I have from time to time pursued lists of “great movies” some way down. I’m a bit of a cinephile–I rewatched Tarkovsky’s “Ivan’s Childhood” yesterday–but it takes me so long to digest movies, I’m also slow. I’m a slow reader, too. But I like to think that when I am done, I have taken more from the experience, doing it once, than most will in several passes through.
A movie whose fascination for Roger Ebert took me a minute to understand is Gates of Heaven. It is one of those movies where certain images and commentaries reappear in my awareness years later. I have the ability to remember little things from little movies twenty years later sometimes; and of course I’m good enough remembering plots that there is little use watching any movies twice that depend on plot twists. The DVD’s on my shelf are by and large “rewatchers”, although I have also recently discovered that I can in most cases buy DVD’s for little more than it would cost to rent them from Amazon (who I–no doubt to Jeff Bezos’ considerable consternation–am trying to avoid as much as possible, while recognizing that he actually doesn’t care, and they are damned convenient sometimes).
Be that as it may, there is an awkward scene in the movie where a guy who runs a glue factory talks about how he helps the zoo dispose of dead zebras and elephants, and lions and tigers and bears. Think about the logistics: what do you DO with a dead elephant? Bury it? How? Does it get a coffin? Is it a good idea just putting a giant animal in the hole that will decompose? Actually, it just occurred to me one of the benefits of a coffin is the ground collapses less or at least more slowly.
In any event, the zoo in this case decided to let him have the dead animals, or have them at a reduced price, to render into glue. Everything, presumably, from giraffes to anteaters wound up–unknown to the public–at the glue factory.
Is this not a metaphor for ideological leveling? Universities are glue factories. No matter how great a talent you may have possessed, certain elements of your mind will be seized, liquified, and rendered permanently sticky. You will stick to everything that they put on you. You can’t help it. You are rendered emotionally and intellectually inert. You are amorphous. There is no clear line between you and your goose stepping neighbor.
The obvious corollary image is from the third season of Stranger Things, where all the “infected” people simply dissolve to become the larger monster.
Now, is this fundamentally different from what is done in the military? No. And think about the military from the standpoint of fight, flight or shame. The point is to engage the amygdala strongly, then offer conformity as the only way out. That is what basic training does.
What I would argue, though, is that in the military this conformity serves a purpose, at least ideally, and by and large most people who have served seem to carry with them both pride, and an improved self discipline that serves them well in the specific and idiosyncratic, individual purposes to which they put it. You dissolve for a minute, but come back.
It is apparently a commonplace in the Marines particularly that for a few months after basic training you are considered a bit insane even by much longer serving Marines. You have the zeal of the cult member. But it fades over time with most, even if the basic structure does not.
But in universities the POINT of going is to build liberality of mind and character. It is to cultivate openness, diversity, the ability to disagree without violence, the ability to entertain multiple ideas simultaneously without feeling compelled to embrace any of them. It is to build curiosity, inquisitiveness, and ideally a spirit of play with ideas and concepts that is a source of delight for the newly minted public intellectual.
None of this is happening in most universities. Prager U–which in my view has done yeoman work in the Guerilla War for Public Sanity (if they ever give campaign ribbons, I think that should be the name of the conflict)–had a student call the POLICE on them. His complaint? That by their PRESENCE they were–this is a quote, and a word he said multiple times–“terrorizing” the students. Watch this video, and tell me this student does not have a mind boiled down to glue. The COPS–not a profession known terribly well for liberality of mind and spirit–are vastly more principled and understanding than he is: https://www.prageru.com/video/student-calls-cops-on-prageru/
Again, should the professors not feel shame, that this student is apparently even unaware that the First Amendment applies PARTICULARLY on university campuses? And, again, is this not where it becomes obvious that THEY DON’T FEEL SHAME.
I actually have another post on that.