Issue 10, June 22, 2009
—
Wider
Screenings, World Cinema and The
Secret
In this issue:FEATURE: Deepak Chopra, The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success Geri O'Neill, Your Amazing Brain Christopher K. Randolph, Asking the Right Questions Guy Finley, Realize Your True Self in Stillness Daniel Linder, The Most Important Relationship Desiderata / Sharon Elaine, Affirmations, Patience Wider Screenings, World Cinema and The SecretEventsReviewsEarlier issues Submit Article
Since
the publication of Rhonda Byrne’s The Secret and the popularization of
the “Law of Attraction” throughout self-help literature since Charles
Haanel’s The Master Key
System, many Americans have embraced an ethos of
prosperity and abundance epitomized in such key phrases as “the
millionaire mind”. Granted, prosperity is now open to all and
achievable by anyone who puts their mind to it. However, the
ethos of American prosperity that many idealize to the point of
confusing material wealth with self-actualization – the “success”
driven American Capitalist mentality that sees power and $ as essential
to individual expression – is being criticized in recent
cinema. One such example is the German film The Baader-Meinhoff Complex.
As there is little film criticism in deference to The Secret’s Law of
Attraction, this column briefly looks at some of the sociological
implications inherent in the self-help ideal of manifesting one’s own
destiny. Specifically, what if your destiny conflicts with
political authority?
Baader-Meinhoff
director Uli Edel is a veteran essayer of individual self-determination
weighed against often adverse sociological conditioning. In Christiane F. he
scandalized German society by ruthlessly examining the day to day
struggle of a 14 year old heroin addicted teen prostitute: attempting
to forge her own way in the world and put her incipient ideals (shaped
by her mother’s rejection and her need for the comforts of a peer
group) into practice, her self-expression is consumed by her
circumstances (heroin dependence). Edel went to America for
two films in which strong, independent women exerted their
individuality against adverse circumstances – Last Exit to Brooklyn
and Body of Evidence
– both films in which the female protagonists are in a control of a
sexuality that others find threatening or would seek to exploit for
their own benefit. Edel does not judge his characters’ sexual
proclivities and in Jennifer Jason Leigh’s performance in Last Exit to Brooklyn
essayed the line between an individual manifestation of destiny and the
sociological victimization of women. Indeed, in his latest
film Baader-Meinhoff
is one scene which encapsulates his radical critique of contemporary
social mores.
The
Baader-Meinhoff Complex is the true story of two women and
one man who operated a student-led terrorist cell in Germany in the
1960s and 1970s, their popularity spreading like a virus through the
German population against an increasingly frustrated
authority. Formed to protest the American-led Vietnam War and
the American funding of the Israeli military in their suppression of
the Palestinian people, the Baader-Meinhoff cell segue from youthful
anarchic protest into bank robberies and bombings in their effort to
hold German Patriarchal authority accountable for their support of
America and their indifference to the world suffering American
Capitalism was then engendering throughout the world, at least as they
saw it. Edel characterizes the central terrorists in terms
which emphasize their drive to self-actualization – the root is a
Descartes philosophy “I think therefore I am.” Indeed, a
theme throughout terrorist cinema as a genre (profiled in Robert
Cettl’s forthcoming book Terrorism
in American Cinema) is self-determination: the terrorists
here rebel against the Patriarchal ethos of successful Capitalism
imported from the USA in order to actualize an individuality in
opposition to the dominant socio-cultural paradigm. Their
destiny is revolution!
Significantly, both central women are mothers who choose to leave their
children in the care of others to pursue what they consider ideological
freedom. However, rather than acquiesce to the ethos of
Capitalist “success” behind America’s contemptible foreign policy they
define themselves in opposition to it and soon attract the
like-minded. Indeed, as the student protests segue into
terrorism, more people are attracted to the ethos of self-determination
offered by terrorist defiance (ironic in that the terrorist’s
self-determination essentially robs their enemies of their own right to
self-determination: the paradox of the terrorist film as a
genre). Applying the Law of Attraction to this scenario, the
terrorists create a world in which their terrorism threatens to become
a social revolution – they actualize a personal rebellion into a real
one. Significantly, their self-actualization occurs with the
complete repudiation of any spirituality – one woman confronts a Priest
to say that believers defer action to hopeful prayer (in effect denying
themselves any self-expression as they appeal to a higher power beyond
themselves) while self-empowered people actualize and enact.
