film, Meta Intelligence

Can a Movie Excite an Unexpected Intellectual Adventure?

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At about the time when this was written Jung was working, in collaboration with Pauli, on his treatise on Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle, which was published together with Pauli’s essay on Kepler in one volume. This was evidently meant as a symbolic act: one of the greatest physicists of the century joining forces with one of its greatest psychologists. The result was a stimulating exercise in unorthodox speculation, but at the same time sadly disappointing. It did not amount to a theory in the proper sense, but rather to a universal schema, both very bold and very vague.

Jung’s treatise hinges on his concept of “Synchronicity”. He defines it as “the simultaneous occurrence of two meaningfully but not causally connected events”;¹ or alternatively as “a coincidence in time of two or more causally unrelated events which have the same or similar meaning²…equal in rank to causality as a principle of explanation”.³ This is an almost verbatim repetition of Kammerer’s definition of “Seriality” as “a recurrence of the same or similar things or events in time or space”—events which, as far as can be ascertained; “are not connected by the same acting cause”. The main difference appears to be that Kammerer emphasises serial happenings in time (though, of course, he includes contemporaneous coincidences in space), whereas Jung’s concept of synchronicity seems to refer only to simultaneous events—although he includes precognitive dreams which occurred sometimes several days before the events. He tried to get around the time paradox by saying that the unconscious mind functions outside of the physical framework of space-time; thus precognitive experiences are “evidently not synchronous but are synchronistic since they are experienced as psychic images in the present as though the objective event already existed”.⁴ One wonders why Jung created these unnecessary complications by coining a term which implies simultaneity, and then explaining that it does not mean what it means. But this kind of obscurity combined with verbosity runs through much of Jung’s writing.

Although Kammerer’s “Seriality” and Jung’s “Synchronicity” are as similar as a pair of gloves, each fits one hand only. Kammerer confined himself to analogies in naive physical terms, rejecting ESP and mentalistic explanations. Jung went to the opposite extreme and tried to explain all phenomena which could not be accounted for in terms of physical causality, as manifestations of the unconscious mind: “Synchronicity is a phenomenon that seems to be primarily connected with psychic conditions, that is to say with processes in the unconscious.”⁵ Its deepest strata, according to Jungian terminology, are formed by the “collective unconscious”, potentially shared by all members of the race. The “decisive factors” in the collective unconscious are the archetypes which “constitute its structure”.⁶ They are, as it were, the distilled memories of the human species, but cannot be represented in verbal terms, only in elusive symbols, shared by all mythologies. They also provide “patterns of behaviour”⁷ for all human beings in archetypal situations—confrontations with death, danger, love, conflict, etc. In such situations the unconscious archetypes invade consciousness, carrying strong emotions and—owing perhaps to the archetype’s indifference to physical space and time—facilitate the occurrence of “synchronistic” events. The appearance of the scarab while the patient was telling her archetypal dream is considered by Jung as an illustration of this nexus. The same applies to the detonations in Freud’s bookcase during Jung’s visit, indicating the explosive nature of their father-son relationship: “Meaningful coincidences which are to be distinguished from meaningless chance-groupings—therefore seem to rest on an archetypal foundation. At least all the cases in my experience and there is a large number of them—show this characteristic?”⁸

Elsewhere in the essay he writes:

Synchronistic events rest on the simultaneous occurrence of two different psychic states. One of them is the normal, probable state (i.e., the one that is causally explicable), and the other, the critical experience, is the one that cannot be derived causally from the first. In the case of sudden death, the critical experience cannot be recognised immediately as “extra-sensory perception” but can only be verified as such afterwards. …In all these cases, whether it is a question of spatial or of temporal ESP, we find a simultaneity of the normal or ordinary state with another state or experience which is not causally derivable from it, and whose objective existence can only be verified afterwards. …An unexpected [mental] content which is directly or indirectly connected with some objective external event coincides with the ordinary psychic state: this is what I call synchronicity.”⁹

Jung (1960), p. 441 [ref]

Jung (1960), p.551 [ref]

Jung (1960), p. 435 [ref]

Jung (1960), p. 445 [ref]

Jung (1960), p. 511 [ref]

Jung (1960), p. 436 [ref]

Jung (1960), p. 438 [ref]

Jung (1960), p. 440 [ref]

Jung (1960), pp. 444-5 [ref]

Arthur Koestler, The Roots of Coincidence, Picador, 1974 (first published by Hutchinson & Co. Ltd., 1972), pgs. 94-97.

In the political thriller The Eagle Has Landed, there’s a scene where Col. Radl discusses Jung’s concept of synchronicity. For example, a man checking out drops a coin near the register and searches for it momentarily before giving up. Years later, he is at the same store and finds a similar coin. He rationalizes this with a mundane story, not some cosmic notion of fairness.

Can a movie trigger an unexpected intellectual adventure?

Usually, when considering this question, you might see a film on a specific subject, then perhaps read an article or try to find a book about it.

In his essay on Synchronicity (Jung’s term for meaningful coincidences of events separated in space and/or in time,¹ Jung examined some of the beliefs surrounding apparently related incidents which seem to have no causal connection. These incidents could be, for example, the coinciding of a patient’s dream with an actual event corresponding to its occurring at the same time some distance away, it could be ESP phenomena—response to some event that does not become known through any sense; it could be a horoscope reading which corresponds to the observed character of the individual or his self-image, or an astrological prediction which seems to be borne out in subsequent events. The possibility of finding meaning in these correspondences had tantalized Jung for many years. The beginning of his serious study goes back to the days when Albert Einstein was developing his first theory of relativity. During this time he was a guest on several occasions for dinner in Jung’s home. In a letter on Einstein and synchronicity, Jung wrote: “It was Einstein who first started me off thinking about a possible relativity of time as well as space, and their psychic synchronicity.”²

In The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, C. W. 8, pp. 417-531. [ref]

Letter to Dr. Selig dated 25 February, 1953, in Spring, 1971, p. 127. [ref]

June Singer, Boundaries of the Soul: The Practice of Jung’s Psychology, Anchor Books edition, 1973, p. 398.

