Arts & Letters

(I finally got around to finishing this rather lengthy post.)

Dave Grossman, On Combat: The Psychology and Physiology of Deadly Conflict in War and Peace. Lt. Col. Grossman is an extraordinary thinker and writer. He discusses how in mortal threat situations the body often knows better than the brain what to do to survive. He notes that person-to-person violence is the “universal phobia”, in a literal not metaphorical sense. Virtually all people experience acute phobic-type responses when faced with intentional, personal violence. The unique nature of soldiers and policemen is that they “run toward gunfire” instead of away from it. The book is largely built up out of case-studies from military and police experience with “deadly force encounters”, a/k/a gun-fights. The key elements for survival and victory are (1) training and (2) a realistic appreciation of what will happen to the mind and body before, during and after the fighting. Grossman describes state-of-the art training being employed by the United States military and some of our police forces. He emphasizes the moral element — the person charged by society with the use of deadly force must believe in the rightness of his cause, and the person who is asked by society to face deadly force on its behalf should be given the tools and training and respect he needs to survive and prevail, physically and mentally. There is far more of value in this book than this short paragraph can do justice to. Very highly recommended. Grossman’s earlier books On Killing : The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society and Stop Teaching Our Kids to Kill : A Call to Action Against TV, Movie and Video Game Violence are also very good. (Grossman’s website is here.)

Paddy Griffith, Battle Tactics of the Western Front: The British Army’s Art of Attack 1916-1918. Griffith is a vigorous and opinionated writer. He convincingly takes on the conventional wisdom, demonstrating that the British Army in World War I was not led by a bunch of dolts who sent their men to die in the mud year after year out of bullheadedness and ignorance. To the contrary, the British leadership dealt with the horrendous novelty of World War I reasonably well under the circumstances. It was the circumstances that caused a “reasonable” performance to still mean the loss of hundreds of thousands of men. And, partially contra Griffith, some of what the leadership did can be attributed to bullheadedness, such as pressing on with the Passchendaele battle even when the whole battlefield had been reduced to liquescent mud. Nonetheless, the British leadership were not impervious to the reality they faced. They were constantly trying to innovate, to introduce new weapons and tactics to survive and overcome the stalemate of trench warfare, and their performance improved throughout the war. The British artillery in particular became a fearsome instrument. (Ernst Junger’s book Storm of Steel has barely a page in it where someone isn’t killed by the British artillery.) Griffith notes that in the closing years of the Great War the British showed sharply increasing combat skill, much of the time. In particular, it is often forgotten that the last 100 days the British were attacking all along the line, and the Germans were in retreat. Mobility had returned to the battlefield, and it was the British who had restored it. This achievement is under-appreciated, and if it is not remembered a false lesson of abject futility is taken away from World War I. Griffith attacks what he sees an excessive regard among American military historians, and the American military, for the German achievement in the war, and for the German military more generally. This view is probably best exemplified by the response to Bruce Gudmundsson’s book Stormtroop Tactics : Innovation in the German Army, 1914-1918. Gudmundsson’s book is brilliant, and has been very influential in American military circles. However, if it is read in a vacuum, a false impression is created that only the Germans were responding creatively to the new conditions of trench warfare. Also, as Griffith notes, the Germans gained much of their edge by creating elite formations, which may have been superior to their opponents, but they were unable to raise the army as a whole to this pitch of skill. The follow-on waves of under-trained infantry attacking behind the first wave of elite stosstruppen resembled “crowds going to a football match”, and were on many occasions blown to bits by the British artillery. So, Griffith convincingly teaches us not to over-credit what the Germans managed to do in the war. Eliot Cohen, reviewing another book by Griffith about the Great War, had this to say:

Despite the writings of a few defiant historians outside the mainstream, the popular image of the British Army in World War I is one of soldiers exhibiting great valor sacrificed to the near-criminal stupidity of their high command — “lions led by donkeys,” in a memorable phrase. The current work makes an important contribution to a different view. [Griffith] is a prolific and provocative historian of tactics, a subject disdained by too many students of strategic affairs, and he has … [explored] the ways in which the British army adapted to the challenges of trench warfare. The reader comes away with two unsettling questions. If the British (and presumably other) European armies changed their approaches to war as quickly and well as is suggested, was the slaughter of World War I simply unavoidable? And if historians are only now unraveling the workings of battle in 1914-18, how certain can today’s experts be that they fully understand the workings of modern warfare?

