Actually it doesn't promote splitting up families at all -- It's much more a tragedy for all parties involved, including the central gay characters and their wives.
I think this movie is getting unfairly prejudged *purely* for the sake that it's about gay people. I've read the short story since the author has written other very good literature, and it's actually quite revealing as to the real experiences of some homosexuals. I honestly recommend you read it before you bash gays for the sake of being jerks to them.
I for once would like to see WAAAY more actual compassion and understanding for gay people. I'm ashamed how many of you claim to Christians and are so quick to insult without rational thoughts -- in this case, insulting gays, this story, and the film. If the film is true to the short story, and I've read that it is, then it is very much NOT some simplistic promotion of homosexuality. It explains the complete tragedy of being gay in an environment with no understanding of being gay (much like freerepublic, unfortunately.)
What about the complete tragedy of marriages being broken up and children abandoned by fathers?
What about the tragedy of trusting, loving women being lied to, cheated on and betrayed by their husbands?
That's Michael Medved's whole point.
As I read the synopsis of this movie in moviespoiler, it is a story about two lovers who have a brief passionate affair in their youth. They go their separate ways, marry and have children. Then they find each other again. Fanning the flames anew, they engage in an extramarital affair lasting years. One divorces because of the affair. The other is killed while seeking more extramarital sex while the lover is absent. The movie makes the lovers the sympathetic characters while soft-pedaling the tragedy of the broken families and fatherless children.
Sorry, I don't find that to be an uplifting movie, but then I also refused to see Titanic and Bridges of Madison County for the same reason I will not see this movie: it glorifies immorality. And the gay aspect of this movie is only a small part of what makes it so wrong in my book. And I couldn't care less about technical perfection, emotional satisfaction or Academy-grade acting.
This message of this movie is not the tragedy of a society which doesn't understand and accept homosexuals but of homosexuals not understanding and honoring fidelity and covenants.
Why do you have to generalize about people who don't care for the subject matter of the film? You sound like a liberal in that anyone who doesn't agree with you is intolerant and therefore bad.
Michael Medved says that the film is about families that are torn apart.
He asked a homosexual caller if he would support a 42 year old man with kids who left his wife for a 22 year old woman.
Same issue of "being with who makes you happy".
Nothing but a selfish act.
La la la la live for today.
"I for once would like to see WAAAY more actual compassion and understanding for gay people. I'm ashamed how many of you claim to Christians and are so quick to insult without rational thoughts -- in this case, insulting gays, this story, and the film. If the film is true to the short story, and I've read that it is, then it is very much NOT some simplistic promotion of homosexuality. It explains the complete tragedy of being gay in an environment with no understanding of being gay (much like freerepublic, unfortunately.)"
As much as the idea of 2 guys creeps me out, I have to agree with some of your posts. I might get flamed for this, but I do believe most gay people are just "born that way" as they claim. (some, maybe not) Part of me believes that because what guy would CHOOSE to be attracted to another man's hairy a**? (excuse my graphic description)
I am offended by alot of the pro-homosexual agenda being pushed by modern media, but at the same time I really don't care what people choose to do with their private lives, or if they want to go see some gay ass cowboy movie. There is alot of hate towards homosexual people that seethes here on FR. I guess I disagree with that, because, well.. I just don't care what gay people do, as I don't care about things that don't affect me. If people want to be gay, that doesn't really bother me. If they wanna see this faggety movie, that doesn't bother me either.
Lighten up, folks. It's just some homo cowboys. We have alot bigger problems in the world.
I just WIIIISH I could help you.
It certainly is not “tragedy” in the classical sense of literature at all...
The origins of drama come from the esoteric ideals directly related to religion. Religious ritual is psychodrama designed to conjure up images in the mind of the viewers and/or participants. This is illustrated no better than by the Greek traditions of using masks in their plays. The actor can hide himself behind the illusion of a character’s mask, the audience can focus not on the actor, but on the image of the character represented - - one form of idolatry, among others in pagan Greek polytheism.
Essential to tragedy in drama are mythical elements giving the reader or viewer an esoteric reference to the mechanics of a story. This dramatic device is effective, because regardless of the cultural background of the audience, the observer can reference the action of the characters, the plot and dialogue to personal experiences common in themes of religion and/or mythology. Mysteries surrounding human existence are a key to drawing interest from a contemplative mind and have been used to influence social interaction as well as to entertain.
Often, tragedy and other forms of drama use death, marriage, childbirth, ghosts, dreams, sorcery and religion because they are common experiences in the mysteries of human life. Birth, gender, and death are things that are universal to every human life - - they are inescapable.