The Eagle Has Landed begins with newsreel footage depicting Mussolini’s rescue by the Germans during the Gran Sasso raid. This probably inspires the plot to abduct Churchill. Come to the present. Did the operation to capture Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, stem from this, or is there no causal connection? All of this is the intellectual adventure of Jung’s synchronicity.

Japan-Watching: Still Dreaming: Kon Satoshi’s “Paprika” and Other Visions

by Miyamoto Yūko [宮本裕子]

Anime (アニメ) director KON Satoshi (今敏) died in 2010 at the age of 46, but his works remain highly influential. His final film Paprika, released 20 years ago, highlights his preoccupations with the divided self and the blurring of the lines between dreams and reality.

Dream Analysis

After starting out as a manga artist in 1985, KON Satoshi [今敏] honed his skills in the anime production teams of OSHII Mamoru [押井守] and ŌTOMO Katsuhiro [大友克洋], and then made his feature-length direction debut with Perfect Blue, which was released in Japan in 1998. His fourth feature, the 2006 Paprika, is an adaptation of the novel of the same name by TSUTSUI Yasutaka [筒井康隆]. Kon was public in his admiration of the book and he is said to have aimed to produce “something like the novel Paprika” in his previous anime. Indeed, Kon’s Paprika adaptation has many factors in common with his earlier works.

KON Satoshi [今敏] in Venice in September 2006, when Paprika was showing in competition at the Venice International Film Festival. (© Reuters)

Tsutsui studied psychology at university, and motifs and ideas from Freudian and Jungian psychoanalysis feature regularly in his novels. Dream analysis plays a central role in the story in Paprika. In psychoanalysis, psychologically repressed material is thought to be banished to the unconscious before emerging in a different form in dreams. Analysis of dreams has been seen as a valuable way of resolving psychological problems by bringing the repressed matter into the open.

Paprika is set in a near-future Japan, where it is possible to monitor other people’s dreams on a screen. The main character is a therapist called Chiba Atsuko, who provides treatment via her alter ego Paprika, a dream detective. The technology is abused, however, forcing people to experience nightmares, and eventually these flood into the real world.

While Kon follows the broad outline of the original work, his adaptation incorporates numerous changes. The biggest of these is the chaotic parade of electronic goods, beckoning cats (“maneki-neko” [招き猫]), Buddhist statues, torii gates [鳥居], and other marching objects. This symbolizes nightmares spilling out of control, but there is nothing like it in Tsutsui’s book. Kon explained that the parade is made up of old-fashioned appliances and forgotten religious and traditional elements.

In Freud’s The Uncanny, he describes the titular subject as something familiar that has been estranged through repression. In the film, the members of the parade have become estranged from the conscious minds of people today, but are resurrected, and symbolize the uncanny nature of nightmares.

Integrating the Self

Alongside its Freudian elements, Kon’s Paprika shows Jungian influences. Carl Jung did not think that it was best to bring repressed aspects of the psyche under control, instead emphasizing the importance of integrating them into the self. This integration process can be seen in several of the characters.

While Konakawa, a character suffering from anxiety issues, searches through his dreams together with Paprika, he realizes that a mysterious person he repeatedly encounters is an old friend with whom he once shared the ambition of becoming a film director. This friend, who died of illness, appears in Konakawa’s dreams as his other self—the one who wanted to be a director. Konakawa overcomes his anxiety by recognizing and reconciliating with the repressed and forgotten self, represented by his old friend.

The division and antagonism between Chiba Atsuko and her alter ego Paprika are similar to those seen between Konakawa and his old friend. In the original book, Paprika was Chiba in disguise as a dream detective, but in Kon’s anime, they are like entirely different characters. In the finale, when dreams are flooding into the real world, they divide completely, existing at the same time in the same space. After this split, Chiba comes together again temporarily with the uninhibited Paprika when she no longer holds back her suppressed love for her colleague Tokita Kōsaku.

Chiba and Paprika do not divide in Tsutsui’s novel, and Konakawa’s old friend does not represent another self. This aspect of the divided self, added by Kon during the adaptation process, can be taken as a Jungian motif.

Books by the late KAWAI Hayao [河合隼雄], renowned as a Jungian psychologist, were widely read in Japan from the 1980s until the 1990s, and Kon was among his readers. He is said to have become an avid reader of the psychologist for a time because he wanted to understand the music and lyrics of HIRASAWA Susumu (平沢進), the former vocalist of the techno-pop band P-Model, who was influenced by Kawai. Hirasawa later created soundtracks for anime by Kon, including Paprika.

Kon also stated that he was influenced by the novels of MURAKAMI Haruki (村上春樹), who himself developed a friendly relationship with Kawai through interviews and other encounters. Kon is said to have claimed that he was the only person who could adapt A Wild Sheep Chase [羊をめぐる冒険] and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle [ねじまき鳥クロニクル] to anime.

Kon’s Themes

The anime Paprika could be seen as a later stage in the Kawai-led Jungian psychology boom in Japan, as well as a culmination of Kon’s characteristic themes. For example, the following aspects regularly appear in Kon’s work.

First, there is the depiction of another self. These include Chiba and Paprika in Paprika, Chiyoko and the old woman who appears at key moments and symbolizes Chiyoko’s future self in Millennium Actress (2002), and idol-turned-actress Mima and the apparition of her former pop star self in Perfect Blue.

Second, there are departures from heterosexual norms. In Paprika, the title character announces the wedding of Tokita and Chiba, which maintains the existence of this free-spirited “dream detective,” so that the film deviates subtly from the typical closed ending of heterosexual marriage. The ending of Millennium Actress suggests that Chiyoko’s long search for an artist she meets in her youth is her goal in itself, rather than a romantic relationship with him. In Tokyo Godfathers [東京ゴッドファーザーズ] (2003), alongside a caricatured depiction of a transgender character, we see the struggles of heterosexual couples and their families.

