The Books of My Life: The Beiderbecke Affair

For many contemporary critics and historians of post-World War II British television Alan Plater belongs in the pantheon of television writers along with Dennis Potter, Alan Bennett, Alan Clarke, Andrew Davies, Lynda la Plante, John Clesse and a few others. Plater, who also wrote for film, radio, the book trade, and the stage, began writing for television in the 1960s. He is remembered for writing several plays for both the BBC and ITV,  for writing several episodes of the groundbreaking Z-Cars (BBC, 1962-1978), for his adaptation of Olivia Manning's Fortunes of War (BBC, 1987), for his superb adaptation of Chris Mullin's A Very British Coup (Channel 4, 1988), for writing several episodes of Midsummer Mysteries (ITV, 1997-), and for writing several episodes of the wonderful Lewis (ITV, 2006-2015), one of my favourite TV programmes.

One of Plater's best known and most beloved works for television was his The Beiderbecke Affair (Yorkshire Television/ITV, 1985), a reworking, of sorts, of his ITV serial Get Lost (ITV, 1981). As William Gallagher notes in his solid monograph The Beiderbecke Affair (London: BFI, BFI TV Classics series, 2012), the plot, what there is of it--Plater as Gallagher tells us was more a character man than a plot man--of both Get Lost and The Beiderbecke Affair centres on two schoolteachers, in the case of The Beiderbecke Affair schoolteachers at the aptly named San Quentin High School in Leeds, Trevor Chaplin (James Bollan) and Jill Swinburne (Barbara Flynn) along with several other eccentric characters who find themselves trying to solve two related mysteries, why did Trevor not get the Beiderbecke albums he ordered from a catalogue mail order service raising money for the Cubs and why is someone trying to pull the plug on this community catalogue mail order service?

Gallagher, drawing on script analysis, interviews with Plater, Bollan, director David Reynolds, Yorkshire TV's David Cunliffe and Paul Fox, title sequencer Diana Dunn, and Frank Ricotti, composer of the memorable Bix Beiderbecke like jazz soundtrack--Plater is a devoted lover of jazz-- explores, in workmanlike if unspectacular paint by the topical numbers fashion typical of much of the writing on film and television these days, the history, writing, plot, acting, and mise-en-scene of the The Beiderbecke Affair. For at least some, Gallagher's lack of exploration of the broader sociological contexts of The Beiderbecke Affair likely makes it of limited interest to those academics interested in the broader contexts of television shows and the mass media in general. Additionally,  Gallagher provides only limited exploration of the two sequels to The Beiderbecke Affair, The Beiderbecke Tapes (Yorkshire Television/ITV, 1987) and The Beiderbecke Connection (Yorkshire Television/ITV, 1988). Finally, one can only wonder why the BFI and Palgrave Macmillan decided to put a scene from The Beiderbecke Connection on the cover of a book about The Beiderbecke Affair.

Recommended for those interested in British television. As for the show, The Beiderbecke Affair, which is one of those wonderfully eccentric and whimsical British dramedies with an emphasis on character, is well worth watching.

"She's Family": Musings on Mormonism and Twilight

For years I have been interested in sociology, Mormonism, and film and television. It was impossible for me not to think of all three and the interaction between all three as I watched the five films that make up The Twilight Saga: Twilight (2008), New Moon (2009), Eclipse (2010), Breaking Dawn Part One (2011), and Breaking Dawn, Part Two (2012).

Sociologically and ethnographically film, like the mass media in general, is a secondary socialiser. It teaches us,  in the broad sense of the term, along with other secondary socialisers like schools, the government, religious institutions, peer groups, and primary socialisers like our families, who we are, how we should behave, what we should believe, and how we should see and interpret the world we live in, for example. Without socialisation we would all be ferals.

