The Lessons of Fargo

September 30, 2005

Movie: Fargo
Reviewer: John P Bernat (Kingsport, TN USA) - See all my reviews

Some reviewers here call this the greatest film of the decade. Others express concerns and confusion about the movie's violence and nastiness - how can this be seen as funny?
Violence is not funny. People who have laughed at a foot sticking out of a wood chipper have done so either because of the sheer incongruity of the mise-en-scene, or because we're so surrounded by violence that any depiction causes an almost involuntary laugh response.

But in this movie it almost seems as though the Coen's want you to laugh at this, more or less as one might laugh at Moe hitting Curly with a hammer.There's a reason for this thematic, and I think it might be easy to understand. Identification (or lack of it) is a source of great art. We can laugh at Moe hitting Curly because we know the hammer isn't real and that Moe does not really hate Curly or want to see him suffer.

This movie encourages the audience to distance itself from the pathetic, stupid people depicted in it, and thus laugh at what they do to one another. The criminals are dumb, and act dumb. The good guys are dumber. The main "good guy" talks about nice things in such pathetically cheerful dialect that you want something bad to happen to her, just so she'll shut up. Moe, would you poke her in the eye for me?

And then the Coens make us turn on a dime. I realized, on the first of many viewings of "Fargo," that the woman is not only a brilliant detective who "cracks" a pretty tough case, but she also has figured out life's most subtle challenge: how to be happy.

Her speech to the criminal at the end is seen by many as a simple continuation of the irritation of her affect. It is so much more. She tells all of us how to be happy. And, like Richard "Lord" Buckley (1906-1960) told us, it is so simple it evades all of us.

Love people - and love them unconditionally.
Obey the rules, because most (though not all) of them were made for good reasons.
Chasing money and sex does not produce happiness.
Work hard and use the gifts you have.
Give generously.
Be cheerful and pleasant to others; it might even improve your own happiness.

None of this means having to be a chump. But we associate chumpness with this so much that we need to Coens to unscramble the egg just a bit. Throughout the movie, the dumb criminals invested their energies in acting smart; turns out the wisest person of all seemed the least wise to us all.

Did I mention that the special features are outstanding? They are.

The Official Gay Priest Matrix

So, there's information out now.

The new Pope is about to issue an edict asserting that gay men are not welcome to apply for jobs as priests. In part it's because of all the pedophilia stuff going around.

In the press coverage of this important development, Vatican wags have been quoted as saying that the logic of that connection is not, per se, amenable to normal analysis. In other words, are gay priests a greater risk to children than straight priests?

I tried to work it out, thus:

Fig. 1

The Vatican figures that the quantum of risk to children is reduced by outlawing gay priests, right? Since pedophilic priests are not desired, any pedophilic man needs to be kept away from the priesthood. So far, the Holy See hasn't seen how to screen for pedophilia, but Rome was not built in a day.

The church is in something of a pickle when it ordains anyone as a priest. You are a priest forever. Regardless of your sins, your problems, your faults, your taste for sex with children, your thirst for alcohol, your liking for recreational drugs, your sloth, your avarice, your envy, your lust, your gluttony, your vanity, you are a priest forever.

I was a high school seminarian in Chicago. I went to school with a couple hundred young men who were thinking of becoming priests. As a group, they were really great guys. A handful of them ultimately were ordained. And, some, but not all, of them are now practicing their priesthood.

At least one of that small number is gay. Maybe more than one. Shocking? OK, no, not really, but I'd put a high bet on this.

The Vatican cannot purge them from the roster. The most they could do would be suspend their license to practice priesthood stuff, pretty much.

But I'd sure as hell love to know how many of those gay priests that I went to high school with actually went pedophilic on us.

Know what? I'd be prepared to believe that none of them, not one, attacked or molested a little boy, ever. In fact, the majority of them probably abstained from all forms of sex throughout their lives. The were and have been - now don't be shocked - celebate. Because when they were ordained, that's the vow they took. And, knowing these guys, they'd take that seriously. That's how they were as people.

So, the pink box in Fig. 1 bothers me somewhat. It's hard to escape the Vatican's position as being based on an assumption that fellers in the pink box are unacceptably risky. The Vatican wag said that it would be like an alcoholic working as a bartender, since priests, men, lived together in rectories. What a dilemma!