The third aspect is how media and technology blur the lines between reality and the unreal world. In Paprika, the DC Mini device erodes the boundary between reality and the dreams it is used to view, while Mima’s double in Perfect Blue appears in mirrors, PC monitors, and internet browsers. In Millennium Actress, Chiyoko’s acting roles are intertwined with her real life. In Kon’s anime series Paranoia Agent [妄想代理人] (2004), rumors transform into reality through the actions of the mass media and the characters, who in themselves are a kind of media commodity.

During a scene in Paprika when Konakawa goes to the movie theater, posters for Kon’s other films are on display. This shot shows Millennium Actress and Perfect Blue. (© 2006 Madhouse/Sony Pictures Entertainment Japan, Inc.)

Robot Adventure?

While there are clearly repeating themes in Kon’s works, Dreaming Machine [夢みる機械], which remains unfinished due to his sudden death from cancer, shows signs of an apparent major change of course. At one point it was announced that another director would complete the movie, but the producer later backtracked, saying that there was no director capable of realizing Kon’s vision.

Based on the remaining materials, this appeared set to be an action-adventure story about robots hunting down precious electricity in a near-future setting when humans are extinct. Paprika was also set in the near future, but Dreaming Machine features more overtly futuristic urban landscapes. The main characters are smaller, cartoonish robots, compared with the relatively tall humans of Kon’s other films. While it seems to have been aiming for a different kind of movie in terms of both content and visuals, was this really going to be a standard adventure story, without any twists?

Kon said that one of his influences was the manga [漫画] creator MOROHOSHI Daijirō (諸星大二郎). In a short 1974 work by Morohoshi, also called “Dreaming Machine” (“Yume miru kikai [夢みる機械]”), robots go about their daily lives in the place of humans, who dream in a form of suspended animation. Kon’s unpublished 1984 manga Toriko covered similar ground. Can it be simple coincidence that his unfinished work has the same title as Morohoshi’s manga?

Beyond what looks on the surface like a robot action adventure, in Dreaming Machine, Kon may have planned to depict a world of cryofrozen, dreaming humans. Or perhaps the robots were intended to be controlled consciously or subconsciously by humans. This is pure speculation, but I cannot help thinking that Kon may have intended to continue his theme of technology blurring the boundaries between dreams, or fantasy, and reality.

Some people may consider it unproductive to imagine what Kon’s works may have been, but this imaginative act helps carry his vision forward. Kon’s direct and indirect influence can be found in films like Darren Aronofsky’s Requiem for a Dream (2000) and Black Swan (2010), Christopher Nolan’s Inception (2010), and Edgar Wright’s Last Night in Soho (2021). While we will never see another KON Satoshi (今敏) film, his vision lives on.

History of Global Antagonisms: China

The famous Yale historian, Paul Kennedy, is well-known for two major works, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers and The Rise of the Anglo-German Antagonism: 1860–1914. The former starts with a very powerful line:

“Rome fell. Scarsdale will fall.”

This gives us the theme of anxiety over national destiny and trajectory, which currently preoccupies the American mind.

In the second book, this antagonism question involves real and imaginary threats, and all of these anxieties and antagonisms are related. The masterpiece series, Downton Abbey, depicts a scene that takes place in the garden, where the Lord announces that they are at war with Germany, and his audience is perplexed, thinking, “How can we be at war? Germany is our biggest trading partner.” This teaches us that wars and the antagonisms that precede them are not solely based on rational factors like trade volumes.

Let us turn our attention to China. We are all aware, however vaguely, of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. In the recent PBS television series, American Masters, the episode “Tyrus” (season 31, episode 7, aired September 8, 2017) has the artist Tyrus Wong recounting the story of his father, with whom he immigrated to California in 1920 at the age of 9. It is hard for us to believe that, as people of Chinese descent, they were forbidden from owning property outside of Chinatown. He describes his struggle with the hassles of overt racism. He did not gain his American citizenship until 1946, after the act was repealed. He came to fame with Disney’s Bambi, where he was the film’s lead artist.

This anti-China xenophobia was just as virulent in Europe, going back to the 19th century. Germany’s Kaiser Wilhelm II popularized the phrase “yellow peril” to demonize the Chinese and encourage the European empires to invade, conquer and colonize China. Another instance of this sentiment in its European guise was the writing of Theodor Fontane. His classic novel, Effi Briest, can be thematically compared to other novels on 19th-century marriage from a female perspective, such as Anna Karenina and Madame Bovary, which are also adultery tragedies. In the novel, there are discussions of people from all ethnicities crowding into German cities and towns.

“…But all the people who live in the little shipping and trading towns along the coast are immigrants from far away, who care little about the Kashubian hinterland because there’s nothing there for them, their concerns are elsewhere. What concerns them is where their trade is, and since they trade with the whole world and are in communication with the whole world, you find people among them from all corners of the globe. Which goes for Kessin too, backwater though it is.”

“But this is delightful, Geert. You keep calling it a backwater, but now, if you haven’t been exaggerating, I find that it’s a completely new world. All sorts of exotic things. Isn’t that right? That’s what you meant, isn’t it?”

He nodded.

“A whole world, I say, with perhaps a Negro or a Turk, or perhaps even a Chinaman.”

“A Chinaman too. What a good guess. We may still have one, we certainly did have; he’s dead now, buried in a little plot with a railing round it next to the churchyard. If you’re not afraid I’ll show you his grave sometime. It’s in the dunes with just some marram grass round it and a little immortelle here and there, and the sound of the sea all the time. It’s very beautiful and very eerie.”

“Yes, eerie — I would like to know more about it. Or maybe rather not, I invariably start imagining things and then I have dreams, and I don’t want to see a Chinaman approaching my bed tonight when I hope I’ll be sleeping soundly.”

“Well, he won’t.”

