This concludes the movie; I hope you liked it. I hope that everyone likes it, that is, finds it worth thinking about. This is not to say that there is any expectation that everyone will agree with all of the contentions in the "film." That isn't possible for a number of reasons, especially my awareness that much more could be done to make the production better, with a better story line, better character development, and better exposition of ideas. Some things require really powerful persuasion to have any chance of changing people's minds about anything. The problem was how to finish the "movie" in a reasonable time. As it was, various sequences took far longer than anticipated. Finding just the right photographs for the airplane attacks toward the end of the film took maybe 2 and 1/2 hours, and I still am not satisfied. But there was no choice but to work with what was available. A studio with film archives and all sorts of wonders would be possible but that is out of the question at this time. Yet there was enough of the right kind of visuals such that anyone who looks over the production ought to be able to see its considerable potential. Anyone who isn't clueless, that is. This is a rough sketch, needless to say, an early attempt to combine ideas, but that is all it could be for now. What I have learned in the past two or three years, in an attempt to segue into story -narrative- creative efforts, not dropping non-fiction but adding a new skill set, is that the transition is very tricky. It is particularly tricky for me since my objective is to make fiction as information rich as non-fiction. That is, the purpose of 'movies,' as much as these creations merit that kind of terminology, should be far more than ha-ha, yuk-yuk laughs, or crying at sad parts. The idea is education, challenging people to raise their standards of judgement, to develop a capacity to see new kinds of realities in the world, to become smarter. Basically, I can't stand stupid people. Cultivating a knowledge base for my efforts is also on the agenda. Back in late 2004 or some time in 2005 I created my first "movie" shown via e-mail, more-or-less a documentary about Radical Centrism. It wasn't until seeing video rebroadcasts of TV dramatist Tom Sawyer's talks about writing fiction, shown locally as far as I knew starting in 2011, two lectures each about 90 minutes long, that I began to take the possibilities of narrative seriously. To understate things I am still far from being good at this, but progress has been made, real honest-to-God improvement. What my self-education has already taught me is that learning any new discipline takes serious time. But this is also true for doing anything that is worthwhile, you've got to put yourself into it. You've got to work at it, you need to find the time to make it conceivable for your efforts to pay off in some fashion. This applies to Radical Centrism. For me, RC is not some sort of add-on, a diversion that can be dispensed with because it supposedly is only one way to look at the world and there are others that are just as good. Quite the opposite is true: Nothing else is nearly as good, certainly when thinking about political philosophy, but extending into such areas as social psychology, the study of history, economics, literature, and even religion. Conceivably RC has value in business as well. Unfortunately few people are able to understand what Radical Centrism actually is, and what its potential can become. To do that requires an investment of time and effort, however, and if you aren't willing to make that kind of commitment it won't be possible to fathom what the possibilities for RC are. And that is the excitement of Radical Centrism. It has the ability to revolutionize political thought and the world of ideas more generally. On the subject of resources and time, what I have now discovered about the history of the film industry has been very useful. This is in reference to a 1989 book that I recently read, Neal Gabler's An Empire of Their Own, How the Jews Invented Hollywood. It is a volume -432 pages- that I cannot recommend highly enough. There is good writing, and it would be possible to mention scores of books in this category, but this text is a masterpiece. The research is fantastic, the book is highly informative, but not only does it flow, it is filled with some of the most artful turns of phrase you will ever come across in any reading in any genre. The opus demolishes a number of stenotypes about Jews generally and Jews in California in particular, but more important it explains how it was that Jews early in the 20th century created an entire new industry and made it a roaring success that has helped change world culture. Not always for the better, needless to say. Sometimes horribly for the worse. But Gabler makes it clear that there never was such a thing as a monolithic Jewish film monopoly and also clear that Hollywood's Jewish movie moguls -and the vast majority of moguls were Jews- were as often at each other's throats as anything else. Nearly all were political conservatives, something that did not begin to change until, at the earliest and only with a handful of cases to report, in the late 1920s; it took the Great Depression to begin to radicalize Hollywood although another and major contributing factor was a growing influx of Leftist Jews of eastern European background which really had an impact only in the 1930s. Until then almost all executives in the business, and certainly