Angels with Dirty Faces

I screened thisⁱ quaint, sad piece of femstate agitprop for the harem last night. It made for lukewarm entertainment while it lasted ; but once it dronily expired the tedium interim was suddenly, and dazzlinglyⁱⁱ recuperated : I made a coupla points which still resound in the halls.

Firstly, the observation that there were three important moments in the history of our (meanwhile failed) North American colonies : when low taxes, weak local government and strong personal freedom were defeated by strong central government and not much else in the Civil War ; when the male-centric pastoral mode of life was defeated by the female-centric agricultural mode of life with the mass deployment of barbed wireⁱⁱⁱ ; and finally the lulz depicted (very partially) by this thing : when the female-centric pulpit lobby defeated the male-centric publican lobby for control of the government. The resulting war atrocities, like say the "one woman mission for the salvation of each individual sinner" (the thing that used to be called политический руководитель, back in the other soviet union -- you probably heard it as "politruk") still echo today through the halls where your harem should go.^iv

Secondly, that old propaganda makes an excellent source of direct information for the anthropologist, and the historian, and more generally the gentleman scholar, because in its attempt to convincingly lie to contemporaries it therefore abandons any hope of lying to posterity at all! The establishing shots of the poor New York tenements are accurate, notwithstanding that the goings on represented are "profoundly" (which is to mean -- most superficially) falsified. This being the fundamental problem with lying : while truth speaks in all times and for all people (hence say Goethe's theory of art), to lie one must always know the audience, and lie to it specifically. As time, and distance, and many other things readily defeat the magic of that specificity, it therefore follows necessarily that we can here sit, and point, and laugh at them. The idiocy of socialism is always ridiculous from afar.

The conversation inside the walls then followed its own course, and the discussion here will follow its own ; the brief, momentary node of union between the two permitted by the evanescent presence of one quaint, sad old film melting behind, in the darkened distance, like that one, like that any, light of yore. Goodbye!

Wenn sich die spaten
Nebel dreh'n
Wer wird bei der
Laterne
steh'n
...

1. Angels with Dirty Faces, 1938, by Michael Curtiz, with James Cagney, Humphrey Bogart, Pat O'Brien. [↩]
2. The required Ro/Fr "fulgurant" admits no direct English equivalent. Wonder why. [↩]
3. It permitted homesteaders to effectually deny cowboys water, and that was that. [↩]
4. Incidentally -- this, and nothing else, is the fundamental difference between the poor Torah rescript calling itself "Christianity" and the poor Torah rescript calling itself "Islam" : that the former has the insolence to pretend god owns women, whereas the latter recognize men own women. By manner of consequence xtian women dare attempt to tell their lord and master his business, whereas muslim women dare not. [↩]