Josie and the Pussycats (2001): A Structural Analysis

 This month, the Criterion Channel streamed 2001’s Josie and the Pussycats movie—thereby granting me intellectual permission for the first time to watch a film that I would not have been caught dead near at the time it ran in theaters (I being an 11-year-old boy at the time). It is now one of the most popular films streaming on the Criterion site, and it’s easy to see why: not only is the movie entertaining, it also has all the fascination and populist appeal that comes from being a film (much like 1999’s cult classic Drop Dead Gorgeous) that the critics completely misunderstood at the time it appeared, and which only began to receive its due thanks to DVD purchases and its die-hard contingent of fans finding each other on the internet. 

When it ran in theaters the first time around, after all, the film was a box-office flop: its satirical message proving ill-tailored to the target audience of its marketing. It also suffered the fate of so many films that draw from beloved pop cultural material of the past. People, to the extent that they were aware of “Josie and the Pussycats” at all, knew them as stars of the Hanna-Barbera cartoon, or as side characters from the Archie comics—two sources of entertainment we recall with affection from childhood, but which seem cringe-inducingly naïve and unselfconscious in retrospect, like most pop culture from that era. Critics therefore assumed the Josie movie would have the same tone. 

Ultimate Indignities

 Of all the unsettling stories to emerge from our generative AI moment, perhaps the creepiest is the fact that people are now trying to create avatars of their deceased friends and relatives, using the new technology. The idea is that the algorithms can train on a library of video, text, and audio recordings of a person's various words and deeds (a trove of data that each of us now generates in the course of a lifetime, if we are at all plugged into technology—or members of our family are), then it can use this information to generate a plausible simulacrum that moves and sounds "like" the person who is gone, but can also respond to new prompts and stimuli, giving the illusion that you are really speaking with a lost loved one.  

What spooks me about this idea is not so much the idea of a person—or a digital avatar of a person—communicating with us "from beyond the grave." Rather, I am bothered on behalf of the deceased. I don't want anybody prolonging my existence—or a simulacrum of it—without my consent. I do not in any way share this longing for digital immortality that many of our tech overlords and silicon valley bros seem to have; indeed, it seems to me a prospect fraught with an especially vertiginous sort of existential horror. Who wants to live forever as bits—a set of ones and zeroes? 

Symbolism

 Throughout my life, I have at great intervals experienced an odd sensation. A confluence of circumstances will suddenly remind me of something. I will feel that whatever just occurred has a great yet inexplicable meaning. It's tempting to describe this feeling as a type of déjà vu, if only to help me find the words to describe it, but it's not exactly as if I feel—in these moments—that I have experienced the same thing before. Rather, it's as if whatever just occurred reminded me of a particularly important idea. Yet, in contrast to the familiar and more common type of realization, the importance of the ideas disclosed in these moments remains wholly incommunicable. And, more noteworthy still, I invariably forget them a few minutes later, and can never retrieve them again (I cannot even now, in writing this, think of a single specific example of the phenomenon in question—it is part of its nature to elude recollection). 

I've been tempted at various times by the thought that I should carry a small notebook in my pocket everywhere I go, so that whenever these moments of mysterious recollections occur to me, I could jot down something about their content—to catch them in the wild, as it were. Yet, I can never bring myself to put this scheme into practice. What stops me from implementing it—apart from its obvious impracticality and inconvenience—is the fear that if I ever started jotting these sensations down when they occurred, somehow it would make the visitations stop. I am sure that if I wrote these sudden "ideas" on paper, they would appear as meaningless to me the next day (or even the next hour) as most dreams usually are a half-hour after waking. And worse, I'm convinced that it would somehow kill my capacity to receive these transmissions. Like the old stand-by canard of the charlatan medium—I worry that the spirits would go quiet if I ever tried to record their speech. 

The Secret History

 There is something in Trump's character that invites a certain two-facedness on the part of his allies. After all, he demands of his various camp followers and toadies that they display constant uncritical devotion. No matter how terrible his behavior, the slightest sign of opposition from his various lackeys can transform one in an instant from trusted minion to arch-nemesis. Even Bill Barr, who did his best for years to enable Trump's excesses, nevertheless ended up on Trump's enemies list, purely because he refused to invent bogus reasons to overturn the 2020 election results, or to say that there was evidence of widespread voter fraud when there wasn't any. 

This constant need to cringe and bow before Trump, no matter the moral toll he exacts, surely wears people down over time. Whatever dignity remains inside them therefore starts to kick against the humiliation. People try to salvage their inner self-respect by rebelling, if only inwardly and silently. Thus, many of the same people who have appeared in public to be Trump's closest political allies, have also expressed to friends in private that they utterly loathe the man. 