Cohen’s unsettling questions are unsettling because we know the answers, and we do not like the answers. Incidentally, Griffith notes the odd gap in our historiography of the Great War, the absence of a scholarly history, in English, of the French Army in World War I. It now appears we will soon be blessed with one, Pyrrhic Victory : French Strategy and Operations in the Great War by Robert A. Doughty, a very well regarded historian of the French Army, i.e. this and this . Perhaps Doughty will give us a further volume on French tactics at some point.

Joseph Ratzinger, God and the World. I started it in the Fall, before I had any idea he’d be Pope. This is the third in a series of interviews with Cardinal Ratzinger. The fact that he is able to answer with this sort of clarity and modesty when speaking off the cuff is interesting, and shows the depth of his scholarship (and wisdom) and his style of thinking, which is at once traditional and yet aware of the modern world and its challenges. For a person who is supposedly a hard-headed proponent of orthodoxy, he is much more open to discussion and even “thinking out loud” than one might expect. Ratzinger is a man who comes off as sound on dogmatic theology, and moral theology, without being “dogmatic” in any simplistic sort of way. Of course, anyone either within or without the Church who is hoping for some basic change in long-standing theological or moral principles will find little cheer. Finally, Ratzinger seems to be a more practical and dour man than his predecessor. John Paul II was a man of preternatural cheer rooted in a deep personal prayer and an all-embracing sense of the Divine, mystical dimension of life and the world. This led him to make optimistic pronouncements which were cheering to the faithful, but also seemed at odds with the empirical facts. Ratzinger is not of that sort of mind. I expect a more focused and practical and disciplined approach — a more German approach — to the papacy from Ratzinger. I loved John Paul II and I miss him. But Joseph Ratzinger is a tough and brilliant man and I have great hope that he will serve the Church and humanity very well in whatever time he is granted as Pope. I pray for the Pope every day.

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Here’s a fascinating NYT article about a brilliant photographer who worked alone for forty years before showing anyone his work. Now he has shown other people his work and it is receiving the attention that it deserves. That’s great. Mr. Stochl (the photographer) as well as the photography teachers, curators and gallery owners who are promoting him deserve credit.

But I was struck by this quote in the NYT article from a museum director whose views are consistent with a way of seeing art that I don’t find appealing:

Yet other observers have not been so quick to praise Mr. Stochl. “Keep in mind we wish him well,” said Rod Slemmons, director of the Museum of Contemporary Photography at Columbia College Chicago. “But if he’s just as good as Robert Frank, or someone like that, we’d rather spend our money on Robert Frank.”

He added: “If somebody came to the Art Institute with a bunch of paintings that looked just like – or were just as good as – the Franz Kline paintings of the 1950’s, in the heyday of his work, do you think the Art Institute would buy them or show them? What would be the point?”

Not that Mr. Slemmons dislikes the work of a previously unknown artist, it’s just that he prefers to invest in blue chips rather than take a flyer on a risky biotech stock. This is not an unreasonable attitude for someone whose job is to buy product with an institution’s money, but it seems at odds with the appreciation of art for its own sake. It brings up the old question about whether a high-quality reproduction of a great art work is as good as the original. I think it is, aesthetically speaking, and that’s all I care about. But from the standpoint of business the original has more value, and maybe there will always be tension between aesthetic and business values here. And of course consumers buy art for all sorts of reasons. This is all just as well, because you need the business people to promote the art and the buyers to maintain a market in it. But it’s also wise to know what matters to you before you accept someone else’s evaluation of a particular work.

