The politics of the West Wing

I feel like being trivial today so here we go: the West Wing. Let me start by saying that I really enjoy the show. It’s well written, has rhythm and is generally well acted. Now, let me demolish it.

The boys' club: There is an underlying patronising attitude to the female characters, which I can't stand. It would have been nice if the writers had put more effort into making these characters more authoritative and credible rather than go for the good looks, shrill voice, 'I'm just a girl' character. That’s entertainment, I suppose.
However, I believe one can still be funny and goofy while making intelligent statements, such as like spilling your tea while pontificating about Rawls, a regular occurrence for some :).
The only ones who do not succumb to this fate are C.J., the First Lady and, to a lesser extent, Donna. Had it been a bit more female-oriented they could have developed the character of Donna, have a little more clash and attraction between Donna and Josh (Mary-Louise Parker as Amy Gardner can’t pull it off). C.J. should have become Chief of Staff at the end of the fourth series with Leo elected to something. With Donna working for the First Lady, the role of the First Lady could have been expanded too. They sort got stuck with a formula and didn't attempt to develop it. Shame.

It’s the economy, stupid: not in the West Wing obviously! The President is supposed to be a Nobel Prize winner in economics (whatever!), but economics and finance are hardly ever spoken of. When they are, the approach is so superficial to the point of irrelevance. I might be biased. I tend to think that there’s an economic aspect to nearly all things, especially in politics, but isn’t there? :)

The smartest kid in the class: there’s a fundamental misunderstanding of genius as dissociated from hard work and perseverance. Luckily, Martin Sheen has gravitas, charisma and tries to be a good guy so he can pull it off.

The retro feeling: the politics of the West Wing seems firmly set in the 1980s. I don’t know much about American politics, but the screen-writers seem to be living in their own bubble and enclose their characters in the West Wing bubble. No wonder the following of the show ended up being restricted to a particular section of society. No wonder only a few bother to vote if politics is so distant.
Everything seems to be happening inside the White House with Congress only getting a mention in passing, never mind the rest of the country. Unbeknown to the authors, theories of government/governance have changed profoundly and gone beyond the State vs. Free Market dichotomy. I don’t expect Aaron Sorkin to know about Public Value Management Theory, but a better grip, even on traditional politics, wouldn’t go amiss. I would have certainly liked more on Congress, the Cabinet and state politics across the US, which is steadily gaining prominence.
The other two big issues, which we are witnessing in the American primaries now, race and gender, are treated with lack of understanding and superficiality. I can’t believe that Amy Gardner, the head of the women’s lobby (whatever!) is asked to comment on the dichotomy ‘stay-at-home mum’ vs. ‘career-girl’ and after thinking about it (yep), she comes out with ‘I don’t care who stays at home as long as it’s their choice’ type of reply. Err … how about some research? How about the fact that the US are one of very few countries were statutory parental pay is not provided? Who can actually choose? What determines choice? How about the fact that women managers have started giving up their careers? Why not taking a look elsewhere where men are starting to value fatherhood and flexible working? Is there a class divide? Is there still a culture of division between work (public sphere) and home (private sphere)? By the way, the ‘fatherhood’ mantra from the feminists was full blown in the 1990s in the States. It needs better articulation in terms of policies and rights, but it has been there a long time.
The West Wing chickens out from the big questions and the difficult issues such as immigration, unemployment, finance and economic and social inequalities. They like international crises too much and don’t manage even to grasp the issues there. What happened to the old saying ‘write something you know about’?

I still enjoyed it though (notwithstanding intense moments of irritation). What I found interesting is the attempt to convey the idea of the American dream, in the tradition of Frank Capra. At first, it feels ... well ... American! It makes you cringe and wince, but then it seeps into you and lets you see a bit more.
It’s the sincere belief in America as an idea, as a country to be built, not inherited. It’s the mentality of a settler society, which is perhaps rather alien to us. Nevertheless, we face similar dilemmas. We would like our country and ourselves to be hospitable, to do the right thing, to uphold the law and defend minorities but we are faced with a very heterogeneous society where 'values' need interpretations that go deeper.
Governments look for answers in definitions of Britishness or Europeanness (remember the Constitution preamble?), and so do religious figures (see previous posts 1 and 2), but I feel they miss the point. They look at the past not for guidance but to pin down who we are and should be. I feel very European (which includes British) in my ways, habits, political philosophy etc. but I am a human being and my values, I believe, are human values. Freedom and equality do not stop at the border and we do not have the copyrights. As a wise man once said:

"Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it whether it exists or not, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedy."