An Impossible Dilemma

 I do not envy the many judges, juries, and prosecutors around the country now tasked with addressing Trump's various misdeeds. For the real tragedy of Trump's bad behavior—his repeated efforts to destabilize American democracy—is that there is practically no way to address it that is not itself destabilizing to our political institutions. Give him an amnesty, for the sake of peace, and you have established a precedent of impunity for attempts to overturn a democratic election. Prosecute him to the fullest extent of the law, and you set the stage for a never-ending tit-for-tat that brings our political process to a new low of partisan viciousness. 

The decision last night from the Colorado Supreme Court is a case in point. I honestly don't know how the judges should have ruled; I only know that they had no good options. Ultimately, a majority of the panel concluded that Trump was in fact barred from seeking office again, under the 14th Amendment's prohibition on the reelection of people complicit in an insurrection. The three dissenting judges, however, raised a good point—Trump has not actually been convicted of abetting an insurrection. He was acquitted in the Senate (however ludicrous and partisan most of us found that vote), and the current prosecution of him for defrauding the people of the United States has not yet secured a conviction. 

Bright Young Things

 Trump has made headlines yet again in recent days for his increasingly unhinged comments. Even as he has maintained his seemingly irresistible climb in the polls, he has meanwhile captured attention not for any campaign promises or conventional politicking, but for another round of bombastically fascistic remarks—many of which have pushed the moral envelope even by his abysmal standards. In recent weeks and months he has: once again described immigrants as "poisoning the blood" of the United States; heaped more praise on authoritarian strongmen from Xi to Putin to Kim Jong Un; endorsed, Duterte-like, the extrajudicial killing of accused shoplifters; and promised to be a dictator on "day one" of his presidency (though supposedly not thereafter) and pointedly declined to rule out abusing his presidential powers to persecute his critics. 

What I want to focus on today, however, is not so much what Trump said, but whom he said it to; for I think it sheds light on a side of the Trump movement that often goes unexamined. To be sure, many of the recent comments were delivered in the usual round of campaign rallies in early-primary states, soft ball interviews with sycophantic right-wing pseudo-journalists, etc. This part of the Trump phenomenon everyone knows: it is often said that he appeals to rural, less-educated whites alarmed at the pace of social change. To see him making a pitch to voters in a rust belt state, therefore, or yammering away on a right-wing call-in show, fits the clichéd image of how he reaches his base. 

Bacon and the Bush Doctrine

 Francis Bacon's Essays are sometimes seen as a founding text for the ideology of the British Empire, and the reputation is warranted; but it is not limited to such. Really, this book could function as a how-to manual for any aspiring imperial power. 

Bacon's ethic in the Essays is fundamentally one of realpolitik. It is ironic in this regard (and perhaps telling, in a "methinks he protests too much" sort of way) that he disavows the works of Machiavelli, and characterizes the great Italian thinker as an infidel; for in truth, Bacon is writing very much in the same spirit. This makes the Essays a timeless classic of political thought, though not always a wholesome one. 

Establishments

 In one of his various self-flattering fulminations about the evils of European institutions and the glory of American ones, Mark Twain declares (in the Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court) that the crucial difference between the two is that the former have an established church, and the latter does not. In Twain's telling, that is to say, the greatest bulwark of American freedom is our lack of an institutionalized state-sponsored religion; and the worse tyranny of continental monarchies descends from the fact that they do have one. 

Thus, he prophesied, our liberty of thought and expression "would last" only "until [the country] had an Established Church." For, he adds elsewhere, "an Established Church is an established crime." He goes on to advocate for splitting up religion "into forty-three sects," on the theory that, in that way, "they can police each other," and no one religious body will ever become too powerful. 

Just for a Handful of Silver

 One of the most fascinating aspects of the Trump era is how it has managed to bring once-submerged aspects of people's characters (both suppressed villainy and unexpected heroism) to the fore. In ordinary times, after all, many of the significant moral differences between people—their real as opposed to merely hypothetical courage and integrity—remains hidden. This is because, in ordinary times, simply going along with the collective opinion of one's party, caste, or society exacts no special moral cost. One is imperfect, but only in a normal sort of way, and no more so than everyone else. 

The thing about Trump, though, and other would-be gangsters and tyrants, is that they make a point of exacting special moral tributes from anyone who goes along with them. They make sure that, if you are going to join their team, you must do so at the cost of violating your moral self. It is a crude mechanism for maintaining group loyalty that is well known to the leaders of criminal organizations. You make sure people have really debased and compromised themselves in order to join your clique; that way, they can never turn on you, because they have shed their ties to the mainstream moral community. 

The Wonder

 Whenever I find myself wondering all over again why people so readily embrace fascism, as soon as it is served up to them, I only have to reflect for a moment before I recall that the major religions—at least in their most literal and least intellectualized forms—mostly still preach a species of cosmic fascism. 

