| | Laj wrote:
"That website also cites Ayn Rand's Virtue of Selfishness in its pantheon of nihilist classics. Need I say more?" Mistaking Ayn Rand's ethics for a form of nihilism appears to be a common mistake. (See this wikipedia entry on the subject, which mentions Atlas Shrugged.) I'm not too familiar with the links that nihilists allege between their ideas and Rand, but I would hypothesize that they're a result of Rand's advocacy of atheism and selfishness, which at a suface-level glance can appear Nietzschean in nature.
At any rate, I do not believe the author of that website is unfamiliar or mistaken as to the fundamentals of nihilism itself. Therefore, his inclusion of Wells's TWOTW is inductive evidence that that novel has nihilist themes. Now, if you think that his inclusion of TWOTW is also mistaken, I'm all ears as to why. (Of course, not having read the novel, I'm at a loss to press this part of the discussion too much further. However if it is true, as Glenn writes, that everyone just "sits in a church waiting to die," the case might be hard to construct.)
With regard to your post 52 Laj, I think you raise some interesting questions. I hope, once you have seen the movie, that we'll be able to hash them out a bit further.
However, you also write, "Remember the rule of thumb: for many Objectivists,snide comments at dissenters are morally justified because of the dissenter's inherent immorality. However, snide comments from dissenters are signs of evil and irrationality." I am wondering, who specifically are you accusing here, and in what posts did they do this? I don't deny making many snide comments about Daniel, but they only appear after Post 9, where he himself threw down the glove.
Bill, I really enjoyed reading your posts about Bollywood movies. I would like to borrow (and maybe watch?) a few of your favorites at TOC. And feel free to keep talking about it on this thread... Let a thousand lotuses bloom! 8 )
Glenn asks, "Do you know what nihilist is?" I'd say, broadly speaking, it is the belief that existence is without importance or value, or that it is futile. I've already stated my reasons for believing that the movie is nihilistic despite the occasional presence of humans struggling for survival or displaying a wish to stay alive, even with the happy ending in mind. You offer a few other moments from the movie, but I think they're all soured in some way:
*SPOILERS*
"The ending of the movie with the whole family surviving and meeting at grandma's house." I've explained that I think this is a shallow and saccharine moment, a critique that has also been made by many other movie commentators.
"When Cruise helps the woman and her daughter try to get on the boat."
"The son helps the people get on the boat."
A boat which is doomed from the very beginning. Even before they had set off from the dock I remarked to my friend, Aren't there just going to be some other aliens to come along and get that boat?
"When the people in the cages work together to pull Cruise out of the ship."
This, along with the army bazooka team, is part of the happy ending that, for reasons I've outlined, is a jarring appendix to the rest of the movie.
"The son 'joins' the army to fight the aliens."
An army that is summarily defeated at every turn. We have every reason to believe Robbie has needlessly died in a massive fireball, until he miraculously reappears in the very last moments of the film.
"The couple who thinks Dakoto is abandoned and try to save her."
And nearly separate her from her father, as she desperately begs the couple to just turn their heads around and *look.* Was I the only one who thought Dakota should have given that lady a punch in the jaw?
"Robbins saving them by getting them in the cellar."
Robbins then turns out to be an incoherent rambler who almost gets them killed several times, might (the movie seems to hint) be a pedophile, and eventually necessitates this scene:
"Cruise killing Robbins to stop him from killing them all.(see below)"
This last scene has been mentioned several times now, but I did not find it life-affirming at all. In fact, it made me grimace. Strictly speaking, yes, Ray makes the right decision. But in the process, a man loses his life and Ray's daughter is forced to witness her dad kill a man (it is clear she knows what is going on, blindfold and singing notwithstanding). This is the sort of "lifeboat ethics" decision Rand criticizes quite well in VOS. It can best be described as "tragically necessary," and certainly not "life-affirming" or "the sort of thing Objectivists want to see."
To return to the question of whether the movie as a whole can be fairly called nihilistic, I think it is instructive that I'm not the only one who thought the ending was tacked-on. In fact, during our post-movie discussion, I was about to make the comment, "It would have made more sense for the aliens to win," when my friend said the exact same thing, and my other friends agreed. Can we at least agree that, had that been the ending, it *would* have been nihilistic. If so, I say that it is nihilistic anyway, because the last 15 or 20 minutes are, as I said, an afterthought.
Laj writes, "If I was to take the kind of approach that some people on this thread have taken towards art, I think that I would dismiss out of hand the opinions of anyone who claimed to be an expert on art and didn't think highly of Beethoven and Shakespeare because of a "malevolent sense of life" and "determinism"." Who, specifically, do you believe has taken this approach?
I think you raise some very interesting points in Post 68. For instance, I had heard about the relationship to colonialism after reading the Wiki entry on Wells's TWOTW. I actually thought the idea (assuming it's really where Wells was coming from) was rather clever. Satire at its best is often biting and even pessimistic. But I do not think that this movie can be paid the same compliments or was made in the same spirit.
"I guess it's easier to just label the movie nihilism, shut off all intellectual discussion, and then dehumanize everyone that disagrees."
"The problem is that some people prefer that passionate debate be their exclusive right, a right that they deny their opponents using all kinds of rationalizations, including the purported inherent irrationality of the opponents, as justification."
Again I ask, who specifically are you referring to here?
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