It is well known that the author of the four Twilight books--Twilight (2005), New Moon (2006), Eclipse (2007), and Breaking Dawn (2008)--Stephanie Meyer, is a descent Saint, a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a Mormon. Given this, and given that other Mormon writers like Orson Scott Card embed Mormon ideas and ideals in their novels and short stories, it has to be asked whether one can discern Mormon ideals and ideals in The Twilight Saga. My answer to this query is an unequivocal yes. The Twilight Saga is not only the product of Western romantic ideologies, vampire traditions, and the vamps meet the superpower comic book tradition, but also of Mormon ideologies which are themselves the product largely of Western Victorianism.

Mormonism is a patriarchal religion. Only those who are male can hold the priesthood in the church and only priesthood holders can be bishops, stake presidents, and general authorities, the highest authorities in the church. Like the Mormon Church, The Twilight Saga is grounded in patriarchal notions. The head of the Cullen clan, Carlisle, is a male. The head of the Volturi, Aro, is a male. Edward, particularly In the first two films of the Saga, often tells Bella what to do and she usually does as he asks.

Edward, as The Twilight Saga tells us again and again, is Bella's protector. When Edward absents himself in New Moon because he fears what will happen to Bella if he doesn't, Bella does little, after Edward leaves, but pine for her one true and forever love, Edward, and put herself in dangerous situations so she can see him. Bella rarely talks of anything other than love though she does seem to find a not quite replacement love in Jacob for Edward until Edward returns. She never even, unlike one of her friends, as a deleted scene from Eclipse shows, talks about going to college. Love and marriage (and eventually becoming a vampire) seem to be the only things on Bella's mind, something I am sure The Twilight Saga's massive tween female audience eats up.

Things, of course, do change after Bella becomes a vampire, sired by Edward in Breaking Dawn, Part Two. Choice, of course, is at the heart of Mormon notions of eternal progression from pre-existence to the return to existence beyond the veil and Bella chooses to "convert" to vampirism much as one might convert to Mormonism. As a result Bella becomes as strong, actually stronger, than other vamps, because she is a new born and new borns, as the series mythology tells us, are initially stronger than the old ones after she is resurrected thanks to Edward's siring. Bella also becomes, after "converting", someone who has special powers. In Bella's case she is a protector. Her protector abilities, however, arguably have a distinctly maternalistic flavour making Bella's protector role akin to the maternalistic roles women played in the American reform movements of the 19th and 20th centuries, maternalistic roles tied tightly to the roles mothers were supposed to play in the Victorian cult of domesticity, mothers as protectors of family and children.

Mormonism preaches the virtues of celibacy. Mormons are urged by the patriarchal leaders of the church to remain virgins until they are married. Those who attend the Mormon university Brigham Young University, must, if they are not married, covenant to remain virgins until they marry. Should they err they can even be expelled from BYU. The Twilight Saga also preaches the virtues of celibacy and chastity. Edward and Bella remain virgins until after they are married in Breaking Dawn, Part One.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints preaches the joys of marriage. Saints are urged, by the male powers in the church, to marry. In The Twilight Saga Carlisle and Esme are married. Emmett and Rosalie are married. Jasper and Alice are married. Edward and Bella marry in the course of the Saga.

Once married the powers that be in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints urges its married members to follow the first commandment, "be fruitful and multiply". Significant numbers of those who come to BYU, for instance, get married while they are there and began to fruitfully multiply. In The Twilight Saga the question of whether vampires can have children is an open one. Edward and Bella have their "miracle child", as Renesme is called, before Bella is turned in Breaking Dawn, Part One.

Mormonism preaches that families are eternal. Mormons believe that families can, if their members follow the plan of salvation, eternal progression, remain together not only in this life but in life after death, life beyond the veil, where they can become "as gods". In The Twilight Saga the Cullen clan, the Cullen family that Bella becomes a part of, are a family of "immortals". The Volturi are a family. Edward and Bella tell us several times that their love for each other is eternal. The loyalty of the Cullen's to each other also seems to be eternal.

