Elia Kazan and ultra-purism

Max Sawicky sawicky at epinet.org
Tue Mar 23 09:30:50 PST 1999


Henry L:
>
> "Reds" is not a film about the left, but a film about the
dilettante left's disillusionment. There is a big difference. The left has been such a neglected child in American culture that even a backhanded slap is appreciated.>

Who are you to call John Reed, Louis Fraina, and Emma Goldman dilettantes? Or, why do you think a bald assertion like this is persuasive?


> Very noble. Loyalty to some one who was not loyal.
> One has a responsibility to choose one's friends
> carefully. Friendship
> and debts, unlike family, are made by choice and not fate.

More unwisdom of the ages. Debts are often not incurred by choice.

As for nobility, self-righteousness is no less a moral pretense. The abiding sin of the campus left in the U.S. from the 60's to presently is that of self-righteousness. Moral judgement is more faulty, the greater the distance in time and place. My own little form of penance is to try and exercise restraint in this regard.


> In the Chinese revolution, many families were split
> along political
> lines. Sons angainst fathers, brother agaianst brothers
> If Beatty owed Kazan, then Beatty's posture was merely
> self defense rather than noble.

WB needs no self-defense now. So his gesture to Kazan cannot be explained on that basis.


> > I was fascinated to note the audience reaction. ...
>
> What you noticed was the televised rebirth of the
> UnAmerican Committee.
> The night of the living death of McCarthyism. . . .

This is simple hysteria.


> Max, you are too soft on Beatty whose Hollywood liberalism is
derived more from guilt than from faith. Beatty used his bogus political capital for an evil purpose to get out of Faustian corner.>

I've never stopped being amazed at the Internet's predilection for rendering instant long-distance moral judgements, garnished with 50 cents of amateur psychology, on perfect strangers.

mbs

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