Dreaming of America vs The American Dream
Apr. 17th, 2008 04:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mallorys_cameraBeen doing the miniseries total immersion thang with HBO’s John Adams. At first I was kinda resistant – the American Revolution doesn’t interest me in the least. I am not a patriot.
I should explain.
I’m not anti-American – I’m sure throughout history there’s been no better place for the majority of men to live than the United States. It’s just… I think all nationalism is a form of pseudo-speciation; great ape behavior encoded into our DNA, evolutionary improvements to the frontal cortex notwithstanding. I dislike the fact that primates are so inherantly sociopathic and cruel that they must band together for protection against one another. I don’t want to have to band together for protection and if it were only a matter of dying, I wouldn’t. I don’t much care if I’m alive or dead. Pain, though. Very unpleasant. I’d rather not have it inflicted upon me, thank you very much. If the only way to avoid it is to huddle together with 301 million other people – only 300, 999, 880 of whom I have sympathy in common (Malcolm Gladwell’s magic number! One hundred and twenty!) – then by golly, that’s what I’ll do.
So anyway – John Adams…
When Max was thirteen or so, Robin’s age now, he thought history was the most boring thing in the world. In order to fan some kind of interest in him, I used to say, “History’s not just a list of events. What you have to imagine is people who were just like you and me living through those events. What would you be like if you’d lived in France during the Napoleonic Wars? That’s history.”
Of course I was over-simplifying. Dramatically over-simplifying. All sorts of subtle things make up psychological profiles, and many of them are specific to time and place. Case in point: contemporary humans are characterized by very short attention spans. It’s popular to blame this on the Internet and video games, but I think those are secondary effects. Personally I blame freeway speed limits – a brain that’s learned to process the types of information that will allow it to make decisions at 70 mph develops specialized entertainment needs.
Anyway, the problem with John Adams is that there’s no sense that any of its characters are living in the 18th century. They have modern sensibilities; they just do weird things like wear wigs. I suspect the reason they wore wigs is because of the onmnipresence of lice. Lice may be thought of as a defining factor in the 18th century psychological profile in much the same way that riding in a fast car is the defining factor in the 21st century psychological profile. But you never hear about lice on HBO.
Also John Adams – who was truly a repulsive human being in real life, revisionist history notwithstanding: think of him as a colonial Dick Cheney – perforce is presented as a sympathetic character. And he just wasn’t.
Apart from those two things, the miniseries is diverting enough. Took me out of myself for two whole days! Two whole days of bright sunshine.
But today the weather turned gray. And as without, so within. It’s like a morgue down here on world-famous Cannery Row. April has been bad month. I’m running on fumes and I’m tired of it, tired of the fumes, tired of the running.
Small business is the backbone of America, they say. Small business is the chase for the American Dream! I guess that must mean the American Dream is bitterness, constant exhaustion and an utter lack of any kind of self-worth. I wonder what John Adams would think.
I should explain.
I’m not anti-American – I’m sure throughout history there’s been no better place for the majority of men to live than the United States. It’s just… I think all nationalism is a form of pseudo-speciation; great ape behavior encoded into our DNA, evolutionary improvements to the frontal cortex notwithstanding. I dislike the fact that primates are so inherantly sociopathic and cruel that they must band together for protection against one another. I don’t want to have to band together for protection and if it were only a matter of dying, I wouldn’t. I don’t much care if I’m alive or dead. Pain, though. Very unpleasant. I’d rather not have it inflicted upon me, thank you very much. If the only way to avoid it is to huddle together with 301 million other people – only 300, 999, 880 of whom I have sympathy in common (Malcolm Gladwell’s magic number! One hundred and twenty!) – then by golly, that’s what I’ll do.
So anyway – John Adams…
When Max was thirteen or so, Robin’s age now, he thought history was the most boring thing in the world. In order to fan some kind of interest in him, I used to say, “History’s not just a list of events. What you have to imagine is people who were just like you and me living through those events. What would you be like if you’d lived in France during the Napoleonic Wars? That’s history.”
Of course I was over-simplifying. Dramatically over-simplifying. All sorts of subtle things make up psychological profiles, and many of them are specific to time and place. Case in point: contemporary humans are characterized by very short attention spans. It’s popular to blame this on the Internet and video games, but I think those are secondary effects. Personally I blame freeway speed limits – a brain that’s learned to process the types of information that will allow it to make decisions at 70 mph develops specialized entertainment needs.
Anyway, the problem with John Adams is that there’s no sense that any of its characters are living in the 18th century. They have modern sensibilities; they just do weird things like wear wigs. I suspect the reason they wore wigs is because of the onmnipresence of lice. Lice may be thought of as a defining factor in the 18th century psychological profile in much the same way that riding in a fast car is the defining factor in the 21st century psychological profile. But you never hear about lice on HBO.
Also John Adams – who was truly a repulsive human being in real life, revisionist history notwithstanding: think of him as a colonial Dick Cheney – perforce is presented as a sympathetic character. And he just wasn’t.
Apart from those two things, the miniseries is diverting enough. Took me out of myself for two whole days! Two whole days of bright sunshine.
But today the weather turned gray. And as without, so within. It’s like a morgue down here on world-famous Cannery Row. April has been bad month. I’m running on fumes and I’m tired of it, tired of the fumes, tired of the running.
Small business is the backbone of America, they say. Small business is the chase for the American Dream! I guess that must mean the American Dream is bitterness, constant exhaustion and an utter lack of any kind of self-worth. I wonder what John Adams would think.
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Date: 2008-04-19 05:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-20 03:33 pm (UTC)