Authorized Values

Have you ever noticed that the percentage of movies from the 1970s and 80s being shown is far less than other periods?  It is not because the movies were not necessarily as good. Blame it on “Victorianism”. Movies during that time enjoyed a more open sexual nature than the later decades.

Why bring this up? Over the weekend I saw the American version of “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” (2011). It is based on the popular international trilogy by Stieg Larsson. Fortunately I had first seen the well received Swedish version made in 2009 a couple of weeks earlier.  I wondered why would a major American studio turn around and do a remake of a movie out only a few years earlier? The answer is of course money. I think they probably failed in that effort.  The movie is already out on DVD. That happens when a studio is trying to salvage the finances of a failure at the box office.

The problem is that the American studio picked a movie to remake about serial sex crimes. American movies use innuendo to avoid being slapped with an “X” rating of NC-17.  It is the kiss of death in the American box office. Activitivist groups boycott these movies. Therefore, it is exceedingly rare an American studio will make really graphic movies or that they are shown here. 

In America we assume our view of what is acceptable is universal, especially among our Western allies. Most Americans do not know prostitution is legal in Canada and was reaffirmed recently by the courts. Many Americans do not know that Israel does not actively enforce its prostitution laws. We do not know that both India and Brazil do not support the unassailable rights of business when the larger public good is adversely affected. Our American mores are not universal.

There is always an exception, even in our pedestrian views. The exception in showing risque movies is money. An internationally acclaimed movie that has done well will be shown here in selected outlet channels. The regular premium cable channels is often the vehicle. The movie “Pan’s Labyrinth” is an example. The movie is original and good. It was shown here on premium cable, despite stepping strongly in American taboos. An American produced success was the sex crime movie“Se7en” (1995) with  Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman. It often requires lobbying, coercion, and cutting to get the American movie rating agency to grant an “R” rating.

The American version of the “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” (2011) glossed over or obscured the underlying plot. Such as the continuing Nazi activities and the fact the sex crime rapes and murders were targeted at Jewish girls. The multi-level nature of sex crimes in society also did not come through.

The bottom line, the Producers could not have picked a worst movie to “Americanize”. Fans around the world that read the books, and people that had seen the 2009 movie, were treated to a tepid experience.

Food for Thought

Some years ago there was an olive commercial on television. In the commercial a man is pondering a jar of olives. He reasons; suppose his company puts fewer olives in the bottle? It would increase profits. No one is likely to notice a couple less. But it would make a big difference to the company when it produces hundreds of thousands of jars of olives. He sends his idea to higher management. Their response was to take out even more.

This is the mindset of American business in regards to consumers. If you buy something that is in a powder form, have you noticed the grains are larger? It means you are getting less. Have you noticed it takes more packages of artificial sweetener to achieve the same sweetness?  Have you noticed that the ounces of things are less then they were in containers?

Even meat is not immune. Look at the controversy over the "pink slim" being added. It is another form of adulteration that results in less. Have you noticed a big air bubble in your tube of toothpaste? What about the products that claim they are better because they are whipped. Whipping inserts air bubbles and reduces product density. Have you noticed reduced gas mileage? Less gas mileage than can be reasonably attributed to the lower octane ethanol additive?

By design, these changes are hard to pin down. It used to be much easier in regards to some products. The quantity was a part of the product descriptor name. An example is a "pound" of coffee. One company was challenged on advertising a "pound" when it was less than 16 ounces. The company said “pound” was not a measure, merely part of the name.

In aggregate Americans are getting poorer. Inflation in the costs of everything is escalating. The other “hit” is charging for things that used to be free.

It does not really impact you very much paying more for less with a jar of olives. It impacts you greatly when price increases are ubiquitous. At some point in this cycle economic sustainability will collapse.

Religion

You are inoculated in a culture once you are born. The culture becomes so ingrained you live and see only in the light of its prism. Stepping outside the culture is often impossible for most people.  Even when they do take a step outside, it is only into a culture with a very close affinity. Another “Western” like culture is what is embraced and you proclaim yourself “world class”.

There are intellectual risks to stepping outside your culture. Here in America we take the core precepts of Christianity for granted. It infuses us like the air we breathe. Christianity appears as anything but a linear progression if we apply scholarship to its genesis and evolution. There were twists and turns all along its evolution and inescapable questions arise about its numerous junctures. The more one learns, the more challenging is belief in singular story.

As America’s preeminence declines, other truly different cultures will erode this culture. One causality will likely be Christianity as an unassailable truth. It will be submerged back into the realm of “faith” and cease today’s forced competition with the empirical in America.

The competition fires are being fanned by our politicians. They are using Christianity as a gambit to control the people for their own nefarious ends. The game is who can throw the most combustible material on the fire. Other cultures, even “western like” cultures, are taken aback by this obvious farce. 

You can not force feed religious tenets on others and achieve a sincere and enduring result. Religion implies willing sacrifice.

Religion needs no proof or justification other than the belief of the faithful.  They will always stand as a group apart.

Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's,

and unto God the things that are God's

Matthew 22:21

What we Know

I wonder why we have not admitted that our current era is not the first accession of man? The evidence is all over the world. A site in Turkey, Göbekli Tepe, has been dated 4,000 years earlier than the pyramids. It was built at a time when we were supposedly in the stone age, about 12,000 years ago at the end of the last ice age.

There are idiosyncrasies everywhere. Such as the nazca lines. They are only intelligent if seen from the air. Therefore, was there flight thousands of years ago? The fact remains that the monoliths around the world are constructed of stones blocks weighing as much as 20 tons. Only our heaviest construction equipment today might manage such a load. Yet we insist it was accomplished using stone tools and muscle power.

What do we know? We know mankind’s existence on the earth is fragile. We see destruction on smaller scales with hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, volcano eruptions, and tsunamis.  Statistically, something globally traumatic could occur at anytime and has occurred numerous times in the past. The most publicized is the extinction of the dinosaurs.  

Let us suppose that the last accession failed with the ice age. The ice age probably decimated the world wide human population. The remnant that survived was driven back to the stone age. They forgot the knowledge they once possessed.

If it is so obvious that this is not the first accession of man, why the intransigence in acknowledgement? Never under estimate the power of racism. Perhaps it is also known that in the last accession the dominance was not by Caucasians.