The other day, I was watching a rerun of an episode of “THE SOPRANOS”. This one was pretty good: it featured the actor Kingsley Amis and the actress Laruen Bacall. For those who might be unfamiliar with the episode, the Cliff Notes are that one of the main characters, an up and coming mobster named Christopher, has apirations of becoming a Hollywood screenwriter. He travels to LA to try to get Amis to get involved with his script. Amis declines, but that is just an aside: the underlying motif of episode is the glitz and greed of Hollywood. Christopher attend some Hollywood soiree where he sees the already rich and famous be further enriched. “Goodie Bags” containing Rolex watches, Gucci wallets and handbags, Fendi accoutrement and other high fashion baubles are lavishly handed out to the likes of Paris Hilton. Of course, from a stirct market aspect, this makes sense: if you are a high fashion designer, wishing to peddle your wares that are probably made for pennies in Chinese sweatshop, you have to ensure high fashion people are seen sporting your stuff or it isn’t high fashion. After all, i would daresay that Serengheti sunglass and those available at CVS are both made in Shanghi…and probably crafted by the same person.
Be that as it may. More movie stuff: one of my all time favs is DR. ZHIVAGO, with Omar Sharif and Julie Christie. The movie opens just prior to the Russian Revolution in 1917. Yuri Zhivago is a member of Russia’s emerging middle class also known as the bourgeois. The key word here is “emerging” because due to a number of reasons, notably the Russian language’s use of the Cyrillic alphabet, Russia missed out on many, if not all, of the philosophical, political and economic reforms that transformed Western Europe from a feudal society into a modern one: The Rennasaince, The French Revolution, The Reformation and the writtings of great thinkers like John Locke, Martin Luther, Thomas Hobbes, Edmund Burke or Rousseau come to mind. But, as they say, to cut to the chase, the movie depicts the events of the Revolution when a mostly feudal Russia is suddenly and violently pulled into the 20th Century. Kind of along the lines of “It’s Our Money and We Want it NOW”, the NOW had the effect of giving a teenage son your Visa and turning him loose in Vegas: everything went to crap. Setting aside for the moment the murder and mayhem associated with any violent upheavel associated with any civil war, i was struck by one thing: Zhivago, before the revolution’s onset, led a nice middlle class life: he was a doctor, had a beautiful wife, a nice home in the city and a nice dacha in the country. He was smart enough to go to medical school and had the soul of a poet. He was, as one of the lines in the movie read, a good man. To which, one of the now in charge leaders of the now in the toilet society neatly nutshelled by the squalor of a field hospital scene, replied, with what i daresay is distain that rates right up there with some of the crap i read in the papers of today, “To hell with good men”
The front page of the 12/10/10 issue of THE USA TODAY had a lead piece about how CEOs, who have tons of stuff and money, also get free health care while the rest of us have to pay for it…if we’re lucky. Hmmm….
Back to THE SOPRANOS: in one of the last scenes, Ms. Bacall emerges from her soiree, her goodie bag with the jeweley and baubles in tow. Chistopher dons a ski mask, runs up to her, bops her on the head, grabs the bag and takes off. The next scene show him kicking up the goodies to his boss, Tony as sharing the loot.
I was struck by the juxtaposition of both of these works of fiction as depictions of plausible facts. In the Sopranos, when them that has gets more, someone gets hurt. In Zhivago when those that have nothing get less, someone gets hurt. Put another way, when the Commies take over, people get hurt, the middle class gets destroyed and everything goes to crap. And when already rich are positioned to become richer, people get hurt, the middle class gets destroyed and everything goes to crap.
It is kind of like bowling: if you keep on tossing gutter balls, be they down either the left or the right, you lose. The only way to win the game is by bowling down the middle.
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