Funky Finch Finds Film F*** Filth

There was an article in the Times Online recently, which called to my attention the scandalet brewing among the cinematic community (and presumably affecting the none-too self-sufficient minds of Oscar voters), following a denunciation of the film The Reader by an American critic, Charlie Finch.

Finch attended the first advanced screening of the film (based on the famed novel by Bernhard Schlink, published in 1995), which opened on December 10th.

Like the book, the film includes explicit sex between a woman, who turns out to have been a prison guard in a Nazi concentration camp (and she is illiterate, to boot), and a teenager half her age.

You may or may not like nudity or explicit sex on film, you may or may not like the book itself - but the fact is the book does contain sex, and it does so for a very valid reason.

(You'll have to read it to understand. Or try this study guide written by Schlink himself.)

But Finch disagrees.

What is especially repellent about The Reader is the use of Kate Winslet's nubile body to create sympathy for a repellent character, whose triumph over illiteracy somehow mitigates unspeakable crimes that are never actually depicted on screen.

(You can read the rest here: The Personal is not Political.)

So, we learn that Finch finds Winslet's body nubile, therefore attractive.

And we learn that said body moves Finch to almost-sympathise with her character.

We also learn that he considers (understandably so) the main female character to be "repellent" - and that he finds that her triumph over her illiteracy somehow (how, exactly?) mitigates "unspeakable crimes".

One suspects he may not have read the book - and, in all fairness, he doesn't claim to have read it. Furthermore, one suspects it would have not made much difference if he had.

What Finch seems to want is that a "repellent" character be as de-humanised as possible.

I am sure - I may be wrong, of course - that he would have much preferred an old hag playing the main character. (For obvious reasons I couldn't possibly advance any specific casting suggestions in this direction.)

More importantly, it sounds as if he would have preferred the sex to be omitted not only for aesthetic reasons but to avoid presenting the woman as a sexual being.

Why?

Because presenting her as an asexual being would further de-humanise her: it would further remove her from the common human experience.

It would make her a non-human.

But she is not a non-human.

She is inhuman.

She is all too human.

And herein lies the danger of such treacherous sacred indignation: by considering inhuman people to be non-human, one implicitly (and blindly) denies the ever-present danger of inhumanity among even the most "civilised" societies.

I am not going to say that everyone is potentially inhuman.

(I dislike demagogy and "truisms" - with a passion! - in case you haven't noticed.)

But there is no doubt that very many people can be inhuman - sometimes, with eerie ease. 

Or else, how could have so many atrocities happen so many times, in so many places, to so many millions of people - over and over and over again?

How could the Maos, the Stalins, the Hitlers (and their petty epigones a la Pol Pot or Milosevic) of this world prevail, if it weren't for the millions of people - pretty or not, sexy or not, tall or short, fair or dark, sociable or unsociable, highly sexed or virgins or impotent, music lovers or tin-eared, elegant or shabby, rich or poor, cultured or illiterate - who found reason in their leaders' words? 
Or who simply didn't find it necessary to expose themselves and their families to the potentially dire consequences of disagreeing with the regime? 

OR, indeed, those who found a certain pleasure in the misery of others, or who had been victimised themselves to the point of becoming blind to other people's pain?

There are as many core reasons for inhuman behaviour as there are people who perpetrate inhuman acts.

But being non-human is not one of them.

Such people may commit monstruous acts, but they are not "monsters", as they are often ridiculously called.

And it is precisely this delusion - that only "monsters", i.e. non-humans, can act monstruously - what perpetuates the possibility of atrocities. Over and over and over again.

Did Finch, writing his review, really think it through, I wonder?

I may be wrong - of course - but I don't think so.

I suspect voicing his impressions, as loudly and as conspicuously as possible, is really his first priority.

(I am not about to judge him for that. I understand; after all, I am writing this to express my opinion - even though there is much more pressing work awaiting my attention...)

And in doing so, I suspect he knows which c(h)ords to play to elicit the maximum attention from the breed best described as the aspiring intellectual in haste.
(That's the crowd who graduated from the entire "... for Dummies" series and who rest easily in the satisfaction of being able to distinguish Monet from Manet - sometimes, even visually!)

Consider this rather typically titled offering:

Dubious Dumas

(Oh yeah: alliteration works every time, in nursery rhymes as in art critique. It might not gain you the respect of your peers - or your subjects, unless your rhymes are flattering to them - but it will attract the attention of the notoriously ADD-afflicted "masses" in search of a cultured facade. Aliteration makes things easy to remember and gives even the most pedestrian word combinations a certain rotundity that compensates the lack of substance by sheer verbal force. Oh, and by the way: I don't like Dumas' work either.)

I am all for abandoning the pretense of "objectivity" (which is a sham, anyway) and critiquing works - and, eventually, people - from a blatantly subjective view.

I don't even mind the alluring antics of alliteration - as long as people are aware of its aims: to beguile, to razzle, to dazzle... To conceal.

But that's just it... Are they?

Some are. Many are.

Very many aren't.

But there will always be those who'll find the means to talk their way to the head of the herd. 

They are the ones who know that the blind don't really mind another blindman leading them - as long as s/he does so loudly and proudly, with confidence, concealing ignorance and fear.

Ignoring ignorance and fearing fear.

And I am not talking about film.
Or about Finch, for that matter.