My struggle (and rise) as a fascist looter:
How I Got My Start:
I tried to give it a chance. I really did. But then I had tried as much with Rand and The Virtue of Selfishness, but got so nauseous by the third essay, I had to put it down. And nothing I further read or heard about her compelled me to temper my disgust. Certainly not the critical biopic, the Passion of Ayn Rand, in which she has an affair with an intern after telling her husband and the intern’s girlfriend what she was going to do -that is out of some sociopathic notion of enlightened truth. As a peer once said: she seemed like the kind of woman that would eat her babies. And I had assumed my sentiment to be common among the creative community. So imagine my surprise when I read that Atlas Shrugged was being made into a movie in an article that mistakenly gave the impression that Angelina Jolie was backing it. But then why not? God only knows what runs through that chick’s mind. Still, it seemed odd that the so-called Hollywood liberal elite would even consider it. But, when I saw a clip of the movie, where Hank Reardon declares his utter indifference to the poor, my curiosity took root. For one, I got the impression that it would be one of those moody independent films in the sci-fi genre like The Blue Rose Hotel. Plus that, I concocted a Trojan horse theory that the movie was made not just as a tribute to the book, but a subtle critique as well. So when I kept coming across it on Netflix, it was only a matter of time before I would set aside my own center to left leanings, push the play button, and give the woman, her book, and her position their day in court, and do so in the remote hope that it would surprise me. It has happened. I had always been impressed when talent from the other side managed to present their view in a way I found digestible and empathetic enough to temper my own extremes and revise my mental concepts. For instance, the movie A River Runs Through It paid tribute to Christian values in a way that most non-Christians would find inoffensive and even admirable. And Robert Duvall did as much by putting old school values across in a dignified and non-sanctimonious way in such movies as Rambling Rose and Secondhand Lions. And, hating on chairs aside, you have to admire Clint Eastwood’s classicist approach to movie making. Plus that, to go into it for the explicit purpose of heckling just seemed petty and below my intellectual integrity.
But that hope dissipated as the second rate (if not third rate) production values revealed themselves. Many critics compared it to a TV mini-series. But I would propose the cheap B movies that are sometimes made for the ScyFy channel or shown on Fear Net. The only difference was that those films are generally innocuous enough to serve as mindless entertainment –something you stick with while rolling your eyes just to see if it ends in the manner you predict. Atlas Shrugged, on the other hand, took the more mean-spirited and paranoid route of a novel written by a conspiracy theorist or holocaust denier. It was less the individual perspective of a work of art and more like war to anyone with a non-pathological sense of reality. In fact, I began to suspect that what I was watching was not the theatrical release, but some made for TV knockoff much like the miniseries of Steven King’s The Shining, that which stuck closer to the book at the expense of the production values and creativity of Kubrick’s version. Even when I recognized the clip where Reardon expresses his indifference to the poor, I still had to wonder if it wasn’t just another version of a key moment in the book. It just seemed odd that something like it would even be released in theaters and that some marketer would not have recognized that it might have made a better entry (it basically flopped with critics and the box office) in a more appropriate medium such as TV or straight to DVD? And, of course, there was the most pressing possibility: that ideology over-rode business and aesthetic sense, and those behind it thought they had something more than they did.
Still, I hung on, because between the cheesy production, the cheap special effects, the one dimensional portrayals, and the talky ideology-laden dialogue, I had no choice but to focus on the message that was more or less being shoved down my throat. And while this approach seemed heavy-handed in Kevin Smith’s Dogma, and while I can now sympathize with the offense that Catholics may have felt because of the film, it gets really heavy handed and unsympathetic when you’re facing the equivalent of a master expecting the sympathy of the slave. My being there was becoming less and less about aesthetics and more and more about ideology, and a challenge I couldn’t refuse.
But my resolve only continued to slip as a heavy handed contrast emerged between the protagonists and antagonists. On one side of the mythical confrontation were the protagonists, Hank Reardon and Dagny Taggart, the respective heads of Reardon Steel and Taggart Transcontinental (a railway company), and champions of a miracle alloy that is lighter while being stronger; and on the other were the antagonists, those petty and bumbling government bureaucrats and rich quasi-socialists suffering from liberal guilt, the “looters” who skulked about plotting against the Promethean efforts of Reardon and Taggart. And as impressed as I was supposed to be by their heroics, I only found myself breaking into shrieks of mock whining:
“Why is everyone picking on me? Am I not the driver of progress? The job creator?”
In Rand’s world, apparently, no one understands the rich or feels their pain. The only surprise was that the antagonists didn’t have Hitleresque toothbrush mustaches that they could stroke as they contemplated their schemes and future victories. They were just short of it -and actually made the connection later in the series. But I hung on anyway. Then…
I’m not really sure why it seemed such a big deal. I had seen the same kind of plot device in other movies: one to several people struggle for something until they come to a moment when their persistence pays off and it all comes together. It’s a common and still effective motif in movies. However, when Taggart and Reardon were riding alone on that train, to make their point about the safety of the Reardon steel used for the railways, and that buoyant music and panorama of grand vistas was paying tribute to the triumph of the moment, I felt it welling up. But it was when they came to that bridge, that bridge that Reardon had promised he could build in 3 weeks, that shiny beautiful bridge gleaming in the sun and stretching victoriously across the abyss that had given Dagny so much concern, that monument to the ability of Capitalism to overcome all obstacles, that the meltdown occurred. That was it! I had to throw down. It could have been how hokey it all seemed. It could have been the forced attempt to equate the beauty of nature with the beauty of Capitalism. It could have even been, as many RandHeads would assert, jealousy. But that neglects the other movies in which I have found the tactic effective where characters have done things beyond my capabilities -sometimes to the point of choking up or, if drunk enough, tears. Or it could have been the sheer gall of thinking I could be manipulated so cheaply into seeing the errors of my ways and prostrating myself before the two main characters and the glory of Capitalism. I mean I could literally imagine a RandHead (a true believer) standing behind me and crowing:
“You see it? Do you see it now?”