Many elements found in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman show these various themes. It can be compared to other tragedies in literature and theater. There is dispute among critics as to whether this is really tragedy or not.
Death of a Salesman has some political elements to it. Is it Miller’s intention to give a Marxist view of American society - - the "victim" mentality of life not being fair, establishing a political necessity to artificially create social institutions that limit the individual freedom to choose your own destiny? Or was Miller’s intention just the opposite? Is Willy Loman a victim of an unfair world or the result of his own failings? Is Uncle Ben the evil capitalist, a devil, an angel or what Willy always wanted to be but lacked the courage to strive for? Many artists, playwrights and authors use their works to promote their political or religious ideology. Is Miller any different?
It can be shown that most art, music and literature (sacred or secular) have an intent to influence rather than just to entertain. Considering the personal views of the artist and conditions of the period of history they live in are factors in what they produce. Does life imitate art or is art just a reflection of human experience?
The elements of myth are always esoteric. The secular drama is a myth in and of itself, it is fiction. Myth is metaphorical, the use of such fiction is for escape from reality. Fiction conjures up phantasms, ghosts of the mind that are representative of an ideal or distasteful reality the author wants the audience to ponder and possibly come to a desired conclusion about.
Often the popular performers, athletes, television and movie actors, so used to being someone else living in a world of total fantasy, do not really know who they are anymore. Many have delusions of grandeur and insert themselves into political, social and scientific issues of which they have no expertise or experience. Some display psychotic public behavior, or are advocates of them. Think of how many end up on trial for all kinds of criminal offenses. Professional athletes, recording artists, and the screen actors always caught up in perpetual maelstroms of scandal. Coincidence?
Willy Loman’s fantasy world of delusion is the character’s attempt to escape from reality. Willy Loman is a phantasm for the observer as are the other characters in the play.
This idea is supported by Thomas Hobbes in Leviathan:
Part IV. Of the Kingdom of Darkness
Chap. xlv. Of Demonology and other Relics of the Religion of the Gentiles.[10] Another relic of Gentilism is the worship of images, neither instituted by Moses in the Old, nor by Christ in the New Testament; nor yet brought in from the Gentiles; but left amongst them, after they had given their names to Christ. Before our Saviour preached, it was the general religion of the Gentiles to worship for gods those appearances that remain in the brain from the impression of external bodies upon the organs of their senses, which are commonly called ideas, idols, phantasms, conceits, as being representations of those external bodies which cause them, and have nothing in them of reality, no more than there is in the things that seem to stand before us in a dream. And this is the reason why St. Paul says, "We know that an idol is nothing": not that he thought that an image of metal, stone, or wood was nothing; but that the thing which they honored or feared in the image, and held for a god, was a mere figment, without place, habitation, motion, or existence, but in the motions of the brain. And the worship of these with divine honour is that which is in the Scripture called idolatry, and rebellion against God. For God being King of the Jews, and His lieutenant being first Moses, and afterward the high priest, if the people had been permitted to worship and pray to images (which are representations of their own fancies), they had had no further dependence on the true God, of whom there can be no similitude; nor on His prime ministers, Moses and the high priests; but every man had governed himself according to his own appetite, to the utter eversion of the Commonwealth, and their own destruction for want of union. And therefore the first law of God was: they should not take for gods, alienos deos, that is, the gods of other nations, but that only true God, who vouchsafed to commune with Moses, and by him to give them laws and directions for their peace, and for their salvation from their enemies. And the second was that they should not make to themselves any image to worship, of their own invention. For it is the same deposing of a king to submit to another king, whether he be set up by a neighbour nation or by ourselves.
[14] An image, in the most strict signification of the word, is the resemblance of something visible: in which sense the fantastical forms, apparitions, or seemings of visible bodies to the sight, are only images; such as are the show of a man or other thing in the water, by reflection or refraction; or of the sun or stars by direct vision in the air; which are nothing real in the things seen, nor in the place where they seem to be; nor are their magnitudes and figures the same with that of the object, but changeable, by the variation of the organs of sight, or by glasses; and are present oftentimes in our imagination, and in our dreams, when the object is absent; or changed into other colours, and shapes, as things that depend only upon the fancy. And these are the images which are originally and most properly called ideas and idols, and derived from the language of the Grecians, with whom the word eido signifieth to see. They are also called phantasms, which is in the same language, apparitions. And from these images it is that one of the faculties of man's nature is called the imagination. And from hence it is manifest that there neither is, nor can be, any image made of a thing invisible.
[15] It is also evident that there can be no image of a thing infinite: for all the images and phantasms that are made by the impression of things visible are figured. But figure is quantity every way determined, and therefore there can be no image of God, nor of the soul of man, nor of spirits; but only of bodies visible, that is, bodies that have light in themselves, or are by such enlightened.
