What it takes to be a Republican

 

Friday, August 21, 2009

 

I can’t help but think how psychotic the Republican Party is these days. People always used to complain about the Democrats, citing that old joke about how unorganized it is, partly because it has so many factions.

But the Republicans are probably worse in a different way. They have to contend with two significantly different perceptions: a tough, self-reliant bunch that believes in a strong military but not a strong central government, fiercely patriotic, unsympathetic towards “slackers” and “liberals,” who would weaken the country by leaching off those powerful industrialists who give strength to the economy.

There is no room for weak people in their philosophy, or those who fail to contribute to the whole. It is pure Darwinism, survival of the fittest.

The odd ball in this are the fiscal conservative, but socially liberal Republicans who seem conflicted as to what exactly they believe, as confusing and inconsistent to me as “knee jerk liberals,” guilt ridden over the fact they have acquired wealth on the backs of the poor and feel they need to give something pack as penance.

At the same time, the Republican Party, who refuses to believe in modern science, hanging out crap about creationism because that’s what it says in The Bible – as if that collection of myth has any more validity than any other book written by any other human being. But despite the claim they believe in the literal word, they don’t always believe it all. These Bible thumpers reserve the right to interpret The Bible as they see fit, claiming a personal connection to God. Talk about self-centered. I’ve heard about barroom braggarts that used to claim big connections in order to look down on us ordinary folks, but this takes the cake.

Yet the Republican Party appears to have one common thread, a sense of superiority, of being “better than” not “equal to” those of us who disagree with its self-centered, greedy philosophy of “haves” over “have nots.”

I learned in political classes I took in college that the two party system boils down to a very simply definition: Republicans are people who have all the wealth and want to keep it for themselves, while Democrats are people without wealth but want to take it from the Republicans.

 

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Boy, the more I see Harvey the more I think Spielberg must have studied it frame by frame when he was in school.

You can superimpose its style on many Spielberg films – especially when it comes to movement and placement of characters.

Nearly every frame is a masterpiece of movement in Harvey, so similar to some of the takes in Crystal Skull and other Spielberg films, I had to go back and look at them to compare.

The fun part in Harvey, however, is trying to locate the invisible rabbit in some scenes.

Not every shot leaves room for the rabbit, but some do. There is a vacant chair or an open space where the rabbit should be or could be standing.

I’m not talking about all those scenes where Elwood escorts Harvey around, but in those scenes where Harvey’s influence is felt, such as the scenes with the chain purse, the doctor and other such scenes.

Sometimes, there is a vacant chair. Sometimes there is an unexplained gap between the visible characters when in most other scenes the director does his best to have characters fill up these spaces by moving characters around in the frame.

I’m also half way through reading the play, and it is curious how it was adapted, and how the film fleshed out certain details such as the relationship between doctor and nurse, and cut back on some unnecessary repetition. Yet at the same time, the film increased symbolic repetition such as the issuing of Elwood’s card, his invitation for dinner, and his sometimes unsuccessful attempts to introduce Harvey to strangers.

The language humor is hugely important – such as the Abbott and Costello bit with the taxi driver confusing Henry with Harvey, and the ghostly voice of the judge over the telephone when Elwood and Vita are in the den. Harvey already has many of the critical themes typical of Spielberg films: misuse of technology, failure to communicate, and such. So many of his themes exist in Harvey, I again wonder if Spielberg used it as a model for all of his films – consciously or unconsciously.