From that point to the end of part one, it was a self degrading frenzy of eye rolling and heckling my computer –when I’m not sure the poor thing deserved it. But in my defense the movie did everything it could to encourage my behavior. For instance, the explanation that Rearden provided, in heavy handed fashion, for the demise of the 20th Century Motor Company as he and Dagny were approaching it. Apparently, it was due to everyone getting pay raises based on need rather than merit. This was later reinforced by a loyal Taggart employee who explained to Dagny that new management had run it into the ground with new ideas about treating it like one big family. The question, though, is what factory, in reality, is this supposed to resemble? Granted, many companies will simplify things by granting raises through across the board percentages. But a percentage means that those who have been there longer will be making more. And, as far as I know, the way the more ambitious bypass that is by working their way up the ladder through promotion. But, once again: what profit seeking corporation would even consider such an approach? Of course, the preposterous nature of this slippery slope only foreshadowed the Kafka-like labyrinth of bumbling and petty bureaucrats and new policies that grew more preposterous as it went along.
But the bigger issue was Rand’s well-known propensity towards the heroic and mythological coupled with her clear disgust for her antagonists: the looters. Her admiration for and influence by Shakespeare made itself more and more apparent as I went along -which seems strange given Shakespeare’s clarity on the corruption of power. What resulted was a vacillation between a comic book dialogue and a classical propensity towards speech making. On one hand, there were lines of dialogue that sounded like something off of a Lichtenstein painting such as when James Taggart, an antagonist by virtue of his wanting to serve “the public good”, displayed his pettiness by advising his sister, Dagny:
“You can’t leave. It’s a violation of the directive.”
Or this line by Reardon (typical of the false dilemma this movie presented) as he walked away from an agent from the State Scientific Agency:
“One of these days, you’re going to have to decide which side you’re on.”
Even the repetition of the line “Who is John Galt?”, which threaded throughout the narrative, seemed to take on a comic book aura -not to mention that of some inside joke that might be passed about through a cult.
On the other hand, I got these Shakespearian dialogues that, for the too obvious purpose of effect, seemed to be delegated to the more heroic characters. Esai Morales, for instance, as Francisco d’Anconia, skulked about like some modern Iago, almost shaman-like, dispensing his wisdom in resonant soliloquies on the folly of fools who do not know what they do and the unrecognized wisdom of Laissez Faire Capitalism.
“When money ceases to be the tool by which men deal with other men, then men become the tools of other men.”
And this might have seemed a poignant point if it wasn’t for the fact that no one I know of is trying to get rid of money and that, as anyone who is not self-employed would know, even with money men are the tools of other men. This Shakespearean element got even more vulgar with the heroics of Hank Reardon as he stood before court accused of violating the “Fair Share Act” that imposed a limit on how much one company can sell to another –another policy that eluded me as to what the purpose would be.
“I do not recognize this court,” he stated in bold defiance, then proceeded to indict more government policies that seemed too unlikely to provoke my sympathy or any desire to cheer him on. At one point, at the mention of “the public good”, he responded, yet again, with the same smug disregard he did earlier:
“I do not recognize the good of others as justification of my existence.”
And let’s be fair here. As Robert Reich convincingly points out in SuperCapitalism, we cannot expect corporations to act as moral agents. They exist solely to create profit for them and their shareholders. That, for good reason, is the law. It is government that must serve as check and balance to corporate power. But then, it is government power, regardless of what function it serves, that Rand and the movie makers wanted to undermine. At another point, he proceeded to frame the “public good” in terms of:
“….those who would regulate and define us in our businesses and homes by stealing our liberty.”
Of course, at this point the crowd broke into the cheers of the converted. Who wouldn’t? Who isn’t concerned about their personal liberty? The problem is that Reardon’s point is a little hard to assimilate with the fact that, in our world, the primary agent of social control (under the encouragement of the health insurance industry), through drug testing, smoking policies, and, increasingly, wellness programs, has pretty much been our employers. But then we’re not in that world are we? We’re in Rand’s world. Reardon then proceeded to describe the benefits provided by corporations, such as job creation and technological progress, while the crowd cheered and the court slammed the gavel and screamed:
“Silence! Or the court will be cleared!”
And as would be expected, the court, recognizing that they could not turn Reardon into a martyr, decided to sentence him to 10 years in prison then, in light of his achievements, suspended his sentence. This was then punctuated by the following scene with Dagny playing cheer squad and telling Reardon that he had provided a voice to the people. Apparently, at that point, Rand and those behind the movie were perfectly convinced they had done a thorough job of creating a consensus.
