Trump Emulates Goldfinger

Since I hardly read any fiction now but have still been watching films, I decided to write about films today. When I was growing up, I regularly watched films and often walked to the RKO or Loews theaters in nearby New Rochelle on Saturdays to see them. Since I haven't been able to find new ones that I like, I am continuing to watch old ones. When Dr. No was released in 1962, I went with my family to the Pelham Picture House to see it. I liked it at the time and still liked it when I watched it recently. I particularly like Sean Connery as James Bond compared to the others who have played that part. Ian Fleming was not a great writer, but he had an upper-class English background, and Bond, as played by Connery, is one of the classiest people I've ever seen in a film. In that film, Ursula Andress isn't bad either as Honey Rider. I also rewatched Goldfinger, which was released in 1964. I didn't enjoy that as much but still thought it was good. I realized that Donald Trump must also have seen that film, and I just read that it made an immense impression on him. Auric Goldfinger in the film is a fat, Germanic millionaire with Nazi connections who loves gold and being wealthy. He also likes to play golf and cheats in order to win. And he places little value on human lives. Sound familiar?

I know that this isn't a favorite topic of my readers, but I have to say that, based on my readings, human behavior is generally quite predictable over a lifetime once you understand a person's childhood and upbringing. As I wrote earlier, many people my age or older are climate change deniers. That even includes otherwise intelligent people like Freeman Dyson. Since I have been forced to pay attention to Trump for ten years now, and also grew up in the New York City area, it is very easy for me to see where most of Trump's ideas came from. Because of his narcissism, he has always wanted to be a public celebrity. The underlying problem is that he has no real talent in anything. He would have loved to hang out with Rat Pack members like Frank Sinatra, but Sinatra hated him. Over time, he could only attract B-Team people like Kid Rock and Hulk Hogan. Many people, such as Jeffrey Epstein, and current members of his cabinet, such as Steve Witkoff, are primarily second-tier financial opportunists. I don't think that he could be close to the tech bros, and they are mainly interested in manipulating him for their personal benefit. But Trump's worldview is obsolete across the board. Because he has little knowledge of world history or science, he can't grasp that the 1960's are over: there will never be a resurgence in the oil industry, manufacturing jobs in the U.S. are ancient history, and corruption and stupidity lead to unstable world economies. I suspect that his "grand strategy" may have been to steal oil from Venezuela in order to create a new supply so that he could bomb Iran. That's how stupid he is. My favorite scene in Goldfinger occurs near the end when, as Bond and Goldfinger scuffle over a gun while being flown in a jet piloted by Pussy Galore, a window is shot out and Goldfinger is sucked out by the pressure drop.  

Another thing I've noticed from watching old films is how certain aspects of sexuality were altered because of the status quo. Apparently Ian Fleming's Pussy Galore character in Goldfinger was a lesbian. Fleming thought that lesbianism was the result childhood experiences and could be "cured." So, in the novel, Bond "cures" her with his manliness. In the film, Bond does succeed, as always, but the lesbianism is ignored. This cleaning up of scripts was even more conspicuous in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958) if you compare it to the stage version (1955). From watching only the film, you would think that it was mainly about family succession, with Big Daddy approaching death, and Brick's depression about the death of his friend, Skipper. It helps to know that Tennessee Williams was gay, and that the main undercurrent was the sexuality of the men. Apparently Brick and Skipper had a sexual relationship and were either gay or bisexual. There are also suggestions that Big Daddy had been bisexual earlier in his life. Homosexuality was so suppressed when I was growing up that I rarely ever heard about it. A better understanding of Tennessee Williams is now making me think that some of my high school friends may have been gay or bisexual (I'm not).

The Brontës IV

I'm only up to 1840, when the Brontë children were in their twenties. There is too much information to sum everything up neatly. Charlotte didn't teach for long at the Roe Head School, but Emily and Anne attended briefly while she was there. In 1838, Emily became a teacher in Halifax. Charlotte became a governess in 1839. Anne attended Roe Head when Emily left, but herself left in 1837 following an illness and was briefly a governess. At one point, the three sisters all ended up back at Haworth, a situation that they did not object to. In Branwell's case, he wrote to Wordsworth but was ignored. He later wrote to Coleridge, who did respond and liked the samples of his writing that he had sent. They met. Charlotte also corresponded with Coleridge successfully. 

One of the most interesting aspects of the Brontë family was the way that the children collaborated on writing projects. Branwell and Charlotte wrote about the imaginary world of Angria and Emily and Anne wrote about the imaginary world of Gondal. Branwell liked to think of himself as a heroic, Byronic figure, and Charlotte initially went along with him. Gondal was a less violent and more fantastical world, which Emily and Anne preferred. Eventually Charlotte distanced herself from Branwell's style. The four of them preferred being at home to teaching or working as governesses. The household was like an MFA program for teenagers, with courses in heroic fiction and Gothic fiction. I have noticed that children with a particular talent can become extremely proficient if they are able to pursue it in an unfettered manner.  Over time, it seems that Charlotte and Anne moved closer to realist fiction with elements of social criticism. I've only read Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights, so my perspective is somewhat limited. While there does not seem to be any clear evidence, it seems likely that Charlotte read A Vindication of the Rights of Women, by Mary Wollstonecraft, and though her novel contains some of the whimsical elements of Angria, it can also be read as the comeuppance of a male chauvinist pig, Edward Rochester. Of the four surviving Brontë children, Charlotte had the most exposure to the outside world and was probably more attuned to the inequities of society. Some of this had to do with wealth. She was acutely aware that her friend, Ellen Nussey, came from a wealthier family and didn't have to work: she was happily traveling about while Charlotte was toiling away in unpleasant jobs. Then it would have been impossible for Charlotte not to notice that Branwell received preferential treatment from their father: she had to work in order to pay for his training as a painter.