- Sir Ernest Benn

Sex, the media & personal freedom

I realised I condensed a few thoughts in a very short piece in my post Sexy, so here are a few more thoughts.

Dignity: my main objection to the perpetual portrayal of people, mostly women, as sexual objects is that people are deprived of their humanity. I’m fed up with seeing mainstream media trashing our human dignity. Our imagination and psyche are being desensitised to the humanity of those around us. It might lead one to think that it is they who are the objects, not us, however by seeing others as less than ourselves aren’t we diminishing our own humanity?
Furthermore, a negative construction of gender such as that given by many music videos and similar material affects everybody in as much as we are judged against that yardstick/model of femininity or masculinity or feel the pressure to follow those images. Ideas and images surrounding femininity have changed, of course, but the construction of gender is always there to remind us that we do not own our social body.

Liberation vs. Liberalisation: there is the trite and idiotic argument that women working in the sex industry comes from sexual 'liberation'. It’s a rather old and disingenuous argument, which has really past its sell by date. Some, of course, might feel ‘liberated’ by playing at being sexual objects or predators. However, I think it’s more a sign of liberalisation of sex rather than liberation.
It is true that there isn’t only one form of sex work and that not all sex workers ('Prada prostitutes') are victims (although they are the majority). Nevertheless, I think that, as a society, we should strive to ensure everyone’s personal freedom. This means that we should concentrate on those who work in the sex industry as a result of having been trafficked, abused or who are addicted to drugs. I think we should also make more available treatment for sex addiction.

Consumerism: leaving gender aside, the mainstream media have concentrated in reducing us to consumers driven by our appetites and basic instincts (that’s why I refer to my post on the Century of the Self). It’s quite interesting to see that actors smoke far less in films nowadays than they used to in the past. Times have moved on, so why can’t there be a portrayal of sexual relationship and 'roles' that is more positive?

Moralisers vs. sexual freedom: some object that to see stripping or half-naked women as degradation is bigotry. The argument is flawed on three accounts. Firstly, to think of lap-dancing or soft-porn music videos as separate from the sex industry is naïve, especially given the rise in sex addiction. I am not arguing for censorship but for responsibility by those who produce videos and films.
Secondly, isn’t degrading to be seen as body parts (mostly women) or as sex-driven robots (mostly men)?
I seriously doubt that, in the majority of cases, sex workers choose freely the profession. By the way, free choice is more than lack of coercion.
Thirdly, to the risk of patronising the body parts & the robots, isn’t this just the acting out of hegemonic images? (see Gramsci!) Doesn’t labelling detractors as moralisers suit the narrative of the ‘producers’ of ‘sexy’ material? Doesn’t it equate to being a product in the consumerist chain?

The media control the media: those working in the ‘media’ often shy away from taking responsibility hiding behind the usual lame excuses, such as the trend in depicting sex & violence being widespread and the public wanting it. Images of greed, egotism and objectification are widespread, but who shapes the trend?
The idea that it’s the public who want to be fed rubbish is nonsense. After all, the public got fed up with being fed junk food at McDonald’s and McDonald’s had to switch to ‘healthier options’. How about using imagination for once rather than the trite bad taste images that fill our space?

Masculinity and femininity might be in crisis (finally!), so what? Why can't we be human? :)

Sexy

I keep on coming across appalling music videos where women act or are paraded as if they were for sale. There seems to be a very fine line between what is deemed 'sexy' in a woman and the debasing display of body parts.
Men (and women) are fed an awful lot of nonsense about what a man is supposed to like and what women are supposed to be like. The driving force is supposedly sex, which is reduced to the physical act and deprived of everything I would personally define as sexy. We are constantly being told that half-naked women behaving like idiots are sexy, that men like that and find confident women intimidating. It might be the case for many, but I believe many more are simply victim of these messages. A few considerations:

What is sexy? No, I don’t find half-naked people sexy. I don’t like body parts, I like the whole person. I find people sexy when they have sense of humour and are comfortable with themselves. I like warm clear voices and sincere smiles. I think sense of humour is the basis of attraction.
Yet, we are fed an ugly narrative that deprives us of our humanity, of our imagination and personhood. If women (or men) are reduced to body parts or men (or women) to their basic sexual instincts severed from desires, imagination and mind, what are we?
Nothing to do with sex. Research shows that men who go to lap-dancing clubs, pay for sex and so on, are not simply reacting to basic sexual instincts, they are seeking power. The idea of sexy as portrayed in a million billboards, music videos and films is one that is constructed around the dynamic of power and powerlessness. A confident woman is intimidating because she is not powerless. Music videos seem to be the worst with half-naked women crawling around with no dignity. It is a rather pathetic spectacle.
Addictive images. The ‘producers’ do not respond to a need, rather they create a dependent consumer by perpetuating a view of the world based on the old-fashion power relations. They create identities based on domination and debasement. And they are not even subtle at that! It’s advertising after all, Bernays-style!
Sex addiction is on the increase, will advertisers start thinking about the health implications of the junk they produce?