Of course, you can get away with a lot in a movie if the comedic effects work. But this depends on wit defining character that arises from the creator’s profound love for their creation. And if successful, that compassion gets transferred into the audience. Think, for instance, of the work of Thurber or Twain. But Rand, in her corporate solipsism, can only see her characters as functions in a black and white world where the protagonists act as little more than heroic mouthpieces for her ideas while the antagonists fumble about, keystone cop-like, in their pettiness so that we might recognize in them the profound folly of not accepting Rand’s beliefs. The thing is she does seem recognize, perhaps because her Hollywood training, the import of character development in humor. But her dogmatic sensibility limits her to the same one dimensional and eye rolling wisecracks one might find on a church billboard. At one point, Dagny, faced with an employee who drones “Who is John Galt?”, responds:
“Don’t ask that question if you can’t answer it.”
But these references to the heroics and above-the-fray nature of the main characters fail to seduce. At another point, when Taggart and a scientist played by Dietrich Bader plot to research a super-battery that can save the world and, as we are to understand it, only the private sphere is capable of producing, Bader points out, in a conspiratorial way, that he can use his state funded lab to study it and that Taggart shouldn’t worry since they have the best night watch there is: him. And we can assume the profound irony here to be the state’s incompetence allowing the private sphere to carry out its own heroic efforts. Oh them lovable rascals! Right? But the most telling comes when a CEO and political candidate snarls when his train is stopped:
“I swear, if this train doesn’t make my campaign stop in San Francisco, I’ll make it my personal priority to nationalize this railroad.”
This is followed by the drunken wit of a fellow traveler (with a British accent for good effect):
“History shows that it is the only way to make the trains run on time.”
Get it? Nazi Germany? Trains running on time? Unfortunately, for the movie, the real humor lies in what the movie makers wanted us to take seriously. At one point, CEOs are photographed walking, with expressions of serious intent, to a board meeting in (can you guess it?) slow motion. The only thing missing was the hard beat and crunchy guitar from Kill Bill Volume One in the club scene with Lucy Lui’s crew. But the continuous joke throughout it all was the way the plot line built not through suspense, but through the escalation of the ludicrous. In Part 1, this climax of the absurd came at the very end when Ellis Wyatt, before leaving with Galt, left his newly discovered natural gas field in flames and a note that said:
“I’m leaving it as I found it.”
Apparently, he just wandered upon a burning field that no one else had noticed, put out the flames, and had him a natural gas field. And doesn’t there seem to be an underlying whininess about this: the feel of a child throwing a fit? However, the makers of Part 2, in Peter Jackson style, managed to keep it building throughout the series by topping the above with the most preposterous moment yet: the introduction of Directive 10-289. In a scene that was clearly meant to chill us out of our Priuses and drive us to the NRA, the Head of State (played by Ray Wise) made a televised announcement of new policies that would make no sense in a purely communist regime, much less a democratic one, and that is while everyone in the nation, rich and poor alike, watched with dropped jaws of shock and disgust. Among them were total bans on firing employees or employees quitting or changing their jobs, wage freezes, all companies surrendering their patents in the form of gift certificates, and a mandate on everyone to spend the same amount of money they had the year before. Of course, in a perfect world where the government wasn’t so far up corporate ass as to actually act in the behalf of people, this might be a legitimate slippery slope. But how would wage freezes and bans on quitting or changing a job serve that purpose? In fact, what purpose would it serve under any circumstance? Forcing people to give up their hard earned patents would be a disincentive to new discovery. Even a Social Democrat and looter like me knows that. And Capitalism, and the inflation it creates, already has the patent on forced consumption as anyone would know who, lacking access to public transportation, has to maintain a car in order to get to work, or finds themselves in need of healthcare, or paying more for basic services such as TV which, by the way, use to be free, or generally wants to function in contemporary society.
The only thing missing from the whole scene was the low, eerie hum of a synthesizer and someone screaming:
“Oh my God! It’s a white Obama!”
From that pivotal point on, the denouement proceeded with a montage style breakdown that consisted of previous anti-corporation protesters, having been schooled in the principle of unintended consequences, turning anti-government and Dagny losing her scientific ally to Galt, chasing him down in a plane, wrecking, and, as fortune would have it, meeting John Galt for the first time.
However, I would argue that the real money shot, at least for those who were behind the movie, came with a transient (a clear reference to Nietzsche’s madman) sitting on a curve while the chaos of protest went on around him, and writing on a piece of wood shaped like a gravestone:
Here lies my country:
Born: 1776
Died: Yesterday.
How I Faltered and the Plot Thickened:
Of course, as my shock and confusion intensified, the questions proliferated: was this some kind of joke? Why go through with this? They had to have seen just how badly it was going. Wouldn’t the stilted dialogue have been a clue? And were the Koch brothers behind it? It just seemed a little self defeating to showcase Rand’s work and thought in such a blatantly hokey and ridiculous manner. There was the theory I had toyed with back when I saw the clip of the Reardon expressing his indifference to the poor: that what the producers were actually doing was offering up a combination of tribute and critique of the book. But that might have made a good movie. In this case, the only way they could have been serving this purpose was, in a backdoor kind of way, by presenting it in the most distasteful manner possible. But that would seem an incredible risk of money without marketing it and actually presenting it as satire. And, of course, there was the most obvious possibility of the project being financed as propaganda for corporate interests and right wing think tanks.
