Benjamin & Chaplin

“For without exception the cultural treasures he surveys have an origin which he cannot contemplate without horror. They owe their existence not only to the efforts of the great minds and talents who have created them, but also to the anonymous toil of their contemporaries. There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism.”

I chose this quote because it reminded me a lot of a theme that I developed on in my last blog entry.  It is interesting because Junger and Benjamin come from completely different backgrounds and met completely different ends; Junger was a early Fascist supporter and glorifier of war while Benjamin was a Marxist in the Luxembourg-type. But here, I think they strike a similar chord in the duality of civilization and barbarity.  

In this quote, Benjamin opines in this contradictory push and pull of civilization and barbarism.  We look at the pyramids and wonder at the greatness of man; one could argue that the pyramids, created thousands of years ago, is the apex of human civilization.  But think about the lives that it took to build the massive object and it was of course built by slave labor.  In other words, in the sheen of civilization there lies a large dose of barbarism, of the worst instincts of human behavior.  

Regarding the Chaplin movie, I didn’t see a lot of similarities with Dada, which is interesting because Benjamin argues the ultimate goal of Dada was what turned out to be film.  I think the biggest difference is the fact that the Chaplin film has a purpose.  Dada artists said that that since life was inherently ugly and futile, the art that should reflect that as well.  Contemporary art did not reflect the realities of life, which was war, misery, and social failure; art was seen a way to tear down society, which was rotten to the core.  The Dada art had no “message”.  But the Chaplin film is quite preachy and certainly does have a message.  In the film’s final scene, Chaplin gives a speech about human respect, love, and freedom.  He drops the Hitler imitation to give a heartfelt speech that he doesn’t want to rule over everybody; what society needs now is human kindness. Such sentiment would certainly not be given by a Dada artist.    Not only this, the goal of Dada was to make ugly art, “anti-art”.  But in the Chaplin film, even an ameteur can see the incredibly hard work that Chaplin puts into his films.  Chaplin was not making a mockery of art; he was embracing it to create the best possible work possible.

Art

“One of the foremost tasks of art has always been the creation of a demand which could be fully satisfied only later. The history of every art form shows critical epochs in which a certain art form aspires to effects which could be fully obtained only with a changed technical standard, that is to say, in a new art form. The extravagances and crudities of art which thus appear, particularly in the so-called decadent epochs, actually arise from the nucleus of its richest historical energies. In recent years, such barbarisms were abundant in Dadaism. It is only now that its impulse becomes discernible: Dadaism attempted to create by pictorial – and literary – means the effects which the public today seeks in the film.”

This is a quote from one of the last sections of Benjamin’s essay.  Here, he contends that art is essentially ambitious.  It tries to reach for something that it can’t do.  All art is trying to reach for the stars but it can’t because of technological limitations.  He cites the example of Dada.  He is a great critic of Dada and says it unleashed many “barbarities”.  But what Dada was inherently trying to do was make art move and give it life, color, energy.  What accomplished this was not Dada - which Benjamin argues was a terrible form of art - but film.  Film accomplished what Dada was trying to achieve.  But Dada couldn’t because the technology was simply not there.  

I don’t know whether I agree with Benjamin here.  Most likely though, I don’t.  At this point, I think the current trend in art - if there is one - is to actually try to relive the past in a lot of ways.  For example in music, songs are perpetually recycled; the same choruses and hooks have been used in rap music from the disco era.  I remember we watched a music video of the band Franz Ferdinand, who were trying to re-create Dada imagery in their work.  So I think the opposite is true.  Art today is not trying to reach for something it can’t because of limitations,  but it is trying to re-create something that was lost from the past.  

Junger

“Since the War’s end, the denial of pain as a necessary as a necessary facet of life has experienced a late revival.  These years display a strange mix of barbarity and humanity; they resemble an archipelago where an isle of vegetarians exists right next to an island of cannibals.  An extreme pacifism side by side with an enormous intensification of war preparations, luxurious prisons next to squalid quarters for the unemployed, the abolition of capital punishment by day whilst the Whites and the Reds cut each other’s throats by night - all this is thoroughly fairytale-like and reflects a sordid world in which the semblance of security is preserved in a string of hotel foyers.”   - 10

I chose this passage because I think it’s very relevant to our time.  Right before this passage, Junger talks about this cult of reason, that reason is leading us to a better world.  I liken it to this mentality that people have of “look, how far we’ve come!  Look how great everything is!” We point to our smartphones or our social media and claim that we’ve reached the highest point of humanity.  But at heart, the world is as barbaric as ever.  The idea of civilization is just a glossy sheen on an old product, perhaps one that is as worse as ever.  