“Well, he won’t. Listen to that. How odd it sounds, as if it were somehow possible. You’re trying to make Kessin interesting for me, but you’re rather overdoing it. Are there many foreigners like that in Kessin?”

“A great many. The whole town consists of foreigners like that, people whose parents or grandparents lived somewhere else altogether.”

“How very peculiar. Tell me more, please. But nothing sinister. A Chinaman, I think, is always a bit sinister.”
Theodor Fontane, Effi Briest, Penguin Books, translated from the German by Hugh Rorrison and Helen Chambers, 1967, page 33.

Notice the quote, “…I don’t want to see a Chinaman approaching my bed tonight when I hope I’ll be sleeping soundly.” This character echoes similar sentiments several more times above.

This “othering” of the Chinese in the novel continues:

Innstetten laughed. “We’re seventy miles further north than Hohen-Cremmen here and you have to wait a while for the first polar bear. I think you’re feeling the strain of the long journey, what with the St. Privat panorama and the story of the Chinaman and everything?”

“You didn’t tell me any story.”

“No, I just referred to him. But the mere mention of a Chinaman is a story in itself…”
Theodor Fontane, Effi Briest, Penguin Books, translated from the German by Hugh Rorrison and Helen Chambers, 1967, page 35.

“What was it all about?”

“Oh, some nonsense: an old ship’s captain with a granddaughter or a niece who disappeared one fine day, and then a Chinaman, who may have been her lover, and in the hallway there was a little shark and a crocodile, both suspended on strings and always in motion. Makes a marvellous story, but not now. There are all kinds of other things flitting through my mind.”
Theodor Fontane, Effi Briest, Penguin Books, translated from the German by Hugh Rorrison and Helen Chambers, 1967, page 177.

All of this global antagonism-watching and paranoia is disconcertingly related to our current situation. Donald Trump and the Republicans are essentially entrepreneurs of hatred. As is widely misattributed to Mark Twain, “history doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.”

What Do We Mean by “Spheres of Existence”?

The classic Hollywood film, How Green Was My Valley, is set in a Welsh coal-mining community over a hundred years ago. The spiritual head of the community, played by Walter Pidgeon, is walking along a hillside with a young boy who was traumatized after being injured in an accident. After some small talk, Pidgeon’s character tells the boy that prayer will help him heal. He explains that this isn’t mumbling in a church; what he means by prayer is the deepest possible communication with oneself, thus existentializing it.

This whole dimension derives from the existence-watchers Pascal and Kierkegaard. For example, Kierkegaard writes, “My principal thought was that in our age, because of the great increase of knowledge, we had forgotten what it means to exist, and what inwardness signifies.” (Quoted from “Truth Is Subjectivity”, a section in Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments.) Note that when you watch a very gifted scientific analyst, like Robert Lawrence Kuhn, whose PBS series Closer to Truth, represents the opposite of Kierkegaard’s inwardness.

In “Realms and Domains: Levels and Confusion”, we presented realms and domains as ways of shaping knowledge. Kierkegaard utilizes the word “sphere” to communicate a similar concept. Think of the term in geometry or as a “sphere of influence” in geopolitics.

Kierkegaard tells us, “There are thus three spheres of existence: the aesthetic, the ethical, the religious.” Let’s explain these three spheres. By “aesthetic,” he means the pursuit of wine, women and song as a life. The European academic song, “Gaudeamus igitur” embodies this philosophy. In the Eugene O’Neill play, Long Day’s Journey into Night, one of the characters exclaims, “In vino veritas!” (Latin: in wine, there is truth.)

By ethical, Kierkegaard is not describing a great concern for morality. He means, rather, the sense of camaraderie felt by someone for their fellows. A strong example of this occurs in the film, The Third Man. Trevor Howard plays a conscientious Royal Military Police officer, whose mission is to catch the elusive criminal played by Orson Welles. Howard’s officer’s entire existence is characterized by his desire to protect the public and his men. One could says this protectiveness is his bottom line.

To understand what Kierkegaard means by the religious, we quote, “Existence constitutes the highest interest of the existing individual, and his interest in his existence constitutes his reality. What reality is, cannot be expressed in the language of abstraction.” In The Third Man, the criminal’s girlfriend embodies the religious sphere. Her every task in daily life can be described by the previous quote.

Kierkegaard also has a very penetrating analysis of humor and irony, given his spheres of existence. Think of a comedian like Woody Allen, who has the intelligence to glimpse the profundity of existence but this wavelength makes him intensely anxious, provoking humor. These jokes are escapist, attempting to flee the tension of existence.

Finally, there are existence-watchers like the great American author Walker Percy. In his masterpiece, The Moviegoer, he depicts a current world so fragmented, adrift and soul-crushing that the protagonist tries to find his salvation in going to movies. He sees the experience of viewing the movie as being part of a congregation. Kierkegaard writes, “In our age it is believed that knowledge settles everything, and that if a man only acquires a knowledge of the truth, the more briefly and the more quickly the better, he is helped. But to exist and to know are two very different things.”

Navigating through Sources

Consciousness and the Novel: Connected Essays by the famous British novelist David Lodge is a classic work published by Harvard in 2004.

In this Lodge book, the author mentions a famous British society-watcher, Charles Masterman. In 1909, Masterman published his best-known study, The Condition of England, which tells us that England at that time experienced a greater inflow of migrants into London than in previous centuries taken together.

[Charles Frederick Gurney Masterman PC MP (24 October 1873 – 17 November 1927) was a British radical Liberal Party politician, intellectual and man of letters. He worked closely with such Liberal leaders as David Lloyd George and Winston Churchill in designing social welfare projects, including the National Insurance Act 1911. During the First World War, he played a central role in the main government propaganda agency.]

We then notice that one recurrent topic in various movie versions of the E. M. Forster novel Howards End (1910, set in those years) is the “horrifying” trend where great mansions and stately estates (Howards End and Wickham Place, say, in the novel) are all being demolished and replaced by ugly “flats.”

