Hire the Morally Handicapped

A long time ago, as a student at a Baptist college, I was on a Christian service assignment that took me to a hotbed of liberalism, homosexuality, and recreational drug commerce. There I saw a bumper sticker, "Hire the Morally Handicapped," and I've been chuckling about it ever since.

In fact, every time I drive up to a store and see all the empty parking spaces reserved for the handicapped, I remind myself that I can say I am morally handicapped after all...

Of course, you can't say someone is good or evil in our society. It's double-plus-ungood. And I suppose that saying one is morally handicapped is single-plus-ungood, too. So, to be politically correct, let's just say that those Republicans (if you're a Democrat) or those Democrats (if you're a Republican) or those Republicans and Democrats (if you're a Whig like me), are neither evil nor morally handicapped, but differently ethic-ed.

Though I started out joking about being differently ethic-ed, the term has explanatory power. Though moralists have had to go underground in Hollywood (unless it's attacking Christian hypocrisy), you can find moralists alive and well in Bollywood. And I'm cool with this, because I like a moral message in the stories I consume.

I've mentioned before that watching Bollywood and paying attention to its morality is illuminating. For instance, when a bad guy kills the good guy's mother in the 2nd reel of a movie, it is obligatory for the good guy to exact an eye-for-an-eye, tooth-for-a-tooth vengeance in the 3rd reel of that movie. Contrast this with the American pattern of killing the antagonist just as dead, but after s/he/it goes for its gun leaving the hero No Choice.

Mindful of this I watched a snippet of a Shahrukh Khan movie. It didn't have subtitles, but it was very interesting. It is called Pardes. So, I looked it up on Wikipedia for an explanation of what I'd just seen.

(By the way, if you ever see a Shahrukh Khan movie and he's all bloody in the climatic scene, it's likely a romantic comedy.)

In Pardes, we see a conflict between Indian and American morality. The presumption in Pardes is that America is morally corrupt and it has no problems with smoking, drinking, or sexual infidelity. And that Indian morality is much better.

This isn't quite fair. Unless you're President Clinton, Americans think that adultery and sexual infidelity is morally wrong.

If you're a good Baptist who doesn't drink, smoke, or chew, nor go with girls that do, we think these things are as moralistic as Indians. Nevertheless, many good Baptists do not live up to these moral aspirations. (BTW I hear there are more Baptists in India than anywhere outside the US and Britain.)

The antagonist of this film is morally handicapped in both the Indian and the Baptist sense, while the heroic Shahrukh Khan works to protect the antagonist's reputation at great cost to his own reputation. And his own happiness, because he hides the antagonist's evil from his love interest who happens to be engaged to the antagonist.

As you'd expect of Bollywood, the source of conflict is family honor: it requires the girl to marry an obviously unsuitable fellow.

Ultimately, the antagonist's father relents, acknowledges Shahrukh Khan's virtue, and grants a happily ever after to everyone save the lothario. The Moral Of The Story is clear: Indian Morals are better than American Morals, as seen by Shahrukh Khan's nobility versus the Americanized antagonist's vice.

I was nodding and going along with this line of thinking until I tripped over this little bit of the wiki plot summary:

"Ironically, it also highlights one way in which Western culture can be viewed as more just and compassionate than Indian culture, since a Western bride can break off an unsuitable engagement without risking death at the hands of outraged family members."

Oh.

That.

Good point.

This shows us something important about moralizing. It's easy to be blinded by the customary, and traditional to that which is obviously very wrong. The Savior's warnings about motes and beams in eyes come to mind as do his woes upon those who idolize tradition.

I'm not suggesting that your storytelling refrain from moralizing or from espousing a moral position or condemning wrongdoing when you see it. However, when you do, maintain the humility to recognize your own moral shortcomings.

Save Me from My Sin

I watched a fun little movie on Netflix, Robot and Frank. It is about an old man who suffers from senile dementia. His family loves him, but his son lives several hours away and his daughter travels the world, and his wife isn't around. He needs someone around to keep house and mind his health, so his son buys a robot.

Frank rejects the mechanical valet until it helps him shop-lift a soap from a local boutique. You see, he is a cat burglar who has been released from prison in his dotage. He is surprised at the complete amorality of the robot, and soon he is teaching it how to pick locks.

The robot obliges, because its primary mission is to keep Frank engaged and active while monitoring and helping to improve his health. The robot would prefer they work on a garden, but its programming is flexible.

They burgle the local library, and after that succeeds, they go after bigger prizes. It's a lot of fun because the "mark" is an unpleasant and annoying man.

