Thinking Out Loud: The Substance of Style

I went to see Kill Bill: Vol. 2 last night with silvertide, kenficara and his partner Maya. The only scene that gripped me was David Carradine, as Bill, explaining the meaning of the Superman story. I thought the movie was otherwise heartless: an exercise in comic book violence without consequences. It had its funny moments, and some clever dialogue, but I never had any emotional investment in any of the characters. kenficara and Maya had similar objections, if I can take the liberty of summing up their reactions here. silvertide, on the other hand, said he liked the movie, an opinion he may have been reluctant to offer in the teeth of my unequivocal and flamboyant critique. When I asked him what about it he enjoyed, silvertide said he liked the movie’s style. That stopped me in my tracks (well, it turned off the engine, anyway: my mouth took a while to coast to a stop).
I’ve had the almost identical experience with kijjohnson: she has responded warmly to the style of a film or book that left me cold. Now silvertide and kijjohnson are two of the smartest people I’ve ever met, and I don’t say that lightly: they’re both quick and subtle. If they see something important and worthwhile in a work’s style, it’s hard for me to dismiss the book or film as stoopid.
I have to admit, to my complete chagrin, that I’ve been thinking about style versus substance in exactly that way: an either/or proposition in which style is the enemy of substance. Style, in my mind, is all about surfaces, about looks. That world view isn’t just limited to books and movies, either: it’s an intellectual vanity that’s infected a lot of areas of my life. I suspect the root of this anti-style nose thumbing is envy. The truth is that I prefer attractive surfaces, in books, films, clothing, and material possessions. And people.
I would find it snobbish, not to say mean, if someone were to make fun of Molly Ivins because she’s not a raving beauty. Why would it be okay to mock Gisele Bundchen because she’s not an expert on national politics? Probably because I look more like Molly Ivins than Gisele Bundchen, and I know it. This all sounds terribly squishy and self-absorbed. But what’s interesting to me is how easy it is to make supposedly intellectual arguments for emotional reasons.
I don’t know if I’m ready to become a convert on the question of style versus substance, but I should probably think about calling off the jihad. What do you think?

Panhandlers in the Marketplace of Ideas

In his book Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right, Al Franken brilliantly decouples inherent worth from commercial success. In Chapter 2, “You Know Who I Don’t Like? Ann Coulter,” he writes:

…like any movement conservative, Coulter is a firm believer in the free market. By definition, anything that succeeds in the “marketplace of ideas,” like her books, must inherently be of value. And, therefore, unlike members of working families, she really does work for a living.
Here’s something to think about, though. A friend of mine works in the hotel industry. About 65 percent of the movies that are ordered in hotels are “adult movies.” Clearly, two blondes going down on each other is a real winner in the marketplace of ideas. My all-time favorite stat: The average length of time those movies are on is…twelve minutes. That is my favorite statistic in life.

My question is, what are all those people doing with the second six minutes?

The Objectivity of the Press

The Chicago Sun Times reported today that Associated Press reporter Mike Robinson expressed his decidedly subjective opinion of accused felon Michael “Mickey” Segal outside a federal courtroom during a break in the trial. Segal is an insurance mogul charged with numerous counts of racketeering, tax conspiracy and mail fraud, to hit just the high notes.

“You’re going to the s–t house,” Robinson spat at Segal. “You’re going to look good in an orange jumpsuit.” Then Robinson questioned how Segal would feel when he “hears the jail door slam shut,” according to two eyewitnesses.

The Sun Times reports that the Associated Press has taken Robinson off the case. Too bad he’s not on the jury.

Blog of Arabia

You should read The Religious Policeman, by Saudi citizen Alhamedi Alanezi, while you can. I’m afraid soon they’ll be rolling out the polythene sheet for him.
Courtesy of Rick in Scottsdale.

The Law is a Ass

Doctors are better writers than lawyers: Lewis Thomas, Perri Klass and Atul Gawande vs. John Grisham, Scott Turow and Lisa Scottoline. Why?
I think doctors have to be smarter, for one thing. But mainly the difference lies in the worlds they have to consider. Medicine draws upon the natural world: evolutionary biology, anatomy, chemistry, physics. The whole oyster, with its origins going back to the big bang. Law is a self-contained universe, created wholly by humans, mostly in the last five-hundred years, and nowhere older than five-thousand years. The law is a hothouse, designed to blunt the effect of the real world on its specimens.
Lawyers have their moments, of course: I’m thinking of Lincoln at Gettysburg. But today we have Scalia of Hattiesburg. The more recent the vintage of lawyer, the less likely he or she will be broadly schooled or widely read.
Lawyers, and the copy writers who blurb their books, embrace the conceit that they are expert observers of human nature. This is true only in the sense that sewage treatment workers are expert observers of water quality. Lawyers see only people locked in a struggle with others: their expert observations are overgeneralizations drawn from a data pool of the criminal, the greedy the bereaved, and very occasionally, the downtrodden.
Doctors, with some exceptions, treat the broad spectrum of humanity: the rich and poor, the broken and the whole. Doctors deal with the world first-hand: one can’t cure pneumonia by appealing to a jury’s emotions; beat a brain tumor on a technicality; nor appeal a fatal heart attack.
Finally, every time a lawyer wins a case, someone else loses. As a profession and an institution, the law can reinforce the worst in the human heart. Doctors, in contrast, aren’t engaged in a zero sum game: if the doctor wins, everybody wins. There is plenty wrong with medicine the way it is practiced in industrialized society, but it lends its practitioners, and authors, a more expansive view of the human condition than the one from the bar.