...on addiction to sex, see this from the FT. Addiction seems to be dependent on genes. However the constant exposure to the same messages, the same iconography, the same narrative habituates us to viewing the world in a certain way, anaesthetises the brain and creates a need. We banned tobacco advertising and are trying to tackle junk food, why not junk sex? For the record, I'm not advocating censorship, just responsibility. After all, the media control the media!

Science, religion and the Golden Compass

This was one of those times when I wondered why I still bother going to the cinema at all. The Golden Compass is visually unimaginative, the acting is perfunctory, the script is bland and the morale utter trash.
The experience is made worse by the tendency of cinema theatres to keep the volume ridiculously high. I’m not sure whether that is done to compensate for lack of substance or to keep you awake.
The fuss about GC is in its ‘morale’, which is an unsophisticated whinge against authority. I understand the book (Philip Pullman’s Northern Lights) is supposedly critical of the Catholic Church for abusing its authority by keeping people in the dark. The film tones it down into a lacklustre opposition to authority.
When I sat in the cinema and watched the never ending nonsense, I couldn’t understand what the fuss was about. Not having read what it was meant to be about, I was interpreting the inadequate script as a dumbed down version of the creation story. Accordingly, human beings transgressed authority and, as a result, evil becomes present in the world tempting people. The ‘authority’, aiming to keep people in their childhood ignorance and innocence, capture children before temptation can lead them astray.
One could even interpret it more blandly as a metaphor for history: a successive series of conquering what is perceived as evil, be it poverty, powerlessness, injustice and captivity, regardless of the means and oppression of others.
No such luck. The Golden Compass is paranoid fear of religious authority. Perhaps someone should point out to Pullman that the Catholic Church, and most other religious ‘authorities’, have lost their authority and power long time ago. I suppose it’s easier to look into the past (about 200 years in fact) and cover one’s eyes to our 21st century’s challenges.
Even so, the script is full of mistakes, using words inappropriately and confusing concepts such as ‘freedom’ with ‘free inquiry’ and ‘free will’. These are three separate concepts bundled together in the film by sheer ignorance.
Pullman seems to argue that authority wields power over people taking their ‘free will’ away, (by which he probably means free choice instead) and impedes free inquiry, such as the pursuit of knowledge, which he identifies it with modern science.
Free will is a philosophical category; it generally means choosing between good and evil, not what you’re having for lunch! Authorities, let alone the Catholic Church, have never taken away one’s free will. They have taken away one’s freedom by imprisoning and killing, and free choice by censoring books or people.
Pullman is stuck in the past when the Catholic Church waged war against modern science. Aside from the fact that history is much more complicated than this, the Catholic Church, at least, accepts of the theory of evolution and wields very little power, if any.
Pullman’s ignorance leads him to confine free inquiry to scientific research and to call scientific knowledge ‘truth’. Oopsy daisy!
The pursuit of the truth, being transcendent, is primarily philosophical and religious and is beyond the scope of scientific inquiry which concerns itself (or should concern itself) with objective reality.
Such incompetent ‘defenders’ of scientific inquiry feel under attack (not sure why since the bio-sciences get most of research funding) and launch an anachronistic tirade against an authority that is no more. If Pullman feels so strongly about authorities deciding for the rest of us, he should look elsewhere, at the new elites wielding power over knowledge.

