James Hynes

Ladies and gentlemen, Mein Damen und Herren, mesdames et messieurs, welcome to the Weimar years of the American republic! Bankruptcy, unemployment, class resentment, wars and rumors of war—what better time for a little light entertainment! So here's a motley, magpie cabaret show for your viewing and listening pleasure. First, a sprightly opening number from our master and mistress of ceremonies, something that captures the essence of, the, the—oh, what's the word I'm looking for? The spirit of the age, something like that. Take it away, kids!

Wasn't that delightful? Edifying and entertaining. We're all feeling just a little richer after that, too, aren't we? And since cabaret is nothing if it's not topical, let's range a little further afield for our next number, with a few words from Randy Newman.

Zeitgeist! That's the word I was trying to think of earlier, and a handy word it is, too! And who knows the zeitgeist better than Tom Waits? But which zeit is he singing about the geist of?

Looking for something a little more ragged, a little more...raw? Our next artiste is so salt of the earth, he can't even afford a haircut! And my goodness, what's he so angry about? Ladies and gentlemen, Mein Damen und Herren, Mr. James McMurtry.

My! That was bracing, wasn't it? And since one bad turn deserves another, perhaps we can squeeze in just a bit more gloom and doom from the tomb from our next performer—you know him, you love him—Mr. Richard Thompson.

Oh dear, ladies and gentlemen, I fear I've abused your indulgence; I can see some of you are restless, some of you are already heading for the exits—please remember to tip your waitresses before you go!—but may I beg your patience for one more song? I'd hate to send you out into the night thinking dark thoughts, so let's bring back Mr. Newman for a charming finale. We can always count on him for a smile.

Ah, I think we all feel better now. I know I do. Good night, guten nacht, bonsoir! Come again soon!

Lord knows I love movies. Lord knows I love movies based on great novels, even ones that take enormous liberties with the original story—Peter Jackson and Viggo Mortenson's reimagining of Aragorn in Lord of the Rings as a tormented, reluctant hero is actually an improvement over Tolkien's more wooden conception of the character—or set the story in a completely different setting or era—for my money, Clueless is one of the best Jane Austen films, and I loved Ian McKellen's Fascist-era interpretation of Richard III. And lord knows I also love—way, way too much—big, dumb, over-the-top action-and-special-effects spectaculars. The first Matrix made me feel like I was fourteen years old again, and I mean that in a good way. Hey, when it first came out, I saw Point Break twice. In one week. So lord knows it's no surprise that I loved the latest movie by Russian director Timur Bekmambetov, Wanted, which was (in the manner of Point Break) simultaneously completely preposterous and enormously entertaining, and not just because it featured Angelina Jolie in high action figure mode. How can you not love a movie where an international secret society of super-assassins gets its instructions from (I'm not kidding) the Loom of Destiny, which works its magic in an abandoned factory on the west side of Chicago? So by some sort of transitive property, I ought to be looking forward to Bekmambetov's forthcoming film of Moby-Dick, right? Right?

I would that it were so, shipmates, but alas, I can protest all I like that I'm as hip and po-mo as the next guy, but the fact is, the idea behind this new version of Moby-Dick sounds awful. You can read the article about it in Variety by clicking on the link above, but here's the passage that got me going, with emendations:

Studio paid high six figures to Adam Cooper and Bill Collage to pen the screenplay [The previously produced work by this team consists of Accepted, a college comedy, and New York Minute, the Olsen twins movie].

The writers revere Melville’s original text [They haven't read it*], but their graphic novel-style version [Uh-oh] will change the structure [alter it beyond all recognition]. Gone is the first-person narration by the young seaman Ishmael ["Call me...nobody"], who observes how Ahab’s obsession with killing the great white whale overwhelms his good judgment as captain.

This change will allow them to depict the whale’s decimation of other ships prior to its encounter with Ahab’s Pequod [Because we all know the problem with whaling in the 19th century was the terrible toll whales took on whaling ships], and Ahab will be depicted more as a charismatic leader [Like, say, Bush going after Bin Laden?] than a brooding obsessive [And while we're at it, where's it written in stone that he has to have only one leg?].