And here is where the Junger passage is so important.  He says that since the end of World War I, the denial of pain - the truth - has become a necessary ingredient of living.  There is so much pain and so much brutality around us that the only way man doesn’t go crazy is by desensitizing himself to it.  He lists a variety of social malaises that we tend to ignore - squalid quarters for the unemployed.  It reminded me of when we see homeless people on the street in New York City.  These days, we barely even flinch, let alone give money to beggars because they’re everywhere.  I remember a friend visiting me from Sweden and she was so shocked at how many poor people we have here and her instinct was to give something; I barely noticed the beggars.  She, clearly, was not dehumanized as Junger would put it.  Her ability to fathom pain was not as well-attuned as mine at the moment.  

The world that Junger is describing is very relevant to our own.  Going back to my point, we have here in the US such amazing achievements:  technologies, skyscrapers, everything we could imagine.  We look at these things and think about how much we have achieved, that we’re the greatest country in the world.  But do these things truly matter?  Who are we as a society?  Beneath this so-called progress is much inequality, division, ignorance.  But we’ve been able to ignore these because I think the ability to stomach pain is highly prevalent in American society.  

It is difficult almost to write about the two films because they provide such a different subtext to the Nazi horrors.  Let us begin with Triumph of the Will.  Watching this film, I began to see why the Nazi regime could have been so appealing.  Today, Hitler and his government is synonymous with evil and we think to ourselves why would anybody be a true believer to such a vile regime?  But watching the film I could see how somebody from that time in Germany could have found the Nazi program so fantastic.  I was struck at the first scenes of healthy, young, in-shape men working out and playing with each other.  This, I thought, is the Germany that people want to live under - healthy and vibrant.  I compared it to the weak and depraved men of the other movies that we saw.  Like the young men in the Blue Angel, doing nothing with their lives; here is the opposite of what Germany could do.  I could see people watching this and thinking to themselves that this is the image that they have of Germany.  A strong, beautiful, and energetic nation, in contrast to the materialistic and frivolous one that they’ve experienced the past few years.  A nation that can re-capture the past glories; it’s certainly in there - they have the people but they only need the leadership.

Speaking of the leadership, I was also struck at how great Hitler is portrayed here.  I read in the lecture of the “Ubermensch” that became popular by Weber.  Here, it’s clear that the director Riefenstahl is trying to portray as such a man.  I was struck at how she build up the suspense.  We really don’t see Hitler until about the 30th minutes.  We know there is a man on the plane circling Germany trying to get to the parade.  It reminded me of “M” in that we don’t see the criminal until later on.  Obviously, here Riefenstanl is trying to do the opposite on a way since the criminal is the ultimate villain and Hitler is the hero.  But the idea of building up the suspense is effective. But you can see when Hitler speaks how people became so carried away by his charisma and energy. His agenda we known now is evil but in 1934 people did not know this yet or were wilfully ignorant.  To people like Riefenstahl, he was the ultimate Uebermensch.  

The contrast - the yin to the yang - is Night and Fog.  I watched immediately this film after Triumph of the Will and couldn’t help but see the similarities between Riefenstahl’s film and the first few minutes of Night and Fog.  It’s showing a vibrant country - and then shows the horrors of the people marched off to their death.  I believe the director was trying to mock the ideals and images of the Nazi films like Triumph of the Will.  He is implying that this empire was built on the backs of slave labor and cost people millions of lives.  I also admired the director for including the image of the French collaborator.  I can only imagine how controversial this was at the time.  This film was only made 10 years after the war; the idea that French people helped the Nazis was probably unheard-of.  It would kill the entire image that people made of themselves.  

Tilly

It is interesting because one can see numerous parallels between Tilly and Weber.  Both stress that states are essentially all-growing and all-consuming entities.  This is a course of all states.  Also, both thinkers argue the importance of violence.  Tilly notes that war creates states; Weber insists that at heart, all politics is violence.  Unfortunately, this is a sad by-product of politics and even the most moral politicians will have to swallow this reality.  However, where the two differ is that Tiller stresses violence and Weber talks about bureaucracy.  According to Weber, the lifeline of the state is bureaucracy.  Eventually he insists that the state just will act as a way to provide patronage and its entire existence will be to hold up the job-seekers and corruption of political parties.  The “blood” of the state is the bureaucracy.  Though Tilly also highlights the importance of bureaucracy, the main lifeline for states for him is war.  

