All Founding Fathers Are Created Equal (But Some Are More Equal Than Others)

Over the past few weeks, I counted at least two or three made-up quotes on different social media sites, attributed to the founding fathers on the matter of the right to bear arms. The most painful one is the "Liberty Teeth" speech attributed to George Washington -- jibberish that not only was never uttered by our first president, it actually insults his intelligence. No such worries in the past for both Playboy magazine and the NRA, both having published made-up George Washington quotes, only to retract them when asked to produce their sources (each other apparently).

Let's settle the founding fathers' "RoboCop Directives" debate once and for all, shall we? If anything is self-evident to me it's that nothing kept the founding fathers up at night more that the paradox of establishing and running a commanding government, while allowing its citizens to be armed to the teeth. George Washington's successor, who was also Thomas Jefferson's advisor on the Declaration of Independence, said it best:
  
"To suppose arms in the hands of citizens, to be used at individual discretion, except in private self-defense, or by partial orders of towns, countries or districts of a state, is to demolish every constitution, and lay the laws prostrate, so that liberty can be enjoyed by no man; it is a dissolution of the government. The fundamental law of the militia is, that it be created, directed and commanded by the laws, and ever for the support of the laws." 

  
        -John Adams, “A Defence of the Constitutions of the United States”, 475 [1787-1788]

I believe this statement to be accurate, but I encourage its verification. Nothing threatens freedom more than blind zealousness. I am reminded on that note of a famous pig named Napoleon...

The infamous altered commandments from George Orwell's "Animal Farm" (1945)

How Much Is That Six Year Old In The Window?

Allison

What a tangled web we weave. The day we allowed industrial and corporate lobbying to buy their way into government was the day we sold our world-envied constitution to the devil. In other words, we figured out a way to legalize government bribing. We thought we were being so clever, so first-worldish, by institutionalizing bribery and making it "transparent". Or as we call it today, Political Action Committees (PACs). Yes, we transparently disclose the amount of money being used to buy politicians. Clever indeed, if not the constitutional confidence game of the century.

The problem is much bigger than the NRA, as much as they are the latest center-stage reminder of what we've done. The tobacco lobby is a perfect example: against overwhelming evidence that tobacco is one of the biggest killers of Americans, it is still being protected by elected officials. 443,000 people are being killed by cigarettes every year in the US, according to the CDC. So how much “legal bribing” does it take to allow the federal government to protect the right to kill people? Apparently about $3.4 million dollars every two year election cycle (source: Center for Responsive Politics). That translates to $3.84 per human life killed.

There are limited statistics on how much private gun ownership protects individuals. The closest number I could find is an FBI report stating that between 2005 and 2010, 213 homicides were recorded as legitimate self defense. That's 42 per year. We also know that the proportion of non-fatal to fatal shootings is roughly one to one (Source: CDC Study, 1993 – 1998). So in lieu of a direct statistic, let’s extrapolate and say that another 42 legitimate self defense cases result in non-fatal injury. That only leaves claims where a gun owner legitimately deterred or turned away an assailant -- a statistic that simply does not exist. But I would be hard-pressed to believe that for every fatal and non-fatal incident there are more than TEN times the number of legitimate deterrent incidents -- LEGITIMATE meaning not a deterrent by the mere fact that there is a firearm in the house. That benefit of the doubt would bring our count to about 1,000 incidents a year where private guns save lives. And that would reduce our yearly firearm homicide count from 8,583 per year (source: FBI, 2011) to just about 7,500, rounded. Yes, the logic seems a little twisted, since it trades a life saved for a life lost. A more logical approach would be to say that for every innocent life a private gun saves, it destroys eight. 

Speaking of lopsided logic: if you want to blow your mind for a moment (figuratively, please), consider the following simple math: the United States has been involved in 75 war-scale conflicts since its birth (1776 - 2011); about 20% of those wars were waged against North American natives; the total number of US deaths in all 75 conflicts adds up to 1.3 million (estimate varies by sources, but most credible sources agree that it is well over 1 million); out of the 1.3 million US deaths, about HALF of them were self-inflicted (Civil War - does not include so-called friendly fire). On the domestic crime front, a very conservative estimate puts US homicides since 1776 at 1.5 million (almost a million alone since World War II). So the grand total of Americans killing Americans, in the history of our great nation, is well over 2 million. On the flip side, just over half a million Americans have been killed by foreign enemies. Which means that three out of four American casualties, killed in wars or domestic crime, have been killed by Americans. Talk about our own worst enemy.