By Part Two, I had calmed down and found myself playing the game of “why would these actors involve themselves?” primarily because the cast from Part One had been completely replaced with what, as far I could tell, were more familiar faces. There was Richard T. Jones utilizing the same stoic loyalty as Dagny’s assistant that he did in Judging Amy and Paul McCrane utilizing the same obnoxious worm, as a government official, that he did in ER. And the inclusion of these two suggested that they were character actors chosen for their perfect fit based on these previous roles. Furthermore, unlike An American Carol where all the actors had some association with the Republican Party, there was nothing to indicate that any of these had any particular ideological affinity to the story itself. Nor was there any indication that they were lacking for work and participated out of desperation. The only conclusion I could come to is they were just minor actors who took whatever work was available to them and stood little to lose by it. This especially seemed to be the case with Ray Wise as Head of State Thompson who, having gotten notice in David Lynch’s Twin Peaks, seems to show up everywhere, regardless of the quality, and keeps showing up due to his unique physical characteristics. One could almost expect such character actors such as Danny Trejo and William Forsyth to show up in the third installment. At the same time, I can’t help but suspect that Esai Morales took the part to brush up on his Shakespearian chops, while Deidrich Bader took it to break from his more air headed roles and write complex mathematical formulas on glass, just like he saw Russell Crowe do on A Beautiful Mind.
Still, there was the question of what happened to the first cast. John Aglialoro, the primary driving force behind the series, implied that the cost of hiring the cast from Part One exceeded Part Two’s budget and added that Taylor Schilling, Dagny in Part One, had become a bona fide star. This, of course, was immediate cause for suspicion since I hadn’t heard of or seen much of her. However, as a little researched showed, she had since appeared in the movie The Lucky One and the Netflix Series, Orange is the New Black. But how did that make her anymore inaccessible or expensive than Esia Moralas, Ray Wise, or Diedrich Bader? And Aglialoro wouldn’t be the first executive to spin something. So there was still the possibility of what, in some deep, dark, and petty element of my psyche, would have given me pleasure: that the first cast, having seen what a flop they had participated in, jumped ship, or the less pleasurable one of the producers abandoning them in the hopes of getting it right the next time. Or it could have been a combination of both.
The real story unfortunately, offered less cause for self indulgent sanctimony than I would have liked. After I got past my own expectations, and an initial propensity to read them into my research, I found the truth to be a little less odious. First of all, it was a project that took 30 plus years to be realized, starting in 1972 when Albert S. Ruddy approached Rand with the idea, which she agreed to on the condition that it focus on the love story between Reardon and Taggart and that she had final script approval. However, Ruddy rejected the offer and the deal fell through. It was then proposed as a 4 hour mini-series, but fell through again due to a CEO change. Rand even attempted a screenplay, but misfortune followed the project when she died 1/3 of the way through it. After yet another setback, concerning the option to her script, Aglialoro, an investor, obtained the rights in 1992 only to suffer several more setbacks until the movie went into production in 2010 and was released in 2011. The hope was that Part One would finance the making of Part Two. But that, due to bad critical and box office reception, didn’t happen. However, Aglialoro and conspirators would not be discouraged and they somehow managed to scrape together an even bigger budget for Part 2 only to create an even bigger flop. And as would be expected, the criticism it received depended the individual’s ideological position. Most critics, being of a liberal or moderate lean, bludgeoned it with some caveats such as the look of the film and the casting choices in Part Two. But the most insightful criticism came from the A.V. Club:
"The irony of Part II’s mere existence is rich enough: The free market is a religion for Rand acolytes, and it emphatically rejected Part I.”
Reception in the Conservative press, as would be expected, was generally more positive while being more mixed than one might expect. Fox New’s Sean Hannity and Jon Stossel, along with some critics from conservative journals, sang its praises , while others were a little more reserved in recognizing the bad production values while recommending it for the message. But a point needs to be made here, one I have neglected, in that not every conservative would necessarily advocate this series nor the ideological extremes that Rand goes to. William F. Buckley Jr., for instance, rejected the book itself on the grounds of its underlying objectivism. Therefore, for the sake of fairness, it would serve us to make an important distinction made by Thom Hartman: that between your everyday conservative and the Neo-Con, or what he referred to as a Con. As I have learned, throughout my ideological process, conservatism can mean any number of things depending on which conservative you’re talking to. And even if I disagree with it in general, it is far too complex to warrant the venom I have focused on this particular extreme. In other words, there is a big difference between the run of the mill conservatives we deal with everyday and the psychopathy demonstrated by Rand and her primary disciples, the Cons.
That said, as it stands now, Part Three is slated to appear in the summer of 2014. And it will be interesting to see if it does. I mean given the struggles and dramatic turns this project has gone through, it’s become a kind of narrative in itself –one that, like a cheap B movie, you can’t help but follow to see how it turns out.
There will, of course, be the true believers that will try to pass these problems off (as Aglialoro attempted) on the alleged Hollywood leftist conspiracy. It was the critics that killed it; not the quality of the movie. And we have to attribute some credibility to this argument. Creative people, at least those in the arts (including critics), do tend to be a little more liberal. But this is because their chosen pursuit requires that they be a sympathetic and sensitive to the complexity of a given situation and character or personality type. For the truly creative, it is the cornerstone of the process to recognize that, if we look deep enough into ourselves, there isn’t anyone that can’t at least be empathized with, if not sympathized, no matter how despicable. However, Rand, and those behind this project, seemed to have failed miserably in this effort. So what, exactly, did they expect? No more than I could expect to get through to the true believers with this, how could they expect this series to get through to the very people they are, with an air of disgust, referring to as “Looters”? How well would that work if I attempted a story that referred to rich people and the true believers as “Hoarders”? How much luck would I have getting corporate sponsorship for that?
