1. So I’ve gotten several emails complaining about my lack of sensitivity–or Christian love–in not being being moved by the movie. Here’s the most balanced judgment from a veteran conservative:
[Name of wife here] LOVED Les Miz. She thought it “better than the play,” which she had seen a half dozen times or more on Broadway back in the day, precisely because it prioritized Christian redemption over the political revolutionary theme. She marveled that the film makers could have been so “in sync” with the Christian element. She and the two women she went with were all crying by the end. I suspect the whole thing works better for women.
2. Before you call me sexist, remember that we at FIRST THINGS are all about reminding America of the naturalness of sexual complementarity or sexual difference. I’ve written before, of course, of my admiration at the savvy relational ability of women to use both smiles and tears as weapons–to have much more control than men over what their faces are doing. But I have to add that women probably are more genuinely moved than men by real expressions of personal love, and surely the film meant to be about that. For me: When you talk about its story, it seems a lot better than hearing it sung (with all those silly rhymes to Javert etc.). My wife, for the record, didn’t cry at the film and even thought some of it was somewhat ridiculous, but she did like and appreciate it.
3. In general, I’m capable of being moved by Broadway musicals, but not those in which every word is sung. Another film version much than worse than LES MIZ, for example, is EVITA, which was unrelieved torture. So that must mean, someone might say, that you’re so loutish that you don’t like opera. Well, I like many of the
tunes found in operas, particularly Italian operas. But it’s true I have trouble sitting through whole performances. I was once stuck in a Seattle Opera Company (one of the world’s best) performance of a 5-hour Wagner ring thing. I was, in fact, crying after about the first hour.
4. So as to seem not too much in the thrall of sexual stereotypes, I acknowledge that distinguished Christian emo conservative men such as John Coleman and Michael Gerson have written eloquently about the tears they shed in watching and especially hearing the wonderful story of redemption from miz.
5. I also cry when thinking about the beating the Republican are taking at the hands of the president and his men (and women). The Hagel nomination is pushing all the right buttons–unifying, as I predicted, the lefties at THE NATION with the isolationists at THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE–in support of the ANTI-MCCAIN. The “neocons” (well, of course, not just neocons) are interpreting the nomination as evidence that the president–contrary to what he said during his campaign–doesn’t care about Israel’s future or a nuclear Iran or even a resolute national defense. There is, after all, evidence from Hagel’s mouth that support those concerns. But the McCain perspective is really unpopular now, and so why not trick the Republicans into projecting it once more? Another issue, of course, is there’s little evidence that Hagel could actually RUN the Pentagon (I admit there’s not much McCain could do it either). The drop-off in quality from Gates and Panetta is pretty obvious, from an executive perspective. Meanwhile, the president is projecting his resoluteness in a different way: He says he’s all about issuing unilateral executive orders to protect us from serial killers through weapons control. Another shrewd move–today VP Biden is consulting with gun control advocates, the NRA, and THE ENTERTAINMENT INDUSTRY about what neeeds to be done.
UPDATE: Gene Veith, another conservative Christian man, also loved the movie for being so explicitly Christian. But his judgment might be compromised by this claim that the Hugo novel is one of the geatest ever.
January 10th, 2013 | 1:27 pm
[...] 1. So I’ve gotten several emails complaining about my lack of sensitivity–or Christian love–in not being being moved by the movie. Here’s the most balanced judgment from Source: Postmodern Conservative [...]
January 10th, 2013 | 3:34 pm
#5 is the worst thing I’ve ever seen you write, Peter.
January 10th, 2013 | 4:35 pm
And you pressed all the right buttons over at TAC. “Tiresome and unaccountably petulant,” says Rod Dreher.
As for Les Mis, I love the Broadway musical but I was lukewarm on the movie. For me, what works well on stage just didn’t work as well on the screen. The story can draw some tears from me, though I’ve never tried to weaponize them so hopefully I’ve preserved my masculinity!