Nessie, the nickname Jacob, Bella's Native American werewolf friend and protector and protector of Nessie, gives Renesme, is at the heart, in many ways, in the (perhaps) final instalment of The Twilight Saga, Breaking Dawn: Part Two. Nessie, the "miracle child", is half-human and half-vampire--we learn in the final moments that there is, at least, one other, a Brasilian indigenous who is half-vamp and half-human--is a kind of messianic figure in the final instalment of The Twilight Saga. It is she others come to have faith in.

The set up for the end battle in Breaking Dawn, Part Two, to which Nessie is central since she is who the two sides are fighting over, reminded me very much of the cycles of heresy and faithfulness that dominate the narrative of the "Book of Mormon" and particularly the final battle between the faithless and the faithful in the "Book of Mormon", a battle which ends in a kind of apocalypse but with measure of hope intact, the hope that the story of the faithful in the New World will become known thanks to the restoration of the one true gospel brought about by he who who Mormons believe to be god's prophet, Joseph Smith. In The Twilight Saga the apocalypse is avoided. Both possible danger and hope permeate the ending, however. Hope, is there in the form of Nessie while danger exists in the form of Aro's and the Volturi's obsession with power.

I can't say that after watching all of The Twilight Saga I am a fan of it either aesthetically or intellectually. As someone who greatly appreciated Buffy the Vampire Slayer, a show that was at the centre of the aesthetic television revolution of the 1990s and 2000s, Buffy, to me, is a far more interesting adaptation and variation on the vampire myth and much more. Buffy showed us a world that was far more complex and far less simplistic than The Twilight Saga. I appreciated Buffy's tragic,  sometimes farcical, and heroic existentialist realism at the time. I still do. It really is hard to live in this insane world.

The Books of My Life: Bleak House

Christine Geraghty's monograph Bleak House (London: BFI and Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, BFI TV Classics, 2012) nicely interweaves historical analysis, genre analysis, narrative analysis, mise-en-scène analysis,  and technological analysis, in its exploration of BBC One's critically acclaimed 2005 adaptation of Charles Dickens's novel, Bleak House.

Geraghty puts the 2005 BBC adaptation of Bleak House into historical context exploring the history of British television adaptations of classic novels including adaptations of Dickens novels and other adaptations of Bleak House. She puts Bleak House in economic and cultural contexts arguing that the 2005 adaptation must be seen as part of the BBC's attempt to broaden the audience for adaptations of classic novels through its use of narrative strategies, specifically its mix of soap with its character structures, character development strategies, and cliffhanger strategies, through its mixing of the bildungsroman and the mystery,  and through its use of new visual strategies, specifically its use of HD cameras, its framing strategies, its camera angle strategies, its almost documentary like quality, and its quick pace, She explores the cultural contexts of Bleak House by focusing on ithe mise-en-scène of Bleak House and its setting, décor, and visual strategies, strategies used, she argues, to underline character traits or to provide secret or hidden information about characters, character relationships, and locational relationships. All of these economic and cultural strategies combined, argues Geraghty, is what puts the classic in the BBC's 2005 adaptation of Bleak House. I am, by the way, not so sure that Bleak House is the classic Geraghty argues it is. It suspect that it takes both time and distance, before we can say what is and what is not not a "classic". And then there is the issue of the social and cultural construction of artistic canons...

I highly recommend Geraghty's monograph to anyone interested in television criticism broadly and adaptations of classic novels for TV more specifically. Though I wished for more mise-en-scène analysis in the final chapter, as opposed to a review of critical responses to Bleak House's mise-en-scène, Geraghty's book provides, in so many ways, a model of how contemporary television criticism should be done.

