Odd Optimism
Thanks to not being in the habit of going to see movies in theaters, I didn't see the remake of The Manchurian Candidate when it came out, but thanks to Netflix, we did see it tonight.
Not as good as the original, but pretty good. The new one wasn't about Communists, it was about a world-wide mega-corp. The new one unfortunately downplayed the incest angle. The new one didn't have Angela Lansbury in it, but it did have Meryl Streep.
The new one, however, had an optimism that the old one didn't. That was a surprise to me. It seems that every time someone tries for optimism and the future these days, it gets shot down by the conservatives...you know, those people who believe the past is better than any present (and certainly any future).
The new one showed that the marriage of strong belief and power never goes well, while at the same time showing that the marriage of strong ideal and power can accomplish the thought-to-be-impossible.
Things were more black and white in 1962. People are more savvy in 2005. I can see the desire to want things to be more cut and dried; after all, it takes a lot more effort to navigate the world when you have to consider pesky things like nuance and subtlety and complexity. Good, Evil and other Captialized Bugaboos find no purchase in complexity. This is the core of the tactic taken by the conservatives these days. Most of what they do can be captured in simple (read: simplistic) syllogisms:
Liberals appreciate nuance and complexity
Good can't exist in such a world.
Therefore, Liberals must hate Good and so must be Evil.
As I navigate through the nuances of relationship as well as the flat-out goodness and badnesses of our current situation—which, in turn, makes for complex dynamics—I remind myself that dogma is bravura, a haughty pose by those unsure or unable to navigate the changing seas of being alive. In other words, it's bullshit.
So I applaud Jonathan Demme in his remake, even as I miss the simpler, spookier, nastier, more incestuous story-telling of the past. And with clearer understanding of these interesting times of mine, with reminders that even the bad parts of my past (recent and distant)—while easier to remember as black and white—were just as nuanced as everything else in my life, it's quicker to recognize and reject the dogma-junkies.
And that makes life a little easier.