Chris Bertram writes disapprovingly, suggesting that Berman’s ‘philistine reaction’ misreads the grandeur of Che’s life – a grandeur which cannot, Bertram suggest, be sullied by facts. Literally…
Lack of success and damaging facts should not necessarily be enough to deprive a hero of heroic status: Achilles was flawed, and Achilles was cruel, and Achilles failed, but we still respond to him.
Yes, but do we respond to Achilles as a hero, or as a kind of glorious monster?
But this isn’t about Brad Pitt.Go read Bertram’s post.
Then read this old post of mine.
From Isaiah Berlin:
You would have found common sense, moderation, was very far from their thoughts. You would have found that they believed in the necessity of fighting for your beliefs to the last breath in your body, and you would have found that they believed in the value of martyrdom as such, no matter what the martyrdom was for. You would have found that they believed that minorities were more holy than majorities, that failure was nobler than success, which had something shoddy and vulgar about it.
From me:
Sound familiar?
What began to matter wasn’t the endless small adjustments to “objective” reality or to work with others – what mattered was your wholehearted willingness to pull down the temple rather than submit, and your ability to project your dreams and ideals – objectively, your fantasies – into the world and to try and make the world conform to them, rather than the other way ‘round.
Bertram admires Che because of, not in spite of, his attachment to the ‘ideals’ as opposed to the mundane:
…he did turn his back on a comfortable future as a communist bureaucrat to pursue the goal of the revolutionary liberation of humanity.
The attachment of the progressive left to that ideal – to the liberation of humanity that comes through a revolutionary stroke, rather than the endless small acts and hard work that build and nurture real life, real freedom, and exemplify real love for humanity – is the malign center of Bad Philosophy as it exists today. When we can extract it, real progress can begin.
But this isn’t about Brad Pitt.
Drink alert on that one. Heh.
… do we respond to Achilles as a hero, or as a kind of glorious monster?
A “hero” is not necessarily a good man. Achilles exemplified the heroic virtue of arete: courage, physical prowess, honor, and the ability to kill lots and lots of people. Slaughtering your enemies by the hundreds was a most praise-worthy thing in the ancient world, so Achilles does not represent a sociopathic monster.
Che Guevara was no Achilles. Che Guevara was just a blood-thirsty son of a bitch who was attracted to Marxist political fantasy precisely because it fed his own homicidal fantasies.
Bertram says Guevara was no Lenin, either. But like Lenin, Guevara was obsessed with the idea of violence and killing. Unlike Lenin, Guevara was not a craven coward. That doesn’t make him a hero.
Another important thing to note: the victims of Achilles – Hector and all the rest of them – were portrayed as being noble and heroic themselves. Their deaths were tragic. When Achilles slays Hector, it’s not a crime, but it’s not a happy event, either. There’s no justice it, just the tragedy of hero striving against hero in a world where (Homer says) “the generations of men are like the leaves on the trees.”
To the likes of Che Guevara, though, their enemies are sub-human things who deserve nothing but death. That’s not Achilles – that’s Lenin, Hitler, and Stalin.
Sing, Goddess, of the wrath of Achilles son of Pelaeus
And the countless ills he brought on his fellow Achaeans,
Many brave souls sent down to Hades beforetime,
Heroes lying dead, food for dogs and crows.
Glenn has it right. Achilles demonstrates the sort of fatal flaw that Aristotle claims is at the heart of tragedy. In his case, the flaw of a rigid pride and anger which — whether he is sulking in his tents due to insulted pride or berserking on the battlefield after the death of his lover / shieldmate — undercuts his best works.
He’s a far less impressive person that Odysseus or even Hector and Priam, in many ways. But he is presented as deeply human, interacting with others as humans and not as pawns for power or ideology.
There is a point buried in Bertram’s post – that a biographer should look at the subject from within that subject’s own point of view and circumstances, in order to arrive at some kind of understanding from the inside AS WELL AS a view from the outside.
Bertram’s mistakes, however, are many and serious. Let’s start with his most obvious quote:
bq. “Those for whom the whole project of the revolutionary liberation of mankind from exploitation and alienation is an absurb fantasy disqualify themselves from writing about Communism in the same way that those who find the notion of the supernatural redemption of the world from sin disqualify themselves from writing ecclesiastical history.”
Sorry, this is dumb.
There were later attempts to weasel on this one, but as one of his commenters noted, does this means we should take biographers of Hitler and Mussolini less seriously unless they see the whole project of a state under an all-powerful overlord and aimed at purity of the will (and race) in a somewhat sympathetic light? If you think this was all an absurd fantasy, does that mean we’ll find someone else to write about Hitler, thank you very much?
