Donald Trump Plays Chess With Death

scene from The Seventh Seal by Ingmar Bergman

Remember the famous scene in Bergman’s The Seventh Seal in which the Knight (Max von Sydow) plays chess with death (Bengt Ekerot). You may remember that Woody Allen turned it to comic advantage in a famous New Yorker piece called “Death Knocks.” But imagine Donald Trump as the Knight and Vladimir Putin, Death. Of course, the piece Trump would be willing to sacrifice is The Crimea (“Trump to consider recognizing Russian Control of Crimea," USA Today, 7/31/16). What he would get in exchange is, of course, cooperation in wiping out ISIS. How this move is represented on the chessboard is another matter, but it’s reminiscent of Chamberlain’s famous quote, “The settlement of the Czechoslovakian problem, which has now been achieved is, in my view, only the prelude to a large settlement in which all Europe may find peace.” Trump is a true utilitarian. His solution is similar to that of the famous trolley problem in which you run over one person to save a larger group. Perhaps the attainment of the state of appeasement should be regarded as an achievement for such an otherwise unaccommodating personality.  The USA Today piece went on to quote Trump as telling ABC’s This Week, “I’m gonna take a look at it. But you know, the people of Crimea, from what I’ve heard, would rather be with Russia than where they were. And you have to look at that, also.” Another way this grandmaster of life and death situations could have put it, is “you can’t please all of the people all of the time”—something apologists for Hitler were undoubtedly saying when he invaded the Sudetenland.

Orson Welles’s Othello

Is it possible the famed death procession at the finale of Bergman’s The Seventh Seal (1957) was  influenced by the prologue to Orson Welles Othello (1952). A newly restored print of Othello is being exhibited at Film Forum in connection with the global “Celebrate Shakespeare 2014” commemorations. You have the same chain of mourners, ascending towards heaven, but shot at angles. The angles are the key element in Welles interpretation since they show the distorted lens through which jealousy views the world. Even if Bergman never saw the film, this is a world of archetypes. Bergman and Welles were drawing from the same well. Iago’s (Michael MacLiammoir) words to Roderigo (Robert Coote) about Desdemona (Suzanne Cloutier) set the parameters of the tone poem Welles is out to create: “He will out of her own goodness make the net that shall enmesh them all.”  Welles’s movie is about framing. As suspicion and malignity are inseminated (“the motive-huntin of Motiveless malignity,” is what Coleridge famously wrote about the play), the camera frantically cross cuts between Iago and Othello. The crowds of soldiers appear on the ramparts, tiny figures overlooking a turbulent sea and then as oddly placed spectators looking down at the unfolding tragedy through a porthole in a roof. At the end Othello’s face will be framed in darkness. As the infernal logic of the tragedy plays out, Othello overhears as Iago baits Cassio (Michael Laurence) on. Then the camera turns to Othello, a grand creature, characterized by what Cassio calls “a free and open nature,” who in the beginning dominated auspicious archways—now reduced to a sad pair of eyes. The ultimate piece of framing is of course the cage in which Iago will eventually be hoisted. Welles inundated the landscape with shadows and it’s probably one of the major faults of the film. Love is never really established amidst all the omens of death, but there’s one curiosity and that’s the  countervailing images of sky against which Shakespeare’s characters are profiled. Like the tiny figures on the battlements, it creates a feeling of perspective that momentarily allows the viewer to step away from the tragedy occurring down below.

Thailand Journal VII: Wat Muen Mettakhunaram

Photograph by Hallie Cohen

Wat Muen Buddha Mettakhunaram is on the road to Mae Chan. There travelers making their way to the Golden Triangle, the meeting point between Thailand, Laos and Myanmar, the epicenter of what was once the opium trade, will come upon an ebullient golden Buddha. Golden Buddhas dot the mountains of Northern Thailand. But this one stands out due to its expression of total happiness. When you walk through the gate of Wat Muen, you see that the Buddha sits astride a temple reached by an enormous flight of stairs. No you are not reliving the ‘60’s. You’re not tripping, though you might ask yourself why Chinese characters rather than Sanskrit abound. The answer is that Wat Muen is a temple and school established by Chinese Buddhists for the orphans of AIDS victims. Curiously, the prayers that are recited over the PA system sound like the hortatory language blasted in front of party headquarters in some Southeast Asian countries like Vietnam--though the statement emerging might be something more like that played in front of another nearby temple Wat Phra That Chom Kitti, reached by climbing 353 steps. “Get your body ready. Get your soul ready. Get your mind ready for meditation. You remember yesterday, but you can’t have yesterday.” On a recent visit to Wat Muen a visitor was startled by what sounded like a shot. Thai border guards often fire into Myanmar to discourage smugglers, but this was not gunfire, but fireworks attending an on site crematorium. The belief is that the fireworks will smooth the way for the deceased as he or she proceeds on his or her journey. Afterward, a procession of mourners wound their way along the highway. In Bergman’s The Seventh Seal, death is an ominous presence, a player in a famed chess game. However this ebullient Buddha presides over departing souls with an expression that could only be described as bliss.

