Madalyn Murray O'Hair: The Most Hated Woman in America

I recently watched The Most Hated Woman in America, about Madalyn Murray O'Hair, on Netflix. I read a comprehensive biography of her some years ago, but my memory is a bit hazy:

LeBeau, Bryan F. The Atheist: Madalyn Murray O’Hair. New York: New York University Press, 2003.

See my previous posts on O'Hair for my notes on this biography.

The film begins with her and son and (grand?)daughter kidnapped with hoods over their heads. I would think the dialogue is completely contrived, because unless the murderer-to-be told the story, how would be know? Seems tasteless to me. The police have no interest in following up on their disappearance, and the born-again son doesn't want to be bothered.

The motive for the kidnapping is blackmail, for funds the kidnappers know O'Hair secreted overseas, unbeknownst to the IRS.

Then flashback to 1955 in Baltimore. Madalyn and her young son are living with their parents, particularly the nasty Christian judgmental father. Madalyn is pregnant again as an unwed mother, which makes her a pariah in 1955. They're watching TV, Negroes are protesting not being able to be served somewhere, and Madalyn does not approve of this treatment. She and her son become the only white people to join the protest. She is an acid-tongued rebel, contemptuous of Christian hypocrisy. Her son knows the word "nonconformist".

Then it's 1960 .... she is a social worker. I don't remember any of this, but I'm pretty sure Madalyn got her MSW at Howard University.

Jumps to 1961: violent harassment. Jumps to 1963 Supreme Court decision against compulsory school prayer: rednecks go nuts. Jumps to 1964.

Madalyn founds American Atheists. Fired from social work job in Baltimore. Famous speech. Challenges Baltimore school system again. Makes cover of LOOK magazine: the most hated woman in America.

Flash forward to hostage situation--weird. News media not interested in the Murrays' disappearance, except for this one reporter. The man who reported missing persons is black and gay, rejected by parents, taken in by O'Hair--I didn't know this.

Flashback decades past: more controversy, radio programs, attack. Madalyn is married now. Later, older son is married with child, doesn't want to remain in the maelstrom. Jump ahead in time again: Madalyn on Carson; son's wife files for divorce.

Jump to 1979: O'Hair now in Austin, with protests against her.

Son Bill is a drunk, Madalyn and Bill now hate one another. Momma's boy Bill abandons her. Madalyn on Donahu debating Rev. Bob Harrington. They go on the road, making tons of money. I know there were debates, but this chumminess--for real? Son Bill in AA, a wreck now praying.

Son Bill denounces Madalyn on TV, now a public Christian. Madalyn hires future kidnapper. 1993: Found out he was a killer; this didn't bother her.

1994: Big fight between Madalyn and future kidnapper at solstice party. Several flash backs and forwards. In the future, son Bill gets involved, files missing persons report, suggests kidnapping is an inside job.

1995: news report on O'Hair. Skip ahead to 1998: reporter still investigating. Flashback to the murders. There were 3 kidnappers: starts with the killing of Robin, then Garth, then Madalyn. They are sawed in pieces, buried in a field. One of the kidnappers murdered. David Waters confesses.

I don't recall enough of the actual biography to know where inaccuracies in this biopic are to be found. It is quite sad. In real life Madalyn was quite a pill. The film does capture at various moments something you will find more of in the biography: while an outspoken rebel, Madalyn wanted to be thought of at times as a normal person, emphasizing family. At some point in the kidnapping in the film, she says, maybe in a flashback or voiceover--I don't remember now--that she most wants to be remembered as a mother. Then we see the brutal murders of her atheist son and granddaughter and finally of her. We need to remember that she was already a pariah as an unwed mother in a repressive society. I'm guessing it was the hypocrisy of white Christian America that drove her to single out atheism as her central cause among all the injustices she saw. But her environment also induced a single-minded narrowness that the more genteel "humanists" of the '60s could afford not to have--their narrowness was of a different sort--that drove her to act like the Stalin of atheism.

Life of Pi (film)

Saw the movie (spoiler alert:) Life of Pi yesterday afternoon. It was visually stunning. The acting was superb. The two-hour narrative was compelling, though I grew impatient with the long sojourn in the Pacific Ocean, which took up at least half the movie. As a film, it is definitely worth seeing. I have not read the novel.

However, thematically I have a big problem with it. For its major theme is belief vs reason, and while it gives reason some props, and preserves ambiguity, belief ends up having the upper hand.

The film is enacted mostly in flashbacks. Pi's story is supposed to convince a skeptical journalist of the existence of God. Pi himself as a young man develops a belief system in which he is a combination, Hindu, Christian, and Muslim. (Later in life, as a scholar, he develops an interest in Judaism.) His brothers mock him for adopting several religions at once; his father, however, is a rationalist and skeptic, warning Pi not to be fooled by the pageantry of religious ceremonies as they distract from the darkness underlying all religion. Pi, raised in a zoo, develops an early empathy with animals, and even tries to develop a rapport with a tiger named Richard Parker, who eventually becomes the second most important character in the tale.  But Pi's father warns him not to project his own human emotions onto the tiger, giving him a graphic demonstration of what tigers as predators are really like.

Later on (spoiler alert) Pi spends half the movie trapped on a lifeboat with the tiger Richard Parker. This goes on a bit too long, and though not boring, could tax the patience of a viewer who rejects the basic premise of the narrative, which involves a paradoxical symbiosis between man and tiger.