[16] And whereas a man can fancy shapes he never saw, making up a figure out of the parts of divers creatures, as the poets make their centaurs, chimeras and other monsters never seen, so can he also give matter to those shapes, and make them in wood, clay or metal. And these are also called images, not for the resemblance of any corporeal thing, but for the resemblance of some phantastical inhabitants of the brain of the maker. But in these idols, as they are originally in the brain, and as they are painted, carved moulded or molten in matter, there is a similitude of one to the other, for which the material body made by art may be said to be the image of the fantastical idol made by nature. (Hobbes, p 444)
In Hobbes’ sense of fiction, myth is always esoteric regardless of aesthetic intent. Arthur Miller’s writing of this play seemed to be very careful in avoiding any overt reference to the esoteric. However, these elements do materialize much the same way as in Othello.
In the other tragedies written by Shakespeare, there is witchcraft, sorcery and ghosts. In Othello these are conspicuously absent. The magic is in Iago being an archetype of an esoteric devil or Satan. Is Uncle Ben like the ghost of Hamlet's father?
Arthur Miller’s writing is not immune from this use of such imagery although he goes to great lengths to deny it in Tragedy and the Common Man:
Now, if it is true that tragedy is the consequence of a man’s total compulsion to evaluate himself justly, his destruction in the attempt posits a wrong or an evil in his environment. And this is precisely the morality of tragedy and its lesson. The discovery of the moral law, which is what the enlightenment of tragedy consists of, is not the discovery of some abstract or metaphysical quantity.The "morality of tragedy" is a curious term. ‘Morals’ or ‘morality’ are nothing more than a replacement for the ‘avoidance of sin.’ An atheist telling someone they are immoral is no different than a preacher or rabbi telling them they are a sinner. The idea of a "moral law" implies a "metaphysical quantity" in this sense. The denial of a "metaphysical quantity" in the above by Miller is also contradicted by himself later in the same essay:
The Greeks could probe the very heavenly origin of their ways and return to confirm the rightness of laws. And Job could face God in anger, demanding his right, and end in submission. But for a moment everything is in suspension, nothing is accepted, and in this stretching and tearing apart of the cosmos, in the very action of so doing, the character gains "size," the tragic stature which is spuriously attached to the royal or high born in our minds. The commonest of men may take on that stature to the extent of his willingness to throw all he has into the contest, the battle to secure his rightful place in the world.
The mention of the Biblical figure Job and the book of Job is an interesting thing to contemplate in reference to the role of the Enemy (or Satan), the Accuser (or Diabolus), the Destroyer (or Abaddon) in the book of Job. Many Judaic Biblical scholars will say that Satan does not exist at all as a single entity or angelic being. Malakhim Raoth. Perhaps because either phantasms are no things corporeal and therefore their collective embodiment in their prince cannot be also, or there is a pagan conflict within Judaism itself, a confederacy of insurgent deceivers.
The philosopher Thomas Hobbes, having been fluent in both Greek and Latin at a very early age, supports this in Leviathan and, in part, some of the previous claims I made concerning the conflict of pagan Egyptian cosmogony and the Judaic related to Othello:
Part III. Of a Christian Commonwealth.
Chap. xxxviii. Of Eternal Life, Hell, Salvation, and Redemption.[12] And first, for the tormentors, we have their nature and properties exactly and properly delivered by the names of the Enemy (or Satan), the Accuser (or Diabolus), the Destroyer (or Abaddon). Which significant names (Satan, Devil, Abaddon) set not forth to us any individual person, as proper names do, but only an office or quality, and are therefore appellatives, which ought not to have been left untranslated (as they are in the Latin and modern Bibles), because thereby they seem to be the proper names of demons, and men are the more easily seduced to believe the doctrine of devils, which at that time was the religion of the Gentiles, and contrary to that of Moses, and of Christ.