I have a modest proposal. Consider this:

Fig. 2

If the Church ever changes its mind regarding the ordination of women, the picture changes somewhat. I don't recall reading a lot of stories about nuns molesting children - do you? The evidence (or lack of it) seems to indicate, then, that while women can certainly be pedophilic, not that many women, especially those associated with religious practice, have chosen to act on that inclination (1). So if the Church is worried about ordaining pedophiles, my advice would be to seek out lesbian priests. Here are my main points:

1. With the church's refusal to ordain male homosexuals, the current shortage can only grow worse.
2. Lesbians, by all evidence, pose a lesser risk of attacking children - especially boys. What's in it for them?
3. The matrices show TWO red boxes for male priests, and only ONE red box for female priests. 4. Can't you count??
5. I'd even be willing to lose the pink box on fig. 2 and give another half-point (2) to the lesbians who want to become priests. Wouldn't you agree?
6. Let me ask any Catholics out there who went to a parochial school and was taught by nuns: put your hand on a Bible and tell me that Sister was straight, not gay. Nuff said.
7. Lesbians can live in rectories with men. Like I said, what's in it for them?
8. If the Church is not motivated in this most recent decree by protecting children, then something else is in the mix: homophobia.

That might be worth discussing. Is being homosexual sinful in Catholic teaching?

Well, the way I got taught, no. BEING homosexual is not sinful. The homosexual ACT was sinful, but then, so was heterosexual sex between unmarried people (3). So, if someone was gay but wanted to go to Catholic heaven, they simply had to abstain from all sex - just like all the other straight Catholics.

Got it?

So - what gives?

More and more Catholic religious personnel - priests and nuns - are coming from countries other than America. In no small part, this is because Americans cannot wrap themselves around or comply with the Church's rules. In small but significant steps, the USA is becoming a Catholic missionary beneficiary for countries in Southeast Asia and even Africa (4).

The Church is now walking an even more conservative course, and will do so for many years to come - probably beyond my lifetime. It is incredibly sad to see this happen, especially after having been so excited about the church's "aggiornamento" under Pope John XXIII (5). A lifelong dream of seeing Christian faiths united is even more remote than before.

And yet - I can't stop being Catholic. Ain't it a pisser?

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(1) Much to their credit.
(2) Or more...
(3) Hell, some conservative Catholics apparently believe that heterosexual sex between married people is fornication unless you're trying to have chidren. I'm not joking about that one - a volunteer CCD teacher, not a priest or nun, spake that one to my daughter...
(4) That's no joke - it's quite for real.
(5) "The twenty-third," OK?

Train Wreck

I go to Chicago occasionally, for work or for pleasure. I drove there last weekend. The whole weekend was amazingly sunny and beautiful - 78 degrees in daytime. Chicago gets, like, four days a year like this.

Had a business meeting in Waukegan Saturday morning. At an unusual location: this company leased space from a municipal airport authority. The space had been built out for use as a restaurant, but the Waukegan airport is used exclusively by private jets and propeller aircraft. People who have their own planes don't hang around the airport and eat in restaurants. They drive up to their planes and get on and go.

When the meeting started, my associates said, "Well, you're going to get to see Michael Jordan - they rolled his jet out right there," pointing out the window, "and you'll see his Range Rover pull up right next to it."

The meeting ensued, but then a black Mercedes 500 pulled up, driven by an attractive woman. She got out with a small garment bag.

"Oh, that's Mrs. Jordan. She's probably going shopping in New York today."

So, I had celebrity-induced euphoria. It is true: there are people who don't live like you or me, that can get up and decide to shop in New York. So please roll out the Lear for me, do you mind?

I returned to my car to a voice mail -my sister, very upset. There was a Metra commuter train crash, lots of people hurt, and her daughter was on the train.

So, phone calls. She was already out of the accident area; her own husband is a Chicago Fire Department paramedic and took care of her. Took her home. She had minor cuts.

The train was going to downtown Chicago at 9:00 am, taking my niece to a volunteer job she has at the Chicago Art Institute. We now know that it was traveling too fast and derailed while trying to negotiate a crossover switch track. A locomotive was pushing five two-story passenger cars downtown. At the time of the derailment it was doing 69 mph. It was supposed to travel below 15 mph*.

She was in the third car from the front. The fourth car, she said, was where the worst stuff happened, like two dead people. In her car, viewed from the upper gallery, people were flying all over the car as it decelerated and tipped back and forth violently, as it left rails and skidded to a stop. The tracks run along an embankment above a city street; the street is on an embankment above one of the busiest expressways in Chicago. She was worried that these tall train cars would tip over, go down both embankments, and then end up on the Dan Ryan Expressway.