a plurality of others as well, were Republicans. As was the case, for example, of Louis Mayer, CEO of MGM, who was a close friend of arch-conservative William Randolf Hearst. The larger point, though, is that even among conservative Jews in cinema, there were fierce turf wars, merciless competition for audiences and name actors, battles over the kinds of values movies should uphold, and vast differences in studio priorities. Basically, everyone fought everyone else, not always, there could be truces for several years, but regularly, sometimes viciously, and often costly. Today's anti-Hollywood anti-Semitism, in other words, is based on a retarded conception of Hollywood history. What is most impressive, though, are the stories of how the original Hollywood studios came into being. The saga is one of early 20th century start-ups with limited capital, seeking to popularize a technology that almost all the 'smart money men' regarded as a novelty with no real long term potential. Moreover, Hollywood was opportunity by default; there was very little else at the time for inventive but struggling Jews with inadequate educations to do that offered any prospect for business success. The extent of anti-Jewish bigotry in the pre-WWII era may be hard to imagine in 2015, but in the era between 1900 and 1925 or so, Jews had little chance for business careers in any important industry in America, were often excluded from living in better neighborhoods, and were seldom admitted into the ranks of any social group with status, anywhere, including quality schools. There were plenty of "establishment Jews" on the East Coast, of course, and many had broken through to success in some fields of endeavor, especially retail trade and the beginnings of Jewish presence in banking and finance, but mostly those Jews had German background and were clearly well assimilated into American society. Hence, as incredible as it may seem now, large numbers of Jews of the first decades of the 20th century celebrated Christmas and hence a good number of songs of the season actually had Jewish composers or lyricists. Examples are: * Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow * The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire) * White Christmas, a creation of Irving Berlin. * Silver Bells * Winter Wonderland * Sleigh Ride * I’ll Be Home for Christmas Hollywood's moguls were all assimilationists whatever differences they had; being acknowledged as true Americans was at the top of their personal agendas. This might mean one thing to Mayer, who produced such Norman-Rockwell-in-spirit-films as Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, while at Columbia the seedy side of the USA was evoked to make points of one kind or another, but regardless the movies sought to diminish the distance between Jews and everyone else as much as humanly possible, and a significant number either ceased being observant at all or became members of Christian Science, which for a time was a major religion in Hollywood. But what is so memorable was how almost haphazard the beginnings of the movie industry was. And how undercapitalized most film start-ups were. But family connections could suffice when money was tight, making resources available that young Jewish entrepreneurs simply did not have on their own, or would-be film producers might sell a stake in their company for capital to get a hot new idea -usually requiring a new technology- off the ground. Some Jews did not make it but most did even if they might have multiple failures first. Most Gentiles simply didn't see it coming, among the few being Darryl F. Zanuck. Others who should have been at the forefront of the industry, like Edison, were loathe to innovate once the basic inventions that made movies possible were in place and, as he saw it, what was important was milking his existing patents for all they were worth and wilfully turning his back on competing inventions that, even after a few years, clearly were transforming movies into a semblance of what we think of today when we think of cinema. As well, it was the Jews of Hollywood who reconceptualized movies from 5 minute novelties into dramas similar to stage plays, with developed story lines and engaging plots. No-one handed anything to the first generation of moguls, they had to work for it and often had to fight to keep what they had. They did it all at a time when "Hollywood" consisted of dirt roads, a total of three mom-and-pop cafes, and when automobiles were rare sights to behold amongst horses and buggies. The real advantages simply were climate that allowed year round outdoor filming, cheap land, and distance from Edison and his control over much of the technology by means of laws that had no standing in the far West. What was also noteworthy were the values of a number of the Jewish movie moguls of the era. Adolf Zukor and Carl Laemme, for instance, sought to promote what we would call the best Christian values of the time -although, of course, as they understood matters, and in this they were basically right, those values were, for the most part, also Jewish. They also sought to create movies with class, films that promoted the best of Western culture, including classical music played before film showings or sometimes during the action of those early silent movies. And, as soon as money became available, newly opened theaters showed just how cultured the Hollywood Jews were. Some of what they constructed was kitsch in nature, but