January 11, 2011

Excerpt, Interview with John Cassavetes

The dilemma of our country is the dilemma of the common man. His house, with his television set, and his credit card standing, his sexual confusion and his nagging business obligations have taken up too much of his time for him to realize the importance of his human needs. Films reflect better than anything else the systems that we live under, the feelings of the people. All the feelings of the people, the bad and the good, and only with films do you really have a chance to see where you are.

There's too little trust between people. Our children disappear -- popping pills, sucking smoke and pushing needles -- in some far-off reaches of the country where clean air and soft water still can be found. Our children are dying for lack of guidance and, more importantly, ideals. They don't believe in hope, but only in the present. Our industry refers to this group as the 'youth market'! It continues prognosticating what will be successful and forcing down the tortured throats of its audience pop-art solutions for politics and freedom in preview houses where a cross-section of the classes go to have their emotions tested, their laughs counted and their intelligence translated into box-office potential.

The people who make films have gone crazy. There's a responsibility not to express the worst part of your panic. They need to express life. In my whole life I've never known anyone who's been murdered. There was a time when life was important. Not this weird stuff but the way people really live. As a boy I worried about going to a party and talking to people. I worried about how to get my cowlick down. Other things that worry people are how to stay married, how to make kids proud but no so proud they lose their identity. I hate to see this business about the world being tougher than it is. There's such a continual series of put-downs. We just dehumanize ourselves to such a great extent that nothing really counts, nothing really matters.

The cause of motion pictures should not be a dehumanizing one. Major companies are making pictures that are disgusting. They make anti-war movies but exploit it by making money on those anti-war pictures, by publicizing and selling them. People on screen are stripped naked and left there to die. The thinking is supposedly committed to a revolutionary spirit but lacks the depth of intentions necessary for such discussions. Audiences begin to accept this exploitation as part of their lives. They find themselves laughing at what isn't funny, angered by what they don't care about, and influenced and contaminated by hours of heartfelt, unmotivated propaganda.

Motion pictures, whether art or not, should reflect in human terms the needs of their audience. If relating to one another only ends in cheap momentary revelations, communication of the spirit, of the heart, will be distrusted and unwanted too. There isn't anyone making any films that relate to anyone as far as I'm concerned -- the human part of anyone. If your characters can communicate with other people, and not put them down by being heroes or anti-heroes, then you succeed. How simple it is for people to care on their own level, and how lovely it is and how much confidence it can give people to see that -- characters revealing themselves in the smallest form.

There is no real art in America other than business, and anyone who thinks that there is is crazy. People who are artistic and who are working for big companies are dead, are dead men. You can't work for a big company and have any respect for yourself unless you're out to make money. People plunge their careers and their lives headlong into making money -- and when they get it, they don't like it, they don't need it and they don't know what to do with it. Money is the last refuge of people who've been scared by life, whose only way to survive is to acquire as much money and power as they can -- to protect themselves. But from what? We've got to realize that money is useless beyond whatever it takes to feed, clothe and house yourself. As a matter of fact, the more you have beyond that -- whatever it takes to free you from those basic concerns -- the more difficult it is to find out what really matters and to get it for yourself.

Before the war, America was a country of great innocence and idealism. Since then, it's been completely undermined by its people's hunger for profits. And that hunger is not limited to any ethnic group. I see it in everyone: Italian-, English- and German-American, Irish Catholics and, yes, even Greeks. Everybody's been going for the money and saying the hell with society. I see people just throwing away their values, all the things that their ancestors and fathers always treasured. They've put money up as the goal of life, but money is no measure of the value of a man -- any man. I know a lot of millionaires who do nothing but sit alone in their houses and wish they could have a friend to drink with or a woman they could truly love. All they have is their money. But they're really not greedy for money; they're interested in the zeros -- in the game of making two dollars into $20 into $2,000,000 into $20,000,000; nothing is enough.