There must be, one thinks, a direct link between all the massive migrations into London at the time and all the proliferating flats at the “expense” of beautiful and historical villas. (This “demolish” trend is also part of the story of the classic novel A Handful of Dust by Evelyn Waugh, 1934)

In the predecessor to Downton Abbey called Upstairs, Downstairs, the story ends in 1930 with a sign outside the great “house” at Eaton Place offering flats coming soon, as the demand for housing (think of San Francisco today) is so massive that sellers can make a fortune selling out to developers, move into one of the flats being created, and live off the sale for the rest of their lives and “duck” the higher “Lloyd George taxes.” (In Downton Abbey, the dowager played by Maggie Smith repeatedly lashes out at Prime Minister Lloyd George as a kind of financial traitor.)

We see from this simple example how students should learn to “jump” between books and movies and TV miniseries to get a stronger focus on what’s being depicted on screens and pages and not just “swim along” at the surface level without any “drilling down.”

Education is largely the struggle or habit where students learn to bring pattern and structure out of “chaos,” thus giving narratives some overall shape.

This reminds one of the opening lines of Beryl Markham’s 1942 Africa memoir:

“How is it possible to bring order out of memory? I should like to begin at the beginning, patiently, like a weaver at his loom. I should like to say, ‘This is the place to start; there can be no other.’ ”
from West with the Night by Beryl Markham

This is a similar impetus: to bring order out of memory or others’ memories in books and movies from various times and places.

Looking Around Is Educational

Julian Fellowes (the writer who gave us Downton Abbey) followed up with a 2018 movie called The Chaperone about a girl named Louise Brooks who became a global superstar, especially in Weimar (pre-Hitler) Germany:

Louise Brooks is a rebellious 15-year-old schoolgirl who dreams of fame and fortune in the early 1920s. She soon gets her chance when she travels to New York to study with a leading dance troupe for the summer—accompanied by a watchful chaperone.

Louise Brooks starts as a would-be dancer, “inducted” into an avant-garde dance school. This is the Denishawn School of Dancing and Related Arts (founded in 1915 by Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn in Los Angeles, California), which helped many perfect their dancing talents and became the first dance academy in the United States to produce a professional dance company.

Upon Louise’s “induction” into the school, one of the founders says to the girls, “Remember you are not in your body, your body is in you.”

The listener wonders: What could this possibly mean?

The answer is this: In one sense you have a body, but in another, you are your body. The first body is the “thing” you weigh on the bathroom scale. This is your interaction with gravity, as measured in conventions like pounds. On the other hand, you are also “somebody” (i.e., some body). To have and to be are entwined here. In philosophy, say in the writings of Gabriel Marcel during the fifties, the body you weigh is “corporeal” and the body you are is “existential.”

Very roughly, the first body is objectively weighed, the second subjectively sensed as your experience of yourself.

Physics and Dance (by Emily Coates and Sarah Demers), a recent book from Yale University Press, gives you the dancing body as a biomechanical problem. Dancing itself is the expression through biomechanics and movement based on physics, but apart from this, it’s also an art form.

The student will see that a moment in a movie—in this case The Chaperone—can open a door to a whole set of domains, realms and phenomena. Education at its best comes from learning how to go from such instantaneous accidents on the street or screen to a larger canvas.

Thus the declaration, “Remember you are not in your body, your body is in you” explains that biomechanics is an infrastructure, while the artistry of the dance is an art form (i.e., a kind of “communicative action,” to use a Habermas phrase).

Extracting “Big History” from Hollywood “Sword-and-Sandal” Movies: Cleopatra (1963)

Seen in “deep time,” the movie is not about colorful personalities only but on a larger scale, the transition from the Roman Republic to the Roman Empire. This covers approximately one thousand years with some five centuries for each form of government, republic and empire.

The movie has as its background internecine power struggles in both Rome and Egypt.

The upshot of these struggles is the transition from the Roman Republic to the Roman Empire. This transition is “punctuated” by two momentous battles:

Land Battle of Pharsalus, 48 BC (Cleopatra begins with this battle).
Naval Battle of Actium, 31 BC.

Rome went from monarchy (Kings) to republic (Senators) for five hundred years to Emperors for another five hundred.

(Notice that Napoleon was crowned Emperor of the French in 1804. The King was executed during the French Revolution and the word “king” was to be avoided.)

Other movies like Ben-Hur with Charleton Heston playing the lead role, show you the unhappiness of colonial peoples (like the Hebrews) under the Roman Empire. Christianity became the official religion in 330 AD under Constantine and the capital was moved from pagan Rome to Christian Constantinople. The very name “Roman Catholic Church” shows you the fusion after centuries of conflict.

After the Battle of Pharsalus in 48 BC, Julius Caesar went to Egypt, under the pretext of being named the executor of the will of the father of the young Pharaoh Ptolemy XIII and his sister Cleopatra.

Ptolemy and Cleopatra are in the midst of a civil war of their own and she has been driven out of the city of Alexandria.

Ptolemy rules alone under the care of his three “guardians,” the chief eunuch Pothinus, his tutor Theodotus and General Achillas.

Cleopatra convinces Caesar to restore her throne from her younger brother. Caesar, in effective control of the kingdom, sentences Pothinus to death for arranging an assassination attempt on Cleopatra, and banishes Ptolemy to the eastern desert, where he and his outnumbered army would face certain death against Mithridates.

Cleopatra is crowned queen of Egypt and begins to develop megalomaniacal dreams of ruling the world with Caesar, who in turn desires to become king of Rome.

They marry, and when their son Caesarion is born, Caesar accepts him publicly, which becomes the talk of Rome and the Senate.

After he is made dictator for life, Caesar sends for Cleopatra. She arrives in Rome in a lavish procession and wins the adulation of the Roman people. The Senate grows increasingly discontented amid rumors that Caesar wishes to be made king, which is anathema to the Romans. On the Ides of March in 44 BC, a group of conspirators assassinated Caesar and fled the city, starting a rebellion. An alliance among Octavian (Caesar’s adopted son), Mark Antony (Caesar’s right-hand man and general) and Marcus Aemelius Lepidus puts down the rebellion and splits the republic. Cleopatra is angered after Caesar’s will recognizes Octavian, rather than Caesarion, as his official heir, and she returns to Egypt.

