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Holiday Reprint: Parallel Parking In Hollywood

[Editor’s note: during the holiday week, I am republishing classic articles while I do site maintenance and catch up on paperwork(and babysit the houseguest!).

This article was originally written in October 2004. It does seem like a million years ago, doesnt it?]

My buddy Ray gets at least partial credit for this post, but in all fairness, I was already running down this road when Ray threw the shopping cart out in front of me, so here goes...

I think we all know by now that "Our Man JFK" gets under my skin pretty fast. I've always thought he was the weakest of all candidates that have been put forth by the Democrats in a very long time, It's not that I dont think that Bush could not have been beat this time, Its just that I've been very sure that hes not going to get beat by John "Fredo" Kerry.

Ray got me thinking about Science Fiction movies in relation to what movie character Archetype Kerry reminds me of the most. And then I had it:

This is a picture from one of my favorite movies, "The Thing From Another World". In this movie, We see many of the great 1950's movie stereotypes at play.

"The Thing" fuses Science Fiction and horror into a platform that would be replicated many times over during the morality plays of the movies ofthe 1950's. This film is more than just a do-or-die played out with big sticky bug eyed aliens, the central conflict of the film itself is actually between academic and martial culture, embodied by the good and world weary view of "Marlboro Man" - Captain Hendry, and the academic knowledge and refined lifestyle of "Metrosexual Man" - Dr. Carrington.

On one end of the story is "The Good Captain" whose duty is to protect his troops and the civilians under his protection from the alien, and on the other side, is "The Doctor" who is more than willing to let a few of the little people die in order to acquire knowledge for what he's sees as the betterment of humanity. To Dr. Carrington, the violence that the alien uses is just a misunderstanding between the clearly older and wiser alien culture and the lesser and more inferior human culture.

Dr. Carrington assumes that the creature is in fact, "more wise" than the puny humans that discover it and at one point in the movie he says:

We owe it to the brain of our species to stand here and die... without destroying a source of wisdom.

It's in the interplay between the characters of Hendry Vs. Carrington that we see Common Sense in competition with intelligence. Captain Hendry has duties to perform where Dr. Carrington looks only towards his own basking in the reflected glory that comes from the worship of knowledge. Captain Hendry is in "The Service" whereas Dr. Carrington serves no one but himself. In several scenes in the movie, Dr. Carrington proves that although he may be smarter than Captain Hendry and the rest of the "puny civilians", he is also not trustworthy. Not because he is not smart, but because he does not value the lives of the average person. To Dr. Carrington, human life is not as valuable and worthy as the expansion of scientific knowledge. Dr. Carringtons Self-loathing has overridden his common sense and basic humanity.

To whom do you trust your children? Captain Hendry or Dr. Carrington?

Posted @ December 27, 2005 07:44 PM | annual_review

Posted by: pst314 at December 29, 2005 09:44 AM

Posted by: California Job Case at December 29, 2005 06:05 PM