North by Northwest: The Art of Survival

 As streamlined legend has it, Alfred Hitchcock commissioned a script from Ernest Lehman that would begin with a murder at the UN and end with the protagonist hanging off the face of Mt Rushmore. (Working title: The Man in Lincoln’s Nose)  From that premise, Lehman crafted the iconic twists and turns that Cary Grant's character, Roger Thornhill endures in North by Northwest.   To give heart to aspiring screen writers everywhere, it took Lehman a year, and it was a year of struggle and writer's block, belying the apparent seamlessness and breeziness of the finished product.  This being a Hitchcock thriller, the plot incorporates mistaken identity and intrigue involving a cool blonde, the coldly competent and worldly enigma Eve Kendall, played by Eva Marie Saint.  All of it arguably just an excuse for one of Bernard Herrmann's greatest scores:

It's still a thrill to watch, but it invites a question:  Could a Roger Thornhill of the twenty-first century undergo what the Roger Thornhill of 1959 endured?   Updating the story to today (versus remaking it) would be an interesting challenge and it’s not immediately apparent that such an adventure would still be possible given advancements (and regressions) of the present time.  (Note: Spoilers may follow).  Some obvious opportunities for re-imagination present themselves immediately.  Smart phones would obviate the mix-up at the hotel bar that sets the plot in motion.  They would also make it unlikely that a truck stolen in the flat heartland would make it all the way back to Chicago without being stopped.  The ubiquity of surveillance cameras in the lobbies and halls of hotels  and for that matter everywhere would complicate things for someone evading police.   The omnipresence of security at train stations, public gatherings and official spaces like the UN would pose special challenges to one trying to sneak onto transportation, disrupt an auction or make a hasty getaway from the scene of a very public murder (let alone commit one).  

These are trifles compared to some of the other changes in American society since Roger Thornhill first appeared on screen that would call for a vastly different approach to the suspense.  What would replace the cold war politics?  What information would be worth transporting in a physical object that couldn't be more efficiently procured cybernetically from the safety of the home country?  Is the UN as relevant to American audiences today as it was then?  For that matter, what foreign power poses as much of a threat to everyday Americans as that of homegrown corporate evil-- and that being the case what could be done with contemporary Roger Thornhill's complicity in it as an adman?  There's a mini theme in the original concerning the assistance that workers -- cabbies, redcaps, maids, bellhops, valets and maitre d's-- provide in evading the authorities and the thugs or making things happen-- often for a price, but always with a subtle finger flipped to the powers that be.  Isn't that still a thing?

I'm not saying it would be impossible to update the story (if one were up to the challenge), but to match-- or realistically merely to emulate-- the knowing punch of the original would take some serious remapping.  What you would wind up with would not be the elegant sophistication of Hitchcock's North by Northwest.  It would be pointless to do unless you were using the inspiration of the original to explore the question of what present day menace would be the counterpart of the cold war threat of the original and what obstacles of the given surveillance state would inspire a contemporary Roger Thornhill to make it through to the face of Mount Rushmore with grace and wit to spare.  Sounds just crazy enough that someone who cares to do it right (without pretending to want to "improve" the original) just might ought to someday give it a try.

Staying Alive

A sentiment I'm hearing a lot toward the year soon ending: Fuck you, Year! I'm hearing it on the left, on the right and in the middle.  I have some sympathy for the thought, but probably not as much as I could. I am lucky to have a job that can be done anywhere, including from home.  Here I've been since March, which is kind of where I've always wanted to be.  Not everyone in my family has been as lucky with their livelihoods.  The youngest and oldest especially.  But together, we've managed.  

Life in America is so cruel usually.  It was unusual to say the least that even in this cruelest of eras, presided over by a petty mean small band of know-nothing thugs, the structure of so many workplaces, so many lives, was rearranged so quickly in the service of human safety.  Not as thoroughly as it could and should have been  of course.  Not without a toll for many; not without empty gesturing and divisive posturing on the part of those in a position to help people shelter in place, but whose aid to those most in need of it was stingy when it came at all; not without knee-jerk resistance; not without the already financially bloated managing to profit excessively from the new circumstances (disappointingly typical for them).  This is America after all.  

But looking back over the course of the year, it's astonishing that human society the world over was rejiggered so violently in the service of protecting the species from a new sudden threat to its mortality.  You could argue (and you'd be correct) that we humans had it coming -- we made the threat by the way we exploit animals to keep our vast impoverished global labor force alive.  For decades, we denied or ignored that our activity was causing the warming of the planet and could also be marshaled to mitigate it until it was too late to make a difference; but you have to hand it to us, we responded to a virus many of us never saw with astonishing swiftness.  (Leaving aside those who exploited and exacerbated the situation as a gamble for their own political gain.  The worst offender ultimately lost the bet in November.)