The Books of My Life: The Truth of Buffy

The anthology The Truth of Buffy: Essays on Fiction Illuminating Reality edited by Emily Dial-Driver, Sally Emmons-Featherston, Jim Ford, and Carolyn Anne Taylor, (Jefferson, N.C., McFarland, 2008) explores, via approaches that have become commonplace in the landscape of contemporary film and television studies, the American television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer (WB, 1997-2001, UPN, 2001-2002), specifically Buffy's narrative forms, themes, character arcs, and mise-en-scène, from a number of disciplinary and interdisciplinary vantage points including psychology, sociology/ethnography, philosophy, English Studies, and Cultural Studies. The intent of the collection, which each essay generally succeeds in meeting, is to, as the subtitle of the book notes, relate Buffy the Vampire Slayer to real life.

The problem I had with many of the essays in The Truth of Buffy is the same problem I have with many contemporary approaches in film and television studies, methodological. Many of the essays in The Truth of Buffy seem to me, to take what is ultimately an etic or outsider approach to a TV show. Many of the essays in the book, in other words, apply elements of disciplinary practise, the meaning based approach of psychologist and psychoanalyst Victor Frankl, for instance, to help readers understand the meaning structure of BtVS, with, however, only a limited attention to the emic dimensions of, in this case, a televisual text,  Many of the essays in the collection focus, in other words, on the text without exploring how that text was constructed or manufactured and the real economic, political, cultural, demographic, and geographic contexts that surround and at least partly give meaning to a text.

What I have always liked about the Movie approach to film and television analysis (see Deborah Thomas's superb "Reading Buffy" in Close-Up 01, Wallflower, 2006, pp. 167-244) is that it is grounded first and foremost in exegesis. The Movie method, as outlined, for example, in Victor Perkins's Film as Film: Understanding and Judging Movies (Boston: Da Capo, 1972) starts with an exploration of the text's narrative, plot, characters, mise-en-scène, and editing strategies, and puts, admittedly more in theory than in practise, the text within its broader contexts, before it moves on to interpretation (hermeneutics) and evaluation (homiletics).

Many of the essays in The Truth of Buffy, on the other hand, and much contemporary film and television criticism in general, starts with evaluation or homiletics, generally an evaluation grounded in ideological coherence, the fit of the text with the analysts ideological predilections and evaluates the text on the basis of the fit of the text with the evaluators ideology, on the other hand. Much contemporary film and television criticism, in other words, is deductive and etic rather than, as with the Movie approach, inductive and, at least initially, emic. This means that, as in Sally Emmons-Featheston's essay on the Buffy episode "Pangs" (4:8) in The Truth of Buffy, for instance, analysis is not grounded in an exploration of what the writer of this episode, Jane Espenson, and the director of the episode, Michael Lange, thought they were doing when they, along with others, made this episode of Buffy, leaving, in the process, what sociologist and social theorist Gene Halton calls a rather large donut hole at the heart of such criticism since it is individuals embedded in real economic, political, cultural, demographic, and geographical contexts who make films and TV shows and this is important when analysisng and evaluating a television show, a film, or a work of fiction. It also means, since ideological or a lack of ideological coherence is the standard for evaluation, that things like the tone of a television show or film can and sometimes is missed. The tone of "Pangs", for instance, is quite clearly parodic, something I don't think that Emmons-Featherson fully got.

For me, then, a valid criticism must start with sound exegesis, an analysis of what those who make or made a TV show or a film were trying to do or what they thought they were trying to do, and the broader economic, political, cultural, demographic, and geographic contexts in which a TV show or film is made. Only then can an analyst move on to hermeneutics, the interpretation of a text, in this case Buffy's narrative forms, plots, themes, character arcs, mise-en-scène, tone, and editing strategies. And only then can the analyst morph into a critic and evaluate (homiletics) a text, for those who approach the text via the classic Movie methodology, the credibility and coherence of the text. Finally I should note that real audience quantitative and qualitative ethnographic analysis is necessary if an analyst wants to explore how real people read real texts.  Assumptions about how people read texts, as the case with much of the crystal ball approach to textual analysis and evaluation, simply won't cut it.