"Our vision isn’t your grandfather’s Moby Dick," [Or Herman Melville's, either] Cooper said. "This is an opportunity to take a timeless classic [A recognizable cultural brand name] and capitalize [nuff said] on the advances in visual effects to tell what at its core is an action-adventure revenge story [Really, you can say the same thing about Hamlet, if you cut out all the boring speeches and just leave the swordfights]."

Okay, I realize my feeble disdain is making me sound like a cross between some prissy high school lit teacher from my youth and the kind of comic book geek who freaks out when Hollywood changes the slightest detail of, I dunno, Spider-Man's costume or something. But why film Moby-Dick if you're just going to turn it into something else? Why not just make your own action-picture version of the story and call it something else, like Peter Benchley and Spielberg did with Jaws (where Robert Shaw made a pretty good Ahab)? Basically, all you're getting by making up your own story and slapping the title of Moby-Dick on it is a little bit of brand recognition, and what does that matter, really, to the modern filmgoing demographic? The handful of actual readers of Moby-Dick who will go to see it will just be pissed off by the changes, and the vast majority of people who will go to see CGI whale sink ships with his mighty CGI tail and watch Viggo Mortensen (or whoever) as Ahab kick cetacean ass (or whatever) won't care. How many people who saw Peter Jackson's King Kong had ever seen or even heard of the original one? I'm just asking.

According to IMDb, there are half a dozen (at least) earlier film versions of Moby-Dick, including two good ones, John Huston's mostly faithful version (though I've never gotten used to Atticus Finch as Ahab), and a TV version with a superb Patrick Stewart as Ahab (considering that Melville's language owes everything to Shakespeare and the King James Bible, casting an actual Shakespearean to play Ahab was long overdue). But still, it's not as if Hollywood fucking with this particular "timeless classic" is a new thing. A couple of years ago, I saw on TCM the sublimely silly 1930 version of Moby-Dick, which dispenses with all that boring stuff about fate and nature and clocks in at a brisk 80 minutes. The film features John Barrymore as a jolly Ahab with a love interest (the pretty daughter of Father Mapple), and it ends (spoiler alert!) happily, with Ahab killing Moby-Dick and returning to the arms of his girlfriend.

And, of course, bottom line, Moby-Dick will survive whatever goofiness the movies inflict on it. Demi Moore's softcore version of The Scarlet Letter didn't ruin Hawthorne's reputation, after all, and Angelina Jolie's kitten-with-a-whip portrayal of Grendel's mother didn't sink Beowulf. And even if he did kill Moby-Dick, John Barrymore didn't kill Moby-Dick. But even so, Bekmambetov et al. may be tempting fate a bit by messing with one of the most iconic metaphors for implacable nature or the divine or hubris (take your pick) in the history of literature. Or, if you won't take it from me, shipmates, heed the words of Father Mapple:

Woe to him whom this world charms from Gospel duty! Woe to him who seeks to pour oil upon the waters when God has brewed them into a gale! Woe to him who seeks to please rather than to appal! Woe to him whose good name is more to him than goodness! Woe to him who, in this world, courts not dishonor! Woe to him who would not be true, even though to be false were salvation! 



 

*Or maybe they have: I haven't seen Accepted, but according to IMDb, the main character, played by Justin Long, is named Bartleby Gaines. Perhaps I should give them the benefit of the doubt about Moby-Dick, but (and you saw this coming, didn't you?) I prefer not to.

In between bouts of rage at the return of Karl Rove, both figuratively and literally, to another American election cycle (he's about as easy to get rid of, apparently, as Christopher Lee in a Hammer Dracula film--motherfucker just keeps coming back), episodes of despair at the possibility of four more years of the last eight, and fits of bitter sarcasm about the commander-in-chief of the Alaska National Guard (insert your own Marge Gunderson/Annie Get Your Gun/Sexy Librarian joke here), I've found some intellectual solace in an article by Jonathan Haidt, a psychology professor at the University of Virginia, entitled "What Makes People Vote Republican?" I haven't read the responses to it yet--they go on for pages and pages and pages--but the article itself is extremely thought-provoking--and possibly not very cheering for those of us who want Obama to win. But however depressing the article may be, it's an original (at least to me) explanation of the underlying reasons for the current flare-up of the culture wars. It's also (without mentioning her by name, or, indeed, without mentioning the election at all) one of the shrewdest explanations of the appeal of Sarah Palin.