Casablanca: What Makes a Film into a Classic?

Like books and songs, many movies have been made that cannot escape their particular time. In writing my academic book, for example, I aspired to speak beyond those living to generations not yet born because my aim was the production of knowledge beyond mere artifacts of the world in which I live. I knew that the verdict on whether the text passes that crucial test could only come long after my own death. Among films, even though Casablanca is a film immersed in, and thus reflecting its time—the context in 1942 being of course World War II—the film transcends all that to resonate in the following century. In his oral commentary, Rudy Behlmer argues that the film “transcends time.” He goes on to provide us with a list of the usual suspects behind what lies behind the making of a classic.

From: “Casablanca: What Makes a Film into a Classic?”

Isolating the Key Assumptions in a Dysfunctional Culture: A Hometown Case Study

It saddens me to admit that, from my visits back to my hometown, I have found enough of the remaining locals to be gripped with a particular mentality and related behavior that the culture itself had at some time reached a “critical mass” sufficient to be classifiable as dysfunctional, and thus highly toxic. The pathogen is by no means absent from the local businesses, government (and municipal organizations) schools (including colleges), hospitals (and medical clinics), and charities. The underlying mentality is nearly ubiquitous. I assume that finding a culturally-ensconced pathology’s core assumptions stated as explicitly as I witnessed at two local institutions is rare, and that such an opportunity for dissection ought not be lost, lest that and other such sordid cases be written off as necessarily lost in their own stools of firmament as the inhabitants effectively isolate their specific geographical area as “weird” or just plain different from the outside world in a seemingly inescapable downward spiral. Hence my dissection here of two main assumptions tacitly (and occasionally explicitly) shared by the infected souls in my rather hapless hometown.

From: “Isolating the Key Assumptions in a Hometown’s Dysfunctional Culture” 

Disruptive Innovation: Business by Buzzword

When a herd grabs hold of something, odds are that its original meaning will not only get trampled over, but also in a way that turns it up-side down before spreading it all over as if it were sweet-smelling manure. Particularly striking is the ensuing willfulness that typically contravenes efforts to pen in the herd to the confines of the term’s definition. I have in mind the erroneous and even tautological self-aggrandizing trajectory of the term disruption in the business sector of society. Drawing on Nietzsche, I submit that the offending sickness is centered in an interlarding presumptuousness to define an existing word conveniently, even in ways that are antithetical to the received meaning. That is to say, this cultural problem involves more than garden-variety ignorance.

The full essay has been incorporated into (or swallowed up by) On the Arrogance of False Entitlement: A Nietzschean Critique of Business Ethics and Management, available in print and as an ebook at Amazon.

Pope Francis Excommunicates the Italian Mafia

As though a lamb going into a lion’s den, Pope Francis journeyed to Sibari in southern Italy on the Summer Solstice of 2014 to castigate the Italian mafia, and more specifically the Ndrangheta crime group, as an example of “the adoration of evil.”  He added that “(t)hose who in their lives follow this path of evil, as mafiosi do, are not in communion with God. They are excommunicated.”[1] Presumably so too are the mafia families in other European states, and in the American states as well. As laudable as such excommunicating is, the fact that such murderous thugs have regarded themselves as Catholics, and, more generally as Christian, points to a more profound need for reform within the religion itself. In this essay, I draw on The Godfather saga to present this argument.

From: “Pope Francis Excommunicates the Mafia: Lessons from ‘The Godfather’”

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[1] Reuters, “Pope Excommunicates Mafiosi,” The Huffington Post, June 21, 2014.

On the Politics of Religion: A Ukrainian Priest Calls the E.U. an "Empire of Evil"

In Lviv, Ukraine, Rev. Addriy, a priest of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church rather than the Ukrainian affiliate of the Russian Orthodox Church, said after a Mass in June 2014 that the European Union is an “empire of evil” defying the Word of God and spreading sins including homosexuality and pedophilia. The priest went on to characterize the Ukrainians who toppled President Viktor Yanukovych as “Godless deviants” and “fools . . . in the pay of hostile foreign powers.”[1] Being in the western part of the state, the eastern-looking priest was not exactly “preaching to the choir”—meaning he must have known that his message would not be well-received by his congregation. This disjunction illustrates a distinctly religious problem that can arise when clerics fly too far afield from the religious domain onto those of politics, economics, or even social problems.