Interesting book particularly Emily Dial-Driver's and Jesse Stallings's "Texting Buffy: Allusions of Many Kinds", which nicely attempts to provide a quantitative basis for analysing allusions in Buffy, and Juliet Evusa's "Witchy Women: Witchcraft in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Contemporary African Culture", which takes a comparative ethnological and ethnographic approach, to note just two of the interesting and enlightening essays in this book. If you are interested in Buffy and television criticism, check it out.

The Books of My Life: John Huston

Stuart Kaminsky's John Huston: Maker of Magic (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1978) is a solid introduction to the films of John Huston from 1941s The Maltese Falcon to 1975s The Man Who Would Be King. Throughout the book Kaminsky briefly summarises each Huston films up to 1975, explores how each film reflects the themes at the heart of Huston's work, and explores Huston's visual style.

Kaminsky argues that at the heart of Huston's films is a macho world of ill fated groups on a quest (1941s The Maltese Falcon, 1949s We Are Strangers 1951s The Red Badge of Courage, 1956s Moby Dick, 1958s Roots of Heaven, and 1960s The Misfits, to  choose a few of may examples). Huston's characters, Kaminsky suggests are potential losers who inhabit a hostile world be they ignorant, pathetic, arrogant, intelligent, lacking self-understanding, or having self-understanding. His heroes are generally men who sacrifice everything for self-understanding, independence, and, especially for those who retain their dignity in the face of defeat or disaster. In terms of mise-en-scène Kaminsky notes Huston's penchant for putting characters in the foreground of his fame. Finally, Kaminsky notes Huston's experiments with colour in films like Moulon Rouge (1953), with its Toulouse-Laurtrec like colours, Moby Dick (1956) with its 19th century whaling print effect, A Walk With Love and Death (1969), with its mediaeval tapestry like textures, and Fat City (1972), with its faded colours a reflection of its world of faded fighters.

Some might be concerned with the fact that Kaminsky's book was published before Huston directed eight further films including Wise Blood (1979) and Under the Volcano (1984). The themes Kaminsky finds in Huston's films up to 1975, however, seem to be present in Huston's later films as well. Others might be taken a bit aback by the sometime chattiness of Kaminsky's use of interview and memoir material to flesh out his analysis of Huston's films and his suggestion that at least some of Huston's films are grounded in Huston's biography. Recommended.

The Books of My Life: Sidney Lumet

Jay Boyer's Sidney Lumet (New York: Twayne, Twayne Filmmakers Series, 1993) explores twelve of the thirty-eight Lumet's films made between 1957 and 1992: Twelve Angry Men, Long Day's Journey into Night, The Pawnbroaker, Murder on the Orient Express, Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon, Network, Prince of the City, Daniel, Running on Empty, Q and A, and A Stranger Amongst Us. Lumet would go on to make eight more films, one for television, between 1993 and 2007.

Lumet, as Boyer notes, has often been seen by critics as someone who serves the material he is given rather than as someone who authors the films he makes. Boyer's book takes issue with that perspective, however. Boyer argues that the twelve films he centred his analysis on have a thematic core. Lumet's protagonists become, Boyer argues, increasingly isolated from the group over the course of Lumet's films and realise the complexity and corruption of the world around them in the process. Lumet's motifs and mise-en-scène serve, Boyer argues, this theme. Water expresses a rite of passage, a passage  from innocence to a realisation that the world around them is complex and corrupt for Lumet's protagonists. Lumet's use of linear planes with their walls, ceilings, and other impediments in the spectators field of vision entangle the protagonist in a web of conflicting circumstances that force his protagonists to make a choice. The focal length of lenses Lumet uses expands and compresses cinematic space. Lumet's realist and more sytlised style orders and disorders Lumet's cinematic frame.

Boyer's book is a superb analysis of the work of Sidney Lumet. It successfully and oftentimes brilliantly integrates theme, mise-en-scène, and editing. I highly recommend Boyer's book to anyone interested in film theory, film method, auteurism, integrated film analysis, and Sidney Lumet. It was, for me, an example of how a book on a director should be written.

