Lurker Rants, Too!

[Joe Varo]

On Tue, 25 Feb 1997 Mark.Novitz at ny.ubs.com wrote:

> You and I can discuss the merits and demerits of free-markets and
> killing and saving Jews whenever you like.  But 54 million other people
> came away from that movie thinking about nothing even REMOTELY close to
> that level of analysis. 
> 
> I'll bet my left nut on that.  There's nothing wrong with your level of 
> intellectuallism (read previous post: it's why I'm here lurking in the first 
> place)--but you've got to step down for one god-damned minute.
> 
> You must be out-of-that-high-mind-of-yours if you think that any more
> than a tiny percentage (or even less than a percent) of the viewership
> came away from SL thinking that "free market capitalism is the best
> safeguard again totalinarianism".  They probably didn't even think of
> the words "free" "market" and "capitalism" in the same sentence. 
> Granted, _you_ did, and a bunch of other people, but not 55 million. 
> ...

I think that Mark has a valid point here.  For the average, guy on the
street (the preterite?), I don't think that they would think about the
movie in such terms as Dinn/Steelhead analysis, with which I, frankly, am
in agreement.

But then, your average-guy-on-the-street isn't usually capable of plumbing
the depths of Pynchon, either. (I realize that that sounds rather vain,
but....)

So what do we do?  Maybe the film has succeded in pulling someone's head
out of the sand...we should give it credit for that.

You've got to get the heads out of the sand before you can begin to open
the eyes.

Joe