many movie palaces of the 1920s were works of architectural art, veritable shrines to the high culture of the Baroque or the Rococo. Or Art Nouveau or, increasingly, to Art Deco and style-conscious eclecticism. The point to make is that Radical Centrists would benefit from the example of the Hollywood Jews. RC is a start-up philosophy, what Centroids is today hardly suggests what it can become. But like Zukor or Mayer or the other moguls it takes effort to turn dreams into realities. It also takes intelligence, creative thought, serious research -and some Hollywood Jews took time from their businesses to visit Europe to see, first hand, what was being done with film in Germany, Britain, France, Austro-Hungary, or Italy -or Sweden. Hence several European film industry celebrities became Hollywood employees A good example of minimum return on investment for something called Radical Centrism is the New American Foundation, with its tens of millions of dollars and little to show for it because, when all is said, genuine pragmatic innovation is unlikely when what everyone is really working for is simply a more modern and less doctrinaire Democratic Party -with many of its coalition politics objectives at cross purposes with anything that can be called innovation or a fresh approach to problems. But Centroids RC is a different species of Radical Centrism. At least by way of self-flattery, we are the emergent Cro-Magnons vs. the still dominant homo hablis not-quite-there types. But this is new, it takes some faith and some extra effort, but what can be is something that you can actually see if you try. Is my interpretation of Radical Centrism the only conceivable version? Of course not. However, my version, as much as has been possible for me to develop in terms of concepts, has been thought through and researched. If you have an alternative idea, go for it, but unless you develop it, research your assumptions, basically know what you are talking about, you shouldn't expect to be competitive. There is also a matter of style. This is related to narrative character, this means personality, something for people to identify with. They may react against it, to be sure, but there should be no mistake about what it is: Something that can inspire people even if it sometimes may make other people unhappy. But that's life. Trying to please everybody is a totally unrealistic -stupid- objective. That will never happen. A far better approach is to seek to convince people to adopt a style that they can make their own, a style that can bring them real world benefits if they take it to heart and learn the lessons that are built into it. The idea is to win converts to a cause, "true believers," people who are willing to make a life commitment. A few such people and Radical Centrism can change the world. But that can never happen if the approach is strictly part time, now and then, but otherwise, "who cares?" Radical Centrism offers a weltanschauung, a "world philosophy" that is all-encompassing. This means that it has value for our lives in innumerable ways as we seek to find the best way to do things, to make judgments, and to insist on a standard of excellence in all that you do. This is Pauline, as maybe you have guessed. The mentality comes right out of the Epistles of the Apostle Paul. The exact verse, although there are others with similar outlook, is Philippians 4: 8. Do your best, and do it all the time. The words of Paul are not intended as a platitude to repeat now and then and forget, this is a principle of life, something that is vital to who you are, every day, 24/7, without exception. As verse 9 continues, "the lessons I taught you, the tradition I have passed on, all that you heard me say or saw me do, put into practice..." Is this too much to ask? If it is then you aren't a Radical Centrist. What we need more than anything else are people who are committed to Radical Centrism, who want to be Radical Centrists, who won't accept anything less for themselves because nothing else is nearly as good, noble, or excellent. There is some hyperbole here, to be sure. Far more important than anything else is being a decent and caring person. Any kind of ideology that usurps your basic humanity is an ideology too far. However, Radical Centrism should be the way you think at all times when objectivity is important in your life, when professionalism matters, or competence, or achieving a goal. Radical Centrism is all about making good judgements in all cases where objectivity is necessary. Maybe we can find better terminology for the concept some time. This point has been raised often enough before now. But this is our understandable vocabulary at this time and anything that might supercede it should be as good or better, without compromising-away what we mean by Radical Centrism in the here and now. No-one, or no-one in their right mind, can be expected to think and breathe political Radical Centrism all the time. That isn't the idea. What is, is a philosophy of objectivity that guides you throughout life whatever else you may be doing. And there are many things that may be far more important than political anything, depending on circumstances at a given time: Religious faith, art, health, love, earning honest wages, meeting obligations, you-name-it. But Radical Centrism should be second nature to the extent that it is your default way to make objective judgements, it is as simple as that. But how to we convince others? This is where story