Monsieur Verdoux

You should watch this movie if you haven't yet. It stars Charles Chaplin, in a film the original script for which was written by Orson Welles, based on the real life serial killer Henri Landru. Chaplin refused to be directed by Welles, bought and rewrote the script, and shot it in 1947. It's got sound, and is full of dark humor and blunt statements.

What's remarkable is its thesis: That capitalism leads to mass and serial killing. Simple as that.

Chaplin plays a mild-mannered bank clerk, loyal and competent, who is abruptly fired. He is shown no respect, loyalty, or appreciation by his bank. To find money for his wife and kids, he falls almost inadvertently into the habit of charming, marrying, and killing rich widows until a pair of them prove unpredictable and blow his cover. About this same time, he is ruined in a stock market crash, and meets a woman he’s been kind to twice -- his only moments of compassion and kindness -- who plucks him off the street, as he once did for her, and feeds him lunch. This bucks him up and, persuaded by her, he faces up to his crimes, all without batting an eye.

At his trial, he is calm and articulate. He refuses to seek clemency or excuses for his actions. He argues that business and soldiers kill for profit, so he is merely emulating capitalism. He says it’s a matter of numbers: If one man does it, it’s murder; if an army or a nation does it, it’s heroic and fine.

He ironically apologizes for not having done better.

Had he killed for anything other than money, then it might be a crime, he says. But because he was doing it strictly for business, the same as corporations, politicians, and armies do it, it should be sanctioned by society. Certainly much of it is, indeed, sanctioned; he makes oblique reference to Guernica, a war crime in which the Nazis strafed and bombed an entire village of innocent men, women, and children out of existence as they pursued their agenda. All sides do the same basic thing, he observed.

It's a disturbing, unsettling argument, especially in these horrible days of the Bush ascendancy.

At the end of the movie, when Verdoux is caught, tried, convicted, and sentenced to be guillotined, he says: For thirty years I lived by my intelligence. When that was no longer needed, or wanted, I went into business for myself. As to being a mass killer, does not the world encourage it? Are w not making weapons of mass destruction as fast as possible? Have we not used them to kill innocent women and children, entire towns and cities? By contrast my efforts pale to insignificance. But I will leave you with one thought: I will soon lose my head, but I will see you , all of you, very soon."

Prescient and creepy, MONSIEUR VERDOUX rings like a damning indictment, and it is Welles's insight and Chaplin's eloquence that pegged us even that far back.

Rent or catch it on cable, it is well worth seeing, and perhaps the most modern of Chaplin’s films due to its unusually dark, ironic tone. Many blame that tone for the movie’s poor showing stateside when it was released. It did better in Europe, but has never been among Chaplin’s celebrated films. Yet it should be. Without the sentimentality and endless silliness typical of Chaplin’s movies, it makes points elegantly, and offers a portrait we all know too well, in these days of Hannibal Lector and George W. Bush.

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Ghost Hunters

Kohi, Hai

Ghost Hunters: William James and the Search for Scientific Proof of Life After Death, by Deborah Blum
The Penguin Press, NY, 2006
ISBN: 1-59420-090-4
321pp plus Notes, Sources, and Index - $25.95 hardcover

Just read Ghost Hunters by Deborah Blum, an account of the search for evidence of life after death at the turn of the last century. William James, the philosopher and psychologist, is a central figure, as are a host of other prominent Victorian scientists, writers, and experimenters on both sides of the Atlantic.

What is stingingly obvious is how bigoted and closed-minded the science establishment has been from the start against even the search for spiritual evidence, let alone the analyzing of it or the conclusions it forces. We see it still. And knowing that it has remained a howling gaffe in science to pursue paranormal evidence makes the account that much more poignant. These very intelligent, very fair men and women stood up for what was right in the face of strident criticism that destroyed careers and, sadly, continues to do so.

The book is slender but dense. It is well-written, vivid, and full of personal detail. One learns much about the times and circumstances of those brave people who pioneered parapsychology. We see so many instances of elusive results and suggestive hints being decried, ignored, and ridiculed by those pleased to call themselves scientific. Some of these scoffers sneered proudly even as they refused to read the reports, let alone assess the experiments’ protocols or the evidence.

We begin to understand how unsure genuine science is to this day. Far from the body of absolute dogma it pretends to be, science is in fact selective and biased, a thuggery more than an academy. And when science is a bully, then the few who persevere in the face of withering hostility become heroic.

