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wearenotamused
Reviews
Never Cry Wolf (1983)
Did any of this happen?
Wikipedia writes the following:
* Shortly after the publication of _Never Cry Wolf_, the Canadian Wildlife Service received a deluge of letters from concerned citizens opposing the killing of wolves. Canadian Wildlife Federation official Alexander William Francis Banfield, who supervised Mowat's field work, characterized the book as "semi-fictional", and accused Mowat of blatantly lying about his expedition. He pointed out that contrary to what is written in the book, Mowat was part of an expedition of three biologists, and was never alone. In a 1964 article published in the _Canadian Field-Naturalist_, he compared Mowat's 1963 bestseller to "Little Red Riding Hood," stating, "I hope that readers of Never Cry Wolf will realize that both stories have about the same factual content."
* Canadian Wildlife Service staff members argued that Mowat's remit had not been to find justifications for wolf extermination, but to investigate the relationship between wolves and caribou.
* Linguist and former veterinary biologist Will Graves, who spent 42 years reading and compiling information on wolves in Russia from news reports, scientific articles, and interviews with Russian biologists, game managers and hunters flatly stated in an interview with journalist Peter Metcalf "Mowat's book is fiction". In his book _Wolves in Russia: Anxiety throughout the ages_, Graves expressed similar views to those of David Mech, citing numerous cases in the former Soviet Union indicating that wolves feed heavily on medium sized ungulates, contrary to what Mowat wrote.
Karen Jones writes:
"The deluge of letters received by the Canadian Wildlife Service from concerned citizens opposing the killing of wolves testifies to the growing significance of literature as a protest medium. * * * Officials cited that Mowat had observed wolves for a total of just ninety hours -- an indictment on his research credibility and scientific commitment. CWS employee Charles Jonkel quipped, We used to call him Hardly Knowit." – Karen Jones, Never Cry Wolf: Science, Sentiment, and the Literary Rehabilitation of Canis Lupus, _The Canadian Historical Review_ vol.84 (2001)
Wearenotamused writes:
Watching the movie, I had trouble believing that a real researcher could be so comically stupid or incompetent, so I did some casual fact checking. Hollywood is Hollywood, and I would have said that the film is fine as entertainment, except that much of the emotional tug of the movie came from thinking that the events depicted were more or less true. Unfortunately, the plot of the movie seems to be more or less fiction. As a fiction movie, I think I would have found it silly and plodding.
Citizen Kane (1941)
How to Watch Citizen Kane
Warning: spoilers
The first time I watched _Citizen Kane_, the movie seemed to aim for psychological depth in its treatment of Kane, but several of the supporting characters were exaggeratedly silly in a way now appropriate for a TV sitcom. The apparent inconsistencies resolve when one realizes that _Kane_, of course, is a hit job on William Randolph Hearst, and that the depiction of Hearst and his lover are as over the top as the actions of the lesser characters.
Heart's sin, apparently, was being an unrepentant capitalist and occupying media space that Welles thought would be better allocated to progressive voices. Whatever Welles' motivation, he was willing to trash anyone to get to his target. Hearst's lover, Marion Davies, was starring in films before she met Hearst. I suppose Davies' only sin was being near Hearst, but Welles turns her into a talentless vacuum to accentuate Kane's utter narcissism. The documentary _Movie Moguls_ claims that 'Rosebud' was Hearst's pet name for Marion's private part. This would explain why Rosebud appears in the movie as a sled, something for Kane to ride. It also puts a different slant on the final scene, where Rosebud is committed to the flames.
Welles gave his cinematographer the freedom to revive the expressionist lighting of the more experimental films of the silent era. This gives the visual aspects of _Kane_ a powerful role in presenting the film's themes. How to light a film isn't the big lesson from _Kane_. Orson Welles was freezing, personalizing and polarizing his target long before Saul Alinsky. _Citizen Kane_ showed filmmakers how to go for the jugular.
Lost Horizon (1937)
A window on pacifism
_Lost Horizon_ puts into the mouths of a British diplomat and a self-made Lama the humanistic hope that humanity can be perfected, indeed, will be perfected, by practicing good manners and patiently waiting for the alpha males to kill off each other. As the Lama puts it, "the Christian Ethic will then be realized, and the meek will inherit the Earth." He does not mean that Christianity is true, only that the teachings of Jesus, some of them, anyway, are cool. This was one of Hollywood's first forays into New Age propaganda, an uncritical mix of Eastern mysticism and Unitarian pacifism. Shangri-La reveals some beautiful Bauhaus architecture. I suppose, being filmed in 1937, it was intended to look futuristic and timeless. We are also presented with free love, easy divorce, and universal day care as important lanes of the highway to Utopia. If you watch this film, notice that the Lama evades and never answers Conway's question about what is to be done if life really is pointless. No one asks how one gets to live in the nice Bauhaus administration building (with imported furniture) instead of working in the valley below carrying water in buckets. As with most other Utopias presented in film and literature, this society has an unusual source of wealth that funds all this happiness. In Shangri-La, gold is laying around like so many rocks, which allows them to trade for upscale furniture with a caravan that comes by every few years. (In _Twenty-One Balloons_, Krakatoa has diamonds to support its economy. The Dem's Utopia would have "the rich" to support it. I wonder what happens after the rich get soaked -- but I digress.) The acting is not bad for a Capra film. Still, I guess _Lost Horizon_ gets high votes because that many viewers agree with its message. Yes, it would be a much better world if people were just nice. The question is how we can get people to be nice. Moore, Marx, Dewey, Hilton (the author of _Lost Horizon_), and Pol Pot have all tried to answer that question (respectively: communism, communism, socialism, just BE nice and let the not-nice people kill off each other, communism), but with poor results. Being nice is a good idea. Relationships are everything--living in communion with God and with one's neighbors is the meaning of life. However, there will always be plenty of not-nice people, no matter how nice other people are to them. _Lost Horizon_ belongs in the Museum of Yesterday's Tomorrows. It's a good way to peek at what intellectuals were presenting as the answer to the world's problems in 1937. The seventy years since then have shown some of the results, but, unfortunately, the learning curve among the cultural leadership seems to be relatively flat. I give LH a 5 mainly for its interest as a cultural artifact. As entertainment, it is pretty boring.