Prayer is, to these individuals, mere inaction and – worse – the
passive surrender to authority.
Putting into effect their radical denunciation of the roles that
Patriarchal-Capitalist society has dictated to the world for women,
these terrorists appear naked at a PLO terrorist training
camp. Sunbathing while the Islamists look on in horror at
these most un-Islamic women, one woman proclaims that fighting for a
revolution and striving for sexual self-actualization away from social
inhibition are synonymous – in this way, these terrorists epitomize the
credo of the sexual revolution, just as in America such home-grown
terrorist organizations as the SLA tried to rebel against materialism
in their kidnapping and brainwashing / deprogramming of millionaire
heiress Patty Hearst in the 1970s. The message is clear:
individual self-actualization is in defiance of sociological
circumstance rather than in the measured acceptance of social standards
of family, wealth and success: individuality and success do not depend
on the acquisition of wealth – indeed, those who have wealth and power
here create a conformist morality which drowns rather than liberates
the individual. The expression of individuality by taking
control of one’s destiny in terrorist protest against Patriarchal
authority and American Imperialism draws the like-minded to it and
creates an atmosphere of social upheaval so much so that authority
reacts violently to protect its status quo of wealth and power in the
hands of the select.
Wealth and power in the hands of the select is, ironically, emblematic
of supposedly democratic America, a nation without socialized medicine
and whose contribution to the self-help and self-empowerment credo is
still mired in 1980s materialism. The “millionaire mind”
after all was essayed by Oliver Stone in Wall Street,
birthing star Michael Douglas’ infamous speech “greed is good” (quoted
in its entirety in Robert Cettl’s book Film Talk: Quoting the Movies in
the Age of DVD, available now through Inkstone Press /
Inkstone Digital). Indeed, the millionaire mind as
represented by Michael Douglas in Wall
Street epitomizes exactly the mindset that those sho seek
their individuality in The
Baader-Meinhoff Complex reject and seek to remove from
power and control over, at least, American Capitalist foreign
policy. In this way, one can see how the rhetoric of wealth
that in American society has become synonymous with success in much
Self-Help Literature forms exactly the sociological conditioning that
works against the self-actualization of those who reject it, yet still
seek to actualize the world as they see it – as is their right under
the Law of Attraction. In short, the Law of Attraction is
beyond moral accountability – in order to be truly available to every
individual, it is a morally relativist principle beyond absolutism.
However, although The
Baader-Meinhoff Complex demonstrates the Law of
Attraction’s emphasis on manifesting an individual destiny in rebellion
to the ethos of “success” and re-defines “prosperity” away from wealth
to individual self-expression and behavioural defiance, the American
film Zelig
offers a radically different view. In this seldom seen early
1980s Woody Allen comedy, Allen plays a human chameleon. The
titular character can change his physical appearance so that he can fit
into to whatever sociological group he happens to be in company with:
amongst obese people, he gains weight; amongst scholars, he appears
bookish. He has no personality and thus no unique destiny,
yet when placed within a given set of sociological circumstances will
appear to embody them to perfection. On that level he is a
success – he can blend seamlessly in wherever he goes and survive
according to whatever codes are given him: his individuality (not his
morality) is thus relative: his self-actualization relies not on his
individual consciousness – as it does for the revolutionary terrorists
in The Baader-Meinhoff
Complex – but on his ability to be transformed by
circumstances he finds himself in. Rather than striving to
make the world in his ideal, his ideals are shaped by
circumstance. In this way, the situation Zelig dramatizes is
opposite to what one is led to expect by the Law of Attraction which
ideally implies the inverse – that the individual will manufacture
their circumstances as a result of their own unique process of ideation.