In the end though, I had to eat a little crow in having to admit that it wasn’t pimped by corporations, or a right wing think tank, for the sake of propaganda. And the Koch brothers, as far as I know, were not involved. Eventually, I had to admit, as much as I didn’t want to, that it was a labor of love.
I even found myself making further consolations as I went back through both parts in a more lucid and calm state of mind. I found myself a little more sympathetic with Jack Hunter, from The American Conservative, who noted:
“If you ask the average film critic about the new movie adaptation of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged they will tell you it is a horrible movie. If you ask the average conservative or libertarian they will tell you it is a great movie. Objectively, it is a mediocre movie at best. Subjectively, it is one of the best mediocre movies you’ll ever see.”
Once I got past my predispositions and expectations, I found it to be not totally lacking in cinematic quality. And it did seem a little more sophisticated than most B movies in that, between Rand and those who behind the series, there was a clear awareness of just about every plot device that Hollywood had to offer –even if they came off as clichés and lame attempts at humor. And Rand certainly seemed to know how to put a story together (even if it was in a heavy-handed fashion), which gives some credibility to the achievements she managed with other books such as The Fountainhead. So I can easily see how someone who was a little more sympathetic to the ideology, or even indifferent, might be able to enjoy it in the same mindless manner I might some low budget film on ScyFy or Fear Net.
And while I have yet to well up as the train crosses the bridge, I also found myself with an inkling of sympathy for Hank Reardon. In the beginning of Part One, he gave his wife, Lillian Reardon a bracelet made of Reardon steel, a rather appealing piece of work and admittedly thoughtful gift that reflected Hank’s commitment to his work and his high hopes for her future. However, Lillian, a gold digging looter who spends much of the story skulking about and plotting against her husband, takes it as a symbol of his egoism and scoffs at it, eventually trading it to Dagny for a pearl necklace. And we have to recognize the semiology at work in that achievement is given privilege over materialism, and in the suggestion that Dagny’s common understanding of this privilege is what underlies the chemistry between her and Reardon. Interestingly, though, it was Lillian that provided the one insightful line in the whole thing. In a confrontation between her and Hank, over the divorce he wanted but she wouldn’t consent to, she approached him, looked him straight in the eye, and said:
“I’m the one that knows you most. You’re an ordinary man who thinks he doesn’t owe anyone anything. But you do. You owe everyone.”
What was revealed, whether consciously or not on the part of those who produced this story (perhaps even Rand), is the natural force fallacy that haunted and compromised Reardon’s courtroom stand. What one needs to accept, that is in order to see his point as anything else than ludicrous, is the notion that it is perfectly natural for some to rise to the top even if it comes at the expense of others. And while we can agree with Robert Reich that it is not the role of corporations to act as moral agents, we have to take pause when the question is asked:
“What do the rich owe us?”
The problem with this is the underlying assumption that the achiever acts in some kind of vacuum, which is easy to do when Capitalism does such a effective job of mimicking a natural force and can be treated like an expression of nature (like the weather or death). But it’s not. It’s a human construct and, by virtue of that, an agreement. And as with any agreement, when it fails to work for all parties involved (or too few of them), it becomes a disagreement that warrants renegotiation. Second of all, in the real world, Reardon would not have created his wealth by himself. He would have built it on the productivity of labor and the purchases of consumers. So while he is not obligated to recognize the “public good” as justification for his existence (even though the “public good” is why we agree to Capitalism in the first place), he has every obligation to recognize it when it expresses itself through social and political policy (law) –that is since his achievement was as dependent on that policy as anything. But then I’m speaking in terms of the real world where far less ludicrous forms of legislation are created and enforced. And doesn’t this interdependence between producer and consumer point to a major discrepancy between the real world and Rand’s? Throughout the story, we’re presented with a scenario in which America is suffering from major economic distress, one that is unlikely to produce the consumer base necessary to support Reardon’s and Taggart’s activities. Where would the profits come from? It just seems, given the role that the flow of money plays in the market, that if such a scenario actually existed, the only real struggle the main characters would have is avoiding bankruptcy.
And assuming this scene to be taken from the book, it gets more interesting when we consider the internal conflict that inadvertently gave the story a little depth. First of all, Rand clearly recognized that Capitalism was, in fact, not a natural force, but a human agreement that was vulnerable to further choices made by future agents. Otherwise, what would be the point? Why would she even feel the need to write Atlas Shrugged in order to “warn us”? And this just goes to a general inconsistency at work in the argument that results in a back and forth between Capitalism as an agreement that must be protected from the non-believers at all costs, and Capitalism as a natural force immune to all arguments against it -that is dependent on which take happens to be convenient at the time. Furthermore, we get the feeling from this that Lillian is Rand’s worst nightmare due to a truth revealed that Rand could not completely overcome. You have to wonder if Lillian did not serve as her evil alter-ego: a composite of common characteristics (ambition, materialism, and general narcissism) and Rand’s own doubts about herself.
And in all fairness, we should consider the time in which Rand wrote Atlas Shrugged which was published in 1957. At the time, the cold war was heating up and there were Marxist elements that still bought into the egalitarian dream of Communism. Nor was she the only one concerned about this aspect of it as was demonstrated in Kirk Vonnegut’s short story, published in 1961, Harrison Bergeron. Plus that, she, like Smith and Marx, had no way of foreseeing the actual consequences of her push for deregulation much as we witnessed in the economic meltdown of 2007. However, this point fails to redeem those who started this series in 2010 and, in fact, strategically chose the release date of the first part for tax day and the second for the 2012 election thereby confirming the series’ status as little more than propaganda.