telling comes in as the preferred way to communicate our ideas, not the only way, but the preferred way because nothing works better. --------------------------- An actual movie requires teamwork of the highest quality. And there must be serious commitment. This is also true for newspapers, advertising agencies, TV news organizations, high tech businesses, and many other enterprises. But let us focus on movies. No one man can create a successful movie -at least without spending an inordinate amount of time, owning a lot of specialized equipment, and having professional level competence at several kinds of tasks. The argument, popularized in Silicon Valley, that all you need is a computer is pure nonsense. Without a computer you are dead, it is true, but a range of skills is needed and some are totally unrelated to high tech in any way. You cannot craft a believable historical drama without depth knowledge of history, or a science fiction epic without genuine understanding of various sciences, or a film about the wilderness unless you know from experience what life in the wilds is really like. Content requires specialization, moreover, just as most other professions demand the same thing. Someone who is a computer whiz is not necessarily prepared for developing a movie script and may be completely in the dark. Which should not be all that difficult to understand. Not everyone on a football team can kick field goals or catch passes while running full tilt down the sidelines with a defender clawing at him. Which is to say that my patience with the argument, "you've got a computer, that's all you really need," has worn very thin. It isn't an argument, it is an advertisement for the computer business. So, there are things about my "movie" that are weak or faulty or even ill-conceived. But just maybe you can now see possibilities that were invisible to you before today. One weakness should be obvious from the beginning: There are descriptions of a good number of characters but only James Blog is developed in a serious way. Most characters do not appear in the 'film.' However, to do that would have required writing a script, maybe starting with a novel to work out all kinds of relationships and numerous details of story and each character's personality, but there wasn't sufficient time to do any such thing. So, this part of the movie is left to your imagination. A movie is also a visual experience; it depends on the kinds of insights that only someone with background in the arts can provide. This part of things I was able to more-or-less supply, creating a movie in which images and story are intertwined, co-dependent, inseparable one from the other. Yet there is a "grammar of cinema" that I am only learning piecemeal and I know it. Someone with this kind of background ought to be able to see possibilities that simply did not occur to me as I worked. Which is to say that the product is imperfect. It is, at most. a "story board" presentation, an early step in the process of movie making. But it is that, and has value if a number of limitations are discounted and various good ideas are focused on and used as springboards for developing things in useful ways. Some problems were solvable well within my existing knowledge base but there was no access to software that could have been used to produce desired effects. Or if the software was within reach my tech skills were too limited to take advantage of these items. For example, as a graphic artist I have a strong sense of what kinds of lettering -fonts- work best for what kinds of purposes. If you have never studied fonts or typography or similar things, please don't try to sound knowledgeable, you would persuade no-one who does know the subject. At best you would be groping in the dark. Just as an artist who tried to pontificate about medicine or mineralogy could not be taken seriously. The title for the movie, Goldthinker, is not how I envision the "look" of an actual screen presentation or advertisement. There are several metallic or special effects gold fonts that I would have preferred to use, shown below, but which were not available for use on the freebie logo generators that I could find online. Which is to say that the movie could have been better even with my shortcomings acknowledged, but some alternatives were not accessible to me. More could also have been done with the theme of replacement of James Bond tropes with scholarly or philosophical tropes, to create really effective satire or parody, but it takes serious time to think those sorts of departures through in such a manner that the result is worth something. Regardless there is some of that to good effect, enough so that you could take things further if you were motivated to do so. With these comments it is time to bring this "visual effects essay" to a close. Here is the start of a major innovation in Radical Centrism. But it is only a start. You can do better? OK, show us what you are capable of. If all you do is criticize you have not contributed anything to Radical Centrism. This has all been about creating Radical Centrism, making things happen, and nothing can be more important. -- -- Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community <[email protected]> Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. 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[RC] [ RC ] Image and Story # 12
BILROJ via Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community Thu, 22 Oct 2015 22:43:34 -0700