If you dislike spoilers, stop reading and come back when you've seen the film...

It's OK, I'll wait...

No, really, I'll be right here when you get back...

What works well in this story is misdirection and uncertainty in the audience about how much or little is wrong with Frank's memory. As the cops close in on him, he summons his son, feigning death. He gives him a packet that's the same size and shape as the millions in jewels he's stolen.

The cops stop the son and demand to see the package. They find useless shoplifted trinkets. The son is furious to discover Frank is not dying, and the cops proceed to search the house with the son's consent. Frank flees and while he's on the lam, he has to erase the robot's memory.

The movie ends with Frank in a nursing home when his son comes to visit. Frank's dementia seems worse. He joins the rest of his family and they share a bittersweet visit. As his son is leaving Frank say, "Dig under the robot's garden."

The movie ends with a laugh that Frank has fooled the cops, his annoying son, and the audience who feared that Frank's final score would be lost. A lot of modern crime stories work this way with a similar "happy ending" as the crooks get away scot-free.

Which brings me to my point. I was taught as a child to fear God and believe in Heaven and Hell. My terror of the dark prompted me to seek God's mercy by asking Jesus into my heart. I didn't quite understand this transaction until many years later. (If you weren't so taught, and you do not so believe, that's OK, I promise not to pass an offering plate.)

My flawed childish understanding that I was "saved" from Hell and the devil's punishments in recompense for my acts of wickedness as defined by, say, the Ten Commandments, the whole of the Torah, or merely Jesus' summary to Love God and one's fellow man.

I didn't understand that Jesus doesn't save me from Hell, but he saves me from my sins. Whether the movie's Frank burns in Hell or not is immaterial. He's a thief at the beginning of the movie, and he's a thief at the end of the movie. He is never saved from being a thief.

Stealing makes you a thief. Lying makes you a liar. Adultery makes you an adulterer. And so on.

Stories can swing between the extremes of pornography and art, based on how they handle truth. If your story just panders to the audience's appetites, even non-sexual appetites, I call it pornography. Conversely, if your story tells the truth, even truths that make you uncomfortable, I call it art.

I once heard that there are some laws you never break, but you just break yourself against them. For this reason I think it unwise and untrue to tell stories where lawbreakers get off scot-free.

You might think this is moralistic claptrap and that's your prerogative.

But suppose that instead of being a thief, the movie's Frank were a murderer?

What if there's a body under the robot's garden.

(Can You?) Steal This Book

An evergreen debate concerns the piracy of artistic expression and What Should Be Done about it. You might think that copying is theft. I don't.

It is my opinion that Digital Rights Management (DRM) is a bane on society, and when I let my imagination roam, it can destroy civilization. DRM only seems reasonable, that if a work of art is valuable, then that value should be preserved by restricting access to it to paying customers. But art is not a commodity like bread.

The hungry man who cannot feed his children may steal a loaf of bread to feed them, but when he does so he takes it from the baker who needs the money to buy shoes for his children. And so on. Theft of tangible goods victimizes the person from whom the item is stolen. When Moses brought down from the mount the tablets of the Law everyone understood "Thou Shalt Not Steal" in these terms.

Economics is the dismal science of scarcity and how people cope with scarcity. Scarce goods command higher prices and common goods do not. Laws against copying protect and maintain scarcity.

If you copy my work, you don't take bread from my mouth. You will just reduce the scarcity of my work in this world. I had my work before you made a copy, and I have just as much of it afterwards. That's different from a loaf of bread.

Now, don't get the wrong idea. I believe in private property and I believe Intellectual Property law is--in principle--legitimate. Though Moses did not carry copyright law down from the mount, those fellas in powdered wigs who wrote "We the people" included Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 of the United States Constitution that we know as the Copyright Clause wherein Congress is empowered to:

To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.

This is no emanation of any penumbra, but black-letter law. The principle is as legit as the US Constitution, which I regard as more legitimate than any President, Congress, or Court that it establishes.

You may be confused. I said that copying is not stealing, but I asserted the legitimacy of copyright law. There is no contradiction if you remember that the moral law can differ from the civil law. I remember driving home from college and agonizing over the 55mph speed limit. (I was altogether too earnest as a youth.) When someone asked my philosophy teacher why he had a radar detector in his car, he mentioned this distinction.

If you drive 56mph, you should manfully pay the ticket like Socrates drank the hemlock. That is the way of civil disobedience: do what's right and don't cry if John Law catches you and takes you to court.