This is not a book for true believers of any stripe. Those convinced of either a religious doctrine or personal system aren’t likely to find confirmation. Anyone seeking answers will find frustration and open-ended arguments that never resolve. Rather than be upset, they are advised to avoid this book.

If one prefers questions to answers, and if one wishes to know how attempts to understand what, if anything, lies beyond, then read Ms. Blum's excellent book. You'll learn how science fails miserably at many things human, even as it shoulders its way into the inhuman with unnerving success and ability. You'll also see that some of the very best minds a century ago concluded that there was something in all the seances, table-tippings, and ectoplasmic pokes and prods.

William James, his wife Alice, and his brother, novelist Henry, along with members of the British and American Societies for Psychical Research, were convinced telepathy had been established as fact. When it came to surviving the body’s death, and communicating between the living and the disembodied, agreement was not so readily found.

One fascinating experiment involved women in England, the United States, and India simultaneously using automatic writing ostensibly to communicate with a recently-deceased Society member. Like a jigsaw puzzle, coherent messages and direct, specific answers to questions posed to one or another medium came through. It took weeks, months, but when it was all assembled, the conversation was convincing to those conducting it; they seemed to be talking with someone they knew well, who had died.

This reminded me of John G. Fuller’s excellent book, The Airmen Who Would Not Die, in which a series of unconnected spirit communications among many people over a course of years revealed what had happened to a group of airmen who had vanished over the Atlantic during the war. It was later confirmed, and the communications remain one of the most convincing cases of spirit survival of bodily death ever recorded. I had not known there were other such cases and was glad to read of another.

Ghost Hunters is excellent for anyone thoughtful about what comes after all this, if anything. Many suggestive pieces of evidence conclude something is there for us after all.

Not as fun as Will Shorr Vs. The Supernatural, but much more sober and systematic an account by a world-class science writer, this book is recommended.

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49

Kohi, Hai

Birthday Report: Yesterday I woke and ate breakfast, showered, and viewed both PRIDE AND PREJUDICE and 16 BLOCKS on cable with my wife, who’d taken the day off.

Lunch rolled lazily around.

We went shopping a bit, failing to find what we wanted but having a good time looking.

Later that afternoon, I showed up at the nutritionist's for weigh-in and to hand over food log. One pound down, I was told to exercise more. Nothing new there.

Off to home, where we ate a bite, thence to the Omaha Beach Party monthly Jay Lake Picnic. This is writers from Omaha who gather to dine with Mr. Lake, a writer in regularly from Portland on unwriterly business.

We had more fun this time because it was quieter, being less busy at Zio’s on Wednesday nights, evidently, than on Thursday nights, which are our usual. Being able to hear each other’s witticisms and ironic questions helped loads.

The OBP/JL Picnic was fun. There were several gut-buster laughs and mine was acclaimed the evening's most devastating remark, twice. Not the same remark.

"Happy Birthday To You", you being me, was sung in a bizarre slow tempo featuring brain-damaged harmonies. This only after "Bohemian Rhapsody" was assayed by Jay and Ma’at, much to the late Mr. Mercury’s cringe.

A good many decaf coffees apparently added up to something, because I was slightly wired until one in the morning. Further, ideas and inspirations and urges boiled in me, making me want to write novels the way I usually write short stories.

Some of what I accomplished, instead of just thinking about, include adjusting my Amazon wish list to account for recent acquisitions; reading Jay Lake and Ruth Nestvold discussing “Tropes” at IROSF; learning to use a digital recorder; adding a couple numbers, and the names they reach, to my cell phone’s memory; reading a chapter from one of the books I’ve got going; logging in a couple rejections; sending off some submissions electronically; finishing a letter, enveloping it, and addressing it; and having a good time on my birthday with my family and friends.

Oh, and I waived an offer to write someone else’s novel for them, which also meant waving off pay. Ah, well. We can’t all be ghosts, nor even hired hacks. I’m through with franchise fiction, which is for suckers and beginners who don’t know better yet.

Between that and skotching faint rumors of me being offered editorship of a magazine I wouldn’t want to deal with and don’t even bother submitting to, I’m relieved. I want to write my own stuff, thanks.

My only concern, really, is my health, and that’s a struggle for everyone, so no use bitching. 49 turns out to be okay, at least so far.

Check me tomorrow.

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