While planning a campaign against Parthia in the east, Antony realizes that he needs money and supplies that only Egypt can sufficiently provide. After refusing several times to leave Egypt, Cleopatra acquiesces and meets him on her royal barge in Tarsus. The two begin a love affair, and Cleopatra assures Antony that he is much more than a pale reflection of Caesar. Octavian’s removal of Lepidus forces Antony to return to Rome, where he marries Octavian’s sister Octavia to prevent political conflict. This upsets and enrages Cleopatra. Antony and Cleopatra reconcile and marry, with Antony divorcing Octavia. Octavian, incensed, reads Antony’s will to the Roman Senate, revealing that Antony wishes to be buried in Egypt. Rome turns against Antony, and Octavian’s call for war against Egypt receives a rapturous response.

The war is decided at the naval Battle of Actium on September 2, 31 BC, where Octavian’s fleet, under the command of Agrippa, defeats the lead ships of the Antony–Egyptian fleet. Cleopatra assumes that Antony is dead and orders the Egyptian forces home. Antony follows her, leaving the rest of his fleet leaderless and soon defeated.

Several months later, Cleopatra sends Caesarion under disguise out of Alexandria. She manages to convince Antony to resume command of his troops and fight Octavian’s advancing army. However, Antony’s soldiers abandon him during the night. Rufio, the last man loyal to Antony, kills himself. Antony tries to goad Octavian into single combat but is finally forced to flee into the city. When Antony returns to the palace, Apollodorus, in love with Cleopatra himself, tells him she is in her tomb as she had instructed, and lets Antony believe she is dead. Antony falls on his own sword. Apollodorus then confesses that he misled Antony and assists him to the tomb where Cleopatra and two servants have taken refuge. Antony dies in Cleopatra’s arms.

Octavian and his army march into Alexandria with Caesarion’s dead body in a wagon. He discovers the dead body of Apollodorus, who had poisoned himself. Octavian receives word that Antony is dead and that Cleopatra is holed up in a tomb. There he offers to allow her to rule Egypt as a Roman province if she will accompany him to Rome. Cleopatra, knowing that her son is dead, agrees to Octavian’s terms, including an empty pledge on the life of her son not to harm herself. After Octavian departs, she orders her servants in coded language to assist with her suicide. Octavian discovers that she is going to kill herself and he and his guards burst into Cleopatra’s chamber to find her dead, dressed in gold, along with her servants and the asp that killed her.

The Battle of Actium was a naval battle fought between a maritime fleet of Octavian led by Marcus Agrippa and the combined fleets of both Mark Antony and Cleopatra VII Thea Philopator.

The battle took place on 2 September 31 BC in the Ionian Sea, near the former Roman colony of Actium, Greece, and was the climax of over a decade of rivalry between Octavian and Antony.

In early 31 BC, the year of the battle, Antony and Cleopatra were temporarily stationed in Greece. Mark Antony possessed 500 ships and 70,000 infantry, and made his camp at Actium, and Octavian, with 400 ships and 80,000 infantry, arrived from the north and occupied Patrae and Corinth, where he managed to cut Antony’s southward communications with Egypt (via the Peloponnese) with help from Marcus Agrippa. Octavian previously gained a preliminary victory in Greece, where his navy successfully ferried troops across the Adriatic Sea under the command of Marcus Agrippa. Octavian landed on mainland Greece, opposite the island of Korkyra (modern Corfu) and proceeded south on land.

Trapped on both land and sea, portions of Antony’s army deserted and fled to Octavian’s side (daily), and Octavian’s forces became comfortable enough to make preparations for battle. Antony’s fleet sailed through the bay of Actium on the western coast of Greece, in a desperate attempt to break free of the naval blockade. It was there that Antony’s fleet faced the much larger fleet of smaller, more maneuverable ships under commanders Gaius Sosius and Agrippa. Antony and his remaining forces were spared only due to a last-ditch effort by Cleopatra’s fleet that had been waiting nearby. Octavian pursued them and defeated their forces in Alexandria on 1 August 30 BC—after which Antony and Cleopatra committed suicide.

Octavian’s victory enabled him to consolidate his power over Rome and its dominions. He adopted the title of Princeps (“first citizen”), and in 27 BC was awarded the title of Augustus (“revered”) by the Roman Senate. This became the name by which he was known in later times.

As Augustus, he retained the trappings of a restored Republican leader, but historians generally view his consolidation of power and the adoption of these honorifics as the end of the Roman Republic and the beginning of the Roman Empire.

Note: Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra is of course relevant here.

The Levinas Facial Theme in Novels

[a continuation of Education and Spontaneous Learning]

The Face of Another (Japanese: 他人の顔, Hepburn: Tanin no kao) is a 1964 novel written by the Japanese novelist Kōbō Abe. Like other stories written by this author, the novel explores the alienation of modern man from urban society.^[1] It is written in the first person narrative mode, and is divided into a prologue, three “notebooks” (black, gray, and white), and a concluding letter from the protagonist’s wife.^[2] In 1966, it was adapted into a film directed by Hiroshi Teshigahara.^[3]

An industrial accident has severely burned the face of an unnamed plastics scientist. His wife is repulsed by his disfigurement and refuses to have sexual contact with him. To regain the affection of his wife, he attempts to create a prosthetic mask in a rented apartment. With this new “face,” the protagonist sees the world in a new way and begins a clandestine affair with his estranged wife. Although the mask gives the man newfound freedom, at the end of the story, it becomes difficult to determine if the mask has taken ownership of the man or the man has taken ownership of the face.^[1][2][4]

There is also a subplot following a hibakusha woman who has suffered burns to the right side of her face. In the novel, the protagonist sees this character in a film; in the film version, this is deliberately obscured.