The God of the orthodox theologies is a kind of secret policeman, who spends his days in his heavenly kingdom sniffing out hints of heresy or dissent. Those who have the temerity to question his diktats and ukases, he banishes to an eternity in his fiery gulag beneath the crust. He is a dictator, but infinitely more vindictive than any earthly one, because his sentences are for all time, and irrevocable, whereas a merely planetary autocrat can kill only the body, not the soul. The God of Orthodoxy is a super-Stalin, an ultra-Chiang Kai-shek; worse than these mortal butchers because he burns people into ash not once, but eternally. 

First the Heartland, Then the World

 With Senate Republicans voting down the Ukraine aid package last week, supposedly because they were outraged that it did not include unrelated and brutally cold-hearted provisions eviscerating the U.S. asylum system, we are drawing ever closer to a nightmare scenario in which MAGA politicians effectively throw the victory in Eastern Europe to Putin. And since Trump is already hinting he might pull the U.S. out of NATO, or otherwise refuse to honor our treaty commitments to our European allies under this instrument, then it seems we are likewise ever closer to enabling Vladimir Putin to simply march across Europe, in an effort to establish a world-spanning union of the far-right fascist republics. A UFFR to replace the USSR whose passing Putin mourns.

I have to confess that this was not the scenario I spent most of the last year-and-a-half preparing for. Back when Putin first invaded, I did warn that "America First" isolationist types would effectively take the Russian autocrat's side. At that point in history, though, it was much less clear that the MAGA contingent would still ultimately be so ascendant in the Republican Party. I was more worried, at that point, that the typical belligerence of U.S. foreign policy might hurl so many weapons into the conflict that it prolonged the fighting beyond the point at which a negotiated peace was possible. 

"Fire and Strength"

 The discourse around the Israel-Palestine conflict has become so utterly toxic in this country that it feels far more dangerous now than it did just a few months ago to speak the simplest of truths about it: just to remind people publicly, for instance, that there are human beings and families on both sides of the conflict who are just trying to survive, all of whom have a legitimate right to stay in their present homes without facing persecution and displacement. 

On the one side, we've seen the revival of a particularly virulent extremist branch of the revolutionary Left, which is endorsing Hamas's violence. This is a segment of the Left that had been dormant for several decades, and which many of us might have thought would never emerge again. For all the complaints about the alleged self-righteousness and knee-jerk radicalism of the progressive left during the period now known as the "Great Awokening," after all, few members of social justice movements during that era ever explicitly endorsed violence and terrorism as a means to their favored ends. That all changed, however, precisely in response to one of the worst acts of terrorism committed in modern history. After October 7, the Baader-Meinhof version of the extreme left was suddenly rearing its head again. Apparently, they beheld what Hamas committed on that day, and thought it was good.

The Long List

 Well, last night's GOP primary debate was another chilling display of the galloping extremism that has engulfed the Republican Party, and once again the news media seems to have missed the main storyline of what actually happened on stage. Much of the attention went to Christie and Haley, who did indeed deliver the best performances by the rules of traditional politics. But clearly, once again, the real protagonist on stage was Vivek Ramaswamy. I say this not because Ramaswamy has a prayer of winning the nomination—he does not; nor is he even trying (he is clearly auditioning instead for the role of Trump lapdog). But he is the one who best represents the views of the absent Trump, as well as the direction in which the overall MAGA movement is plainly headed. 

Two of the most significant moments of the debate both proceeded from Ramaswamy's mouth. Neither has received the attention it is due. The first came when Ramaswamy sought to reverse the GOP's longstanding support of Israel. Many observers seem not to have picked up on this at all. Ramaswamy chooses his words carefully enough on this topic, it would appear, that the significance of it has largely escaped notice. He talks about David Ben-Gurion and says that his position is that of the "true" supporter of Israel, because he is trying to encourage Israeli "self-reliance," so people don't bat an eye. But what he is actually saying is that the U.S. needs to withdraw all financial support of Israel. This is sure to win him the support of disaffected alt-left types online, or even worse segments of opinion (more on that below), but it has little to do with traditional Republican politics. 

The Bends

 A friend called me up yesterday afternoon to tell me he was working on his letter of resignation from work. I warned him to watch out for "the bends." "The Mercedes-Benz?" he asked. "No," I repeated, "the bends." I explained that minutes before he called, I had just finished reading Charles Bukowski's 1971 novel, Post Office, and that this book ends, appropriately enough, with its author submitting a letter of resignation to the post office. It is here Bukowski introduces the concept of "the bends."

"The bends" are what Bukowski calls the blues that follow the withdrawal of any employment, no matter how hated. Even as he loathed the U.S. postal service, after all, and describes his twelve years there as a purgatory, Bukowski (thinly disguised as Henry Chinaski in the novel) nevertheless slips into a depressive funk as soon as he leaves. He compares this feeling to the bends, because it is as if he had just emerged from the deep ocean, and his body has trouble adjusting to the change in pressure.