In retrospect the old Hollywood glamour wasn't that bad. There was nothing wrong with Lubitsch. It comes to mind that maybe there really wasn't an America -- that maybe it was only Frank Capra. In talking with my friends, with my peers, fellow workers, I find that nothing has changed with them. They are willing to work. They are willing to steep themselves in ideas of human interest, in things that make sense humanly. Audiences care about people that they admire, people who will fight the odds of conformity with innocent weapons, people who fall in love and are crushed, who fight the enemy and die, who sacrifice, who sweat, who burp and work hard to make life more satisfactory. This, believe it or not, is what many good actors, directors and writers would be willing to substitute reviews and financial rewards for. Give the audience the vaguest permission or cause to feel real emotions, and they will take the challenge.


-- John Cassavetes, uncited interview excerpt reprinted in Ray Carney's Cassavetes on Cassavetes, pp. 269-71.

January 7, 2011

Excerpt, "The Soul of Man" by Oscar Wilde

It will be a marvellous thing—the true personality of man—when we see it. It will grow naturally and simply, flowerlike, or as a tree grows. It will not be at discord. It will never argue or dispute. It will not prove things. It will know everything. And yet it will not busy itself about knowledge. It will have wisdom. Its value will not be measured by material things. It will have nothing. And yet it will have everything, and whatever one takes from it, it will still have, so rich will it be. It will not be always meddling with others, or asking them to be like itself. It will love them because they will be different. And yet while it will not meddle with others, it will help all, as a beautiful thing helps us, by being what it is. The personality of man will be very wonderful. It will be as wonderful as the personality of a child.

In its development it will be assisted by Christianity, if men desire that; but if men do not desire that, it will develop none the less surely. For it will not worry itself about the past, nor care whether things happened or did not happen. Nor will it admit any laws but its own laws; nor any authority but its own authority. Yet it will love those who sought to intensify it, and speak often of them. And of these Christ was one.

‘Know thyself’ was written over the portal of the antique world. Over the portal of the new world, ‘Be thyself’ shall be written. And the message of Christ to man was simply ‘Be thyself.’ That is the secret of Christ.

When Jesus talks about the poor he simply means personalities, just as when he talks about the rich he simply means people who have not developed their personalities. Jesus moved in a community that allowed the accumulation of private property just as ours does, and the gospel that he preached was not that in such a community it is an advantage for a man to live on scanty, unwholesome food, to wear ragged, unwholesome clothes, to sleep in horrid, unwholesome dwellings, and a disadvantage for a man to live under healthy, pleasant, and decent conditions. Such a view would have been wrong there and then, and would, of course, be still more wrong now and in England; for as man moves northward the material necessities of life become of more vital importance, and our society is infinitely more complex, and displays far greater extremes of luxury and pauperism than any society of the antique world. What Jesus meant, was this. He said to man, ‘You have a wonderful personality. Develop it. Be yourself. Don’t imagine that your perfection lies in accumulating or possessing external things. Your affection is inside of you. If only you could realise that, you would not want to be rich. Ordinary riches can be stolen from a man. Real riches cannot. In the treasury-house of your soul, there are infinitely precious things, that may not be taken from you. And so, try to so shape your life that external things will not harm you. And try also to get rid of personal property. It involves sordid preoccupation, endless industry, continual wrong. Personal property hinders Individualism at every step.’ It is to be noted that Jesus never says that impoverished people are necessarily good, or wealthy people necessarily bad. That would not have been true. Wealthy people are, as a class, better than impoverished people, more moral, more intellectual, more well-behaved. There is only one class in the community that thinks more about money than the rich, and that is the poor. The poor can think of nothing else. That is the misery of being poor. What Jesus does say is that man reaches his perfection, not through what he has, not even through what he does, but entirely through what he is. And so the wealthy young man who comes to Jesus is represented as a thoroughly good citizen, who has broken none of the laws of his state, none of the commandments of his religion. He is quite respectable, in the ordinary sense of that extraordinary word. Jesus says to him, ‘You should give up private property. It hinders you from realising your perfection. It is a drag upon you. It is a burden. Your personality does not need it. It is within you, and not outside of you, that you will find what you really are, and what you really want.’ To his own friends he says the same thing. He tells them to be themselves, and not to be always worrying about other things. What do other things matter? Man is complete in himself. When they go into the world, the world will disagree with them. That is inevitable. The world hates Individualism. But that is not to trouble them. They are to be calm and self-centred. If a man takes their cloak, they are to give him their coat, just to show that material things are of no importance. If people abuse them, they are not to answer back. What does it signify? The things people say of a man do not alter a man. He is what he is. Public opinion is of no value whatsoever. Even if people employ actual violence, they are not to be violent in turn. That would be to fall to the same low level. After all, even in prison, a man can be quite free. His soul can be free. His personality can be untroubled. He can be at peace. And, above all things, they are not to interfere with other people or judge them in any way. Personality is a very mysterious thing. A man cannot always be estimated by what he does. He may keep the law, and yet be worthless. He may break the law, and yet be fine. He may be bad, without ever doing anything bad. He may commit a sin against society, and yet realise through that sin his true perfection.