Branwell did become a portraitist in Bradford, but judging from the portraits I've seen, they weren't very good, and he soon gave up due to insufficient income. Anne became a governess, and soon after Charlotte became one. Charlotte did eventually have a vacation with Ellen Nussey, during which they traveled to Bridlington, and she saw the North Sea for the first time. Branwell got a job as a tutor in the Lake District, a suitable location for a Romantic poet. However, he was dismissed in a few months, and it is thought that he had impregnated a girl and caused a scandal.

As in most of the biographies that I read, Barker is maintaining a psychologically and sociologically neutral description of the Brontë family. That may be appropriate in this case, because she is consciously attempting to remove the misunderstandings attributed to Mrs. Gaskell. So far, Patrick Brontë does seem like a conscientious and respectable father and citizen, though, consistent with his generation, he had traditional patriarchal ideas. However, when I compare him to my British ancestors, it seems possible that his judgment may not have been optimal. At the beginning of the nineteenth century in Britain, people were streaming away from farming and rural areas and moving to cities. My ancestors from Scotland, Yorkshire, Oxfordshire, Warwickshire, Wiltshire and Hampshire all moved to London. They didn't go to college and learned trades instead. Some were tailors, some were furriers and one was a builder. To me, Patrick Brontë's decision to pursue a low-paying job in a rural area seems out of step with the time, though perhaps it can be justified by his lack of knowledge, having grown up in Ireland. There is also the possibility that Brontë's decision-making process was faith-based, but so far in this book Barker has not explored that angle, and she is being steadfastly neutral on the behavior of the Brontës.

Diary

I've been enjoying The Brontës and will read it intermittently until I finish it. At the moment, biographies are my favorite reading, with a few scientific books added to the mix. In the real world, I've found that people don't generally have detailed discussions about other people. This is partly because that can be construed as gossiping, and I also think that in real time there is a noumenal quality to living people, because there may be many unknown elements while they are still alive. That is why I prefer biographies about people who have been dead for one hundred years or more. There are several advantages to this:

1. If anyone thinks about them after one hundred years, they are more likely to be significant.

2. The longer timespan allows more information to accrue.

3. There is a better chance that a future biographer will write a more competent description of a person than a current journalist.

4. Despite some of the advantages that we have living now rather than in the past, there were aspects of earlier lives that, to me, were qualitatively superior to modern life.

Regarding the modern world, practically anyone could provide a list of unpleasant situations that exist now and were not as evident earlier. I tend to break these down into two categories. One is biological. Especially now, many people are living in transient situations where they and their families have moved many times in recent years, which may cause them to live in heterogeneous towns and cities that are constantly undergoing cultural erosion. The existence of a place no longer implies that its residents have a unified culture. Then there are the effects of social media, which I think has mainly been a commercial operation that has been specifically designed to extract money from unsuspecting participants. In general, people are now thoughtlessly supporting organizations that mislead them about the usefulness of their products and may be causing them to go into cognitive decline without knowing it. The other main category for me pertains more to aesthetic conditions. Though there can always be exceptions, it is clear to me that the music, film, fiction and paintings produced now are of considerably lower quality than what was produced in the past. So, to me, while people may not have lived as long in the old days, they may still have had qualitatively better lives than many have now.

As far as my activities are concerned, I'm still living my simplified rural life. The eastern phoebe eggs above the front porch have hatched and the mother has been frantically feeding them insects. It looks as if there are three chicks. They are now very large and should leave the nest soon. There will probably be a second clutch later in the summer. After I planted my tomatoes, there were several cold days when the temperature fell to the low forties. Since tomatoes require at least 50º, I covered them with a tarp at night and put in an old 200W incandescent bulb that gets very hot. It kept the temperature above 50º. The plants are doing very well. I usually planted them later in the past. Since squirrels had been chewing on the top step to the front porch, I tried turning it over. Then they immediately started chewing that side. So, yesterday I bought a new step and installed it. One of the things I like about living here is the small-town atmosphere. The lumber yard also includes an Ace Hardware and a UPS pickup. Since I've been there several times, I know the owner. She is very friendly, in a way that city people aren't. When I arrived there, I was the only customer, and she was the only other person in the store. I went to the lumber yard first, and there were two men working. They had what I wanted and cut it in half. I now have an extra five-foot stair in case I need it later.

I'm getting really tired of the news and would rather not discuss it. On a positive note, Trump seems to be well into the bottom half of his death spiral. I would have preferred a nice, quick flush.