The Books of My Life: Steven Spielberg

Donald Mott's and Cheryl McAllister Saunders's Steven Spielberg (New York: Twayne, Twayne Filmmakers Series, 1986) is a solid workmanlike introduction to the film and TV work of director and producer Steven Spielberg. Mott and Saunders explore the production, structure, and reception of almost all of Spielberg's films and TV work from Duel in 1971, to, very briefly since it had just been released, The Color Purple in 1985.

Mott and Saunders note the theme at the heart of Spielberg's work until 1985, the theme of ordinary people facing extraordinary circumstances. They note Spielberg's preference for action over character development, his penchant for heavily back-lit lighting that is slightly diffused, his preference for suburban locations, and his influences. Mott and Saunders note the influence of other films and filmmakers in Spielberg's work, something that is not surprising given that Spielberg is one of the movie brats, as Michael Pye and Lynda Miles (The Movie Brats, New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1979 ) call the baby boomers brought up on a steady diet of movie watching who became filmmakers in the late seventies and early eighties. These influences, in Spielberg's case, include the wish upon a star Disney film, the Capracorn of Frank Capra, the films of John Ford, Hitchcockian suspense, and the drama and comedy of Billy Wilder with its dark edges. These dark edges may be slighter in Spielberg's case but they are there, as Mott and Saunders note, in Spielberg's portrayal of the dark governmental officials in Jaws (1975), Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), and E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982).

Some might take umbrage at some of Mott's and Saunders's claims. Both argue, for example, that at least some of the films Spielberg produced are Spielberg films, Poltergeist (1982), for example, which was directed by Tobe Hooper, a film that really brings the darkness to, what seems like the same suburb in which E.T. was set.

Mott's and Saunders's Steven Spielberg is a good if unspectacular introduction to the work of Steven Spielberg. Like all books published while a director is still active it is, of course, limited by the fact that Spielberg has directed 23 films since The Color Purple many of them, like that film, of a more adult nature than the child in all of us films he largely made before 1985. An exploration of these further 23 films may, of course, neccesitate a revision of Spielberg's themes and mise-en-scène.

The Books of My Life: Power and the Idealists

On one level Paul Berman's Power and the Idealists or, the Passion Of Joshka Fischer (Brooklyn: Soft Skull Press, 2005) is an apologia and a historical analysis of how a group of French and German intellectuals, including Joshka Fischer, Daniel Cohn-Bendit, Bernard Kouchner, and Andre Glucksmann, who Berman calls the 68ers, exchanged the anti-imperialism and anti-American manicheanism of their youth for a liberal interventionism that looked to America for help in defending and saving those whose human rights were being violated all across the post-Cold War world. On another level Berman's book is a polemic for this type of liberal interventionism to protect human rights.

There were, for me, a number of problems with Berman's analysis and his polemics and apologetics. On the historical and apologetics level Berman, though he comes close to doing this at times, fails to explore precedents for the liberal interventionism for the 1990s and after. Reinhold Niebuhr, for example, was, like the 68ers Berman explores, a radical in the 1930s who became a liberal interventionist in the years that led to World War II. Niebuhr's one has to chose the best of bad options, by the way, had, thanks to its manicheanisation by his more naïve followers, an immense impact on official American policy during the Cold War, another thing that parallels the trajectory of the 68ers.

Berman plays, historically speaking, fast and loose with the concept "totalitarian". Berman seems to divide the world up into totalitarian and non-totalitarian regimes and urges intervention when the former engage in the mass violation of human rights. "Totalitarian", however, is simply the modern and perhaps postmodern variant of autocracy or authoritarianism. Berman seems to argue that "totalitarian" regimes are fundamentally different from autocratic and authoritarian ones but he doesn't tell us why. Are autocracies and authoritarian regimes distinct economically, culturally, and  politically from "totalitarian ones? If not why the need for a new term?  Or is the term "totalitarian" one invented in the 20th century to scare the masses (propaganda) into submission (for a history of the term see Abbot Gleason's Totalitarianism: The Inner History of the Cold War)?