So back to our count of recent years: at 7,500 lives per year lost, how much does the NRA value life?  The NRA has been contributing towards the election of congress, senators, and presidents at a rate of $1 million per election cycle (source: Center for Responsive Politics, 2012). All for the right of private firearms to be used to kill over eight times the lives they save. Combining both figures, the NRA actually values life at $66.66. 

For the record: I am not against hunting for food, or against a well managed approach to the private ownership of non-automatic or even semi-automatic firearms (for definition of "well managed", see U.S. Constitution, Second Amendment, under well regulated.) Just because I don't own a gun does not mean that I need to impose my personal beliefs on everyone. But an institution like the NRA offers me no respect in return, when they consistently ignore the overwhelming evidence from over twenty other free and developed nations. Their transparent agenda to maintain the sale of automatic / assault firearms to practically anyone is criminal in itself. The moment they put a $66.66 price tag on the head of little Allison in Newtown, Connecticut, it is time to hold them, and the politicians they purchase, accountable.

What Americans Do Every Four Years

Americans vote for a leader every four years -- presumably. It may work out that way "on paper", but nothing could be further from the truth. Yes, a president is actually elected, not so much by popular vote, but by something called an Electoral College. About 100 Americans actually know what an Electoral College is, and yet 100 million Americans argue about politics every four years, until their common sense falls out. But while the Electoral College system may be part of the complication, it is not really the heart of the problem. After all, the Electoral College has disagreed with the popular vote only three times in 236 years. The heart of the matter seems to lie in a collective anxiety of what freedom actually means.

All in all about 120 out of 195 countries are officially democracies, representing roughly 58% of the world's population. But only 25 out of the 120 are stable and consistent democracies. The rest are considered "flawed" democracies. Which brings our freedom count to about 15% of the world's population. That's about one billion people who can truly sing, "well at least I know I'm free". The fact that there are 24 other free countries out there may come as a shock to country music fans, but such is life. There's a reason why humans thought for millions of years that the sun revolved around the earth. We're just wired that way.

Which brings us back to the matter of freedom. In the U.S. we have essentially a two-party system, open to any other interested parties. Each of the two main parties has a set of convictions about economics, national security, and social issues. They typically add up to ten issues or so, making up the famous "platform". For the most part, Americans tend to vote much more so on a platform than for an individual leader (and/or representatives, judges, etc.). To complicate matters, many of the platform-driven Americans are really only interested in part of the platform, and in some extreme cases they are arguably only interested in a single issue. As well-intentioned as the system is, it does leave you wondering what exactly it is we're electing every four years: a leader or a principle? "Both" is a tempting easy-way-out answer, but it is not necessarily the best answer.

No doubt that having the satisfaction of choosing anything of importance is important. About 50% of the world longs for a taste of that choice, and as many as 85% of the world is not sure whether they have ever had that choice. So why do we American voters feel so dramatically anxious every four years? Could it be that we're living vicariously through our principles? The fact is, for every issue on a platform, many Americans already have the freedom of choosing to live up to that particular issue. But it’s never easy, and like anything else in life, it often comes at significant cost. 

So we do what we can to survive or prevail, then we anxiously hope that the majority of Americans agree with the rest of our principles. But with each day that brings an election closer, our hope turns to demand. And there's the problem: we're free to arrive to our principles by choice, but we demand that others agree with ours immediately. 

What we Americans do every four years is realize that it's time once again to confront our convictions, and be challenged in a major way by more than 50 million people. Then we take it all very personally, to the point of distortion. Yes, there are party-line policies that eventually go through, and they do have a real impact on many people's lives. There are social injustices that call for government to intervene and make right. But every time an American utters the words "our way of life", he/she should try substituting "our" for "my" as an honesty-check. Every time a politician says "the American people have spoken", he/she is talking about half of voting Americans -- at best.