Furthermore, it’s not as if I’m completely unsympathetic with the ideology. I too recognize that “selfishness” is a term that tends to be bandied about by those who would selfishly insist that you focus on what it is they think you should be doing. Plus that, being a man of modest resources, I know what it’s like to be surrounded by people who either can’t do for themselves, or won’t, yet make demands that I’m expected to fulfill. As Bill Maher expressed on Real Time, I too know what it’s like to feel like I’m the only one pulling the wagon while everyone else jumps in. But it’s always a little more complex than that. For one, there is the issue of those who can’t do for themselves. What do we do in that case? Help them? Or take the more fascistic route of letting them die off? And it’s not like those that won’t lack for incentive or motivation. Working still seems to be a much better option than the hand to mouth existence I’ve seen such people get by on -social programs or not. But the most odious aspect of this is that Rand’s version of Capitalism acts as if society shedding this burden would magically make it disappear. But what really happens, by not spreading the burden through social programs, is that the burden becomes more localized either through the crimes committed by the desperate, or the desperate that turn to those closest to them to survive.
Take, for instance, the Tea Party justification for dismantling social security. The well known argument is that in the old days families took care of their elderly. The problem with this is that back then the elderly usually didn’t get so elderly because healthcare was less developed and effective (and life expectancy much lower) with the consolation of being less expensive. On top of that, a family could generally survive on one income, thereby leaving one parent, usually the mother, with the time to take care of the aged. And given that such a financial arrangement is no longer practical, I fail to see how such an approach could be conducive to “achievement”, which is supposedly the main issue here. And there is a big difference between deciding to balance one’s own needs with that of others and the plundering of taking what one wants regardless of who suffers, even if it is done through ambition and achievement. And let’s be clear on this: neither myself, nor anyone I can think of, want to strip the rich of all their assets and distribute BMWs in the ghettos. And had Rand, or those behind this movie, taken such considerations into the balance, they might have achieved something more than propaganda. They might have created a decent story. But that, in a spectacular way, is not what happened.
The Comeback or how I Crossed My Bridge:
Of course, some true believers, those with the taste and the honesty to know bad cinema when they see it, would argue that it is unfair to judge Rand’s book, and the ideas behind it, on a badly made movie, that I should read the book. And outside of the most obvious, that the movie did little to inspire me to wade through a 1200 page book, there are a couple problems with this argument. For one, let’s imagine the movie made with top level talent. Let’s say George Clooney for Hank Reardon. One could see him play it with the mixture of drive, restraint, and civility that Rand seemed to want for this character. However, Clooney would play up the conflicts in more subtle ways, much as he did in Up in the Air. And this would have to include his stated indifference to the poor. He would have to find a way to smooth the vacillation between the likable Rearden and the smug, obtuse one. And that might include self doubt. For Dagny Taggart, any one of the actresses originally slated for the movie would work. Angelina Jolie could certainly play it hardnosed. As could Julia Roberts as she demonstrated in Charlie Wilson’s War as a right wing contributor to Senator Wilson’s agenda. But the thing to remember here is Roberts, for all the rough edges, had to play counter to Tom Hank’s humanity and make their compatibility seem realistic. And, certainly, Charlize Theron could pull it off. And I don’t know enough about Anne Hathaway to comment on her. But they would also have to incorporate the Madonna–like character of Taggart. And it’s something we can be certain actresses of their caliber would be more than willing to do. However, it would involve a little more than being nice to people who happen to serve their purposes. They might actually show a little reservation when witnessing the struggles of the poor. But regardless of who played what, it would require much better dialogue and a more rounded approach to the motivations of the main characters and those around them, especially the antagonists as no talented actor would choose to play the one dimensional villains portrayed in this series. And this would likely require stepping outside of Rand’s original intent and message into a combination of tribute to those aspects of her thought that many can agree with, such as the value of achievement, and critique of those aspects most find repulsive. For instance, the main characters might have to be as fallible and prone to being wrong as they are heroic. And one thing good actors would not do, as Stallone has and Costner back in his The Bodyguard days, is just tack those flaws onto their otherwise heroic behavior. Their flaws would have to be as intertwined in their character as their virtues.
And similar considerations would be at play concerning how the movie was made or by whom it was directed. Someone like Spielberg, for instance, would bring much better special effects into the mix and might approach it in the postmodern way he did War of the Worlds and jumble up time by setting the time in the near future of 1957 when Atlas Shrugged was written. This would insulate it from the present and what we know now, thereby, making Rand’s predictions a little more palatable since the causality at work would be that of an imaginary world remote from our own. Plus that, it would effectively deal with something that bothered a lot of critics: the discrepancy between the movies economy, built around the railway, and our own digital economy. But Spielberg, as it was with the actors, would want to mix it up. He too would want to dig into the multiplicity of motivations and circumstances and the conflicting ethical considerations. In fact, I would argue that in order to make the story a little less cartoon-ish, the way such talent would have to approach it is as a critique as much as a tribute.
At the same time, in order to sustain the two dimensional nature of it, it could be approached like the CGI remakes of graphic novels like Sin City or Sky Captain of Tomorrow. This would make it remote enough from our reality to preempt most comparisons between Rand’s slippery slope and the way things have actually turned out. But then purposely making it all seem like a cartoon would only seem like mocking the seriousness of Rand’s message.
