Violence and Recoil

Reflecting on Defiance, I'm struck by the tension created in the movie, which wasn't great, but wasn't bad either, between those who relished violence and those who had to be pushed into it. Daniel Craig's character is the first to draw blood, avenging his parent's murder, but he "still sees their faces," meaning the men he shot at point-blank range. He found the taste of blood to be fetid, though this doesn't stop him from killing a challenger to his authority later. The youngest Bielski brothers are the ones who shy from violence even more. Only the second brother, played by Liev Schrieber, truly embraces that inner call to kill; even though he is killing those most acceptable of Hollywood "victims" Nazis the audience is meant to see that perhaps this isn't the way. In fact, there is a scene in the forest camp where the community of hiding Jews pummel a captured German soldier to death. They scream out the names of their murdered loved ones and they jam rifle butts into the head of the young father of two children.
This is one story where revenge is seen as distasteful, amazingly enough.

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There are but three social arrangements which can replace Capitalism: Slavery, Socialism, and Property. --Hilaire Belloc The Servile State

Good reads of 2009

I haven't made a list like this in a while, and I believe I discussed most of these on the blog as I finished them, but I thought I'd make a handy short-hand list for you and me. These are only in the order I read them and do not indicate any preference. The Open Door * Frederica Mathewes-Green The Children of Hurin * J.R.R. Tolkien The Omnivore's Dilemma * Michael Pollan Agrarianism and the Good Society: Land, Culture, Conflict, and Hope * Eric T. Freyfogle Wonderful Fool * Shusaku Endo Up the Rouge: Paddling Detroit's Hidden River * Joel Thurtell and Patricia Beck Johnny Cash and the Great American Contradiction: Christianity and the Battle for the Soul of a Nation * Rodney Clapp (I started the following in December, but I haven't finished them--so far they are excellent: Love and Hate in Jamestown * David A. Price and The Picture of Dorian Gray * Oscar Wilde) Try one of these--let me know.

Independent Women?

During breakfast today I was reading an excerpt from a play in The New York Times Magazine (I know, I was a day behind and read Saturday's edition yesterday) entitled Rust . The play, written by a professor at Grand Valley State University, here in Michigan, is a nonfiction drama about the closing of a GM plant in Wyoming, MI. The play itself sounds interesting and I enjoyed the excerpt, but what caught my eye was something a character said. The character is "Academic" and plays a historian and guide to the playwright, also a character. He is explaining the rise of the automobile factories and the effect of the car on American culture. He says, "Women became independent, they go from producers of food and clothing to consumers of food and clothing." This was meant as an earnest, praiseworthy point. I would counter with "How far we've fallen." To say that a woman (or a man) is independent because she has moved from producer to cons

I Am Not Hamlet

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