Dissent is part of the democratic process. Not understanding that it is, or how to live with it is an unfortunate misunderstanding of democracy -- and a threat to our destiny as a relevant nation.

My Uncle Discovered America. You Have a Problem With That?

The “discovery” of America to this day is a subject that seems to elude us Americans, for reasons I can’t comprehend. It’s not really that complicated: to begin with, America wasn’t “discovered”.  Not anymore than a band of gypsies helping themselves to leftover burgers at your picnic, while you went out for a hike. Yet here we are, more than half a millennium later and we’re still telling prior occupants that we “discovered” them. Now, no one’s giving anything back, slow down there Tea Partiers and unapoligists before you hurt yourselves.  But to quote Jon Stewart, stop trying to make Bullshit Mountain any higher than it already is.

To be fair, most recent school textbooks have stopped using the term “discovered”.  Instead, they’re using the more politically correct term “fucked over”. Which means, now the tide has turned against my great-great-great-great-great uncle Cristoforo Colombo (Christopher Columbus).  You see, uncle Cristoforo was born in Genova, (Genoa) Italy, like my daughter, her great grandfather before her, his great grandfather before him, and all the way to uncle Cristoforo.  My daughter, by the way, was born in Genova exactly five-hundred years AFTER her great uncle Cristoforo discov… uh, fucked America over.  Oh the humanity.

OK, so somewhere along the line the conversation shifted from “Who discovered America?” to “Who fucked America?”  Fair enough.  But I’m not about to let that conversation go gently into the night… oh no.  As luck would have it, 25% of my family was native American, the other 75% was Italian.  Native South American to be precise.  Apparently a tribe so tough (the Aymaras) that even the mighty Incas said, "we’re not fucking around with them."  I asked my dad one day about this, and he told me something interesting.  He said, “You know son, my great, great, grandfather was probably not much nicer than Genghis Khan.  We idealize native American tribes quite a bit, but the truth is, they had their own demons and atrocious behavior at times.”  And there it was, the moment of Zen in the “who fucked America more” pissing contest.  There ain’t no good guys, there ain’t no bad guys.

So just for fun, let’s re-shift the conversation to “Which very-white guy arrived to America first?”  Now THAT race belongs to three great European explorers: Leif Ericson, Uncle Cristoforo, and Giovanni Caboto (Giovanni later changed his name to John Cabot, like all immigrant explorers who were bullied at explorer school in the New World).  To be fair, let’s start chronologically: Ericson was a mighty Norse Viking Icelander, which basically means he drank a lot and wore a steel helmet – probably because he drank a lot.  Keep in mind, for someone that drank a lot he didn’t just beat Columbus by a day or two:  we’re talking about five-hundred years BEFORE uncle Cristoforo.  So why was old Leif robbed of the historic honor of “the very-white guy who first fucked America”?  Well, minor technicality, as always: Leif’s trip actually started in Iceland.  That's like saying you discovered Canada and you live in Detroit. 

Icelanders and Scandinavian in general are a little sore about this subject, by the way.  If you ever want to have a little fun, bring that up at a bar in Reykjavik, in Oslo, or in Copenhagen.  I will say this for the old Viking: he actually called the new found land  “Vinland” (“Wine Country”).  Awesome name if you ask me.  But Canadians many years later had a better idea.  They thought the new found land should be called Newfoundland. Those wild and crazy Canadians can get out of control sometimes. 

Five-hundred years later, uncle Cristoforo borrowed a few bucks from the queen of Spain and told her he would pick up some tea for her in Japan.  He landed instead in the Bahamas. Now to be fair to uncle Cristoforo, if you look at any wall map, the Bahamas is only three feet away from Japan.  Slightly off course, little did he know he had just set the official precedent for all Italian modes of transportation over the next five-hundred years.  If you don't believe me, grab a taxi in Rome some time and give the driver the exact address of where you're going. Let me just help you with his reply here: “N’do cazzo??” is just Roman for “Where the fuck is that?”

Which brings us to John Cabot.  I have to say, this one I don’t get. A few historians have a beef with uncle Cristoforo because technically he only made it to the Caribbean and Central America.  So they give the honor of the discovery of NORTH America to John Cabot.  That’s just great.  Except for one minor detail: the only record of John Cabot ever landing on the shores of North America was in NEWFUCKINGFOUNDLAND.  Yeah, exactly five-hundred years after Leif Ericson.  Talk about Oldfoundland.