(via photo.net)

One cannot tell the story of our nation without also telling the story of our wars. And these often harrowing tales are best told by the men and women who lived them. Today’s American military is the best trained and best educated in our nation’s history. These men and women offer unique and important voices that enlarge our understanding of the American experience. Looking at the great literary legacy of soldier writers from antiquity to the present, I cannot help but expect that important new writers will emerge from the ranks of our latest veterans. Dana Gioia, chair NEA

Gioia is describing “high seriousness”; great art brings laughter, even belly laughter, but is, in the end, highly serious about the nature of man.

I�ve never liked modern poetry much, but a survey course in the second half of American lit has to spend time on Robert Frost, T. S. Eliot, and Wallace Stevens. It may look at Williams and Pound. The �has to� probably signals my age and the fact that I spent the eighties and into the nineties ignoring lit crit. So be warned, this is an amateur at work. Still, I do believe it �has to�, so I�ve been trying to come to terms with them and only intermittently succeeding. Soon, however, I noticed how central to modernism was the break with tradition of World War I: Frost returned as the war started, with his first books at the critic�s; Eliot stuck in England came to feel at home there while writing of the alienated �Prufrock� in 1917; and Stevens, too, found his unique form during those years, as �Sunday Morning� was published in 1915. We generally think of World War I poets as Brits and with good reason. They fought the war, took it as their subject; some died, others were scarred. These Americans (unlike Hemingway, e.e. cummings, Faulkner) were not affected directly. But it is interesting, possibly important, that they as well as many others found their distinctive voices at that time.

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I saw the remake of The Four Feathers (2002) a few years ago, when it came out. And a few days ago I finally got and viewed the classic 1939 original, (see this comparison). The oldie was better, but both movies had strengths and weaknesses and both are worth seeing. (Wretchard had a good comparison of the book — full text online here — to the remake. Wretchard also wove in a discussion of Churchill’s The River War — full text online here.)

The 2002 version’s strength is its excellent production values: gorgeous English countryside, sun-drenched Sudanese dunes, crisp scarlet tunics, ruddy-cheeked young men playing rugby in the mud, realistic-looking columns of men marching in the desert heat, etc. Those of a historical bent will get a charge out seeing these scenes set in the1880s lovingly recreated, and that is where most of the film’s merit lies. But like any period piece done lately, it ultimately fails to convince. The actors of today are simply too pretty and too vacant to depict the men and women of sterner days and stricter moral codes. Heath Ledger is a man of moderate talents, and Kate Hudson, has some charm but seems best suited for comedy. These two fell short in these more challenging roles, set in an earlier world of hard duties and demanding loves. So the core characters Harry Faversham and Ethne Burroughs, while pretty to look at, lack density. For example, the bodily deportment of the actors is not what one would expect from looking at period photographs, or from reading about the lives and beliefs of the people of those days. They look like modern Americans, uncomfortable in the period garb. The dialogue too often falls far short, frequently jarring any suspension of disbelief as well. And the screenwriters are such creatures of television that they cannot do sustained, coherent narrative, so the film is choppy and episodic, a series of images not a story. Everything is a music video these days.

The director attempted to construct an anti-imperialist superstructure on top of an old-fashioned story that is inconsistent with current views. The story prevailed. I read an interview where he talked about how the film would be “ambiguous” and “post-colonial”. After a rather pompous scrolling text at the beginning, decrying imperialism, the film quickly began to look pretty unambiguous. Courage is good, betraying your country or especially your friends is bad, the redcoats are better than the Mahdists, etc. The introduction of an African character who helps Harry infiltrate behind Mahdist lines was meant, I suppose, to make the whole thing more post-colonial, but all it ends up doing is creating a stereotyped image of a black servant voluntarily aiding his white master out of loyalty, instead of a stereotyped stiff-lipped white adventurer going it alone. Not much progress in seven decades. All that said, the movie has many solid moments, including one excellent battle scene. I was sitting in the theatre next to my wife, and as the dervishes approached a British column in a cloud of dust, I said aloud “form square!” an instant before the officer on screen did, which got a quizzical “how did you know?” from my wife, who should be used to this sort of thing from me. Notably, one actor, Wes Bentley, playing the character Jack Durrance, was impeccable in every way. There are always islands of competence even in such mediocre times as these, and one is occasionally lucky enough to stumble on them. Keep your eye on Wes Bentley.