References

Hoover, William (2019). Historical Dictionary of Postwar Japan, 2nd edition. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. p. 11. ISBN 9781538111550.
Abe, Kobo (1980). The face of another. Internet Archive. New York: Perigee Books. ISBN 978-0-399-50484-6.
Teshigahara, Hiroshi (1967-06-09), Tanin no kao (Drama, Horror, Sci-Fi), Teshigahara Productions, Tokyo Eiga Co. Ltd.
Rush, Zachariah (2014). Beyond the Screenplay: A Dialectical Approach to Dramaturgy. Jefferson, NC: McFarland. p. 59. ISBN 9780786466030

Movies and Chemistry: Keeping the Enchantment of Education

Several movies give you an “enchanting” back door or window into chemistry so that you can “beat” the tediousness of regular education and come into the field and its topics via these movies:

I.

The Man in the White Suit is a 1951 British comedy classic with Alec Guinness as a genius research chemist. He fiddles with his flasks and polymer and textile chemistry experiments until he invents a fabric that shows no wear and tear “forever.” This would seem like a great boon to humanity in its clothing needs but the chemist (“Sidney Stratton”) finds that both labor and management reject his discovery violently as it threatens jobs and profits. Textile or fabric polymer chemistry is at the heart of the plot.

Cry Terror! is a taut 1958 crime thriller movie with James Mason and Rod Steiger. The plot involves the terrorist threat of exploding a domestic airliner with a hidden RDX cache (a TNT successor) unless the demanded payment is made.

RDX was used by both sides in World War II. The U.S. produced about 15,000 long tons per month during WWII and Germany about 7,000 long tons per month. RDX had the major advantages of possessing greater explosive force than TNT, used in World War I and requiring no additional raw materials for its manufacture.

Semtex is a general-purpose plastic explosive containing RDX and PETN. It is used in commercial blasting, demolition, and in certain military applications.

A Semtex bomb was used in the Pan Am Flight 103 (known also as the Lockerbie) bombing in 1988. A belt laden with 700 g (1.5 lb) of RDX explosives tucked under the dress of the assassin was used in the assassination of former Indian prime minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1991.

The 1993 Bombay bombings used RDX placed into several vehicles as bombs. RDX was the main component used for the 2006 Mumbai train bombings and the Jaipur bombings in 2008. It also is believed to be the explosive used in the 2010 Moscow Metro bombings.

Traces of RDX were found on pieces of wreckage from 1999 Russian apartment bombings and 2004 Russian aircraft bombings. Further reports on the bombs used in the 1999 apartment bombings indicated that while RDX was not a part of the main charge, each bomb contained plastic explosive used as a booster charge.

Ahmed Ressam, the al-Qaeda Millennium Bomber, used a small quantity of RDX as one of the components in the bomb that he prepared to detonate in Los Angeles International Airport on New Year’s Eve 1999-2000; the bomb could have produced a blast forty times greater than that of a devastating car bomb.

In July 2012, the Kenyan government arrested two Iranian nationals and charged them with illegal possession of 15 kilograms (33 pounds) of RDX. According to the Kenyan Police, the Iranians planned to use the RDX for “attacks on Israeli, U.S., UK and Saudi Arabian targets.”

RDX was used in the assassination of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafic Hariri on February 14, 2005.

In the 2019 Pulwama attack in India, 250 kg of high-grade RDX was used by Jaish-e-Mohammed. The attack resulted in the deaths of 44 Central Reserve Police Force personnel as well as the attacker.

Semtex was developed and manufactured in Czechoslovakia, originally under the name B 1 and then under the “Semtex” designation since 1964, labeled as SEMTEX 1A, since 1967 as SEMTEX H, and since 1987 as SEMTEX 10. Originally developed for Czechoslovak military use and export, Semtex eventually became popular with paramilitary groups and rebels or terrorists because prior to 2000 it was extremely difficult to detect, as in the case of Pan Am Flight 103.

The Russian apartment bombings were a series of explosions that hit four apartment blocks in the Russian cities of Buynaksk, Moscow and Volgodonsk in September 1999, killing more than 300, injuring more than 1,000, and spreading fear across the country. The bombings, together with the Invasion of Dagestan, triggered the Second Chechen War. The handling of the crisis by Vladimir Putin, who was prime minister at the time, boosted his popularity greatly and helped him attain the presidency within a few months.

The blasts hit Buynaksk on 4 September and in Moscow on 9 and 13 September. On 13 September, Russian Duma speaker Gennadiy Seleznyov made an announcement in the Duma about receiving a report that another bombing had just happened in the city of Volgodonsk. A bombing did indeed happen in Volgodonsk, but only three days later, on 16 September. Chechen militants were blamed for the bombings, but denied responsibility, along with Chechen president Aslan Maskhadov.

A suspicious device resembling those used in the bombings was found and defused in an apartment block in the Russian city of Ryazan on 22 September. On 23 September, Vladimir Putin praised the vigilance of the inhabitants of Ryazan and ordered the air bombing of Grozny, which marked the beginning of the Second Chechen War. Three FSB agents who had planted the devices at Ryazan were arrested by the local police, with the devices containing a sugar-like substance resembling RDX.

II.

The movie Khartoum (1966) has General Charles Gordon traveling to Sudan in 1884 to quell the “mad mullah” the Mahdi. (Osama bin Laden of his day).
At the train station where General Gordon starts his trip, there’s a railway ad sign that promotes the use of “Wright’s Coal Tar Soap.”

This gives us a sign of the rise of the modern chemical industry.

III.

Think of “Sherlock Holmes” in terms of all the movies and TV series or the original stories and books:

Holmes has to explain to Watson how he survived the assassination attempt on him by Moriarty, “the Napoleon of Crime” who threw him off the Reichenbach Falls. Holmes explains that he faked Moriarty out and clung to a bush or something and was (obviously) not killed.