Is file sharing a victimless crime? Almost. You are disrupting artificially created scarcity. Is it wrong to artificially create scarcity? Yes. Is file sharing both illegal and unconstitutional? Probably.

Today the purchaser of an ebook or song spent his money to become an owner, not a licensee. Owners of books or records lend them to friends and sell them at flea markets. But publishing companies call that theft, they have devised DRM schemes, and have lobbied Congress to pass laws to help them make cultural artifacts like these one-use-disposable. Is this wrong? Yes.

One sign that the GOP is just as corrupt as the Democrats is its continued support of legislative schemes to take rights from consumers, despite Hollywood's monolithic support of the Democrat party.

I think this is a situation where the morality that inheres within nature (right and wrong) is inconsistent with the civil law of the United States (legal and illegal). If you make illegal copies of my work, I'm not going to squawk about it, provided it's the right thing to do.

Hooray for Bollywood

I've been savoring the differences between Hollywood and Hindi Cinema. (My friend Nitin tells me the correct term for Bollywood is Hindi Cinema.) I was pleasantly surprised a year ago when I first experienced it. Though Sholay shows its age, it provides a good starting referent to Bollywood. Kudos to my friend Debraj to got me started with this film.

In a Hollywood movie, you are best advised to start with a short story, and make a screenplay from it. That is because a typical novel would take many hours were you to do a scene-by-scene adaptation to a screenplay. Bollywood has no problem with time. They typically make much longer movies. This results in a lot more story to enjoy.

Another difference and the main one I want to bring to your attention is Bollywood's moral compass. It is magnetized differently than Hollywood's. I'm not taking this opportunity to cast aspersions on either Hollywood or Bollywood--different does not mean wrong. I am only going to note differences. And if you think those differences constitute depravity or something very good, that's your decision.

The first thing I noticed about Bollywood is that they are not afraid to mention God. In the USA, any movie that mentions God had better do so in an ironic or comedic fashion, or it's going to be filed in the "Inspirational/Faith & Spirituality" section of the video store. The only time secret agent 007 was ever in church was at his wife's funeral. Otherwise, if you hear deity's name taken in a Hollywood movie, it is most likely taken in vain. Bollywood, not so much.

India has had to negotiate a diverse collection of faiths, and Bollywood wants to sell tickets to Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, and Christians. Pious members of each of these religions will likely hear respectful mentions of deity in a fairly inclusive fashion. The US solution to the problem of religious pluralism is total silence. To Hollywood, deity is something like Voldemort of whom no one dares speak his name.

In both Hollywood and Bollywood movies it is altogether right and proper for the antagonist to die in the last reel. But the protocols for killing off the villain differ. In Hollywood, it does not matter how much evil the villain inflicts upon the hero, s/he'll try to take him alive--then helplessly watch him die. The script writer will then oblige the audience by making the villain go for his gun or fall onto some stabby object, like a wrought-iron fence, or a wood chipper, or molten lava. Whereupon the Hollywood hero will then respond with regret while the audience is doing fist-pumps.

Bollywood is a lot more eye-for-eye and tooth-for-tooth. If you smother my asthmatic family member with a pillow, I'll smother you with a tractor exhaust pipe. If you jam my race car into the wall resulting in a fiery crash, I'll do the same to you. I was shocked when I saw this happen in a kid-friendly family drama.

The only counter-example of this was a movie where a woman serially married men who for various reasons needed killing, and she murdered them one after another only to get off Scot-free by becoming a nun.

All the while nobody is allowed to kiss nobody on screen.

Bollywood also seems to have a greater tolerance for government and official corruption. If you ever see a dirty cop, a bureaucrat who takes bribes, or a corrupt politician in Hollywood, they are villains most vile. But in Bollywood this kind of behavior is laudatory provided he share his ill gotten gains with the poor. I have no way of knowing whether Indian official culture is more corrupt than American official culture, but its cinematic portrayal seems to be much more accepting of it.

They say that a fish can tell you nothing about water. This is because he's in it all the time. Foreign cinema provides a window into not just other cultures, but by way of contrast it tells you something of your own. The US has enjoyed a dominant place in world culture for most of the 20th century. In the 21st century, we're seeing other countries developing sophisticated movie making establishments.

It was a bit shocking the first time I heard two characters conversing in Hindi and lapse into Hinglish, uttering a word or two of English. This is the future of world culture: a mix of distinct national cultures that holds lessons for everyone. I think we'll see a convergence on the good and an appreciation of the differences.

Hooray for Bollywood. If you don't agree, I'll give you a tight slap.