Weber & Edward Snowden

“To take a stand, to be passionate--ira et studium--is the politician's element, and above all the element ofthe political leader. His conduct is subject to quite a different, indeed, exactly the opposite, principle of responsibility from that of the civil servant. The honor of the civil servant is vested in his ability to execute conscientiously the order of the superior authorities, exactly as if the order agreed with his own conviction.

This holds even if the order appears wrong to him and if, despite the civil servant's remonstrances, the

authority insists on the order. Without this moral discipline and self-denial, in the highest sense, the whole apparatus would fall to pieces. The honor of the political leader, of the leading statesman, however, lies precisely in an exclusive personal responsibility for what he does, a responsibility he cannot and must not reject or transfer.”  - Weber, “Politics as a Vocation”

This quote from Weber from his essay is fairly interesting and struck me because of current events.  One of the main themes in Weber’s work is the division between political leaders and civil servants.  The two comprise what is called “the state”.  But they are completely different in their function and philosophy.  According to Weber, the main characteristic of the politician is that he has to be passionate about his role; he has to have his own political views that he strives for.  This is his central element - it’s what drives him.  But the civil servant has to embrace his role as a veritable cog in the wheel.  He has to essentially let go of any personal views and even if its morally disgusts him, to carry out the views and policies of his leaders in power.  If these two are switched, then the state edifice crumbles.  The politicians can’t be a mindless drone; otherwise, nothing politically will happen - a leader needs to have a vision.  A civil servant can’t be a passionate ideologue, otherwise he will make a terrible civil servant.

This quote struck me because of recent events in politics, namely the controversy surrounding Edward Snowden.  However one feels about him - hero or traitor - Snowden is the epitome of what Weber is talking about should NOT happen when it comes to civil servants.  Snowden was a passionate believer in anti-spying in a small government staying with its constitutional bounds.  But because of this, he’s also a terrible civil servant because he could not stomach what his leaders were commanding him to do.  It is the civil servant’s job to swallow what he has to do; otherwise you have leaks and scandals like the one happening now.  It is clear the government has to do a better job of picking people who will embrace their role as cogs in the wheel.  

Article 74:  “Reichsrat has the right to object to laws passed by the Reichstag.”

This right makes a lot of sense if you understand the political system of Germany.  Germany was formed in 1870 but before this, it was comprised of a lot of different, separate states.  When the country was formed, it was clear that some type of state-based system had to be put in place to make sure no state dominates another.  The Reichsrat was the institution that was created to have the voice of the different states be carried out.  So here, one can see how this right is important to humanity.  The Reichstag was the house that would carry out laws, kind of like the United States Congress.  But the states in the Reichsrat had a right to object to them.  So let us assume that Bavaria, one of the richer states of Germany, would start imposing some of their values on the rest of Germany.  This would create a kind of tyranny of one state, or region, over another.  So this is an important check and balance on the power of powerful and populated regions to ensure that the character of smaller ones remains in place.  Though with all honestly, I do not know how much of this is respected today, I know that in the United States, it is carried out quite well.  Most likely it is in Germany as well.  

Article 109:  “Noble titles form part of the name only; noble titles may not be granted anymore.”

This was a crucial difference between the old order and the Weimar Republic.  The old older was heavily based on titles; nobles had a very high place in society.  This was a system that was fundamentally unfair, as it was based on birth and not on meritocracy; essentially these were values from centuries ago.  The Weimar Republic proclaimed equality for everybody - men, women, rich, poor, noble, not noble.  One can see that the Weimar Republic did not totally abolish nobles - they still could be part of names.  This was probably a concession to the older order, who did not just want to get rid of everything they held so dear.  So noble names were able to stay in place.  The problem though is that the titles had no power; the noble names were just letters in a name, meaningless.  At this point, it’s clear that nobility is a staple from centuries ago.  I highly doubt any country respects nobility anymore, especially in the West.  Most likely, if a person would claim to be a noble, they would get made fun of.