It's unimaginable that there won't be some permanent change, but humans will be humans so who knows.  What we need more than anything to combat this and future threats to our health is universal healthcare, but our stagnant ideology prevented the implementation of even that small obvious measure this year.  The string pullers are used to exerting their influence while quarantined from us in the best of times anyway.  Physical separation of the rest of us from each other is an obstacle to solidarity which poses an extra challenge to the advancement of change;  but observing the immediate impact of the nationwide protests that erupted following the police murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor largely without further spreading of the virus was inspirational.  If we haven't learned anything from this sequestration about how to be disposed toward each other, let alone about how rapidly and thoroughly drastic change can happen, I'll be pissed.

The year started for me on a note of hope, in the form of the Bernie Sanders campaign, which coincidentally with the novel coronavirus was gaining momentum throughout the winter.  Its emergence and spread in the early primaries too was met with swift, sudden, well-coordinated countermeasures that succeeded in nipping it in the bud before it threatened to completely infect the electorate, almost as a throat clearing exercise on the part of the professional managerial class for the public health crisis that erupted at nearly the same time.  How differently would the crisis have been managed if Bernie Sanders had been the Democratic counterpoint to Donald Trump throughout the spring instead of the hibernating eventual nominee, who was too wise to botch things for himself by appearing in public in those early months of the crisis.  His career was built on letting things happen, and with his opponent Donald Trump predictably unable to stifle himself when checking out might have served him better, it worked for him again this time.  No question that the infection rate and death toll in the US would have been lower with someone else at the helm of the opposition, and without the president and his party aggravating the situation.  I think Bernie Sanders as an opponent might have inspired Trump to step up in response (a possibility we might be catching glimpses of on his approach to the exit ramp as he shames congress to up the stimulus payments to $2000 from the measly $600 that it had been barely able to muster without his input), and it might have done him as much good as the country.  But in spite of the obstacle that the Trump administration was to public health, a sane swath of the country fell in line to help stem the spread until a vaccine could be found. 

I cringe a little when front line workers are thanked for their service. It's a bit too easy for a conglomerate of any kind to promote the practice in advertising or on TV, but for those regular people who take them up on it, it's surely heartfelt, well intended, and may strike the thanker as the least that can be done.   Many on the front line, to be sure, particularly in health care are called to their work; mere thanks are inadequate when supplies to do the work and for their safety are not forthcoming.  As for essential retail, food and factory workers, if my circumstances forced me into front line exposure to the virus on a daily basis for almost certainly not enough pay, at risk to myself and to my family I don't know that thanks would make up for it.  But thank you all anyway.

For myself, a natural hermit, I can't deny that 2020 with its enforced separation has had its perks.  It's been something of an antisocial dream-come-true to see myself being universally avoided in public nearly to the extent that I have spent a lifetime avoiding others.  Nevertheless, I am looking forward to my daughter's generation getting another chance at living life as adults among each other.  I will not miss not shaving.  I will not miss masks. I will not miss Zoom.  I will look forward to seeing family in person and to traveling freely and to getting haircuts when necessary and to indulging occasionally in public entertainment.  But while I don't wish ill on my fellow humans, if and when we re-emerge from this episode, truth be told, I will sort of miss the distance. 

Hot Takes

In the interest of meeting an impending deadline and in the spirit of continuing writer's block, we give you yet another listicle: 

