Brutes and Ornamental Knowledge
A couple of recent blockbusters make a note of intellectuals as useless flatterers.
During the Trump Administration, liberals (and some conservatives) tried to console themselves that he would be surrounded by “adults in the room.” No matter how inept or unfit for the role of President he was, there would be smart people around him who would guide the ship. While that may be a nice shine on an awful job, a couple of recent blockbusters note how petulant tyrants don’t want competent advisers; they want sycophants. Intelligence in a vacuum is useless, and it’s no more than a shiny bauble to those who would prefer to rule by brute force.
In Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, we meet Trevathan (Wiliam H. Macy), a willing captive of the tyrannical ape Proximus Caesar (Kevin Durand). When the human Mae (Freya Allan) arrives in the ape city ruled by Proximus, Trevathan tries to convince the young woman that she should “make herself useful,” like he has by flattering the ruler’s ego. Proximus is illiterate, so Trevathan reads to the ape, who fancies himself a great leader. Mae bristles at this compromise, and we see through Proximus’ actions that Trevathan has little sway over his master. Despite being surrounded by books and accompanied by a literate human (a rarity in a world where most humans have devolved into speechless scavengers), Proximus sees Trevathan as no more than an amusing pet. He’s a songbird that can share tales of old, but no one takes advice from their songbird. For all of Trevathan’s intellect, he’s only smart enough to save himself and enjoy minor post-apocalyptic luxuries at Proximus’ behest.
George Miller’s Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga features a similar figure. When a young Furiosa (Alyla Browne) gets captured by the sadistic Dementus (Chris Hemsworth), she’s thrown in a cage alongside The History Man (George Shevtsov). The History Man is covered in tattoos containing reams of knowledge, but like Proximus, Dementus doesn’t care to learn anything. He may call on The History Man to recognize an object of some sort, but Dementus has no intellectual curiosity; he wants to torture people until he can rule more territory.
One may argue that learned men don’t serve much purpose in these dystopias anyway, and if the top priority is survival, then flattering a tyrant’s meager intellect is a wise decision. But these movies also recognize such a decision as a cowardly one that flatters the tyrant and the sycophant. We don’t know how much influence Trevathan or The History Man have, but it’s irrelevant because both men lack the courage to question their patron. All the knowledge they possess is merely trivia for someone who wishes to appear wise rather than show the intellectual humility that would create genuine wisdom.
What Kingdom and Furiosa appear to be doing with these supporting characters isn’t to take an anti-intellectual stance, but to note how sophists thrive in dire circumstances where they have nothing of value to offer except base flattery and ornamental intelligence. Proximus and Dementus aren’t wise, but they keep wise men around as if that’s the same thing. They’re like the wealthy dilettante who fills his home with books he hasn’t read and artwork he doesn’t appreciate. They’re the politician who ascends to office, hires a bunch of hard-working aides, and then ignores them to follow his gut instincts. It’s the rise of elevated stupidity. These characters show the gap between knowledge and understanding, and how neither the tyrant nor the learned sycophant wishes to cross that gap.
What I’m Watching
I’ll have more to say about Furiosa in Sunday’s edition (which will go into spoilers, so see the movie this weekend, and then read the article), but for now I feel like the film works, although I wrestle with its approach and construction. The idea of a prequel centered on Furiosa (played by Charlize Theron in Mad Max: Fury Road and played by Alyla Browne and Anya Taylor-Joy in the new movie) seems compelling, but it’s only until you reach the end of the movie that the character of Furiosa makes sense. For the majority of the movie, she’s a steely-eyed badass who always survives thanks to her wits and determination. In almost every way but one, she’s simply a younger, smaller version of the Furiosa we met in Fury Road, so why make a prequel about her?
The answer has to do with what feels like the pivotal scene between Furiosa and Fury Road (and I’ll get to that in a few days), but I can understand the frustration some viewers will feel. There’s certainly the sense that what you’re seeing is a movie that takes you into the worldbuilding alluded to in Fury Road (Let’s visit Gastown! Let’s visit the Bullet Farm!) But I feel like the story that’s told between Furiosa and Dementus is what gives the prequel a distinct identity. I also have to admit that I like this world director George Miller created, and Furiosa is an opportunity to spend more time in it.