Holmes tells Watson what he does when he returns to civilization and travels and studies for some three years:

“I then passed through Persia, looking in at Mecca, and paid a short but interesting visit to the Khalifa at Khartoum, the results of which I communicated to the Foreign Office. Returning to France, I spent some months in a research into the coal-tar derivatives, which I conducted in a laboratory at Montpellier, in the south of France.”

The context implies the year 1894.

There is clear evidence that Mr. Holmes was deeply involved in the research of coal-tar derivatives as early as 1889 when the events of the Copper Beeches matter were transpiring.

We are told that on an evening in 1889, Mr. Holmes was seated in 221B Baker Street at the deal table loaded with retorts and test tubes. He was settling down to one of those all-night chemical researches in which he frequently indulged.

The research work was interrupted by a message of distress from Violet Hunter. Watson found that there was a train the next morning, and Holmes tells Watson:

“That will do very nicely. Then perhaps I had better postpone my analysis of the acetones as we may need to be at our best in the morning.”

It is clear that Holmes was engaged in coal-tar research long before his visit to Montpellier in the south of France.

The quotation from the Copper Beeches story refers to acetones, not to coal-tar derivatives.

“In the fractional distillation of coal-tar, the distillate separates into five distinct groups or layers, depending upon the stage of the process and the amount of heat applied. Category-one of the five includes benzene, toluene, xylenes and cumenes.

Acetones [dimethelketone-CH₃COCH₃] may be derived from the oxidation of cumene. And cumene [isopropylbenzene-C₆H₅C(CH₃)₂] is derived by distillation from the coal-tar naphtha fractions.”

Cumenes are derived from coal-tar, and acetones are derived from cumenes. Thus, a study of the acetones is, necessarily, research into coal-tar derivatives.

The rise of chemical engineering and organic chemistry are at the heart of the Sherlock Holmes stories.

Thus we can “climb” into chemistry via these books and movies and keep a feeling of enchantment as a kind of educational “shoehorn.”

Movies as an Education in Global Looting: The Sea Hawk (1940)

Movies and the World as an Arena of Violent Domination and Global Looting

The classic Warner Brothers swashbuckler, The Sea Hawk, from 1940, within its romantic adventures and intricate swordfights (perhaps comparable to the car chases of later movies) is a partly historical, partly fictional version of a world built on imperial struggles and ransacking and despoiling. The hegemonic power in the West (and perhaps worldwide) is Spain. Phillip II the king-emperor wants to own and dominate and rule the whole world. In 1588, his Spanish Armada loses to England. (The British of course want to compare this to the Battle of Britain against the German Luftwaffe.)

Set in 1585, The Sea Hawk opens with King Philip II of Spain plotting world domination, laughing that all world maps will soon read simply “Spain” — once England is out of the way, of course.

The Spanish ambassador departs for England to escort his niece to Queen Elizabeth’s court, but in a spectacular sea battle, the Spanish galley is soundly damaged, boarded, raided and sunk by a group of pirates led by Captain Geoffrey Thorpe, a Sir Walter Raleigh stand-in played by Erroll Flynn. Thorpe rescues the galley slaves — they row the boat — and spares the crew, taking them aboard and delivering them to England. The jewels and other bounty (or a portion thereof) are a gift to the Queen.

His crew is part of a noble privateer coalition — the Sea Hawks — who justify their piracy as reclamation of English goods (and enslaved sailors) from the Spanish behemoth. The political fallout from Thorpe’s abduction of the ambassador forces Elizabeth to outlaw the Sea Hawks, including an official denial (and private approval) of his mission to Panama to steal a shipment of Aztec gold.

Inca gold is also mentioned in the movie as a target of robbing.

Sir John Hawkins (1532–1595), part of this group of global sailor-pirates and master-mariners, was one of the most notable sailors and naval commanders of the sixteenth century.

He is known for his pivotal role in the maritime history of England and the rise of the global slave trade.

John Hawkins, the son of a merchant, was born in Plymouth in 1532. He became a sea captain and in 1562 became the first Englishman to start capturing people in Sierra Leone and selling them as slaves to Spanish settlers in the Caribbean. (Notice that selling slaves does not discriminate against Spaniards even with Phillip II threatening England. Business is business.)

Stealing Aztec gold as part of colonial or imperial plundering and the slave trade were part of the dark side of history, something the standard history books “skate over” dishonestly.

A key scene between the Spanish aristocratic beauty and Captain Thorpe:

Doña María Álvarez de Córdoba: “I’m not in the habit of conversing with thieves. I thought I made that quite clear, Captain Thorpe.”

Captain Geoffrey Thorpe: “Why, yes, all except your definition. Tell me, is a thief an Englishman who steals?”

Doña María Álvarez de Córdoba: “It’s anybody who steals… whether it’s piracy or robbing women.”

Captain Geoffrey Thorpe: “Oh, I see. I’ve been admiring some of the jewels we found in your chest… particularly the wrought gold. It’s Aztec, isn’t it? I wonder just how those Indians were persuaded to part with it.”
The Sea Hawk (1940)

Donald Trump continues this tradition of looting when he says of Iraq’s oil:

“Think of it as our oil under their sand.”

Thus the whole world is an arena where the weak don’t have any property rights: not the oil or gold, not themselves (slavery) and not their country (colonialism).

This exploitative hierarchy and “world-system” is part of “the way of the world” and even a romantic adventure story like 1940’s The Sea Hawk gives you a Hollywoodized glimpse into its roots. Imperial struggles in the West spill over into colonization and ransacking and looting. History books one sees in high school are dishonest and in that sense uninformative or even disinformative.

The popular PBS travel series Rick Steves’ Europe unintentionally gives us a wonderful example of this notion of plunder and looting as a pillar of world history in the show on Venice. Rick Steves is talking about the various statues in Venice’s central St. Mark’s Square (Piazza San Marco), and comments “I’d call the style ‘Early Ransack.’”

This Rick Steves quip about ransacking and historical wealth-building is very informative.

Tag: film