Consequently, if one relates this discussion back to The Secret, then
it is clear that The
Baader-Meinhoff Complex is an examination of what
ultimately are the moral-social-politicial ambiguities and potential
sociological conflicts behind the Law of Attraction.
Individuals free to make of the world what they will inevitably find
themselves in conflict with sociological circumstance: an authority
which dictates how they must live, think and behave. The
rhetoric of “success” and “prosperity” is here exactly what the
terrorists’ individualized and collectivized ideology
opposes. Yet – for “The Secret” to be true, their ideology is
equally as valid as that of the success and prosperity inherent in
American Capitalism and which they fight against. The final
lesson to be learned here thus is that if one’s happiness and
self-actualized ideals defy those described by Patriarchal authority
(power and money) said Patriarchal authority will enact circumstances
to prevent any alternative idealism from emerging. In short,
is the Law of Attraction defined in Self-Help Literature truly open to
all or is it open only to those who orient themselves to the pursuit of
happiness and wealth as defined specifically by the dominant values of
the Patriarchal authority in power (i.e. American
Capitalism)?
In other words, if I am the master of my own destiny and my destiny is
in conflict with a dominant ideology then my experience of the Law of
Attraction is inevitably shaped by a sociological circumstance
determined to crush my individual self-actualization and shape it to a
pre-determined lore of “success”. Is an ideology of
collectivized power (“democracy”) thus in opposition to the Law of
Attraction, the morally relativistic individuality of which is
inherently anarchic and revolutionary?
** ***** **
Volatile
Off-screen Pressures
(an extract from Robert Cettl’s book Film Tales: Movie Trivia in the
Age of DVD)
During the making of Casablanca,
star Humphrey Bogart was still married to an unstable woman, Mayo
Methot. Bogart apparently preferred spending time on set or
in his dressing room discussing his character over a drink than
spending time with his wife, who had by that time repeatedly threatened
to kill him. She was reportedly insanely jealous of Bogart’s
co-star Ingrid Bergman. Indeed, the actors’ agents were so
worried this may eventuate that they took out a then large $100,000
policy on their client’s life. Bogart would increasingly
spend more and more time in his dressing room, sometimes entire nights
there, found the next morning endeavouring to sober up in preparation
for the day’s filming. On top of that, the cast and crew
often did not know what they were going to film that day. For
although the film had a script and was based on an existing property
(actually an un-produced play), script pages were delivered to the
actors in the morning, often re-written, for the day’s
shooting. Not even the directors knew what the end of the
picture was going to be until the deadline to wrap production was
approaching.
Wider
Screenings columnist Robert
Cettl
has a B.A (Hons) in Film Study from the Flinders University of South
Australia, which included an international scholarship to the
University of Southern Illinois in the USA. He has
post-graduate
qualifications in Librarianship and Information Management from
UniSA. In addition to popular DVD reviewing, his writing for
McFarland (one of the leading American publishers of film non-fiction)
has been collected by such as Yale University Library and the British
Film Institute. His forthcoming work for this market (for
release
in 2010) is Terrorism
in American Cinema: a comprehensive analysis of terrorism
as a genre from fears of PLO inspired homeland attacks in Black Sunday to the
outright denouncement of the Bush War on Terror in W. His
previous work includes the above extracted Film Tales, now on
sale and coming soon as an ebook through Inkstone Digital and Amazon
Kindle in association with No
Limits.
For analysis and commentary on individual films mentioned in this
column (and hundreds of others) and for updates on the latest Hollywood
hits and choicest DVD releases, Wider
Screenings
is now on Twitter. Any @ reply will be duly answered – there
are
no automated DMs or tweets. If tweeting, please mention film
title in tweet: requests for films/DVDs to be reviewed are welcomed and
given priority. Free print copies of Film Tales can be
won in the tweet ‘n win Film Buff Quiz. First tweet request
being incorporated into Wider
Screenings is a retrospective of actor Warren Oates
beginning with the film Cockfighter,
a seldom seen look at cockfighting in the Southern States and a film
still banned in England.
FEATURE: Deepak Chopra, The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success 