Songun: the Musical

One wonders what Andrew Lloyd Webber is thinking now that Kim Jong-il has passed away? As you may recall ALW was the composer of the huge hit Evita, based on the life of Eva Peron and the myth of KJi has all the ingredients for a great musical. In order of importance here are the keywords one would imagine accompanying any post about the musical worth its salt: Crowds (KJi drew huge crowds willing to starve for him), Trains (he had his own luxury train similar to the one that Franklin Delano Roosevelt cruised across the country in when he was seeking his office), Platform shoes (KJi who loved film and kept a large collection of Western classics probably got the idea of wearing them from Saturday Night Fever), Shades (KJi got the idea of wearing them from another popular 70's film Superfly, which had a famous soundtrack by Curtis Mayfield), WMD’s (KJi presided over North Korea’s entrance into the nuclear arms club and dreamt of sponsoring a meeting of the club in Pyongyang as a way of sticking his tongue out at the South Korean leadership who once hosted the Olympics in Seoul), Army (got to give it to you KJi or your policy of "songun, or 'army first,'" reported in the Times; creating the "fifth largest" standing army of 1.1 million in a country of almost 30 million mostly starving people is nothing short of amazing and merits its own tune---how about “If I were a Manchurian Candidate…” to the tune of Elton John’s “Your Song.”), Hair (KJi had a legendary hairdo that was created for him by the famed salon Helena of Pyongyang but do we envision the KJi of the musical as Warren Beatty in Shampoo or as one of the cast of John Waters’ Hairspray?—probably the latter), charm (KJi was secretive and murderous, but apparently could be quite engaging; the Times obit, "Kim Jong-il, Dictator Who Turned North Korea Into a Nuclear State, Dies,” NYT, 12/18/11 quotes the State Department’s Wendy Sherman as saying, “He was smart, engaged, knowledgeable, self-confident, sort of the master-director of all he surveyed.”), Secrets (Mike Meyers and Sacha Baron Cohen are definitely candidates for the part of KJi as KJi was obviously influenced by both Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery and Borat to the extent that like a lot of imaginative people he exercised a certain degree of self-invention in the creation of his own persona, based on the many of the films he saw), Bergman (apparently Kji possessed the Criterion Collection version of The Seventh Seal, but apparently was offended by the scene where the Knight plays chess with Death.) Shogun was the title of best seller by James Clavell. Why not call this musical Songun or You’re in the Army Now?

Alas Poor Yorick Stuff

If one could describe the preconscious thought process of average human beings, satiation of appetite and the desire for attention might be in a Hegelian dialectic with the fear of death, except for those who enjoy a surfeit of what is known as suicidal ideation. For Suicidal Ideationalists, who are sometimes also followers of German Idealism (with its search for overarching metaphysical assertions, which lead to a level of frustration resulting in suicidal thoughts), and who probably comprise a good part of the Hemlock Society’s mailing list, suicide constitutes a form of hope. Plainly there are people who regard suicide as a good thing, to the extent that it is an escape from the burden of existence. The poets Sylvia Plath, John Berryman and Anne Sexton all committed suicide. Clinical depression may have driven their decisions, but who is to say that extreme mental pain must be endured, any more than the physical pain that Dr. Kevorkian attempted to eliminate through assisted suicide. In The Myth of Sisyphus Albert Camus asserts that, considering the nature of the purposeless world in which we live, suicide is the only philosophical question that is important. One thing is certain: those who commit suicide have a level of control that those of us who open medical reports with trembling hands don’t get a chance to experience. For the average person who is not a member of the Hemlock Society, Death and Life are enemies (in the famous sequence from Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal, Max Von Sydow plays chess with Death). The Faustian bargain wherein the soul is swapped for knowledge ultimately involves a search for the kind of immortality that Ray Kurzweil champions in The Age of Spiritual Machines, in which dying organs are replaced by microprocessors. But from another point of view, death may not be regarded as an enemy. Death is as much a part of the evolution of man as life, and without the death of cells (apoptosis), new cells would not be born. Death is the final life passage and the ultimate change. We are afraid of death because we are set in our ways and don’t want to let go. However, is it possible to accept death and even embrace it? Is that what it means to die with dignity? 

The Age of Acquirius

This could very well be the beginning of a new age! If China revalues the renminbi, the two-state solution finally gains traction in the Middle East, Google acquires the rights to most of human thought, and North Korea’s Kim Jong-il finally acknowledges his polymorphic perversity and stops trying to silence critics of his dictatorship, then we can only assume that the problem of cold fusion will soon be cracked. Imagine a world in which energy is no longer something that major powers fight over. As Freud once said about analysis, once it’s over, the real problems begin. If we accept Marx’s analysis, the drive for economic hegemony infuses international politics. Without the struggle for resources, life will lose its meaning and many world leaders will walk around with sunken eyes, like Max Von Sydow losing his game of chess with Death in The Seventh Seal. 

   

What will this new age be called? The Age of Acquirius. When Wall Street is battered as it was in the past year, analysts say that the market is making an adjustment. Wasn’t Period of Adjustment the name of a Tennessee Williams play, later made into a movie starring Jane Fonda? But what is this new age? Thorsten Veblen’s conspicuous consumption is still an apt description of the overarching materialism that has spread exponentially in our time. Our economies have grown from the horse drawn chariot of supply and demand to the nuclear powered rockets of computer-generated algorithms. Profits of some hedge funds exceed the GNP of modest countries, while England is referred to as Iceland on the Thames and the entire country of Greece faces the equivalent of a massive foreclosure proceeding. An explosion of information has awakened whole continents of knowledge, yet newspapers are defunct and the democratization of truth via outlets like Wikipedia has crushed the notion of a moral center. Is this the paradigm shift that Thomas Kuhn was alluding to in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions?  Yeats’s oft-quoted lines ring true once again: “The best lack all conviction and the worst/ Are filled with passionate intensity.”