The Guardian, contrary to Berman's claim, is not, and I assume he is speaking of the British newspaper here, is not a marxist or communist rag. The Guardian is one of the great newspapers of the world.

Finally, Berman, though he mentions the Quakers at one point, elides the role Quakers have played in the pursuit of an internationalist human rights over the years. Quakers played major roles in the prisoner rights movement, the Indian rights movement, the women's rights movement, the anti-slavery movement, the saving refugees movement, and the anti-war movement. Quakers played such an important role in the pursuit of global human rights that the Friends Service Council and the American Friends Service Committee won the Nobel Prize in 1947, itself an acknowledgement of the roles Quakers played in the human rights movement.  It is likely, by the way, that Quaker pacifism is one of the reasons for Berman's ignoring of the Quaker historical precedent. Berman, you see, like the 68ers he turns into heroes, sees war as a means to protect human rights while most Quakers did not and do not.

Speaking of heroes, heroes and villains are at the heart of Berman's manichean apologetics and polemics. Berman's heroes are 68ers like Joshka Fischer, Daniel Cohn-Bendit, Bernard Kouchner, and Andre Glucksmann who, according to Berman, were nutted by reality, particularly the anti-Semitism of those terrorising Israel and Jews that many on the left, because of their anti-imperialist mentality, allied with, and, as a result, whether in government service or as founders or supporters of international human rights organisations, became involved in and supported international intervention in support of human rights whether in Vietnam, the former Jugoslavija, or, more problematically for the 68ers, Iraq. The villains in Berman's not fully interconnected essays are factions within the left, Berman, by the way, is more historically and empirically accurate when he notes that the left has factions than the right and extreme right.

It is this manicheanism, a manicheanism that seems to trap Berman into a corner in which reflexivity is unnecessary and unwanted, that is a key factor in the problems at the heart of Berman's book. For instance, Berman seems to assert that war in general and war in the age of indiscriminate total war is a viable last option to protect human rights. The obvious problem with this argument, however, is that war is and always has been indiscriminate in its victims and hence is itself something that violates human rights. How many civilians were killed in the "good war" of the 1940s?  In the end, the strong pacifist position that argues that something that violates human rights cannot be a weapon for the protection of human rights seems a stronger and more empirically grounded perspective. I suppose one could counter with Niebuhr's argument that sometimes one has to choose between less bad and more bad alternatives, but if one is going to make this argument one has to recognise that war is something that violates human rights and live with it. Berman, however, doesn't seem to have the sense of irony and tragedy, Niebuhr had.

Nor does Berman explore the contradictions inherent in the notion that the US or any other nation can and should be an instrument of pursuing human rights. The US, like the USSR and every other great power present and past, is a bureaucratic oligarchy (see Max Weber and Robert Michels on bureaucracies and inequalities of power and authority) that at both home and abroad has been and will continue to be a violator of human rights. How can the great powers with their economic, political, cultural, and geographic imperialisms be the protectors of human rights around the globe? Again, I suppose one could follow the Niebuhr strategy and argue that we must chose the least worst of bad alternatives but again one has to be conscious, as was Niebuhr who remained critical of oligarchy, capitalism, and imperialism all of his life, that one is choosing the least worst of alternatives and live with it. Berman once again seems to want to have his cake and eat it too.

In the end Berman's book was far too limitedly historical and far too polemical and manichean for my taste. In many ways I found Berman's book, because it engaged in far too much ahistorical polemics and apologetics, that which he ironically rails against in the book, utopian. So reader beware, while Berman's book offers an interesting exploration of the political and ideological "evolution" of the 68ers, it does so in a far too limitedly historical way and in a far too manichean and utopian way for my taste. The more things change?