If I had my choice, though, I would go with Neil Blomkamp. Given the point he made in the director’s comments for District 9, that anyone who wanted a look into the future only needed to go to Johannesburg where 5% of the population holds all the wealth while the other 95% lives in abject poverty, and given the portrayal of it he gave in the movie, he would seem qualified and willing enough to bring out something that was conspicuously missing in the first two parts of the series: the distressed environments and ghettos that would certainly surround the world of Reardon and Taggart. But regardless of who participates or how the movie was made, such high level artists would insist that there be changes and additions to Rand’s original story in order to obtain the subtle complexity that distinguishes real art from propaganda. But then such a balanced perspective would not serve the tunnel vision and one sided perspective propping up the ideology. Such complexity would only raise the possibility that the only economic system that makes sense would be the one we’re already in, the hybrid economy, and that beyond that there is only the question of which aspects of its multiplicity should be either left where they are, or which should be moved closer to the command or market side of the spectrum.
And this points to the fundamental problem with the argument that it’s not Rand’s fault, but mine for not reading the book. While I may not be able to completely blame Rand for a badly made version of her story, what I can almost be certain of is that the message is explicitly hers. This would seem evident in the high praise given the series by true believers such as Hannity and Fossel. Plus that, this was a labor of love by true believers who would have little reason to alter the message. But, for me, it was most evident in the fact that I have heard the same arguments used a thousand times against any argument I have presented for anything less than a religious and dogmatic faith in the invisible hand of Capitalism.
And this leads me to question whether Rand’s sensibility, and her zealous embrace of it, excludes her from the possibility of writing a classic. Never mind Joyce’s explicit warning against the didactic. As pointed out before, art’s distinguishing asset, especially as concerns storytelling, is its ability to capture the complexity and often conflicting forces at work in reality. It, more than any other medium, is equipped to deal with the multiplicity of motives and the emergent subtleties that can come into play in any confrontation. But Rand only sees one side, that of Capitalism, and stubbornly maintains a blind spot for the other. At her best attempt at a balanced perspective, she offers caveats such as her apparent respect for the railway service tech (which is the equivalent of the token black or gay friend for xenophobes) and her willingness to portray the rich surrounding the main protagonists as looters along with the government and the needy masses, as if this were enough to establish her view as more than one sided. Consequently, one can’t help but feel that the main source of this deficit lays in a seething contempt, rooted in her experiences in communist Russia, for the other that she struggles to contain for the sake of integrity -or the expectations she found herself surrounded by as a Hollywood writer. Furthermore, we should consider the distinction between fancy and imagination made by Coleridge. In fancy, we indulge the fantasies that emerge from our baser impulses and thereby give into simplistic notions concerning the monsters that inhabit them. With imagination, we utilize the cognitive in an attempt to understand those monsters as having recognizable and sometimes sympathetic motivations. And Rand, given the one dimensional portrayal of her antagonists and heroes, clearly settles for the fanciful. And while you can entertain people with such, art, sooner or later, requires imagination -not the caveats she sprinkles throughout the story. Paul Krugman makes a humorous and observant point on this:
“There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.”
This becomes especially evident when we consider the main thread that ties it all together: John Galt, the enigmatic but shadowy figure that goes about like a shepherd gathering his flock of overachievers to take them to their promise land, a place where their efforts will be fully appreciated and nourished. But appreciated by who? And how does insulating oneself from the world nourish the creative impulses that arise from dealing with the problems presented by the world? And who exactly will there be to reward those accomplishments with money or applause? Lack of reward, after all, was the issue in the first place. They would, of course, have the appreciation of their peers. But would that be enough? As Nietzsche, an apparent influence on Rand, well knew: mediocrity, for all the frustration it might present, is as necessary to greatness as greatness is to it. There exists an interdependence between the two. But this seems to be a complete blind spot to Rand. This is why she can entertain this rather vindictive fantasy of Galt’s ultimate revenge: to stop the motor of the world, to punish the looters and show them the error of their ways by depriving them of the benefits of greatness and excellence. And how does she know that this will necessarily lead to the downfall? She bases this on the assumption that excellence can only flourish within the context of Laissez Faire Capitalism.
But how does she know the challenges presented by a world without Galt’s flock wouldn’t stimulate those left behind to rise to their full creative potential and assure the survival of their community? And wouldn’t it be poetic justice to see their strike fail and Galt and flock skulking back to society, hoping to partake of the fruits of its efforts, much as the scientist, who had tried to undermine Reardon Steel, did with Dagny after her success with the John Galt line? Perhaps then the looters could engage in the same heavy-handed nobility by deflecting the pathetic concessions of the once great. And once again, doesn’t Galt’s strike feel like a child holding their breath until they either get their way, or everyone’s face turns blue? Doesn’t it feel like whining?
And it is this vindictiveness, coupled with Rand’s zealousness for her beliefs and her propensity towards fancy, which undermines the aesthetic of the work. It appeals to beauty, but succumbs to propaganda. It’s as if she is less concerned with convincing anyone of anything than rallying the true believers. She plays on the internal feedback loop of the cult dynamic. And in her Gecko-like world where greed, if not good, is acceptable for the sake of achievement, and altruistic notions such as the public good are spat out with snarls of disgust, a world where there are only the achievers and the looters, and in which we can assume most of us to be the latter, you have to wonder how much we are suppose care or feel for the main characters, to what extent we are suppose to share in the triumph of Reardon and Taggart as the train crosses the bridge. But then it wasn’t sympathy or care that Rand wanted us to feel, was it? It was, rather, awe: the very awe that subjects of the past were suppose feel for their monarch.