The 1939 version of The Four Feathers is available on DVD and is probably the better film, though it shows its age. It is done on a grand scale, with very large battle scenes, shot on location in the Sudan. The acting and screen-writing are solid and efficient, in the old-school, theatre-trained way the British were once so good at. This very neat, orderly and linear cinematic style is something we are not accustomed to any longer. Also, the old-fashioned combat sequences tend to bloodless and painless, and hence unconvincing, by our modern standards. The acting style is pre-Method. Harry is played as a penitent who must atone for his betrayal, and this is crisply portrayed by the able but little-known actor John Clements. Durrance is played by Ralph Richardson, a stalwart of British cinema, whose career spanned over 50 years. Richardson’s Durrance is competently handled, but is a relatively undeveloped character, compared to Bentley’s. June Duprez is a superior Ethne, a cooler, more controlled yet deeper-seeming figure who carries herself well and who is more believable as a young woman of the 1880s. The dervishes are depicted as brave but cruel. The racial elements in this older film will make anyone highly sensitive to PC issues break out in a rash.

While I’m at it, I’ll mention some other memorable movies set in the heyday of the Empire.

Two excellent movies set in South Africa gives us diametric views of the British Empire and its army. Zulu (1964) starring Michael Caine and Stanley Baker, depicts the battle of Roark’s Drift in 1879, in which 140 Welshmen held off 4,000 Zulus. No other movie better captures the red-coated army which conquered so much of the world against vast odds, at least as much through discipline as technology. Color-Sergeant Bourne is the perfect unperturbable non-com (Here is the real Bourne). The Welshmen singing “Men of Harlech” is very stirring. (See this excellent selection of quotes from the movie, and posters.)

Breaker Morant (1980) depicts the nasty counter-guerilla struggle at the trailing end of the Boer War. Australian troops under Col. Morant, following the orders of their British commanders, execute Boer prisoners found wearing British khaki uniforms. The film is done in flashback from the Australians’ court martial. The trial is rigged with perjured testimony from the cynical British leadership. A realistic depiction of troops under the stress of a guerrilla struggle, and a timeless depiction of the perfidy of military leadership sacrificing subordinates for political reasons.

Another quite good movie set during Britain’s Victorian-Edwardian apex is Young Winston (1972) (And here), with Simon Ward as the youthful Winston Churchill, and Anne Bancroft and Robert Shaw in strong supporting roles as his parents, Randolph and Jennie Churchill. The film is based on, and closely follows, Churchill’s memoir, My Early Life (Mentioned in this post). The film contains, among other good moments, the British cavalry charge, at Omdurman. Churchill wisely sheathes his saber mid-charge and relies instead on a Mauser pistol to work execution upon various sword-wielding Sudanese.

The preliminary to the Sudan campaign is depicted in the movie Khartoum (1966), which has some good mass-battle scenes, including some footage nicked from the 1939 Four Feathers. Khartoum stars Charleton Heston as “Chinese” Gordon, and Laurence Olivier in an over-the-top performance as the Mahdi, spiritual leader of a howling mob of Muslim dervishes brandishing long, sharp knives. I saw this movie as a child. I was traumatized by the Mahdi’s howling ululations when he is presented with Gordon’s severed head. That scene remains one of my most horrid childhood memories.

Finally, Errol Flynn’s The Charge of the Light Brigade (1936) is a nice period piece, with its unabashedly pro-British Empire slant, a very dashing Flynn, with his usual female lead, the reliable Olivia De Havilland. A somewhat slow pace is redeemed by the terrific cavalry charge at the end: “cannon to the left of them, cannon to the right of them, cannon before them, volleyed and thundered.” Into the valley of death they rode, and of course Flynn goes down fighting.

I could have added many more films to this list. The British Empire will, in addition, I am sure, inspire many movies in the future. So many episodes deserve the full-blown cinematic treatment. What is probably too much to hope for is that the film-makers will downplay the ideological preaching, and try to show the people, conquerors and conquered and bystanders, as they understood themselves, not as symbols in our current ideological and political struggles.