Movies and TV, Oh My
Sunday night I went and saw ATONEMENT. Each individual scene was wonderful, and there were some stunning performances, especially Saoirse Ronan who played Briony at age 13, but I found the pacing of the movie to be glacial, and rewind technique got old for me. I also felt like I was being miscued through much of the film. The writer and director seemed to be saying “This is a love story, this is a love story”, but it actually wasn’t, and so I felt emotionally let down because I hadn’t known where to put my emotional energy. Writers in every genre — books, short stories and movies have to be aware of how they signal the readers/viewers, but I think it’s especially critical in short stories and movies because of the compressed time frame of the experience. The movie was only two hours long, but it felt like I’d been in the theater for three hours.
Then last night I watched the new episode of the Terminator show, and it hit a real button for me. The message seemed to be that science is dangerous, scientists are irresponsible and think less about people than their work and research, if the team at Los Alamos had all been killed we would never have been afflicted with The Bomb, which is just moronic. I’m okay with the fact that Sarah Conners might feel that way, but I’d like to see her paranoia balanced with an argument for the other side. Technology has caused problems, yes, but advances in science and technology are going to help solve many of our problems.
In a country where people are putting more credence in crystal power and guardian angels, and we rank at some dismally low place in terms of kids and science scores, I hate to see popular culture pushing an anti-science message. So, end of this morning’s rant. Time to get back to work on the book.
Melinda
January 22nd, 2008 at 1:46 pm
Oddly enough, none of the people I see bashing science are living in caves, wearing furs, and using a pointed stick to get food.
January 22nd, 2008 at 2:56 pm
Another thing that popped into my mind:
Some of the most important discoveries to come out of the Los Alamos lab are related to nuclear medicine.
I wonder if the people who wish everyone at the lab had died will take a moral stand and reject their cancer therapies.
January 23rd, 2008 at 7:37 am
Good points, Ty, especially the one about nuclear medicine.
Then there’s the argument that the nuclear bomb has saved far more lives than it’s taken. I can’t imagine how the bellicose hatred so often expressed by the US and USSR in the ’50s and ’60s would not have led to the century’s third gigantic war had we not been deterred by the possibility of mutually assured destruction.
January 24th, 2008 at 4:14 pm
And, if that had happened in a non-nuclear world, our official language would probably be Russian.
I mean, seriously, have you ever taken a look at the incredible mismatch in conventional forces? Our stuff was typically a little better technology wise, but even if your tanks are not that great, if you have 25 of them for every 1 of your opponents, they don’t have to be.
I hate the fact that nuclear weapons exist as much as anyone else, but there is a very good argument to be made that their existence is responsible for creating a level of restraint in world politics that might not be there otherwise.
The kind of wishing displayed in that TV show demonstrates a complete inability to weigh facts in historical context.
January 24th, 2008 at 6:50 pm
I love Atonement.
It plays some real games with the audience, and I enjoyed them. The sound effects wandered from being part of the action to being part of the score. I just thought it was wonderful.
And the performances were generally good. Knightley has never played anyone so brittle.
And the photography…my goodness.
It probably won’t win the Best Picture Oscar, but I think it might deserve it.
January 27th, 2008 at 12:59 am
Actually, Ty, we would probably have won a conventional war with the Soviets for the same reason we won the world wars against the Germans, who were considerably better soldiers than either the USSR or the West in both conflicts.
That is, we would have beat them by sheer weight of men and metal; and against them, we wouldn’t have had to contend with the German advantage in tactical and operational _nous_. Though the geography means it would have been long and bloody.
Our GDP was always enormously greater than the Soviets’; the CIA estimates which put theirs at about 1/3 of ours turned out to be grossly overoptimistic.
Though it was much closer to the reality than the Soviet Union’s own statistics — by the 1980’s, the Soviet government was often using the CIA statistics themselves.
Their only chance of beating us would be to knock us out before we could fully mobilize, which the Atlantic Ocean (and English Channel) would make extremely difficult.
You’ve got to be careful when estimating the economy of a totalitarian state; the artificial prices and/or currency levels make accurate comparisons very difficult even when they’re not deliberately hiding things.
Eg., the World Trade Organization just revised its estimate of China’s GDP down by 40%, after re-examining the purchasing-power levels, and they’re probably right.
This makes a whole series of policy assumptions about China questionable.
January 28th, 2008 at 5:21 pm
I’ve read the US estimates that in the event of a conventional war, the USSR would have owned Europe in about a week. Which is why the belief existed that in the event of the USSR invading Europe, the only possible response was a nuclear strike on the invading forces.
A friend of mine was an artillery officer in Germany during the 80’s, and has sat in the meetings where they discussed the tactics they’d use in the event of a Russian invasion. It basically amounted to firing off nuclear artillery shells, and then hiding.
Didn’t sound like a confidence that they could win a ground war.
January 29th, 2008 at 12:01 pm
“I’ve read the US estimates that in the event of a conventional war, the USSR would have owned Europe in about a week. ”
– it’s the other way ’round.
We knew that there could be no conventional war in Europe; whoever was losing would reach for the nukes, and that’s _why_ our conventional forces were relatively small.
If there hadn’t been any nuclear weapons, we’d have had much larger ground armies.
What earthly point would there be in trying to duplicate the USSR’s 50,000 tanks when they’d all be radioactive dust in the stratosphere on Day Three anyway? And as a bonus, nukes are cheaper.
“You send a tank across the German border, we blow up the world.”
The Soviets tried to have huge nuclear _and_ huge conventional forces, and from a smaller economic base; as a result, they bankrupted themselves and collapsed.
Ultimately, most large, prolonged wars are won by the side with the deeper pockets. “Quantity has a quality all its own.”
That’s how WWI went, it’s how WWII went, and it’s how WWIII (aka The Cold War) went. It’s not inevitable that the side with the bigger GDP will win, but it’s the way to bet.
January 30th, 2008 at 9:39 am
When I was going to school in Vienna and was invited over to the Ambassador’s residence a few times, the Ambassador’s take was pretty much what Ty’s friend said. Unless the U.S. used nukes in Europe — which didn’t make the Europeans real happy — the feeling was that the Russians would roll west without much to stop them.