So there you have it. I have vindicated my family by doing what every good patriot in any God-fearing country does best: re-writing history.

Happy uncle Cristoforo day.

What Would You Do If You Knew The World Was Ending?

I thought I would review a film BEFORE I see it, for a change.  Appropriately, "Seeking A Friend For The End Of The World" (Steve Carell and Keira Knightley) would be a very good candidate for such silliness.  But is it really that silly?  I mean, I don't want to get philosophical about a funny love story, but the end of the world technically happens every second on our planet.  To be exact, it happens every second for precisely 1.78 people.  That's 107 people every minute, 6,408 every day.  You have to admit, that's a lot of dead people.  It makes the famous line that the creepy kid from "The Sixth Sense" delivers ("I see dead people...") seem like an embarrassing understatement.  Yeah kid, sit down before you hurt yourself.  You and half the planet see dead people all the time.

But back to our lovable yet terribly unlucky guy, Steve Carell.  Perception is reality, isn't it?  Meaning, if you attempt to watch time actually move by staring at the hour digit on a clock, you're in for a very painful experience.  But look into the eye of the milliseconds long enough and it will make you want to go hug your dog and kiss a homeless guy as if it were your last day on earth.  Yes, time, like death, is a matter of perspective.  If we don't know exactly when "it" is going to happen, then it's like staring at the hour digit.  But in end-of-the-world stories like "Melancholia" or "Seeking A Friend", the spotlight suddenly shifts to the milliseconds.

We're told that our down-and-out hero has been left by his wife, when she learns that our planet is about to be squashed like a cockroach by one of those apocalyptic monsters: a big-ass rock.  We're also told that Carell's character ends up meeting a girl that becomes his, well, friend for the end of the world.

You have to admit, it does make you pause for a few seconds and wonder: I mean, what would you do?  Seriously, it's not that crazy a thought when you consider either ending: the one from a silly Hollywood movie, or the one that happens every time you blink.

The beauty of reviewing a movie without actually knowing how it's going to end is that it is precisely where life and art intersect.  No imitation here.  None of us really know how our own story is going to end either, even as it happens all around us.  In our "real" world, the end does not come suddenly and at the same time for everyone.  Not yet anyway, though we're also told that's how the previous tenants on our planet (the dinosaurs) were asked to take a final bow.  Still, our less dramatic, real-world endings happen every second nonetheless, like a Hollywood ending unfolding in super-slow motion.

However "Seeking A Friend" ends, I will bet on this: most people will leave the theater feeling like they should go hug their dogs, maybe give that homeless guy a... OK, a quarter or two.  After all, let's not get crazy here, it's only a movie.  It's not like it's the end of the world.  But just in case, try to hug your dog more often, and maybe carry some extra change in your pocket...

The Mind. Indeed, A Terrible Thing To Waste...

The Lost Art of Conversation

Earlier in March, the Financial Times (FT) shared an interesting article titled "How To Have A Conversation", published in the "Life & Arts" section of their magazine.  The subject matter struck me as interesting, given that a whole decade had passed us by and no one paid much attention to the fact that the art of chatting had been systematically displaced by chatter, texting, and dare I say, something called sexting.  Silly me,  I grew up thinking that "chatter" was the sound my teeth made when they were cold.


The FT piece is fairly well written, perhaps a bit long for my taste.  Here's an excerpt: "What makes a good conversationalist has changed little over the years. The basics remain the same as when Cicero became the first scholar to write down some rules, which were summarised in 2006 by The Economist: 'Speak clearly; speak easily but not too much, especially when others want their turn; do not interrupt; be courteous; deal seriously with serious matters and gracefully with lighter ones; never criticise people behind their backs; stick to subjects of general interest; do not talk about yourself; and, above all, never lose your temper.' But Cicero was lucky: he never went on a first date with someone more interested in their iPhone than his company."