[13] And because by the Enemy, the Accuser, and Destroyer, is meant the enemy of them that shall be in the kingdom of God, therefore if the kingdom of God after the resurrection be upon the earth (as in the former Chapter I have shewn by Scripture it seems to be), the Enemy and his kingdom must be on earth also. For so also was it in the time before the Jews had deposed God. For God's kingdom was in Israel, and the nations round about were the kingdoms of the Enemy; and consequently, by Satan is meant any earthly enemy of the Church. (Hobbes p 308)
Part IV. Of the Kingdom of Darkness
Chap. xlvii. Of the Benefit that proceedeth from such Darkness[1] Besides these sovereign powers, divine and human, of which I have hitherto discoursed, there is mention in Scripture of another power, namely, that of "the rulers of the darkness of this world," [Ephesians, 6. 12] "the kingdom of Satan," [Matthew, 12. 26] and "the principality of Beelzebub over demons," [Ibid., 9. 34] that is to say, over phantasms that appear in the air: for which cause Satan is also called "the prince of the power of the air"; [Ephesians, 2. 2] and, because he ruleth in the darkness of this world, "the prince of this world" [John, 16. 11] and in consequence hereunto, they who are under his dominion, in opposition to the faithful, who are the "children of the light," are called the "children of darkness." For seeing Beelzebub is prince of phantasms, inhabitants of his dominion of air and darkness, the children of darkness, and these demons, phantasms, or spirits of illusion, signify allegorically the same thing. This considered, the kingdom of darkness, as it is set forth in these and other places of the Scripture, is nothing else but a confederacy of deceivers that, to obtain dominion over men in this present world, endeavour, by dark and erroneous doctrines, to extinguish in them the light, both of nature and of the gospel; and so to disprepare them for the kingdom of God to come. (Hobbes p 411)
The fact that Miller is Jewish also refutes his claim: "The discovery of the moral law, which is what the enlightenment of tragedy consists of, is not the discovery of some abstract or metaphysical quantity." Judaism is a metaphysical quantity and does color the philosophical element portrayed by the author. The concept of "morals" are a deliberately deceptive substitute for the "avoidance of sin."
Another criticism of Miller’s expressed view in Tragedy and the Common Man can be found in Tragedy & Philosophy by Walter Kaufmann, formerly a professor of philosophy at Princeton:
Some writers stress that there must be moral conflict;1 others, the importance of belief that failure is compatible with greatness, that greatness and the universe remain mysterious, and that failure must be final and inevitable.2 It would be foolish to deny that some such views have been supported with great eloquence. Indeed, it is almost a commonplace that George Büchner’s Woyzeck and Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman are not tragic because the heroes are "pathetic" or, as is sometimes said, anti-heroes. Nevertheless, our exploration of Greek and Shakespearean tragedy suggests that these very attractive views ought to be given up.The claim that some suffering is merely pitiful and not truly tragic can be neither proved or disproved. But it can be shown to rest on an assumption that is false. This assumption is that both Greek and Shakespearean tragedy concentrated on the tragic and disdained the merely pathetic, and that the loss of this crucial distinction is a modern phenomenon. In fact, we have found that neither the Greeks or Shakespeare did make this distinction. (Kaufman, p 311-312)
1. E.g. Sidney Hook in "Pragmatism and the Tragic Sense of Life" (1960), Max Scheler, 1915, and Hegel.
2. E.g. Walter Kaufmann, above all in The Faith of a Heretic (1961), ch. 11.
Taking into account both Kaufmann's and Hobbes’ observations in comparison to Miller’s Tragedy and the Common Man, one can see how pathos is an element in drama centered on an esoterically based ideal. The use of pathos relates to the idea of an eternal principle, a connection to the human condition of mortality and the human obsession with the eternal. Kaufmann’s understanding of this is based on his study of Aristotle (see Poetics and Rhetoric) and his translation of Friedrich Nietzche’s works. There is a genealogy of drama which is analogous to Nietzche’s idea of a ‘genealogy of morals.’
With the pagan Greeks, drama and theater are directly related to their gods. The traditions of literature also trace their beginnings from the same.
(continued in part 2)
Until this sensitive, caring film was released, I had not realized that all those Lash LaRue movies of my youth were rife with homo-erotic undercurrents.
I and some fellow FReepers were actually rushing out to see this brave new film, but then we realized that we were also due at the Free Tookie Fundraiser. No sooner had we made that obligation, when my Blackberry beeped. You guessed it, PETA dinner dance!
Maybe we'll catch the next one. After all, Gay Cowboy Movies is not a one-film genre, now is it?
Gay people? Sure. The gay lifestyle? No way.
Hell, I don't accept heterosexuals carrying on that way (unprotected anonymous sex, numerous sexual partners, deviant sexual practices, etc.).
I've read the short story --- and it's actually quite revealing as to the real experiences of some homosexuals. If the film is true to the short story,
--- It explains the complete tragedy of being gay in an environment with no understanding of being gay (much like freerepublic, unfortunately.)
Could you explain why it is "unfortunate" that a society [like FR] needs to understand why gays feel 'tragic' about being deviant?
-- After all, - most of us are 'deviant' from the norm in one petty way or another.
If one lets their deviances be known, if they 'out' themselves, ridicule [or worse] is certain..
From my POV, it is not tragic to be gay, it's a stupid choice.