This is evident in Dagny’s relationship with a service tech from Taggart Railway. Rand, like most who argue for Laissez Faire Capitalism, was prudent in including the common man in her vision. As Deleuze and Guattarri point out: no tyrranny could exist in a vacuum. They always have to insulate themselves from those they would exploit by creating a cushion of loyal and well compensated benefactors. This is what Malcolm X was talking about when he referred to the house slave -in terms a little harsher than mine. What he pointed out was that in the days of slavery, the slave owner would keep one family of closer to the house and give them advantages the others would not have. That way, when one of the lesser slaves started to get uppity and talk about rebelling or escaping, the house slave would be right there arguing that such acts of dissent could only make things worse. And one could easily see the Randian fawning over this particular employee: complacent to the point of easy going, dedicated to his job, and perfectly willing, as an ex-employee of Twentieth Century Company, to reiterate Reardon’s explanation of its demise –not to mention his casual awe at finding himself in the presence of Dagny. After he explains to her where the scientist who created the super battery was, she asks if she can take his truck:
“Sure, it’s yours anyway.”
Another lame attempt at humor that plays on the supposedly profound truth of private property. Of course, Dagny rewards this loyalty, as most employers do (or so we’re led to believe) by telling her other loyal sidekick, Eddie, to triple that employee’s salary (happens all the time, right?) and get him another truck since (another stab at humor) she stole his.
But consider the semiology at work here. What one might see in this employee is the one non-achiever that manages to avoid the tag of being a looter: someone perfectly willing to do what their told and not question the forces at work in their life: the ideal producer/consumer. In other words, what is being praised here is conformity. And this seems a little strange and contradictory given that Rand, throughout her career, pimped her ideology under the banner of some radical form of freedom. She argued as if it was best for all. But the only vision that seems to be at work is a world in which the achievers, unobstructed, can enjoy the full fruits of their labors, while those that can’t complacently accept their position in life for the sake of the higher principle of Capitalism.
But despite all that, allow me to indulge in a cheap narrative device, that of the gratuitous plot twist, and actually plug the series and reiterate that I look forward to Part 3, if for no other reason than to see how ludicrous it can get. And I would also confess that I do so, in part, in the pure Randian spirit of self interest. Why wouldn’t I? Those that do might understand and appreciate the preceding essay all that more. Furthermore, I would implore Netflix not to take my 1 star rating as an inducement to take the series off their catalog. With most films I didn’t like, I wouldn’t even bother. And I generally find negative criticism to be a little self indulgent in that it becomes more about the critic than the thing being criticized. But this case is special. And because of that, I would argue that it is Netflix’s social duty to keep it available as an ideological artifact, something to be approached in the same negative sense of Reefer Madness, the thought of John Calvin, and Mein Kampf. And while the series may not exactly represent Rand’s thought, story, and ideology, it clearly represents the mentality that has evolved from it. And in that sense, it is every bit as significant and culturally important as the book itself.
Furthermore, I would encourage everyone to see it –even at the risk of reinforcing the belief system behind it. While Roger Ebert expressed disappointment that the low quality of Part 1 preempted a healthy discussion around the work and ideas of Rand, I would respectfully disagree and reiterate that it may well be the ideology, itself, that preempted the possibility of a good movie. And that, in itself, is cause for discourse and contention.
Now for my fellow looters, my progressive and moderate peers, I would appeal to their forgiving nature and ask that they bear with it until they find themselves immune to the initial sting of insult and bad taste and find in it what I have: a sense of clarity about the extremes the other can go to, the encouragement to set aside one’s self-questioning and open mindedness and recognize bad reasoning when one sees it, and the recognition that when the boundaries of common sense have been transgressed, one can no longer afford the luxury of being a noble or beautiful soul. We can no longer afford the relativity of acting like it is just one opinion among others. This, because of issues like global warming, can actually end up destroying civilization (our civilization) as we know it.
As for the true believers, the Rand and Ditto-heads who have invaded, throughout much of my intellectual process, a large part of my audio and ideological space with droning repetitions of Randian scripture and the unquestioning praise of producer/consumer Capitalism, many of which I have found to be otherwise decent people (some to the point of dear friends), I can only see it as a just form of therapy or deprogramming in that given the task, the best method would be to strap them to a chair and force them to watch this nonsense, repeatedly, with the added effect of interspersing it with ad-like spots, made by real talent, that describe the misery and devastation their perspective has caused. Maybe then, after enough of it, they’ll develop some taste, then a clue, then hopefully, just hopefully, a social conscience. One can only hope that it might lead to an epiphany and recognition of what is effectively a sickness and form of addiction to producer/consumer Capitalism, and that this break from denial will force them to see their belief system for what it is: not so much reason as reason in the service of baser impulses. Maybe then they’ll see that referring to someone as “looters” is as much as calling them “rats” or “cockroaches” and goes to the same effect of reducing the other to an undesirable which must be overcome to achieve some erroneous notion of perfection. But most important is the hope that they’ll see Rand’s thought and Atlas Shrugged for what it is: the propaganda of the self indulgent and sociopathic, the hegemony that would blind us to the exploitation of our baser impulses (and the fancies that emerge from them) for the sake of advantage and power.