and saved god knows how many lives in the process. But no, mad King Drumpf proclaimed the pandemic a "hoax" and than "a flu" and then repeatedly proclaimed that he was a genius to whoever would listen while people were dying in Asia and Europe, rather than prepare the US for what was clearly, by that time, a deadly pandemic. There is no doubt that mad Konig Donald will go down in history as exactly what he is, a narcissistic, self-satisfied, incompetent, and Christian prosperity gospel elitist who is doing to the country what he did to himself on several occasions, bankrupting it, particularly on a moral and humane level.

Now, Trump, who, as self centred narcissists always do, is finding fault with everyone but himself and is looking, as "heretic" hunting demagogues always do, for a scapegoat or scapegoats to blame so that he can, at least psychologically and demagogically, wash the blood of Americans from his blood stained hands like a modern day Pontius Pilate. Trump is trying to put the blame on Democrats for fomenting a fake pandemic to bring the economy down and him in the process (the Jews are poisoning wells and are out to get me gambit) or blaming the World Health Organisation for not doing what he didn't do (and which wouldn't have really helped anyway by that time). But then Trump is a textbook case of a mentally disturbed egomaniacal macchiavelian.

I, for one, have no interest in living in a kingdom run by yet another in a long line of mad Bavarian "monarchical" nutjobs. I think it is time for those of us who do not wish to live in Trump's kingdom of banality and insanity to seek out an alternative. We should probably do it before Trump kills us all.

Better World Books Sucks the Big One...

And now a little bit of news from the strange world of book buying: I recently purchased two books from Better World Books, a book on the history of Soviet music and Alexei Tolstoy's retelling of the Pinnochio tale. I enquired whether the books were ex-library. The response noted that the description said they weren't. A few days later, the Schwarz book on the history of Soviet music arrived and guess what, yup, it turned out to be ex-lib. But wait, the story of the Tolstoy book is even better. It was pictured as the English translation of the book and titled as the English translation of the book but it turned out to be the German language version of the book. Since I don't live in Munchen...Anyway, you have been warned, never buy from the incompetent bookseller known as Better World Books. They are flim flam capitalist hacks in a world of flim flam capitalist hacks. And now I am off to spend an hour dealing with THEIR incompentence without pay.

Living Through Another Cult of Personality...

Recently, I have been reading Josephine Woll's monograph on the Soviet WWII film, The Cranes are Flying, probably my favourite World War II film of all time. Woll (The Cranes Are Flying, London: Tauris, Kinofiles Film Companion series, 2003) has an interesting discussion about how Cranes, a film released in 1957 during the Thaw in the wake of Stalin's death, differed, Woll argues, from WWII films of the Stalin era.

As I was reading Woll's discussion about Stalin and Stalin era WWII films it was hard not to draw parallels to Donald Trump, the current president of the United States. As Stalin's blunders in the early years of the Great Patriotic War were rewritten in such a way as to turn them into brilliant strategy, so Trump's blunders pertaining to the coronavirus pandemic are being rewritten to turn them into brilliant strategy.

Just as Stalin proclaimed, before, during, and after the Great Patriotic War, that fifth columnists were trying to destroy the USSR, so Trump and his devotees and toadies maintained initially that the coronavirus was a fabricated fifth columnist plot by the Democrat Party plot to bring down their Great Leader. Later, when it became clear even to Trump, his devotees, and his toadies that the coronavirus was real and really dangerous, the lack of preparation for the coming pandemic was blamed on Democrat attempts to impeach Trump during the months when the coronavirus was rearing its ugly head in Wuhan China. Needless to see these fabrications are worthy of Stalin (and American McCarthyites) and the role his devotees and toadies played in rewriting Soviet history during the Stalin era.

Just as there was a cult of personality around Stalin, there was and is a cult of personality around Trump. In the Stalinist cult of personality Stalin was proclaimed the all-knowing, all-brilliant, and all perfect leader of the USSR and brilliant strategist in the Great Patriotic War against the fascist enemy. In the Cult of the Orange One, Trump, Trump is treated as the perfect, all wise, all knowing master of every negotiation and every strategy. The portrayals and depictions of Stalin and Trump and the devotion some showed and show to their totem-messiah-gods is clear evidence that they were and are at the heart of cults or new religious movements dedicated to them. These cults bring with them all of the pluses and minuses of cults or new religious movements.

Finally, Stalin was a flim flam man who distrusted science and so is Trump, both engaged and engage in periodic purges, and both, strikingly, had and have blood on their hands. Now that is what I call a legacy.

The Books of My Life: The Psychology of Joss Whedon

As the study of popular culture, popular film, and popular television became more and more prominent in the late 20th century a species of books also became more prominent in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, books exploring the relationship between academic subjects and popular culture, popular film, and popular television. In recent years we have seen, for instance, books on Star Trek and physics, the X-Files and science, and Buffy and philosophy, to note just a few. Joy Davidson's edited collection, The Psychology of Joss Whedon: An Unauthorized Exploration of Buffy, Angel, and Firefly (Dallas: Benbella, Psychology of Popular Culture series, 2007) takes readers into the realm of the biology--neuroscience--and the social science of Joss Whedon's television shows Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, and Firefly.

 In her introduction to the collection Davidson argues that Whedon's television shows show us the human condition in its most glorious and in its most depraved forms. Whedon's teleision shows, Davidson maintains, explore the remotest corners of human emotions, the corners of human capriciousness, and the corners of human morality, and interrogate the meanings of human existence all the while reflecting all of these back at us, the viewers. In Davidson's collection essays by a variety of psychologists coming from a variety of different perspectives apply evolutionary psychology, terror management psychology, existential psychology, feminist psychology, personality disorder psychology, therapeutic psychology, and neuroscience to the Buffyverse, Angelverse, and Firefly verse.

The Psychology of Joss Whedon, like many other books in the television and genre, feels like a hybrid mashup thanks to its formulaic here is the psychology and here is how psychology applies to Buffy, Angel, and Firefly. This paint a television show by its what we are comparing it to or contexting it within numbers approach doesn't always make for easy reading. And while the essays do make a somewhat compelling case for the proposition that, in this instance, psychology, can profitably be applied to popular television shows like Buffy, Angel, and Firefly, so can (and have) almost any academic discipline making one wonder, given the general avoidance in the essays of historical and archival work, whether the television shows are being fitted into little psychology boxes rather than the other way around. This doesn't mean that I wasn't enlightened and that I did not enjoy several of the essays, in the Davidson collection. Editor Davidson's essay on Angel and Darla, for instance, was very enlightening and very well argued.