I also saw The Garfield Movie, which feels like it has to be graded on a curve since there’s such a dearth of family entertainment in theaters. By no metric is The Garfield Movie “good,” but there’s a lot of slapstick, and so kids will probably enjoy it. For desperate parents who simply want to get their young ones out of the house for a few hours, The Garfield Movie fits the bill. Again, that doesn’t make it a good movie, but I can’t begrudge any parent who will take their kid to see it.
I will say that the plot of the movie is surprisingly random. The entry to the film is that Garfield (Chris Pratt), abandoned by his father Vic (Samuel L. Jackson), gets adopted by Jon (Nicholas Hoult), and lives a cushy lifestyle until he, Odie, and the estranged Vic get sucked into a heist by Jinx (Hannah Waddingham), an ex-partner of Vic’s who’s looking for revenge against Garfield’s father. So most of this movie is…a heist. Jon is barely in the movie, and we mostly see him frantically searching for his lost pets. It’s just odd that of all the things a Garfield movie could be and everything that’s generally known about Garfield (lasagna, hates Mondays, lazy), the filmmakers appeared to pull “heist” and “estranged father” out of a hat.
Finally, I saw Richard Linklater’s Hit Man, which arrives in theaters this weekend before arriving on Netflix on June 7th. The film is the first in 2024 that promises to make Glen Powell a star (the other being Twisters, which arrives in July). Powell co-wrote the script with Linklater based on the true story of Gary Johnson, a guy who posed as a contract killer to catch people who wanted to do murder-for-hire. In the movie, Gary falls for Madison (Adria Arjona), who wants to take out her abusive husband, but Gary believes that he’s set Madison on the straight-and-narrow until more complications arise.
Powell is incredibly charming in the role, especially in the smaller scenes where he’s putting on different characters (since Gary believes that the fake hitman’s personality should be suited to the buyer). Between this and Challengers, I feel fairly confident in saying that fun and sexy movies are still being made; the only question is whether audiences will see them or not. Challengers didn’t blow up the box office, and I don’t know how many people will watch Hit Man when it arrives on Netflix, but these movies do give me hope for how sharp direction matched with unabashed star power can make a movie come alive without the burden of being part of a franchise or being an awards contender.
What I’m Reading
I had to dump Final Cut. Some authors have interesting stories to tell, but they lack the writing talent to make the story compelling. Richard Bach is such an author. Perhaps in 1985 when the book came out, it was a juicier read about the Hollywood machine, but for me, it was flabby and overstuffed. It’s one thing to lay the groundwork of how Hollywood reached its corporate ownership point of the 1970s, but at some point, you need to move past the internecine conflicts among United Artists executives and get to the book’s raison d’être—the chaotic production and massive flop of Heaven’s Gate. I reached page 116 (about a quarter of the book), and Heaven’s Gate writer-director Michael Cimino hadn’t even signed a contract let alone started pre-production. Meanwhile, Bach is talking about the struggle to keep Woody Allen at United Artists rather than lose him to Orion, where the old UA bosses went after friction with their Transamerica overlords. It’s not that the Allen stuff is uninteresting, but a better writer (or at least a better editor) would have had Bach kill his darlings and speed past this event rather than dwell on it while the reader wonders if we’ll ever get to the movie that’s billed on the book’s cover.
I jumped over to The Art Thief, a nonfiction book I saw on multiple Best of 2023 lists, and it has not disappointed. Author Michael Finkel does a fantastic job of drawing us into the world of a romantic couple who stole $2 billion worth of art across dozens of museums so they could enjoy that art privately in their own home. The writing is tight, the pacing is terrific, and so far Finkel is dancing beautifully on the line of the thieves’ twisted morality. If it finishes as strong as it started, it will be one of my favorite books of the year.
In other reads:
Is “Love Is Blind” a Toxic Workplace? by Emily Nussbaum [The New Yorker] - For me, the answer to this headline’s question is an unequivocal, “Yes.” The producers basically employ cult techniques on their participants to maximize entertainment value. Just because these approaches are commonplace in reality TV, that doesn’t make them any less despicable. But what I really admire about Nussbaum’s approach is that she’s not simply looking for juicy behind-the-scenes details of a popular reality TV show. Instead, she approaches this as a story about labor and shows how little protection the “stars” have in the work they’re producing.
What I’m Hearing
This has been my earworm for the last two days. Please send help.
What I’m Playing
Little things, mostly. I play a few rounds of Rocket League, and my brother showed me the basics of Stardew Valley. Basically after the 100+ hour commitment of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, I’m in more of a casual gaming mode.