Yes, change happens.  But I would argue that no generation has been better prepared for change than our own (I include most of us out of college and professionally active in this demographic.)   So that might explain why we have stopped questioning the fact that certain matters seem to have taken a bizarre turn in our lives.  What seems to linger though is that uneasy feeling, our conscience perhaps, nagging us to find out if it's a turn for better or worse.  The easy way out of the nag?  Pick a side, and stick to it.  But be forewarned: if you choose to leave behind the eye-to-eye-contact option, in favor of the eye-to-screen one, you may want to wear a helmet when you leave the padded comfort of your digital zone.  It's tough out there in the real world, where "undo" or "save" do not stop an oncoming bus from mowing you down as you attempt to text and cross the street.

How do you get from Goldman Sachs to Carnegie Hall?

Last week, a man named Greg Smith dropped a bomb on Wall Street, one that caused $2.1 billion worth of damage within a 24 hour period.  Not a real bomb, of course, but a lot of you probably know what I'm talking about.  For those who don't: a Goldman Sachs division head resigned on March 14th, and he chose to announce it via a letter that the New York Times agreed to publish.  The letter, arguably written in a professional manner, was a serious blast of Goldman Sachs' corporate culture.  The next day, analysts estimated that Goldman Sachs' value had taken a 3% hit, equivalent to a decrease of about $2.1 billion.  Regardless of how real or long-term the impact on Goldman Sachs' value is, Greg Smith's letter sent quite a shock wave throughout the international business community.  Here's the headline as it appeared on the New York Times, and an excerpt from the letter:

Op-Ed Contributor (From The New York Times, The Opinion Pages)

Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs

By GREG SMITH

Published: March 14, 2012

"TODAY is my last day at Goldman Sachs. After almost 12 years at the firm — first as a summer intern while at Stanford, then in New York for 10 years, and now in London — I believe I have worked here long enough to understand the trajectory of its culture, its people and its identity. And I can honestly say that the environment now is as toxic and destructive as I have ever seen it."

Enough said?  Oh, no.  He's just getting warmed up.  Hoo-ah.  Actually Greg Smith's letter goes on for another page or so, and in my opinion, fairly well written.  Which of course is not the same as well said: too early to tell at this stage.  But you know what else would have been worth a couple billion dollars?  If someone at Goldman's had had the opportunity to video record, even with an iPhone, the expression on the faces of Lloyd Blankfein (CEO) and Gary Cohn (COO) as they read the letter for the first time.  I know, that would have been priceless. 

Leadership, like capitalism, is a moving target.  That may sound like heresy to a lot of people.  But here's why I believe that: as long as societal values shift at least once every generation, so will leadership.  Some may insist the fundamental aspects of leadership never have and never will change: a leader always was and always will have a clear vision, excellent communication skills, intelligence, decisiveness, and generally concerned about the well-being of his followers.  Oh, and highly ethical.  And there's your missing link.  The "Mad Men" leaders of fifty years ago may have not really cared that much about conflicting interests between themselves and their clients, and all else being equal there would have never been a Greg Smith grenade thrown at them. 

I would be willing to bet that you, like me, don't lose much sleep at night over the values of leaders fifty years ago.  But throw Mr. Smith into the mix, and as a business leader, you really should feel something tugging at you.  The question might be, where do we stand on our generation's change pressures?  Every generation has at least one ethical grenade thrown at them, we can't escape that.  Is this something I should try to search my soul about, before I find myself staring at a pin-less grenade at my feet?  Sounds advisable, except for one thing: soul searching is a good start, but unfortunately not good enough.

The story of Greg Smith v. Goldman Sachs is indeed just getting warmed up.  But from a leadership perspective, I find it a perfect opportunity for those of us who are driven by matters of business leadership and personal growth.  I see two clear paths that we can take in search of a valuable lesson here: we can fall into the "pundit" temptation, that is, stand on the sidelines and watch the moving target race unfold in slow motion; or we can place ourselves in the race. 

The old saying goes that the way to Carnegie Hall, one of the performing art Meccas of the world, is "practice, practice, practice".  So, regardless of who the good guys or the bad guys turn out to be in the final script of Smith v. Goldman Sachs:  for those of us hungry to become the best leaders we can be, how do we get to Carnegie Hall?  Practice?  Maybe, but we must really beware of practicing ourselves into a comfortable numbness on the sidelines.  To borrow from the script of Chariots of Fire:  in the words of the great Olympic runner Harold Abrahams, speaking to his trainer Sam Mussabini, "If I can't win, I won't run!"  To which Mussabini replied, "If you don't run, you can't win."

jy
3/17/12

Cool Tunes

Q: What do you get when you cross Peter Gabriel, Joe Cocker, and Bruce Springsteen?