• There's been an intense war raging on the left recently over a suggestion made by a popular contrarian YouTube channel host that "The Squad" in congress-- the burgeoning leftist bloc-- should withhold their votes for Nancy Pelosi's re-election as Speaker of the House in exchange for a floor vote on Medicare-For-All and that if they don't it's because they are lying gaslighting traitors.  Hot Take: The first part of the suggestion is fine as a starter.  The rest of it, which is what underlies the schism that's erupted from it is the problem.  I'll give the Purgers this, they are the loudest side in the fracas that's ensued.  They have commandeered the histrionics.  They own the bombastics. Theatrics R Them.  I'm not going to complain about how Medicare for All happens as long as it happens; but to make the question of how it happens interesting, I'm going to put my money on "The Squad". I've been to DSA meetings and know I am outmatched. Trust socialism to the actual socialists.
• Some public intellectuals and figures in the media such as Bill Maher, Jonathan Haidt, Jordan Peterson, Bari Weiss, and the members of the "Intellectual Dark Web" for starters, are fixated on promoting the notion that the single greatest threat to democracy and to the future of the country is Cancel Culture and in particular, its supposed proponents The Millennials.  Hot Take: I'd point out that most of the voices critical of millennials are baby boomers.  The ones who aren't are children of privilege. Let me repeat, the ones complaining about how spoiled the millennials are are boomers and preppies!   Are you rolling on the floor yet?
• In a zoom meeting with black leaders recently, President elect Joe Biden lectures that he's optimistic that things are changing for the better in America because "three or four out of seven commercials [are] biracial commercials."  Hot Take: I too have noticed a sharp uptick in the featuring of biracial couples in tv ads during the Trump administration. Does Joe realize these are actors and their relationships are fictional? Conclusion: Casting for tv commercials is woke. Why? Because along with foot deodorant, we're being sold a myth of a post racial America precisely to undercut the struggle for substantial meaningful change like police reform, healthcare for all, a green new deal and a living wage for everyone.  What does a potato chip have to do with it?  Because if you're busy applauding the biracial couple snacking on it, you may not notice the deforestation that production of the palm oils used in making the chips are causing in Southeast Asia.
• The Wall Street Journal has mocked Jill Biden for insisting on being addressed and referred to with the Dr title when she is only a PhD, not a doctor of medicine.  Hot Take:  Never mind that there is ample precedent for the president elect's wife to go by the prefix bestowed on her by her education.  I don't care if you're a Doctor of Philosophy or Medicine, enforcing your title is an asshole-y way to be.  Traditionally by acceding to the formality of addressing you with the honorific we are acknowledging your achievement.  True, it is an achievement that some of you worked so hard for so many years for the right to be addressed with the title.  It's also pretty pathetic.  Lots of people work hard; only assholes demand constant respect for it. In any case, please leave me out of your twisted status grubbing.

"Where'd you go to school to get a title like that?"
(Benjamin Schwartz, New Yorker) 

This won't hurt a bit

As long as we're talking vaccines, what are the prospects for applying our models of medical advancement toward eradicating any of the following:

• Tolerance of capitalism - Why is capitalism tolerated?  Its beneficiaries are few, whereas the havoc it brings upon society is all-encompassing. The model of capitalism isn't the entrepreneur (whose talent is figuring out how to monetize the fruits of the labor, research and creativity of others for himself-- something that we ought to deem a criminal activity when you think about it), but the vampiric private equity firm that hunts for enterprises they don't give two shits about to buy at the end of their life cycle in order to figure out how to liquidate assets, fire whoever remains,  screw the employees of their pensions with little to no notice and make themselves and their shareholders a tidy profit. Capitalism is the tax cut supposedly proffered as a stimulus for the economy that is instead spent on stock buybacks and executive bonuses. Capitalists are diseased.  The disease is capitalism.  It infects not just the capitalist who does not know to seek help, but all of society, causing cultural stagnation,  sowing bellicose aggressions in the pursuit of resources to fuel the affliction, limiting the imagination of our academies, cheapening life for everyone.  Someone get on this.

• For profit insurance - You know how melanoma is a cancer but has its own researchers? Low hanging fruit in the pursuit of the elimination of capitalisms ought to be battling hindrances to the establishment of single payer healthcare.  This is largely a mental virus but the toll it wreaks on society is devastatingly physical.  Can't something be done in this country about it as it seems to have been conquered everywhere else?

• I generally acknowledge that language belongs to all of us.  I agree with the viewpoint of my daughter who said to me the other day, "Language is my bitch, not the other way around."  The job of the listener to try to understand is no less a burden than the job of a speaker to try to be understood.  But can we work out a vaccine for misuse of  "Disinterested" anyway?   Disinterested as of this writing still mostly means having no stake in a thing, a prerequisite for objectivity; but more and more I'm seeing it used almost exclusively as a synonym of uninterested, as in bored by a thing.  It would be great if we could get this one eradicated before it slips into the dictionary, although we may be too late.

• Meritocracy. Those who believe in meritocracy would like you to ignore the fact that what demonstrates merit in the model of earned privilege is willingness to subvert one's soul to the projects of elites.  What elites find meritorious, the rest of us should find absolutely odious.  In the words of Noam Chomsky, a “combination of greed, cynicism, obsequiousness and subordination, lack of curiosity and independence of mind, [and] self-serving disregard for others.”  Those are the underlying factors that let's hope would provide a way in for development  of a vaccine.

• Have you noticed how often in a YouTube video on some dumb cultural thing like a pop song, a scene from a superhero movie or rom-com or a Saturday Night Live sketch, someone always puts a pause on their day, directs brain activity to their fingers, and exerts effort to say something to the effect of "[X celebrity] is [adorkable / going all in / being a bae / throwing serious shade / everything] and I am here for it."  Can we find a prevention for the impulse that compels a multitude of people to type the exact same 10 comments on every YouTube video they are impelled by the algorithm to watch? 

• State murder

• The impulse on the part of elected officials at the first sign of crisis to provide stimulus for the wealthy, austerity for everyone else.

• Writer's block

• Adamant reflexive wrongness.  I'd be first in line for that one.