She was not hurt. She was mostly distressed to hear the screams and the confusion. People were getting broken bones reset while she watched. She talked to the paramedic who pronounced the first death. She was glad, though, that her supervisor at the Art Institute was also there, and that she would not have to worry much about her absence from her job that beautiful, sunny Saturday.

Just got off the phone with her today, Monday. She’s fine – a little stiff. Went to work Monday morning like normal. She got many phone calls, since she was interviewed on Fox news and some of her friends saw her on TV. She’s a celebrity.

I got no further details about Mrs. Jordan today, though.

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* Man, the litigation…

The Wrath of God

A friend recently shared a posting from a Christian friend speculating that the real reason Katrina did so much damage had nothing to do with underfunding the Army Corps of Engineers or appointing a horse dude to head FEMA.

Just as you suspected, it's because New Orleans was so sinful, it deserved to be smitten.

Here are a few useful assumptions and observations.

1. Christ rewrote large portions of the Old Testament.
2. When asked what the "most important commandment" was, for example (1), Jesus responded with something like, "Love God with your whole heart, your whole soul, and your whole being, and love one another as you love yourself."
3. Somewhere else in the bible God says, "vengeance is mine."

What does this mean to anyone who is presumptuous enough to call themself Christian?

First, you don't keep God's palm pilot. It's blasphemy (2) to assert that God's pissed at one or more of your fellow humans.

Second, we're called to love one another as we love God.

ANY CHRISTIAN'S FIRST OBLIGATION IS TO HELP PEOPLE WHO ARE SUFFERING. That's what Jesus meant by loving one another.

It doesn't matter whether they're gay or straight, they like fisting, or they use drugs. We might think, after the fact, that we were exploited or used. We might think we were taken advantage of. We might think that the welfare state created a moral abyss and we don't want to aid and abet more pernicious welfarism. We might even think that we might be at risk of being seen as tacitly endorsing a moral or life choice we personally would not make.

Jesus did not care about any of that. Jesus said we were to love one another.

If you want to condemn fellow beings' conduct and use that as a rationale not to help them out, that's your choice. But for God's sake (3), don't call yourself a Christian.

You're making other Christians look bad. And God doesn't like (4) that kind of hypocrisy.

Katrina was a mindless natural phenomenon. God created it, that's true, but none of us know His motives. And to assert otherwise is...

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(1) An attempt by biblical lawyers to trip him up. Man, those lawyers...

(2) Another great old term. Of course, to accuse someone else of blasphemy commits the same mistake this post is all about...God, don't you just love being human???

(3) Ironic usage? I think not...

(4) See footnote (2) above.

Garrison Keillor, Episcopalian

Before he decided to throw in the towel and become what his fans wanted him to be, Garrison Keillor really wanted to see himself and his society from the outside.

He spent a lot of time in New York and Denmark. In that he became who he thought he wanted to be.In our collective lives of quiet desperation, most of us don't get that chance. We don't have the money, talent or perceived time to do so.

But Keillor did. The ostensible lesson is that who we are IS who we want to be.

But he wrote some notes before he drew that conclusion. My favorite passage in "We Are Still Married" is called "Episcopal," where he makes up new words to an old Fats Waller tune to describe the attractions of being Episcopalian:

I'm slow to anger
Don't covet or lust.
No sins of pride except sometims I really must.
Episcopalian, saving my love for you.
The theology's easy, the liturgy too.
Just stand up and kneel down and say what the others do.
Episcopalian, saving my love for you.

With this, Keillor sums up the current (and probably end) state of his career.

Oh, hear that old piano, from down the avenue...I smell the dry rot, I look around for you...

There must be some guilty pleasures associated with staying Catholic.

How Weird is THAT??

SO I wrote the last post and then, two weeks later, my sister gets hit by a hurricane.

[Now, she was not the only one, so I'm not taking this personally.]

In fact, she fared pretty much better than her neighbors. She and her husband boarded up and evacuated, and returned to find relatively little damage. Her section did not flood.

It's so damn weird - she and I do not speak, but all sorts of members of my family asked me how she was doing. I've checked up on her via my goddaughter, who has stayed in touch with her. Then I relay the information to other family members. Is this because I'm the only boy?

They have no running water and no electricity. She has a cell phone, which her son takes to the hospital to recharge for her. They were advised to use their pool to store water, and that's how they're flushing toilets, etc.

Latest news today was about e coli being found in N'Awlins. That, after civil disorder and all the rest.

I thank God my sister and her family are OK. She has two sons - one working at the hospital in Biloxi, and another who left for Houston for a while.

And I resent the politicization of this tragedy. People should organize resources to help out now, and bitch about the government later.