The Century of the Self

I watched the documentary The Century of the Self by Adam Curtis the other day. It’s fascinating, yet Adam Curtis treats human beings as those irrational beings whose minds Edward Bernays wanted to control. In summary, Bernays invented advertising by using his uncle Freud’s ideas about the unconscious. He associated products with desires and got everybody hooked on consumerism. After Nazi Germany, Bernays thought necessary, in order to maintain democracy, that the masses had to be manipulated. Satisfying their desires would have kept their irrational unconscious forces at bay. The equation: consumerism = democracy, was soon advocated by many. In the 1960s, the idea was challenged and psychotherapy was advocating the expression of the inner self. Needless to say that ‘power’ exploited this celebration of the self by tailoring advertising to the ‘Me Generation’. In the final episode, the documentary applies the theory to politics seen more as a victim of the ‘me me me’ mantra trying to give people what they wanted through spin and polls. Curtis seems to think that politics by applying psychology has stopped being about rational debate and has regressed to emotions.
It’s a long documentary so I’ll make only few comments.

1. Adam Curtis’ paranoia: there is no place for complexity and contradictions. There are the good people like Roosevelt who fought against the unrestrained capitalism of the market and the conspirators (= big business, CIA, Bernays, Anna Freud?) who want to control people’s minds, albeit to ensure the preservation of democracy. Err, businesses just wanted to sell more cars!
2. Irrational unconscious desires: only sex, money and power figure as unconscious desires. Leaving aside the definition of unconscious (vs. subconscious and so on), whatever happened to the desire for justice, love and respect? Too noble to be seen as emotions? This twisted idea that human ‘rationality’ is superior to our ‘irrationality’, i.e. feelings, is reminiscent of misogynistic Greek thought. It’s never clear what this phantom rationality is (being able to do sums?) and feels rather reductionist and materialistic.
3. Politics: Curtis seems to regret the fact that politicians have sold their souls to the devil (psychology & spin presumably) and have abandoned rational debate. Once more he implies that emotions are bad and shouldn't be listened to. Whilst I agree that emotions run the risk of turning politics into demagoguery, politics is about ideas and about how you feel about them. There’s no equation to prove ideas’ ‘objectivity’. I believe that individual rights and freedoms are paramount because I’ve always had. Politics is about ideas, symbols (NHS, schools…), identity and many other things, not about what is more practical. In politics, you’re dealing with people’s lives. The practical details can be up for discussions (mostly among civil servants), but people vote for a vision, not a manual. Emotions might be difficult to handle but this is what human beings are made of. Managing expectations and people’s emotions is what makes politics challenging and rewarding.

Adam Curtis forgot that we can choose and we do choose. That’s why businesses had to change tactics and products to make them more personal, what we want rather than what is cheaper to produce. They are ahead. Government is starting to catch up now and move to personalised services because, guess what, people are complex and are not all the same!

TV and the sleep of reason

A friend of mine sent me this recently. It says that watching TV costs you quite a bit (pay TV, games, DVDs, accessories etc.) and that if you did away with it you could save $1m over 45 years. Not sure about the maths here, but the cumulative cost of entertainment is not insignificant, although I don't believe that the best things in life are free as I love cinema, books and music. There are some costs although not necessarily borne out by the user/consumer (libraries come to mind).
When I was a child a friend of mine told me that research showed that TV made you stupid. Being gullible, hypocondriac and trusting my friend, I believed him. I still do! TV doesn't make you stupid exactly but it's passive entertainment, it doesn't get you to ask questions (generally), it provides answers. I had a recent discussion with another friend about entertainment (not sure whether he got that I was being provocative), who defended entertainment. Provocation aside, I don't like entertainment but I would not file good films and good TV under entertainment. Entertainment is the sleep of reason. It provides a false sense of security, solace and escapism. Sometimes, escapism is needed (I don't get nearly enough cosidering how stressful my life is). Yet, even escapism needs to serve a higher purpose. Dreams are not to make life better, they need to inspire one's life. A good book/film does not entertain you, it challenges you and broadens your perception.
One more time, let me recommend 'Good night and good luck'!

Sunshine - mission on the cheap

A few months ago I went to see the film Sunshine. The reviews were excellent, so much that I wonder whether I saw a different film.
Nigel Andrews from the FT: "Even watching in a preview theatre, one spends one's time being walloped by light - flash-floods of molten gold, tidal waves of searing silver - and cowering rapturously at the boom-channel crashes and vibrations." I thought it looked more like a disco.
Whilst watching it I found it incredibly irritating, boring and pure nonsense. In retrospect, I can't help finding it very funny, despite the author's real intentions.
It's the story of a crew of astronauts sent to space to re-ignite the dying sun by detonating a super nuclear bomb and sneak away in time not to be wiped out. A previous mission mysteriously failed leaving no trace of the spaceship called Icarus I. You would, at least, think of changing the name of the second one, but no, they leave superstitions aside and call it Icarus II.
The structure of the film is the usual copy & paste from Alien, Kubrick's 2001 and so on. The characters have no roundedness or depth.