A: Michael Crispin.

I don't know about you, but I find it fun "discovering" new tunes. Hey, I can kill a good hour cranking out The Doors, The Beatles, and Bruce Springsteen like any other guy who grew up in the 60's, 70's, 80's... oh who am I trying to kid: I'm still trying to grow up.   But we all have to move on, that's the way life works. In a good way, that is. No one is saying we need to burn bridges with the past. Good memories and great sounds should be revisited every now and then. But we can't live in them.

But back to Michael Crispin: OK, I hear mostly Peter Gabriel in his voice, but I'll let you have fun and see what other ghost from the 70's genre machine you can find in this guy's voice.  Though I wouldn't listen to him if you didn't care much for Gabriel, cause the similarity is definitely there.

So... (Peter Gabriel fans will appreciate the pun here), without further ado, here's Michael Crispin:

PS - Does anyone know anything else about Crispin?  2009 seems like a long time ago now, and I don't think he's come out with anything new since then.  His Facebook page doesn't seem to have much new info, and Google / YouTube don't give up much either.  But you can still buy his first album (6:16) on iTunes.

The Iron Lady (2011)

"Oh Maggie, Maggie what have we done!?"  So goes the last line from The Post War Dream, a song from the The Final Cut, Pink Floyd's last studio collaboration back in 1982.  The line is a direct reference to Margaret Thatcher's decision that same year to go to war with Argentina over the Falkland Islands.  Not long after, the Soviets nicknamed Maggie the "Iron Lady".

Thirty years later, British film director Phyllida Lloyd, who directed the most financially successful British film ever released (Mamma Mia!), unveils the biographical story of The Iron Lady.  The story as told by Lloyd weaves in and out of an aging Thatcher's point of view and stream of consciousness, almost to the point of introducing dementia as a whole new subplot.  For those of us over 40, the quasi-modern-time historical context of the movie created a bit of an Alzheimer moment for ourselves: was I aware back then that she had been elected as the first woman prime minister in the UK?  Did she really make into the 90's as prime minister?   Is she still alive??

Meryl Streep plays the part of Lady Thatcher not-surprisingly well, almost adding fuel to the stream of consciousness. As the timeline goes back and forth, we begin to wonder if we're not at times watching a documentary. While most of the audience may recognize Streep's name, the rest of the characters are played by relatively unknown actors. Between Streep's fair-enough likeness to Thatcher, and the unfamiliar cast, the film sometimes plays with the audience's collective mind as it appears to waltz in and out of a docudrama genre.

A few days after watching the film, I came across a commentary of The Iron Lady in the Harvard Business Review. Given the source of the review, it was not surprising that the focus was on Thatcher's management style, how effective it was, and how questionable it became when she was unable to evolve with the times as the 90's rolled in. But Herminia Ibarra, Harvard professor and author of the article, actually put some soul into the commentary beyond a pragmatic, ivy league management lesson.

Ibarra recalls a mid-90's BBC documentary about Thatcher, when the former prime minister is asked about her legendary aversion to consensus... "Flashing her famous blue eyes, she answers in measured tones: 'If you look at the great religions — and the Judeo-Christian religion is really at the heart — would you have those great guidelines if Jesus had said, Brothers, I believe in consensus?After a long and piercing look, she answers her own rhetorical question: 'Of course not, you'd have nothing of value.' "

That might give an insight of how Maggie rose to power. But how did she "lose it?" Well, that's when the "aha" moment sets in. Once again in Ibarra's words, "Thatcher's story is a textbook case on how to get power and, later, how to lose it... For as we all know, what got you here won't get you there." She concludes her commentary by saying "...if we are successful, the hard part kicks in: we come to the point where we have to reinvent ourselves. What must we keep and what must we shed in order to advance and grow?"