There was a woman who was taken in adultery. We are not told the history of her love, but that love must have been very great; for Jesus said that her sins were forgiven her, not because she repented, but because her love was so intense and wonderful. Later on, a short time before his death, as he sat at a feast, the woman came in and poured costly perfumes on his hair. His friends tried to interfere with her, and said that it was an extravagance, and that the money that the perfume cost should have been expended on charitable relief of people in want, or something of that kind. Jesus did not accept that view. He pointed out that the material needs of Man were great and very permanent, but that the spiritual needs of Man were greater still, and that in one divine moment, and by selecting its own mode of expression, a personality might make itself perfect. The world worships the woman, even now, as a saint.

Yes; there are suggestive things in Individualism. Socialism annihilates family life, for instance. With the abolition of private property, marriage in its present form must disappear. This is part of the programme. Individualism accepts this and makes it fine. It converts the abolition of legal restraint into a form of freedom that will help the full development of personality, and make the love of man and woman more wonderful, more beautiful, and more ennobling. Jesus knew this. He rejected the claims of family life, although they existed in his day and community in a very marked form. ‘Who is my mother? Who are my brothers?’ he said, when he was told that they wished to speak to him. When one of his followers asked leave to go and bury his father, ‘Let the dead bury the dead,’ was his terrible answer. He would allow no claim whatsoever to be made on personality.

And so he who would lead a Christlike life is he who is perfectly and absolutely himself. He may be a great poet, or a great man of science; or a young student at a University, or one who watches sheep upon a moor; or a maker of dramas, like Shakespeare, or a thinker about God, like Spinoza; or a child who plays in a garden, or a fisherman who throws his net into the sea. It does not matter what he is, as long as he realises the perfection of the soul that is within him. All imitation in morals and in life is wrong. Through the streets of Jerusalem at the present day crawls one who is mad and carries a wooden cross on his shoulders. He is a symbol of the lives that are marred by imitation. Father Damien was Christlike when he went out to live with the lepers, because in such service he realised fully what was best in him. But he was not more Christlike than Wagner when he realised his soul in music; or than Shelley, when he realised his soul in song. There is no one type for man. There are as many perfections as there are imperfect men. And while to the claims of charity a man may yield and yet be free, to the claims of conformity no man may yield and remain free at all.

Individualism, then, is what through Socialism we are to attain to. As a natural result the State must give up all idea of government. It must give it up because, as a wise man once said many centuries before Christ, there is such a thing as leaving mankind alone; there is no such thing as governing mankind. All modes of government are failures. Despotism is unjust to everybody, including the despot, who was probably made for better things. Oligarchies are unjust to the many, and ochlocracies are unjust to the few. High hopes were once formed of democracy; but democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people. It has been found out. I must say that it was high time, for all authority is quite degrading. It degrades those who exercise it, and degrades those over whom it is exercised. When it is violently, grossly, and cruelly used, it produces a good effect, by creating, or at any rate bringing out, the spirit of revolt and Individualism that is to kill it. When it is used with a certain amount of kindness, and accompanied by prizes and rewards, it is dreadfully demoralising. People, in that case, are less conscious of the horrible pressure that is being put on them, and so go through their lives in a sort of coarse comfort, like petted animals, without ever realising that they are probably thinking other people’s thoughts, living by other people’s standards, wearing practically what one may call other people’s second-hand clothes, and never being themselves for a single moment. ‘He who would be free,’ says a fine thinker, ‘must not conform.’ And authority, by bribing people to conform, produces a very gross kind of over-fed barbarism amongst us.


-- Oscar Wilde, "The Soul of Man," 1891/5, from Project Gutenberg at http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext97/slman10h.htm.