The plot is superb in its absurdity.
The astronauts come across Icarus I and think it might be a good idea to de-tour and give them a hand as there seems to be life there. A little bit of not too deep discussion ensues and the option of democratically decide what to do is discounted because the decision needs to be 'informed'. That really annoyed me. The point of democracy is, or at least should be, that decisions are taken by the majority on the basis of informed debate, not by an appointed authority. The crew, instead of being able to express their opinion, reason about the problem and participate in the decision-making, prefer letting the Captain decide. However, given that hierarchy is not good enough and they are all scientists and therefore knowledge is the most important thing, the Captain delegates the decision to the far too young to be a physicist Capa (Cillian Murphy). Capa stands in his disco room asking the computer questions and finally brings back the responsum "heads or tail". The oracle of Delphi would have been clearer but there you go. So the decision is sort of ... well, we might as well go!
And there they go, in true RAC style, they change the route to pick up the hitchhikers from the broken down Icarus I.
The guy who changes the route forgets about the position of the sun and the ship gets damaged. He cries hysterically that there were many calculations to make and he made a mistake. Why does this very expensive, state of the art spaceship, with lots of bright lights, not have a sat-nav? Couldn't they just set the new destination avoiding the toll-road? No, they have to calculate things themselves and get them wrong. Alas, all those years of study come to nothing when they actually need to put notions to use.
So the ship needs some fixing and the Captain pops out to sort it out, a bit of hammering here and polishing there, it'll be like new! While he's at it he can't resist the attraction of the sun that will soon be in trajectory. From inside, the crew shout at unison to get back, but you know what is like, you're out there floating in space with the sun shining ... Captain is wiped out by the wind of the sun, which proves my point that hierarchy is too often a result of power structures than rational decision.
Then four of the crew board Icarus I, but there's a problem with the two ships attaching to each other, so they need to jump back inside Icarus II to get back. Yep! The whingy one gets the protective space gear, the brave one stays behind and the other two cover themselves in kitchen foil ready to jump. Needless to say one doesn't make it.
Several problems and deaths later, the computer tells Capa that there's an extra crew member on board. Instead of telling the remaining crew, he pops around to see who it is. He doesn't even have the time to put the kettle on and comment on the weather that he is attacked. The attacker was one of the Icarus I crew who took too much sun and, aside from a very bad sunburn, he's become a bit of a 'sun fundamentalist', preaching that if the sun is dying is the will of God and he's God-like because he's survived being sunburnt etc. He also transforms himself into the only other remaining crew member, which I assume comes with the nutrient properties of the sun.

The meaning, if there ever was one, is supposed to be around self-sacrifice to save the rest of humanity and whether their attempts are nothing but hubris against God. Needless to say the film does not really explore the theme and does not espouse any argument coherently. It rests on too many assumptions and superficial understanding of faith, science and hubris. It seems to portray the clash between the 'rational scientist' who constructs the means to re-ignite the sun and therefore ensure the continuation of life on earth and the fatalist religious fundamentalist who views the death of the sun as God's judgement of humanity. Another flood, one might say, but in the story of the flood, Noah, his family/clan and all species of animals are saved to ensure that life continues. Sunshine's interpretation of hubris seems to be the challenging of nature/God through personal self-destruction, necessary in order to save life.
The point of the story of Icarus, however, is also to build better wings, not simply not to fly. The meaning of hubris is lack of humility and placing oneself or one's belief at centre of the universe, kaleidoscope through which everything is understood. Hubris is solipsistic consciousness that shuts out doubt, that reduces the universe to object of observation et rien plus!
Most importantly, it is about endowing oneself or one's belief as ultimate legitimate authority, a point which the film totally misunderstands.
The fact that the crew dispenses with democracy and relies on hierarchical authority and the hierarchical authority delegates to the 'rational authority' is very significant. Who decides who the authority is? Why a physicist and not a mathematician or a theologian, for that matter? Underlying this decision there's a belief in authority on the basis of a specific knowledge that is valued at a moment in time. This is the problem with pop-scientists, such as Dennet and Dawkins, and with religious fundamentalists. They are guilty of hubris when declaring that science or their particular image of God is all that there is, the truth and, therefore, the supreme legitimate authority from which everything originates and is ordained. Once you do away with liberalism and the ability of each individual to participate in society and decision-making, you descend in authoritarianism.

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