From: "A Ukrainian Priest’s Divisive Politics: At What Religious Cost?"

Presbyterian Church (USA): Divesting from Israel

By a narrow vote of 310 to 303, the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA) voted in June 2014 to divest about $21 million in stock from Motorola, Caterpillar, and Hewlett Packard because their respective products were being used by the Israeli Government in violent occupation of the Palestinian territories. The Friends Fiduciary Corp, which manages investments for 250 Quaker groups, had divested from Caterpillar, Motorola, and Veolia Environment two years earlier, and in 2013 the Mennonite Central Committee decided not to “knowingly invest in companies that benefit from products or services used to perpetrate acts of violence against Palestinians [and] Israelis.”[1] This point brings up the ethical point of what to do about companies that sell products used in violence by the Palestinians. To occupy is not like being occupied, though violence is violence. Moreover, using divestment from holding equity in a company may not be a very effective strategy, other than perhaps serving as a symbol, though even in this respect the effort can fad without having brought about the desired policy change.

From: "Presbyterian Church (USA): Divestment from CompaniesHelping Israel"

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1. Jaweed Kaleem, “Presbyterian Church (USA) Makes Controversial Divestment Move Against Israel,” The Huffington Post, June 20, 2014.

Mrs. Miniver

The Oscar for Best Picture in 1942 went to a film that in the end comes down to war propaganda, complete with a plug for U.S. War Bonds. As troubling as film as propaganda is, the last scene in the film raises even more fundamental problems that the film glosses over. Tellingly, the scene takes place in a bombed church in the fictional English village.

From: “Mrs. Miniver”

Putin’s Eurasian Union: Another European Union?

At the end of May, 2014, Russia signed an economic treaty with Belarus and Kazakhstan that “forges closer trade and labor ties among the former Soviet republics.”[1] Even though the new economic ties fall short of another European Union, Russian President Vladimir Putin referred to the new trading relationships as the Eurasian Economic Union, which I contend is deliberately misleading. Being implicitly part of the category mistake, the E.U. itself could be further misunderstood as a consequence.

From: “Russian Economic Cooperation as a Eurasian Union Rivaling the E.U.?”

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[1] This and all other quotes in this essay are taken from: Anna Arutunyan, “Russia, 2 Other Nations Sign Pact,” USA Today, May 30, 2014.

On the Theology of the Eucharist: Beyond the Historical Divisions

According to a survey led by a sociologist at Catholic University and published in The National Catholic Reporter, forty percent of 1,442 American Catholic adults said "you can be a good Catholic without believing that in Mass, the bread and wine really become the body and blood of Christ—a core doctrine of Catholicism.” A reporter opines that this “could reflect the decline in Mass attendance. The survey finds it’s fallen from 44% attending at least once a week in 1987 to 31% in 2011, while those who attend less than monthly rose from 26% to 47%. When asked why they don’t go to Mass more often, 40% say they are simply not very religious.” What does it mean to say that someone is or is not religious? Looking back at the history of religion, a neutral party might half-joke that the adjective refers to the proclivity to spar over puerile theological distinctions as if Creation itself hung in the balance. In this essay, I illustrate how such a distinction bearing on the Eucharist (i.e., Holy Communion) can be diffused of its alleged historical significance as warranting Christian division under the taskmaster of (cognitive) uniformity as a placeholder for unity.

From: "On the Theology of Eucharist: Beyond Historical Divisions"

The Eucharist as Transcendent Experience

Taking a swipe at a core tenet of Catholicism, Bill Keller of the New York Times writes, “Every faith has its baggage, and every faith holds beliefs that will seem bizarre to outsiders. I grew up believing that a priest could turn a bread wafer into the actual flesh of Christ.” I contend that the editor’s characterization of consecration represents a misunderstanding of the Eucharist. Such misunderstandings have been worse; in the early years of the Church, some pagans were under the impression that the Christians were meeting on Sundays to eat babies. Indeed, phrases such as “eat my body” may in fact be inherently prone to being misunderstood. In this essay, I endeavor to clear up some of the confusion and put the ritual in a more efficacious light.