Well said.   Although on the matter of power I might feel compelled to put it as follows: it's hard to lose something you've never really had.   And that may very well be my takeaway from the story of The Iron Lady: the reason why we must reinvent ourselves, why someone as smart as Maggie should have known better towards the end of her mandate, is the very essence of evolution itself.   At the time the Iron Curtain came crashing down, ironically thanks in part to Ronnie and The Iron Lady herself, so ended the notion that sustainable power could be had by a single mere mortal, kingdom, or empire.

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Film Trailer:

Melancholia (2011, Lars Von Trier)

We decided to go see a movie last night, and we picked "Melancholia".  Yes, while most people were out trying to spend the first day of the new year in a happy way, we decided to go witness an existentialist drama about the obliteration of our entire planet as we know it. To exist or not to exist - that is the question you keep asking yourself throughout the film. 

Melancholia is yet another existentialist story from yet another existentialist Dane, filmmaker Lars Von Trier. The father of existentialism himself, Søren Kierkegard, must be proud of his fellow countryman.  I don't know what it is about the Danes and their existentialist ways, but I feel I must disclose that I am an admirer of Mr. Kierkegaard and his groundbreaking philosophy.   

Now, you would think that after watching the trailer of Melancholia, I would begin to agree with that guy in Hamlet who said, "there's something rotten in Denmark."  But, nooo. Existentialism sucks me in, yet again. The tragic spirit of the Prince of Denmark himself could have easily been spotted anywhere in the painfully long wedding scene in Melancholia, early in the story.  Appropriately set in a castle, modern day notwithstanding, Hamlet could have waltzed into the upper crust event, like the guy from Quantum Leap.  

The wedding party itself is fraught with all the aristocratic dysfunction that would have made the prince feel at home. Following the surreal toasts from the father of the bride, who was a spoon short of a proper table setting, and the mother of the bride, who ended her toast with the ever so popular at weddings, "Enjoy it while it lasts... I myself hate marriages", Hamlet could have provided the coup de grâce of the evening with his famous soliloquy "To be, or not to be".  All the while the beautiful bride Justine, sensually played by Kirsten Dunst, keeps exiting the reception, stage left, pursued by the mother of all Armageddons.

Kierkegaard could have also "quantum leaped" into this Danish tragedy, and would have found himself right at home.  He would have been useful too more than once, as comfort to the brave-but-one-pill-away-from-a-breakdown Claire, Justine's sister.  Though Claire helps Justine unconditionally through her wedding unraveling, Claire herself begins to breakdown eventually, without much relief from her pragmatic-but-useless-in-a-doomsday-scenario husband John.  John is well played by Kiefer Sutherland, and to be fair to his character, he at least delivers a much needed comic relief in the story when he asks Claire, "Is everyone in your family stark raving mad??"

Kierkegaard's existentialist input would have been borderline eerie, in light of the doomsday nature of the story.  It took me a while, but I eventually remembered and dug up an apocalyptic thought by the Danish philosopher, from his work "Either/Or, Part 1".  The lines could have very appropriately been delivered by Kierkegaard to Claire during the film's "Part 2: Claire": 

“A fire broke out backstage in a theatre. The clown came out to warn the public; they thought it was a joke and applauded. He repeated it; the acclaim was even greater. I think that's just how the world will come to an end: to general applause from wits who believe it's a joke.” (SK, 1843)

If I were to take two good stories in their own right: Mike Cahill's film Another Earth (also released in 2011), and Arthur C. Clarke's book The Hammer of God (1993), then  slow-cook them together, I would end up with Melancholia.  Presto, and that would have actually made a fine dish. What almost spoiled the taste was a dash of that bitter existentialism from a story like The Tree of Life (2011). Fortunately, it was just a dash, not enough to ruin the whole meal. At its  heart, I actually liked Melancholia. Von Trier might have considered a dash less of the dragging and drawn-out moments to hypnotize us into submission, but hey, it's his story and he's sticking to it.

To Mr. Von Trier's credit, I do believe he ultimately succeed in artistically paying tribute to Kierkegaard's genius, whether he intended it or not.  That is especially evident if you consider one of the philosopher's great quotes: 

“The most painful state of being is remembering the future, particularly the one you'll never have.”

jy - Jan. 2, 2012

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