The story Pi tells about this sojourn on the Pacific is so incredible that the question arises at the end whether, without corroborating evidence, it can be believed, or for that matter, an alternative story that Pi makes up.  And this is related to belief in God.

Pi does in the end give credit to his rationalist father for teaching him the survival skills necessary to deal with the tiger.  So in the spirit of eclectic liberal tolerance, rationalism too occupies a place of honor, even if in the end a subordinate one, in the pantheon of religious pluralism.

The emphasis on the believability and desirability of one possible narrative among others on the basis of congeniality alone strikes me as decidedly postmodern and consonant with the liberal religiosity congenial to the upper middle class, with an inherent appeal to a middle class middlebrow or art film audience. These people are suckers for Pi's eclectic spirituality. I do not like this.

Given the foregrounding of Pi's relationship with animals, particularly the tiger, I thought at first that the spirit of the film was essentially pantheistic, but the violence of nature is not soft-pedaled. Pi constantly invokes God, which inevitably points to theism, despite the misguided, unrealistic empathy with the tiger, who has to be tamed anyway.

I also have a problem I have with the essentially individualistic character of spirituality, common among religious people irrespective of education and class, but obnoxious in a special way in bourgeois spirituality. It doesn't matter how many people suffer as long as one person is miraculously spared. The faith of the lone survivor is always vindicated in this world view. But the universe is not your friend, and even if by chance it seems to act that way upon occasion, it surely ain't everybody's friend.

The unbelievable fantasy dimension of the narrative (the ocean odyssey) is irritating even though clever, and its framing in the context of belief in the existence of God is really a waste of the imagination deployed in concocting this tale. And the beautiful visual imagery, reflecting the exquisitely developed technology now at the filmmaker's disposal, reflects the disparity between our advanced technological capability and the constriction of our ideological universe.

I wrote most of the above review upon arriving home yesterday, before I discovered this article:

Life of Pi author Martel hears from Obama, Winnipeg Free Press, 04/8/2010

According to the article, the author received a letter of praise from President Obama. Read attentively what Obama wrote, and tell me this does not confirm my analysis to a 'T'. It's fitting to contemplate this amidst all the fakery of today's presidential inauguration:

"My daughter and I just finished reading Life of Pi together. Both of us agreed we prefer the story with animals. It is a lovely book -- an elegant proof of God, and the power of storytelling. Thank you." 

I can't think of a more fitting basis on which to condemn this story.

Avatar

Written November 6, 2010 at 9:55 pm

Just watched AVATAR on HBO. Much better than I anticipated. Usually I don't care much about special effects, but I was impressed by the world Cameron created, esp. the flora & fauna.

The contrast between two ways of life was striking, but since I don't like nature, or primitive clan social organization, I can't identify with the Nav'i.

There are some aspects of the plot line, & esp. the final battle, I don't find convincing. I don't believe the Nav'i could have won.

Thematically, the fact that the two worlds of technology & virtually unmediated relationship to nature (except for minimal technology like knives & bows & arrows) never are synthesized into a more comprehensive picture, is a failing of the movie, which ends up romanticizing the primitive, a singularly unimaginative resolution of the conflict. It's like high tech "Dances with Wolves".

Exploration of the world of Pandora remains the most interesting thing about the film, more interesting to me than the actual conflict that drives it, which is quite formulaic. The concept of the Avatar is decently handled. I imagine the Nav'i language will be of interest to conlangers.

Jean Anouilh’s Becket

I've always preferred literary art with a philosophical dimension. Case in point: the play Becket by Jean Anouilh. I was introduced to the play via the film starring Peter O'Toole and Richard Burton, which I saw with a friend 35 years ago or more.

We were so impressed with this drama that some years later, my friend initiated a local theater production of it. It never panned out, but I can still remember the rehearsals. Though not an actor, I participated in reading rehearsals, playing an archbishop locked in a power struggle with the King. Tossing out veiled threats was, I admit, intoxicating, even in fantasy. Nothing says sadistic lust for power like the Catholic Church.

But I recall as well something far more important—my reason for the fascination with the play—the curious self-awareness of the Becket character and the ambiguity of his role-playing, culminating in a martyrdom predicated on assuming "the honor of God". Having worked behind the scenes in the theater (long ago and far away) and kibitzing incessantly for years, I got to observe actors, directors, and playwrights. It's instructive to see who really has awareness of the meaning of plays and who doesn't. I've found actors in plays are just as clueless as actors in real life. But some roles can't be adequately played without profound inquiry into meaning. This play presents such a challenge.

I've distilled out of the play some key quotes revealing this most intriguing character:

Jean Anouilh's Becket: Choice Quotes

There's not a line wasted in this play, so it's hard to extract the essentials. I vividly recall almost all these extracts from decades past. I'll just add a comment about the King, since I've not focused primarily on him in these extracts. The King constantly marvels at the intelligence and elusiveness of his close friend Becket, who understands the social order the King commands better than the King does himself. This king—as is characteristic of all rulers—is obtuse to certain underlying properties of the social system he commands. Becket, however, as a member of a conquered people who collaborates with his conquerors, exhibits an excruciating self-awareness and a deeper awareness of how all components of the social order fit together, thus enabling him to help the king rule with greater efficiency. The King is merely pragmatic, though thoroughly so, and like all pragmatists he can see through pretense but not through pragmatism. Hence it is child's play for the King to deflate the hypocritical pretenses of the Catholic Church, while Becket remains an enigma to him. The interplay between these two characters is key to the brilliance of the play.

If you want some entertainment that makes you think instead of settling for the usual pabulum, you'd do well to rent this film.