From: "The Eucharist as Transcendent Experience"

Pope Francis Lashes Out Against the Military Industrial Complex: On the Idolatry of Money

It is not often that the global economy’s military-industrial complex is tied to youth unemployment and, moreover, to the idolatry of money. Yet this is precisely the thread woven by the spiritual leader of the Roman Catholic Church. While the pope’s comments risk a certain overreach from the theological to the terrain of international political economy, which proffers its own body of knowledge, it can also be said that having a transcendent referent as one’s focus enables a person to make subtle taken-for-granted assumptions in our economic, social, and political systems transparent. In articulating an economic (and related political) center and giving it a distinctly theological interpretation stemming from the Biblical passage, “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also,” the Roman pope provides the world with a way to do political economy from a distinctly religious vantage-point.

From: “Pope Francis on Youth Unemployment, War, and the Idol of Money”

Legislating Civilization Chinese-Style: The Tale of Two Cities

In June, 2014, the “Capital Civilization Office” in the Chinese Government began a half-year campaign to “encourage Beijing’s 20 million residents to behave better.”[1] Targets include “people who are noisy, smoke in public, curse at sports events, fail to line up for buses, run red lights, drink while they drive, and drive aggressively.” It seems to me this list could equally apply to Miami, and, at least in terms of driving, to the entire Northeast coastline of the United States. Perhaps urban modernity is to blame, or maybe it is simply the old truism pertaining to the rise and fall of great empires, and thus to cities as well. Chinese history is no stranger to this cycle in the form of a succession of dynasties. Perhaps we would be wise to view the modern city in such terms too.

From: “Legislating Politeness: The Chinese Government Takes on a Dysfunctional Culture”

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[1] For this quote and all others in this essay: Calum MacLeod, “Be More Polite, Beijing Residents Told,” USA Today, June 11, 2014. 

JetBlue Risks Reputational Capital: First-Class Over Egalitarianism

It may sound trite, but managers really do compromise or expunge their company’s reputational capital altogether in order to chase down the additional revenue obtainable from a market segment that had been extraneous to the reputation. If the new advertisements have a Janus-like duplicitousness air, the source is not likely even to admit to the previously long-held principles. Indeed, the contrivance can be discerned from the way in which artful managers use words themselves—stretching them for an intended effect well past their respective meanings and customary usages. Unfortunately, the made-up diction can be contagious in a society that esteems organizational position. I have in mind Jet Blue’s switch from its egalitarian single-class cabins to the first/coach bifurcated model. Left in the jet-wash is the company’s long-standing principle of egalitarianism, lost in the anticipation of more revenue from business travelers.

From: “JetBlue Airline: First-Class Trumps Egalitarianism”

U.S. House Majority Leader Cantor’s Election Loss: An Analysis

It is not every day that the majority leader in the U.S. House of Representatives loses—and badly at that—to a primary challenger in an intra-party contest. In the wake of Jim Cantor’s defeat in June, 2014, journalists wasted no time in reducing the defeat to one issue: immigration. Such a reductionist ex-post facto divination of voter intent—as if an electorate were one monolithic mind writ large—is fraught with difficulties. Beyond the sheer artifice, such an interpretation offers an easy cover for less convenient, subterranean political shifts underway and expressed in the vote.

From:  “U.S. House Majority Leader Cantor’s Election Loss: On the Corporate Connection”

Dallas Buyers Club: Erasing Prejudice

The maturation of a story’s protagonist—as “growth” eventuated through the progression of the narrative—provides a source of dynamism that can keep a film from being static, or falling flat for lack of character development. At the same time, a good screenwriter is careful not to overdo it, lest a character’s internal transition occur too quickly in terms of the story to be believable. In Dallas Buyers Club, Ron Woodroof—played by Matthew McConaughey—“turns on a dime” in his attitude toward gays. The flip is hardly believable. The question is why.

From: "Dallas Buyers Club"