There’s something to be said for an imaginative understanding of a subject or a movement, in order to write about it effectively. There’s also something to be said for grandeur, tragedy, and humanity – even in the biographies of monsters.
But suspension of moral judgment is NOT required in that enterprise. My example #1 is always Bernard Lewis, who is not Muslim and has no inherent sympathy for a restored Islamofascist Caliphate, but nonetheless makes his deep affection and inner understaning of Arab/Islamic culture clear amidst his vast scholarship on the subject.
As Mikael, one of “Yglesias’ commenters”:http://yglesias.typepad.com/matthew/2004/09/the_new_phillis.html noted:
bq. “A film on the early years of the life of a really, really bad person should probably engage the problem that he turned into a really, really bad person. The failure to engage or acknowledge that truth can make the film come off as either making apologies for Che or outright denying his bad-personhood.”
Later in Yglesias’ comments, Jeffrey Davis notes the distinction between separating a WRITER’S politics from his artistic work (unless the art includes said politics), and pictures about a SUBJECT aimed at whitewashing them. Also true.
It seems that the maker of this film may have crossed the line, however. In that same thread, “Cisco” notes:
bq. “Salles has defended Guevara explicitly in interviews. When the movie was released here in Brazil, he was often on TV or being interviewed and saying how Che was a wonderful person, how he’s such a great example, etc.”
Which brings us to sometimes Winds commenter Sebastian Holsclaw, who responds to another’s comment thusly:
bq. SANTO: “You can rant and rave about how foolish their admiration is, but there are good reasons for it, and you ignore them at your peril.”
bq. SH REPLIES: “There are reasons for all sorts of personality cults based on vicious people. And we shouldn’t ignore them. Nor should we pretend that they are good reasons.”
Which kind of sums it up for me. Salles may choose to be blind to this, but that blindness is a major failing. Berrtram’s deliberate perpeturation of that blindness, and refusal to consider the line between a portrayal of a certain time and place vs. a whitewash of a violent totalitarian, is also a major failing.
That’s disturbing, all the more so because it has been such a common failing. Gary Farber, same thread:
bq. “The romanticization of totalitarian figures — and Berman lived through the peak of that of Che — you may underestimate just how powerful the image of Che was in contributing to, for instance, the Weathermen — is truly a disgusting thing, whether it’s Castro or Pinochet.”
Pinochet still has many admirers of his own these days, and one can also argue that along with the bad, he did more concrete good than Che ever did. I wouldn’t recommend ignoring these things, but neither do they minimize what was done under his banner. Would Bertram be as tolerant of a similarly slanted biopic about, say, Augusto Pinochet?
Somehow, I doubt it.
You need to warn us when you link to Crooked Timber. Its like sending somebody into a known malaria swamp. I swore I wasn’t going back there.
Honestly those people are completely clueless. And Yglesias, isn’t he full of himself: “my father is working on a project with Walter Salles at the moment.” Well pardon me.
What I want to know is how long will it be until marxism is consigned to the same trashbin that alchemy, phrenology and phlogiston are kept in. Clearly, the boomers who learned their politics by chanting Ho Ho Ho Chi Mhin, NLF is going to win, and Cuba Si Yanqui No, will need to die. But the Crooked Timber dudes are Gen Xers. And they are mis-educating milleneials. So what do we have another 60 or 80 years?
Excellent comments, Armed Liberal.
As Marxism, and other sorts of extreme “idealisms”, are defined against factuality, the clash and crash with reality is catastrophic.
Mr. Schwartz,
You unfairly defame alchemy, phrenology and phlogiston. Inquiry into all of those scientific fallacies led, albeit unexpectedly, to great and legitimate scientific discoveries (chemistry, localization/specialization of brain function, and oxygen, respectively). I’m unaware of any great truth uncovered as a consequence of Communist theory, except maybe a proof of the adage that the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
dag hammersomething quote which you might like:
Marxism will die a deserved death when its twin, which is property-rights absolutism, dies. Or to to quote Lord Keynes:
I love the resurgence of the Illiad these days. I think the renewed interest in the character of Achilles is that he is the perfect post-modern hero. Its not that he is flawed, thats easy. What makes Achilles so intriguing is that he _knows_ he is flawed, but all the things that make him special, unique, are what feed his demons. He cant let go, even knowing they are damning him. By the time Achilles reaches Troy he is in a sense beyond redemption. Once he decides to go to war, he is like a machine set in motion. He knows what he is, deplores it, revels in it, surrenders to it. I think he is a perfect archtype of our age. Achilles knows nothing of sacrifice, and when he loses something he flies into a petulant rage. Definately a member of the Me Generation. Achilles is the poster boy for ‘Its better to burn out, than to fade away’.