Stranger than Fiction...a review

I did not edit the following text, just so you know, oh, and...fuck the fuckers.

A pre-post on hollywood: if one is to get the most out of any movie, particularly any hollywood movie one needs to understand a first primary fact--it is propaganda.

Now to Stranger than Fiction, a Will Ferrell comedy that tracks the life of a IRS agent who realizes that he is the character in a story and that he is about to die, whereby he proceeds to learn to play guitar (a lifelong dream), fall in love, and, eventually find the author of his story and... yeah. All of this takes place with a Douglas Adam's/Hitchhiker's Guide vibe, and Harold Crick, the main character, is constantly counting and calculating, his steps, his toothbrush strokes, his time to get from place A to place B.

The plot unfolds rather slowly, taking full advantage of Howard's mathy-ness, his screaming at the narrator which no one else can hear, and the comedy of self-consciousness, i.e. narration while events happen, along with the trademark Ferrell flatness that is either boring or hilarious. The movie revolves around three pairs of relationships and the question of life/death: Howard and points of interest in the entire movie, and it is around these points that the movie revolves: 1) the love story between Harold and Ana Pascal (Maggie Gyllenhaal) which begins when Harold audits her bakery, 2) the relationships between Harold and the doddling English professor who repeatedly consults him concerning his fate (Dustin Hoffman), 3) the relationship between the author and her publishing assistant who is trying to make sure she finishes (Emma Thompson and Queen Latifah). The question of life and death is littered with a perhaps charming literary-ness and centers around both Harold's coming to live, including most centrally the love story, after 12 years of comic, and therefore not horrid, monotony, and also concerning how the author is to finish the book, as the author and assistant visit various scenes to imagine the characters death (the last event necessary to finish the novel), and more crucially once Howard tracks her down and they meet, much to the horror of the novelist, who always writes tragedies (this question is underlined by the distinction between comedies and tragedies, whether the book will be about death or the carrying on of life, yay sex!).

The love story attempts to escape cliché through its use of a women who is an anarchist, has arm and other tattoos (yet is a sweetie), a baker/harvard law drop out, and the love story, an obvious setup is predicated on its being unbelievable from the start...and because we remain completely in Harold's mind (trying to imagine what Ana sees in him is like trying to imagine a way to escape the movie's ideology, which is after all a brick wall). This love therefore serves as the cement that maintains the movie, pulls us through, and as love always does in Hollywood (see my previous post on A History of Violence), make us accept the way we are being sold the world. In fact, the entire message of the movie seems to be live your life now because you know, you can, and if you do lots of little things, remember your dreams, find some gorgeous, wonderful, caring, makes cookies and does the dishes, and has good politics type woman then, shit everything will be sweet, besides of course you might die...especially if your narrator always kills her characters.

And thus we are given the ultimate self-referential moment where, our hero reads the tragedy that is his life, after being assured by his English professor expert that it can't happen any other way, that the book is a masterpiece with his death and it shouldn't be otherwise. And, he reads it on the bus, and proceeds to agree, giving the draft of the book back to the author. We then proceed to watch his death, find him help fulfilling his co-worker's dream, preventing his love from not going to jail for taxes by getting write offs for the goods she donates (even though the point was not to pay taxes, but no, she shouldn't go to jail, he loves her, therefore! again, love is the antidote for the socially unacceptable), and, in the final hurrah saving a boy from being hit by a bus by diving in, throwing the boy away and...getting hit by the bus. Of course, the movie doesn't end there, once again proving the power that love plays in cementing its message. Instead he breaks many bones, etc, is fine, gets a kiss, we hear the book's new ending, all about getting the most out of the little things that saves lives, as in this case, and we see that perhaps the author and english teacher too, might soon be having some great sex (which btw in movies is very rarely about the sex but about the relationship it signifies, thus preventing the possible mind/body split which it is in this case made explicit between narrator and character).

In any case, the final interesting part of the movie is the question of death, and the notion that if one lives as if one is going to die, then one lives better, but also, that in this case if one accepts one's death, as a good and worthy one, then one is worth keeping around...that is in this case not being killed off but miraculously saved and, therefore, living happily ever after. Of course, this therefore shatters the connection to death and ends with a yay. In any case, the whole question of death, while conceivably extremely intense, is downplayed by literary necessity, the brief period of time allotted to it, and the dual falseness of the story (both a story and a movie).

But primarily, death is equated to living well, which is equated to finding happiness in the little pieces of the status quo, or in the ideology capable of justifying anything, that is...love. So death, which used for rhetorical effect does not take on its full power, nor is any ethical statement brought forward. We remain in our awful capitalist monotony, which, miraculously, and unbelievably, is a paradise. And that my friends, is called propaganda.

love and solidarity,

db

p.s-this is not to say that love is not something we want, or should partake in. however, all you need is love is obviously not the case, and letting ourselves swallow a ton of shit in service of this idea is not only pathetic but morally unacceptable, though perhaps such a viewpoint as a temporary measure will allow us to find love, and building upon it, move beyond it. movies, however, stop at love as the solution, and therefore don't change anything else, which is precisely why they are propaganda for the awful status quo.

A Very Brief What-I-Got from Anarchist Anthropology

A few things, that, however previously known, were driven home in my experience (this is not necessarily to say this is what the class was about):

-There is no difference between 'primitive' and 'modern' man. While certainly some societies are better or worse at doing things, like maintaining high standards of living, preventing the formation of states and other institutions of excessive power (all of which Western societies are awful at), it is essential to break down this false distinction to understand our own societies and what to do now.
-On this vein, capitalism (that is the form of society where production is the primary value, and is maximized and integrated into every aspect of life), and maybe civilization is about enforced scarcity, about enforced dependence, and any movement against oppression must have both an analysis and a solution to this problem. An interesting idea here is the notion of a "gift economy" which define many societies, and even much of our own. Of course this should NOT be confused in any way with pure altruism.
-Society must be built out of relationships. Charity, philanthropy, etc, are band aids that seek to cover up how money is generally acquired...i.e. through fucking over shitloads of people, often everyone, or by refusing to enter into relationships with other people, "love thy neighbor as thyself...but don't meet your neighbor, dear God, why'd you want to do that?". This points to the general falseness of Christian notions of how to get to equality, and the related notions of love, charity, etc: society will be changed by building society, not by regulating, channeling, etc, the independent action of atomized individuals.
-Revolution, insofar as the word should even be used, is a moral task, a break with the previous moral/societal/economic framework that restructures relationships and redefines needs/desires. In a world with more production than ever before we have a higher percentage of poverty than ever before. This is almost unspeakably obscene. The revolution will not give everyone a car, a big house, two tvs, a washing machine, and a big useless lawn. Precisely finding how we can live in paradise AT PRESENT, and how to perpetuate such paradise is the revolutionary task that must be organized.
-Any change beneficial change happens through organization, and organizations have a unique and essential role, however much we want to promote networks as a way that is more easily non-hierarchical. Networks bring people together for projects, but organizations are groups that are already able, experienced, directed towards doing things, and therefore remain the core of getting things done. Moreover, we need both organizations, that is collections of people who work on certain tasks, networks, ways of connecting people, identities, ways of considering people as having common humanity, and communities, which are people who are brought together both by identity and networks, but also by relationships, lifestyle, and a more holistic culture generally. Now to create such things...

I'm sure there is more but that's all for now.

db