January 10th, 2013 | 5:01 pm
So I’ve read what I could uncharitably call the tiresome and predictable comments from TAC. But the point of my #5 was, to repeat, to admire the president’s skills in pressing the right buttons. The TAC defensive team was on me in a matter of a couple hours, and I could be accused of pushing their button to get ratings up. Those arguing both for and against Hagel are overwrought, no doubt. It goes without saying that the outrage in both directions hardly necessary. The president will and surely should get the secretary of defense he wants. No neocon conspiracy can stop it! Let the casual reader note that this is more evidence still of conservative diversity, and that the “American conservatives” and the “neoconservatives” seem to hate each other more than ‘dem liberals (or progressives) or whatever
January 10th, 2013 | 8:02 pm
Never saw the musical, don’t plan to see the movie. Decided against both after I actually attempted to read the novel and noticed how ridiculously melodramatic it was.
Hugo didn’t know how to calibrate the sympathetic qualities of his hero’s and the unsympathetic qualities of his villains making for a rather uncomplicated manichean view of the world. If you want a truly complicated reading of the christian world you can’t do better than Dostoyevsky. Just compare his Raskalonikov and Porfiry Petrovich to Hugo’s Valjean and Javert to see what I mean.
And as a card carrying member of the Neoconservative tribe. It’s all good. I’ll just bide my time until the next time planes hit buildings or there’s a mushroom cloud over Manhattan to tell my friends on the left and isolationist right (once again) “I told you so”.
January 10th, 2013 | 8:49 pm
Noah Millman at least thinks about the platinum coin. I also agree with him as a matter of public policy that the debt ceilling shouldn’t exist at all.
Thus the ideal solution is for the Republicans to repeal the debt ceilling. We could reach an agreement here. TAC is ok.
I don’t agree with his analysis of the politics of the debt ceilling which instead of being tiresome and predictable, is creative but just plain wrong.
i.e. “The platinum coin option strengthens the Republican extremists’ hands in a negotiation over the budget, and does nothing to protect the economy from a budget crisis that would look very similar to the debt ceiling crisis. So what’s the point of it?”
… Go read the Levy Institute work(not that this will help you on negotiation leverage, but it might change your view of the “budget crisis”.)
I actually think #5 is the smartest bullet point there. Pure Brilliance actually. Albeit I don’t have a clear feel for why you are mixing Les Miz and presidential cabinet positions. One theory, you are going for a Montesquiesque spirit of the Laws type feel. Another theory is (and this regardless of sex) that those who are concerned with politics enough to care about appointments have already so bought in to the idea of revolutionary change via some particular head coach/leader, who will supposedly re-nudge or re-vamp the ‘constitutional” administrative law of the pentagon by persueing policy X,Y,Z that they are incapable of seeing the Christian Truth of Les Miz as anything more than mere copyright for the idle amusement of children. Yes the consumer is always right, (smile)here is a sucker!
That is the inclusion of #5 brings in and requires a certain level of technical knowledge that might not be compatible with appreciation or consumption of the material as copyright. Or it raises the question of the difference between the arm chair quaterback and the passive viewer of games and say Coach Saban. I already have a party admission from you that you can’t watch football with the accute attention to detail of Coach Saban! How do you know the Pentagon isn’t filled with tortured “Historians” who no longer enjoy the beauty of administrative law, or play for the love of the “game”?
I mean the first sentence in #5 is pretty good humor.Especially when juxtaposed with not crying at Les Miz.
Why does Gene Callahan assume your points are seperate? Is this sort of assumption itself grounds for a even more diversity? casual reader conservative diversity (the type that read for pleasure and cry at les Miz) vs. the type that read for dominion and cry born out of a sincere loss of material profit, and career advancement when Republican factions do not win and cannot shower them with bon-bons?
What about the conservatives who cry at Les Miz, and want to shrink the size of the government bureaucracy in order to save the souls trapped by jaundiced wonkish professionalism? (an admitedly theoretical group)
The Pentagon is bad, because the spirit of its law is not christian.
January 10th, 2013 | 9:23 pm
John, You’re on the right track on the irony of 5, which falls short of brilliance, though. It doesn’t actually say that the neocon position is my position, which the TAC assumed immediately. Thanks, Pseudo, for your savvy conclusion.
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